About Scientific Research
Some of the “advanced” technologies used are but proofs to show your superiors of your findings, or rather, designer intuitions. Like eyetracking technology, what it does is not so hard to do so with a designer’s experience and eyes. It can only show the surface of things, yet it cannot tell you the root of the design problem.
The interpretation of results for such research plays a more important role than the result itself. In the end, it is up to the designers themselves to find and point out the mistakes in the design and make the required changes. However, I do feel that a certain amount of research still has to be done to aid the designer in the re-design or design process. The product’s intended user is not the designer himself but the target audience. So getting to know the target audience’s likes and dislikes better will definitely be of some help, especially if you are designing for user experience.
Designers can sometimes overlook the simplest of problems such as the improper placements of buttons or banners, so doing a bit of user research will do much to pick out the minute problems in large projects. However small the help, a little help through research is better than none.
Non Scientific Research
I do agree that non-scientific research methods are useful in aiding the designing process through my own personal experience of designing the Kumon learning portal for primary school children. What we think appeals to them might not be exactly so. It is only through user research that we got to know them better and cater to their wants and needs with greater ease and efficiency.
Methods such as card sorting and user persona gives valuable insight into sometimes easily overlooked areas. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to make things “obvious” to the users, they will somehow miss it. This doesn’t mean that you are wrong or the user is wrong. Everyone experiences things differently, you just have to take it that this method of design does not suit the experience that you are intending the users to have. I’ll always bear in mind the fact that user experience design isn’t all about research, but a great deal of it lies on understanding the needs of your target users and research is but one of the methods to know them better.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Reflections for the course, NM4210
This whole course has really opened my eyes and vision to the world of user experience design. UX design can’t be summarised in any number of words to do it full justice. It can only be attained through trial and error, with the target consumers in mind when designing anything.
A very important premise to designing a good experience which I have taken away from this course is that of user research. It is not just about number crunching and plain old surveys. Rather, its about getting to know your users, how they operate in their environment (not in a lab) and what they like or dislike. It is like getting to know your friends or close ones better. One of the assignments that we did included a ethnographic study, where we had to crash in on a lecture without anyone knowing that we are actually there to study their behaviours and actions during the class. The experience was totally different from any other researches that I have done before. This time round, I had to blend into the environment, observing the people around in their natural settings. I could not talk, ask questions or whatever in that environment; all I could do was sit and observe. It was really interesting that by just sitting and observing, my team could come up with so many conclusions that we might never have gotten from surveys.
Final Project
The final project was a daunting one for everyone of us I reckon. There was a large amount of freedom afforded to us to choose and create a user experience for any target audience. We decided on improving and inculcating the Kumon spirit for Kumon by designing a learning portal for the students. During the course of this project, we had to do numerous interviews, observations and researches. Drawing from what we have learnt in class, methods such as card sorting and usability settings, we were able to design and come up with a product that will be of interest to our target students.
Through our user research, we realised that no two persons are the same; one child may like the design very much but the other would not. We could not please every child with one type of design and feel of our learning portal. Further consultations with Mr Reddy got us to the conclusion that we had to design not for the masses, but for a specific portion of users.
No one research study is final; there are always things to improve at every session. However, it is important to capture the attention of your target audience and please them on the most basic level. The other parts of the design will take time and more user research to reach perfection.
User Interface
After we got the general look and feel of our portal out, we had to move on to the user interface portion. The user interface is a very important part of the entire user experience design of an interactive product. Although a good UI is often times overlooked by the users (because they are so intuitive that it seems to be second nature to the user), the importance of it cannot be stressed enough. Times when the UI is being noticed by a user is when it is badly designed, so much so that it affects and protrudes out to the user when he/she is using the product to warrant such notice. We opted for a click only interface, with the exception of the entering of data such as keying in the username and password at the start. This created a uniform feel for the user interface throughout.
Final Thoughts
Finally, I would like to add that user research is no doubt important, but in choosing our research subjects, we are already practicing a sort of bias. We think that they belong to a group of people that we are trying to target and customise our software to. What happens if they are not really part of our target group? I guess there’s no absolute objectiveness in user research; as such, it is just best to concentrate on a specific group of people that we think would best suit the current project. We can’t please everyone, can we? :D
A very important premise to designing a good experience which I have taken away from this course is that of user research. It is not just about number crunching and plain old surveys. Rather, its about getting to know your users, how they operate in their environment (not in a lab) and what they like or dislike. It is like getting to know your friends or close ones better. One of the assignments that we did included a ethnographic study, where we had to crash in on a lecture without anyone knowing that we are actually there to study their behaviours and actions during the class. The experience was totally different from any other researches that I have done before. This time round, I had to blend into the environment, observing the people around in their natural settings. I could not talk, ask questions or whatever in that environment; all I could do was sit and observe. It was really interesting that by just sitting and observing, my team could come up with so many conclusions that we might never have gotten from surveys.
