Summary of our work so far

For the last exercise we did a lot of work with the high-fidelity prototype and it really paid off. Everyone in the group got to use their skills - like doing a great job with the design, extra research at Tom Tits including user testing, or implementing an actual clickable high-fidelity prototype. Overall, we are very happy with the progress our group has made over the last weeks.

In many meetings we discussed our workflow, sitemap and the actual implementation of the prototype. Additionally we’ve debated often and considered different approaches whereby we used social medias as Facebook, Google Drive and telecommunication.

Since the beginning of the project, we realized the key to great work is a good communication within the group. Also an important factor for being efficient was making use of personal skills and therefore we divided the work after professions. Everybody also gave a lot of feedback on everybody’s work, which helped developing our project further. Everybody has found out what their particular skill in the group is and what their strengths really are. Through our work, our target group has always been our number one priority and we develop this product for them. When we did our interviews and observations on our visits, we met people similar to our future personas. Our observations and their opinions gives a concrete idea about the needs and the personality of our customers which has helped us in creating personas and scenarios. These lead to forming main goals and pain points according to our personas that we wanted to tackle with our product.

It’s fun to see how this project has taken shape since the brainstorming with all its crazy ideas to something that’s actually relevant. During these weeks, we have narrowed our ideas down a lot to keep the simplicity of the product and only have what is absolutely necessary for the target group and Tom Tits. This way, it is easy to understand our product and according to staff members it fits perfectly with Tom Tits values for their guests’ experience. We kept focus on our target group at Tom Tits, but we have always kept the museums interest in mind to create the best compliment. Tom Tits values learning by doing - an ‘hands on’ learning experience. There is no instruction to any experiment because there is no right or wrong way to do it. With our product, the visitors simply get more scientific explanations on the experiments which helps families getting the most out of their visit and attracts also children by small quizzes to experiments.

The final step in this project is considering the proposed changes after the evaluation last week and the feedback from think-alouds, and preparing the final presentation. This also includes making a visual design of the product when being used - a picture of the interactive screens at Tom Tits. Making these final pieces of this project is not overwhelming, the feedback we got has been throughout very positive. In the end, we have learnt to work well in advance instead of doing the presentations last minute and therefore we don’t feel stressed anymore when close to a deadline.

Continuation from the visit at Tom Tits yesterday.

We went to Tom Tits and did our Think-alouds. We interviewed a lot of people who got to try out our prototype. It was exciting to see them try it and as it turned out also very useful for us to develop the prototype further. It was important to us to go back to Tom Tits so that the prototype would be tested in its right environment. We focused on letting visitors that fitted our main personas characters, but also we had some staff members try it out. We did the later just to see if the staff could see if our concept would work with Tom Tits´ concept.

When interviewing the staff, we got their thoughts about what the products should contain. Tom Tits is about hands-on learning - trying out the experiments without someone or something telling what is right or wrong. Therefore the staff liked our product, which doesn’t come with instructions on how to do the experiments.

One of the staff thought our design was alright but could be improved - she said some buttons could be more clear where they would lead. This feedback helped a lot and we have now improved them by changing icons and colors to make it more user-friendly. So now we have changed the icons and tried even harder to find metaphors thats would help the user understanding what to expect when they press a certain button. So instead of having + as the icon for “more information” we have now changed it to an i. That icon was also something some visitors had as suggestions.  

We got questions about how we’ve planned with the screens - where would they be located and how many do we want? Have we thought about school holidays when there is a lot of people - would all the guests be able to use them or only a few? We have already thought about it and decided to have a few screens on each floor - not one screen per experiment. This is, once again, not to interfere with the playful experience of doing the experiments which is one of the main focuses on Tom Tits.

We talked to both parents and grandparents at Tom Tits. Several pointed out that it was important that we don’t have too much information on the screens so the kids don’t loose interest. It is better to have a start screen and then being able to continuing reading if interested. Also good to hear since it was something we had thought of as well and in a way expected to hear from our target group. People in general thought it was a good idea to have a competitive element to the screen - another fun thing for the children in particular. It was not super obvious that our icon for the competition, the star, represented a quiz. We have now changed it.

The grandparents were not as used to this format - the interactive screen - but happily tried it and thought it was something the children would appreciate.

To summarize our visit - people seemed to like our idea and thought it helped out with something that was missing at Tom Tits. Our product is all about giving more information about the scientific part of the experiment and works as a complement to the playful visit at Tom Tits.

