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?