Final Project
The final project was a daunting one for everyone of us I reckon. There was a large amount of freedom afforded to us to choose and create a user experience for any target audience. We decided on improving and inculcating the Kumon spirit for Kumon by designing a learning portal for the students. During the course of this project, we had to do numerous interviews, observations and researches. Drawing from what we have learnt in class, methods such as card sorting and usability settings, we were able to design and come up with a product that will be of interest to our target students.
Through our user research, we realised that no two persons are the same; one child may like the design very much but the other would not. We could not please every child with one type of design and feel of our learning portal. Further consultations with Mr Reddy got us to the conclusion that we had to design not for the masses, but for a specific portion of users.
No one research study is final; there are always things to improve at every session. However, it is important to capture the attention of your target audience and please them on the most basic level. The other parts of the design will take time and more user research to reach perfection.
User Interface
After we got the general look and feel of our portal out, we had to move on to the user interface portion. The user interface is a very important part of the entire user experience design of an interactive product. Although a good UI is often times overlooked by the users (because they are so intuitive that it seems to be second nature to the user), the importance of it cannot be stressed enough. Times when the UI is being noticed by a user is when it is badly designed, so much so that it affects and protrudes out to the user when he/she is using the product to warrant such notice. We opted for a click only interface, with the exception of the entering of data such as keying in the username and password at the start. This created a uniform feel for the user interface throughout.
Final Thoughts
Finally, I would like to add that user research is no doubt important, but in choosing our research subjects, we are already practicing a sort of bias. We think that they belong to a group of people that we are trying to target and customise our software to. What happens if they are not really part of our target group? I guess there’s no absolute objectiveness in user research; as such, it is just best to concentrate on a specific group of people that we think would best suit the current project. We can’t please everyone, can we? :D
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Ethnographic Studies
For our ethnographic studies of lecture conditions, we employed methods of non-invasive observation and interviews of the students.
Observations:
Our group (Junhao, Jialin & Yi Eng) chose to focus on the CS3253 Management of IS lecture in LT34 as it simply highlights most, if not, all the problems we found in the other lectures we have crashed.
The lecture was held at 10am in the morning, supposedly a good timing for students to concentrate and absorb information. It started a bit late as the lecturer had a slight problem with the projector; the projected image kept appearing and disappearing for no obvious reasons. The glitch went on throughout the whole lecture, creating a major distraction for the students as well as the lecturer.
The lecturer was rather monotonous with her lecturing, causing a few of the students to “fly off” to other planetary systems. The situation was particularly bad at the back, where students started chatting amongst themselves. The chatter began to get a bit unbearable, but the lecturer just carried on with her lecture, seemingly unaware of the unrest behind. It was already 30 minutes into the lecture, but students were still streaming into the lecture theatre; again, causing minor distractions to the already monotonous lecture. The restlessness of the students began to show more clearly as more shuffling in the seats could be heard through the entire lecture theatre.
1 hour into the lecture, and still no break was given by the lecturer. By this time, the students have really gotten restless. The attention span of the students began to fade as more and more of them started doing their own things instead of listening to the lecturer. Some started eating and drinking, talking, smsing on the phone, doing stuff on their laptops while others just started looking around aimlessly. Finally at 1 hour and 15 minutes into the lecture, the lecturer decided to give a break; much to the relief of the students.
It is also interesting to note that in most lectures, when the lecturers pose questions to the floor, almost nobody will respond or attempt to answer immediately. There will be a dead silence for 30 plus seconds before anyone speaks up, or rather, the lecturer decides to answer his or her own question. Student interactivity with the lecturer was pretty limited in large lecture theatre environments but in seminar classes, the students were more willing to speak up.
Possible Problems:
Perhaps the lecture was held a bit early in the morning and coupled with the monotonous tone of the lecturer, the students were “lullabied” off to dreamland. The boredom was unbearable especially after an hour into the lecture. There was also not much participation from the students, which resulted in a “one-way” traffic situation where only the lecturer was talking. This seemingly created a type of “disconnectedness” between the students and the lectured topic. Attention spans of students should be taken into consideration too; it appeared that an hour and 15 minutes was a bit too long for the students to maintain their attention to the lecture.