With the feedback we got, we were now able to make some changes after the users expectations and needs. Now we have a more coherent prototype.

Today the group went to Tom Tits again to get some feedback on our prototype. It went really good and the comments on the design was sometimes surprising, some buttons were very simple and obvious to us but not to the user. Especially old users. For some it was learning by doing instead of obvious from the start.

The feedback was good and we can use it to continue the work on the design.

The users all agreed that our product would be a good compliment to the museum and were over all very enthusiastic!

Group Meeting

Today we had a short meeting and decided which changes we will apply to our prototype. Furthermore we planned shortly how work will be divided. As our group consists of programmers and graphic designers, for logical reasons it got divided after profession. This work division also improves personal time planning as smaller groups are coordinated more easily. This way we can create the high-fidelity prototype more efficiently.

Since we are dividing the work we also schedueled a time limit so we can constantly check how far we have come and be sure that the two parts are being produced.

reading seminar 2 group discussion

Today we stood down and talked about what we had read for this reading seminar 2. We also went through the comments we got for our project.

Starting with the book. Chapter 6 contained information regarding brainstorming. We found it interesting to read about but said that it would have been good to read it earlier in the course - our brainstorming was two weeks ago.

Chapter 6 also contained design principles that we haven't used either but could be useful in future design projects.

We discussed a lot about feedback from chapter 7, it's a part of designing that you normally don't think about and is not that obvious. But of course, how a system respond affects the user experience. The example with pressing buttons and waiting for reaction, and how the user needs to see something has happened and different time limits for when the system should respond, was especially interesting.

We can really use this knowledge of affordance in our design, even though we are using screens our "buttons" can still have a design of real buttons so the user know where to press.

Chapter 8 is about prototyping, development and testing. We are thinking from our own experience it is best doing the interface design by going down the way starting with sketches, then proceeding with detailed paper prototypes to end up with detailed digital low-fidelity prototypes is the best way to develop. We have discussed about testing and thought that it would be good to test it already now in the beginning and then continuously test it as we update it. This so we won't have to go back to the start if something where to go wrong if tested at the end.

Reading seminar 2

For our second reading seminar we read three chapters: Ideation and Design Principles, Refinement and Prototyping, Testing, and Development.

The first chapter covers how to create ideas and how to value them.
For the first there are some easy methods. To start the process you can use mind maps or association games.
Afterwards you do structured brain storming by using Personas, Process Moments and Pain Points.
Out of those design principles can be created, which should be memorable, specific and cross-fitting.

Second chapter is about how to get details fitting to constraints. There are several principles of interaction design that have be contributed to.
Just to name important ones: Standard, The Poka-Yoke Principle, Tesler’s Law of the Conservation of Complexity and The Magical Number Seven.
It is important to document and use methods of refinement such as scenarios, use cases as well as sketches and models.

The last chapter can be divided into three steps. The first one is Prototyping. Hereby you start with Interface Design.
Then you can build low-fidelity prototypes as for instance paper prototypes.
They base on Wizard of Oz manipulation to appear interactive. Out of those first tries high-fidelity prototypes are build, which require much more time and ressources.
The next step is testing. In the user testing phase you are observing a user using the prototype, which is evaluated by testing protocols and opportunity reports.
Besides an heuristic evaluation can be done by applying common questions.
The last step is developing, which can be summed up as troubleshooting.

Reading seminar 2 - Isabella Richiello

Chapter 6

This chapter is about brainstorming and different techniques that are helpful during the process. While brainstorming you need to keep in mind that quantity is more valued then quality, therefor concentration and an open mind towards all ideas are two key words. The book later on points out structuring up the ideas with follow up exercises such as e.g. pain points or personas. This is the hardest step and I agree when thinking back on our brainstorming process. Although the personas, pain points and scenarios we made gave a push into the right direction making the exercise brainwriting successful for our group. I feel this is when we really started producing ideas and developing them further by choosing which one was worth pursuing. Many things mentioned could have been of an advantage for us to know about before doing the brainstorming session.

