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.

Brainstorming in class

Today during the exercise we tried different brainstorming methods. It gave us a lot of good ideas for us to use in the future. First we wrote one idea each on a post-it, and then handed it over to the person to the left that added something for the idea. After that, we split the group in two and came up with one idea and design each. 

Here is some pictures from today:

Exercise 3 - Pain points

Issue/opportunity	Marie	Sven
Get information before visit	4	1
Get information fast (without having to search on own device)	4	4
Support from staff	3	4
Need of further information to explain to kids	5	5

1 - very unimportant ... 5 - very important

Exercise 3 - Secondary persona

Sven

Name: Sven Karlsson

Age: 71

Hometown: Lidingö, Sweden

Background

Sven grew up in Småland where he worked as a glassblower with his father. After meeting his future wife, Anna-Lisa, they moved to Göteborg and started a family. There he worked as a carpenter, mostly involved in build houses. Anna-Lisa and Sven had three children, two girls and a boy. Sven built their house himself when the children were young and lived there for many years.

When Sven turned 50, Anna-Lisa gave him the tools to create oil paintings after seeing him do sketches his entire life. It quickly became a big hobby and he started to sell his paintings to small studios for little money. A couple of years ago, Sven lost his wife after a few years of illness.

Personality

Sven used to be a outgoing person but since he lost his wife he became more shy and withdrawn. It’s when he is with his family that he feels comfortable and like his old self. He finds a lot of joy being with his grandchild, Moa, and tries to spend as much time with her as possible. Sven likes to do his same old routines every day. During a normal day he likes to take a walk with the neighbor and their dogs, drink coffee with his friends or take care of the house.

Today

After his retirement and the death of his wife he likes to spend his time with his grandchild Moa, 7 years old. Today he has moved to Lidingö, Stockholm to be closer to his grandchild. He also have some old friends that he enjoy spending time with.

Scenario 1

For some weeks Sven had been looking forward to bring his grandchild Moa on something that they both would appreciate, and one day when Moa have an afternoon off from school they finally got the time. Sven started the morning with meeting an old friend that lives close by, then he left home to pick up Moa at school after lunch.

    He picked Moa up and they headed against Södertälje. On the way Moa was enthusiastic, she had heard a lot about Tom Tits from their last visit some years ago and had some vague memories that she had a lot of fun that time. This time Sven hoped that Moa would also get more out of the exhibitions and maybe learn something.

    At the entrance they saw some advertisement about an app but none of them had a smartphone and Sven had left his tablet at home. But since they had both been there before  they just walk in.

They started off with some experiments that they knew since their previous visit but this time Moa started to ask questions about how it worked. Sven, who is a practical, had no problem explaining the mechanical experiments but when they approached the more scientific ones he struggled. He tried to read the short texts beside and at some experiments they helped him, but on others he didn’t even understood for himself. It also happened that they couldn’t find any texts at all! Then Sven was searching the room to see if he could find anyone from the staff to help them understand, but they didn’t find anyone. They decided to skip these experiments and move on.

    When they left Tom Tits they didn’t left with the same enthusiasm they had when they arrived. They appreciated the experiments they understood but some of the experiments was to hard for them without better guidance.

Scenario 2:

Sven woke after a bad night’s sleep. He dragged himself up from bed to make some coffee in the kitchen, and was just about to sit down in his favorite armchair to read the paper when the doorbell rang. Moa and her dad were early! Sven answered the door and let Moa in. They waved her dad goodbye, made a last visit to the bathroom and then started the long journey to Södertälje to go to the museum Tom Tits.

    When they finally arrived to Tom Tits they entered a soap bubble show. Moa had never been to Tom Tits before, and was very excited. Sven on the other hand, that didn’t sleep very well, had a hard time focusing on the show. When it was over they all applauded and continued to the first floor. Moa ran between the different experiments and showed a big interest in them, but she showed no interest in reading on the small signs with information.

    When they had ran around for a while they went to the café. Sven picked up his smartphone and went through his e-mail. Then he realized that he had seen something about an mobile application around in the museum and looked for it in the app store. He downloaded it, and realized it gained a lot of more information about the experiments. He told Moa what he’d found, and together they went through the experiments that they’d tried out and Sven got to explain a little bit about it. But when Moa asked about a specific experiment that she wanted to know more about, Sven couldn’t find it in the app. Such a pity, Sven thought, now that Moa had shown some interest.

    They continued their visit and Sven hung with as good as he could. Now that he had downloaded the app he tried to explain the experiments, but before he even managed to find the right experiment Moa would rather go to the next one so Sven gave up pretty fast. They’d been there for a few hours and that started to show in. The bad sleep didn’t help. So when they finally had went through all floors they both were delighted to go home. When they reached the entrance floor and realized that there were a slide from the top floor they didn’t even bother to go back upstairs, but started walking to the car. In the exit there was a station where they could rate their visit and give some feedback, and Sven pressed the really happy smiley with the feedback that they could maybe work a little bit more of finding a fun way to transfer some knowledge to the kids while they tried the experiments out.

    Sven was really happy about the visit, even though he hadn’t been able to keep up and be with Moa all the time she seemed to have a great time on Tom Tits.