Possible solutions:
Some of the possible solutions that our group has come up with are as follows; there should be a break given to the students near the one hour mark. The lecturer should try to initiate discussions with the students rather than simply throwing them a question and wait for their response. Maybe small goodies can be given to students who participate in the discussions. (This was done by Dr Perry during her media writing lectures to encourage participations) Presentation slides should not contain a lot of words as this would be a major distraction for the students as the lecturer tries to explain certain concepts. Maybe the lecture notes should come with blanks whereby the students would have to pay close attention to the lecture, lest they choose to risk missing the important points.
Classmate’s presentation:
I found the Feng Shui presentation to be quite an interesting one; adding another facet to observational studies. I didn’t know that NUS was actually constructed according to Feng Shui readings as interesting as the one mentioned by Zhonghao’s group. There are a lot of ways or methods we can employ to read or study environments so as to make improvements to better the current methods. I believe that variety is the way to go for today’s modern world.
Observations:
Our group (Junhao, Jialin & Yi Eng) chose to focus on the CS3253 Management of IS lecture in LT34 as it simply highlights most, if not, all the problems we found in the other lectures we have crashed.
The lecture was held at 10am in the morning, supposedly a good timing for students to concentrate and absorb information. It started a bit late as the lecturer had a slight problem with the projector; the projected image kept appearing and disappearing for no obvious reasons. The glitch went on throughout the whole lecture, creating a major distraction for the students as well as the lecturer.
The lecturer was rather monotonous with her lecturing, causing a few of the students to “fly off” to other planetary systems. The situation was particularly bad at the back, where students started chatting amongst themselves. The chatter began to get a bit unbearable, but the lecturer just carried on with her lecture, seemingly unaware of the unrest behind. It was already 30 minutes into the lecture, but students were still streaming into the lecture theatre; again, causing minor distractions to the already monotonous lecture. The restlessness of the students began to show more clearly as more shuffling in the seats could be heard through the entire lecture theatre.
1 hour into the lecture, and still no break was given by the lecturer. By this time, the students have really gotten restless. The attention span of the students began to fade as more and more of them started doing their own things instead of listening to the lecturer. Some started eating and drinking, talking, smsing on the phone, doing stuff on their laptops while others just started looking around aimlessly. Finally at 1 hour and 15 minutes into the lecture, the lecturer decided to give a break; much to the relief of the students.
It is also interesting to note that in most lectures, when the lecturers pose questions to the floor, almost nobody will respond or attempt to answer immediately. There will be a dead silence for 30 plus seconds before anyone speaks up, or rather, the lecturer decides to answer his or her own question. Student interactivity with the lecturer was pretty limited in large lecture theatre environments but in seminar classes, the students were more willing to speak up.
Possible Problems:
Perhaps the lecture was held a bit early in the morning and coupled with the monotonous tone of the lecturer, the students were “lullabied” off to dreamland. The boredom was unbearable especially after an hour into the lecture. There was also not much participation from the students, which resulted in a “one-way” traffic situation where only the lecturer was talking. This seemingly created a type of “disconnectedness” between the students and the lectured topic. Attention spans of students should be taken into consideration too; it appeared that an hour and 15 minutes was a bit too long for the students to maintain their attention to the lecture.
Possible solutions:
Some of the possible solutions that our group has come up with are as follows; there should be a break given to the students near the one hour mark. The lecturer should try to initiate discussions with the students rather than simply throwing them a question and wait for their response. Maybe small goodies can be given to students who participate in the discussions. (This was done by Dr Perry during her media writing lectures to encourage participations) Presentation slides should not contain a lot of words as this would be a major distraction for the students as the lecturer tries to explain certain concepts. Maybe the lecture notes should come with blanks whereby the students would have to pay close attention to the lecture, lest they choose to risk missing the important points.
Classmate’s presentation:
I found the Feng Shui presentation to be quite an interesting one; adding another facet to observational studies. I didn’t know that NUS was actually constructed according to Feng Shui readings as interesting as the one mentioned by Zhonghao’s group. There are a lot of ways or methods we can employ to read or study environments so as to make improvements to better the current methods. I believe that variety is the way to go for today’s modern world.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Four Pleasure Analysis: "Recommended HP for Trina"
Name: Trina
Age: 26
Occupation: Marketing Manager
Background: Trina was born into a well-to-do family and received high standards of education from young. She now holds a first class honours degree from Boston University in marketing and is working as a marketing manager. She is single and currently lives together with her parents.