Chapter 7

This chapter was very interesting to read about, lots of things mentioned were new and explained easily. Different constraints to help define a product are mentioned, which I found fun to read about since we have touched this point a bit during our brainstorming. For example the technology and context point which affected our designing process. Also laws and principles of interaction design are mentioned, which contains lots of information, some of it irrelevant for our project and some more interesting. The part about Affordance and Feedback was something I thought could be very interesting for us. Affordance is important since we are developing for users that could be older and doesn’t want to learn new things meanwhile feedback would be important since it is a new device and by having good feedback we keep the users trust and patience for it. Another part I found was meaningful was task flows and use cases, I think using them would help further develop and understand our design.

Chapter 8

We are now at this stage of building a prototype so this chapter was good to read through. We have started out by doing a paper prototype and I agree with what is said of it being the easiest way to quickly sketches up different steps of the device. I’m looking forward to go deeper into high-fidelity prototypes. Therefor I would like to discuss what type of high-fidelity prototype is the best for our design and when would be a good time to test it?

Notes to Reading seminar 2 17/10-14 Carl Sténson

After the research phase comes a maybe the most important phase of the project, a phase where the goal is to create as many ideas as possible and forget the constraints of the project. Many times when I’m part of projects we always tend to take a solution based on technology. When reading these chapters I see the many weak points in a solution like this. First of all the solution usually is very common to an already existing one and secondly it can be a bit too complex for the user to use. In the future and during this project we have/ will try to stay open minded for a longer time and work with more than one solution for a longer time.

One thing I think could have improved our ideation process is if we had tried to forget about our constraints a bit more. Our Brainstorming resulted in ideas that pretty much all of them was doable. If we had allowed ourselves to “go wild” without any constraints I believe we could have come up with other concepts. Because even if the ideas are crazy it is possible to find interesting angles and points that you can apply to another idea.

Another thing I reflected on when reading the chapters is that we have focused very much attention on an interactive screen and where to place it. I think we should widen our focus just a bit to see what is around the screen we could/will be able to create a service that fits better into the context. A screen needs to be supported with a nice station to make the screen visible, attractive and maybe even complimentary information/instructions. A discussion might result in something that could improve our solution.

In the future of our project we will develop a prototype and therefore the chapters about prototyping, testing and development were very interesting to read. I saw many opportunities for us to test our project before actually going to tom tits and try it on real customers. First of all we should try to make an easy-prototype and try different scenarios/role play on them and see what works and what can be refined. And during this process of continued testing I think we can develop a more and more high-fidelity prototype. To work with role play will also help us to keep our first and secondary personas in mind during our work.

How do you think we can make our testing most efficent? (with respect to our context, and constraints)

Readingseminar 2

For this seminar we read chapter 6, 7 and 8 in ‘Designing for Interaction’ by Dan Saffer. Most of the information very relevant to our project. The only negative I have to say is that I felt like some came a bit late. We have already gone through the brainstorming part of the project for example.

But never the less, the key for developing is to repeat. Chapter 6 had brainstorming and principles in focus. By reading this chapter I got a deeper understanding of why it’s so important to let brainstorming take time. It takes more than one idea to get a good end product. You need to have many ideas so when you are ready to move on, you know that you have the best idea. It takes time to become a professional “brainstormer”, and it is easy to make mistakes along the way. But I think my group did a good job with following the important rules of brainstorming. We stayed focused during the whole exercise and “lived” by the most important rule of them all: leave your ego behind and there are no bad ideas!

Principles are something that’s new to me but I can really see the use of it: it’s created so that the whole team is on the same page. And can be used as a measuring stick when deciding on ideas worth keeping. By having principles you can make sure that your original vision on what problem to solve is intact.

Now when we have decided on a prototype the next step its important to know your constrains of the project and how to work around them. For us it’s important that the project doesn’t take to long since we have a time limit for example. Since our product in the end will be seen on interactive screens I thought the piece about feedback and feedforward was interesting. It’s very important to give the user feedback so they know it´s working. And it’s a matter of seconds; if the feedback is delayed the user will think less of the product.

One other thing to help use understand the product was affordances: how shape indicates how the user can use something. By using standards on how it looks like will help our prototype to be user friendly.

Question: how can we use feedback and feedforward in our prototype?

Reading seminar 2

I’ve read chapter 6, 7 and 8 in the book ‘Designing for Interaction’ by Dan Saffer. It was an interested read, the first part being about brainstorming and coming up with ideas for the project and the design. Following come descriptions of ways to work with the development of the design. Many factors weigh in, like for example time, money, user needs, business needs, context and teams and so on, which affects the design. There were a few laws mentioned which I found particularly interesting:

Fitt’s law from 1954 which says the time it takes to move from a starting position to a final target is determined by two things: the distance to the target and the size of the target. This law is useful when designing for interactive screens.