Likes: She loves being the center of attraction as well as the company of friends and family. She aspires to attain even greater heights in her career and is extremely image conscious. Nothing but the best will do for her. Although ambitious in her pursuits for career advancement, she holds relationships such as those for her friends and family in high regard. If anything, she would be willing to make sacrifices to maintain these relationships. She also enjoys having meals at posh places although she doesn’t really mind the occasional eat-out at neighbouring food-courts or coffeeshops. She absolutely adores going to beaches for a quiet afternoon of sun-tanning. She also likes to organize or be part of beach barbeque parties; she sees it as a way of staying in touch with her friends.
Physio-Pleasure: Trina loves going to beaches to chill out during whenever she has the time. (Appreciation)
Being a person who is very conscious about how she appears in front of her peers, she does workouts at gyms weekly as well as going for morning runs everyday. (Need)
[The build quality of the phone should be good so that it can take the strains of her gym exercises and morning runs. Mp3 and radio function is a welcome function as it allows her to be entertained during her tanning as well as exercising sessions.]
Being a person who is very conscious about how she appears in front of her peers, she does workouts at gyms weekly as well as going for morning runs everyday. (Need)
[The build quality of the phone should be good so that it can take the strains of her gym exercises and morning runs. Mp3 and radio function is a welcome function as it allows her to be entertained during her tanning as well as exercising sessions.]
Socio-Pleasure: Wants to always be in the know. Enjoys keeping in touch with friends and family. Allows her to feel in control of her life when everyone is within reach. (Need)
She loves to appear cultured and sophisticated in front of her peers. (Appreciation)
[The phone needs to be able to connect to various networks such as 3G and GSM. A 3G phone would be optimal as it will allow her to do video conferencing with her friends and family members whenever and wherever she is. It must also allow her to make blog posts on the go.]
She loves to appear cultured and sophisticated in front of her peers. (Appreciation)
[The phone needs to be able to connect to various networks such as 3G and GSM. A 3G phone would be optimal as it will allow her to do video conferencing with her friends and family members whenever and wherever she is. It must also allow her to make blog posts on the go.]
Psycho-Pleasure: She needs to feel in control of her life and everything that is happening around her. She prides herself for using the latest in technologies as well as the most fashionable designer items.
[A 3.2 Megapixels camera, mp3, 3G, Bluetooth functions are a must for her technological cravings. The user interface should not be too difficult for her to handle. The phone should be aesthetically pleasing to the eye and should have design innovations unlike any other in the market.]
[A 3.2 Megapixels camera, mp3, 3G, Bluetooth functions are a must for her technological cravings. The user interface should not be too difficult for her to handle. The phone should be aesthetically pleasing to the eye and should have design innovations unlike any other in the market.]
Ideo-Pleasure: Due to her constant need to stay in the centre of attention, she enjoys using the latest in technological innovations. The design and quality of a product are of utmost importance to her. The products she uses needs to be expensive looking and exude a sense of class.
[The phone should have a unique design, with a touch of class and sophistication to match her elegance and ideals.]
[The phone should have a unique design, with a touch of class and sophistication to match her elegance and ideals.]
Possible Match: Sony Ericsson K800i Cybershot phone.
Specs: 3.2 Megapixels Autofocus camera, Image stabilization, red eye reduction, real camera flash, memory stick micro slot, mp3 & radio function, 2.5 inch lcd screen, 2nd camera for video conference, 3G & GSM 900 1800 1900, direct blogging function, Netfront internet browser.
Specs: 3.2 Megapixels Autofocus camera, Image stabilization, red eye reduction, real camera flash, memory stick micro slot, mp3 & radio function, 2.5 inch lcd screen, 2nd camera for video conference, 3G & GSM 900 1800 1900, direct blogging function, Netfront internet browser.
Why: The K800i is a phone that exudes a sense of class and stands out from the rest because of its 3.2 megapixel camera, with real flash and red eye reduction, not to mention the image stabilization abilities. Apart from being worthy replacement for a digital camera, the K800i also spots violet keypad lights, which is not common place for many phones in the market. The use of violet keypad lights increases the elegance of this phone. Being a 3G phone, the K800i should enable Trina to be able to keep in touch with her loved ones no matter where she is in the world. The instant blogging option also allows Trina to make blog posts on the go, keeping her friends updated with the latest happenings. The included netfront browser allows her to surf the internet with ease, enabling her to get the latest information and emails.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
VAIO TX37GP (Visceral)
Visceral: It was sleek and beautiful as well as visually pleasing. The keyboard was the first thing that caught my eye, it looked very different from all the other laptops that I have seen. It had this futuristic look to it, finished with a silver glean to every key. It appeared very sleek and gave a feeling of sophistication at the first look. It also had the look of a lean and mean machine, packed with all the powers of processing in a small outer shell.
Behavioural: The battery life was extremely good, clocking in at 9.5 hours per charge. However the drawback was that the keyboard space was a bit cramp because of small size (11 inch widescreen). It should be perfect for ladies though. The processor wasn’t exactly fast, being a ULV 1.2G and it wasn’t even duo core. There was external graphics accelerator, which was a big no-no to me. However, the weight factor was a definitive plus. The entire package weighed in at 1.2kg, with the battery plugged in. Do also note that the dvd writer is built in as well, unlike the Acer ultra portables.
Reflective: Touch of sophistication and it does provide a bit of a “wow” factor to anyone near you because of its sheer size and design. Compared to the X505, the TX series does not really turn heads as much. After purchase, one might feel that it is quite value for money, with the cheapest variant going at S$2799.
Behavioural: The battery life was extremely good, clocking in at 9.5 hours per charge. However the drawback was that the keyboard space was a bit cramp because of small size (11 inch widescreen). It should be perfect for ladies though. The processor wasn’t exactly fast, being a ULV 1.2G and it wasn’t even duo core. There was external graphics accelerator, which was a big no-no to me. However, the weight factor was a definitive plus. The entire package weighed in at 1.2kg, with the battery plugged in. Do also note that the dvd writer is built in as well, unlike the Acer ultra portables.
Reflective: Touch of sophistication and it does provide a bit of a “wow” factor to anyone near you because of its sheer size and design. Compared to the X505, the TX series does not really turn heads as much. After purchase, one might feel that it is quite value for money, with the cheapest variant going at S$2799.
VAIO S18GP (Behavioural)
Visceral: Not really that attractive as compared to the other models in the VAIO line-up, though it once was.
Behavioural: Battery life is decent, about 5.5hours per charge. The keyboard is full sized, meaning that its easier to type on. The weight factor was also not bad for a laptop that has in-built dvd writer, an ATI graphics card at 13.3 inches. It weighed in at around 1.8kg. All the above factors, including the major discount in price, prompted me to get this laptop amongst all the plethora of choices I had.
Reflective: It was the cutting edge technology at the time I bought it, which was 2 years ago. It does not tell much about the taste of the owner as it looked just like any other laptop, save the mirror reflective logo. A touch of class, perhaps?
Behavioural: Battery life is decent, about 5.5hours per charge. The keyboard is full sized, meaning that its easier to type on. The weight factor was also not bad for a laptop that has in-built dvd writer, an ATI graphics card at 13.3 inches. It weighed in at around 1.8kg. All the above factors, including the major discount in price, prompted me to get this laptop amongst all the plethora of choices I had.
Reflective: It was the cutting edge technology at the time I bought it, which was 2 years ago. It does not tell much about the taste of the owner as it looked just like any other laptop, save the mirror reflective logo. A touch of class, perhaps?
VAIO X505 Extreme (Reflective)
Visceral: On first look, the X505 appears extremely sleek, conjuring up images of coolness and attractiveness. One would immediately notice the ultra thinness of the machine.
Behavioural: Battery life short, about 2-3 hours per charge. The trackpad is missing from the laptop, perhaps due to the design constraints. Palms have to rest outside the keyboard, onto the surface of the table. Keyboard lacked tactile feedback, which makes it hard to type at times. One good point about it though, was that it weighed in at about 0.79 kg with the battery installed, extremely light weight for a 12 inch screen.
Reflective: Status symbol; being in the forefront of technological advancements. It is a great show off device. The super slim factor would surely catch the attention of anyone near your vicinity. It tells everyone much about the exquisite taste and of course, the financial status of the user; a device of this calibre surely does not come cheap! (About S$4999)
For your information, the VAIO 505 Extreme was chosen for one of NASA’s space missions for their computing needs because of its extreme light weight and low heat generation and low electricity consumption factors.
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