Hick’s law says that the time it takes for users to make decisions is determined by the number of possible choices they have. As an example, users make a quicker choice from one menu of 10 items than from two menus of 5 items each. This is not working for sites full of content though, as Yahoo and Amazon.

Tesler’s Law of the Conservation of Complexity says that you can only simplify the process so far, and then move the inherent complexity. E-mail is mentioned as an example, where you only need address of the receiver and of the sender, but the software can automatically take care of your e-mail and save who you write to frequently.

I think it’s interesting to read about laws since we so far haven’t really come across any in this project, and in all technological courses we read we always have rules to follow. I’m curious to see what other’s put out as guidelines in this subject.

I also found the section where interaction designer standards where discussed interesting. Some standards are widely used (short commands were mentioned in the text). We discussed standards at the lecture the 15 of October, more specific how many webpages created today look a lot like Facebook. I’d like to end this blog post with the question: is it because Facebook has many users or because it has the best design?   

Developing the prototype

Today we continued with our prototype for the information screens at Tom Tits. We got feedback at last weeks' seminar and now we looked over it and made some changes. Some features have been removed and some added, and we hope this will make the design better!

Quick design sketches

Today we sat down and created a quick (and dirty) design for our touch screens. The interaction of this one is very close to our (probable) final design. The coloring, images and minor details may be changed in future. 

This is a diagram how the menus are linked.

Will be an animation

Will be an animation

group meeting - 8/10 -14

Today we decided on the final design, we sat for a long time just reflecting on the already existing designs and the pros and cons for each one. We draw some sketches and tried to come up with the best one. We decided on that the museum should have screens at place and it should be easy to use.

Here is some pictures on how it looked like when we thought about how visitors could use one of the
design:

 But after some time we sat and made a more detailed design for what should show on the screens:

Design: The convenient one

Lisa, Isabella and Sebastian developed a convenient design idea. We chose one idea from brainstorming step one and develop it. From our field studies a problem for some visitors was not having access to a smartphone or having mobile internet. Therefor we used touch screens that would be available at the museum as devices for the design, so every visitor can have the same experience.

Main ideas:

• Touch screens are offered at least at each floor
• At the entrance Blip is handed so users can be recognized at each touchscreen
• Blip is an object with a chip that is individual for each user. By connecting Blip to the touch screen you activate your own profile.
• The profile shows number of stars you have collected and which experiments you have done.
• On standby all experiments close to are shown
• Selecting one leads to an description how to use this experiment
• Furthermore a challenge is offered in which users can win a star after solving a riddle, question or something similar
• Different highscores are shown, so children are motivated to conduct experiments correctly and try to do all.

Design: A third one

We sat in the group and thought about different designs that would not be like any of the already existing ideas of the group. We started thinking about the app the museum is offering and the troubles users could experience using it. Only one of all the people we interviewed has used the app and he gave up on it since it worked poorly. Therefore we came up with these improvements:

Main ideas:

• Set up free WiFi, so app be downloaded even without mobile internet
• Increasing usage of app by offering one cup of coffee for free (or other similar incitements)
• All experiments exists in the app, today many are missing.
• Add QR-Codes by all the experiments to simplify experiment search and have a QR-reader in the app.
• Shake the phone to get to the QR-reader
• Add menu point “Settings” to personalize experience depending on knowledge level and language
• Show up location on the map (possible to determine floor by closest WiFi-routers) and GPS for the outdoor park.

Design: Wild and Crazy

We (Calle, Matilda and Rebecka) discussed a wild design idea and came up to an idea about using holograms to project a character that explains experiments and tells the user about the museum. We thought about holograms because it offers a more interactive way to get the information than for example a text. Our idea is that children will be more encouraged to learn when teached by some cartoon or character that they associate with fun. Below we have the main points of our idea listed.

Main points:

• Holograms of customized character depending on knowledge level and age
• For example, a five year old gets to talk to a cartoon character and a very interested parent get to talk to Albert Einstein
• Stationed by the wall at a few places in every room, not by the experiments.
• Able to answer questions that you ask them (speak)
• You wear an “id” of some kind so the hologram device will recognize you and adapt to your own customization. Handed out in the entrance where you choose your “customizations” such as knowledge level and character/s to interact with during your visit.
• Do not require any device of the user.