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?

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.

Exercise 3 - Main persona

Marie

Name: Marie Andersson

Age: 39

Hometown: Upplands-Väsby, Sweden

Background
Marie is a 39 year old high school teacher of history and social studies. She is originally from Västerås, but at the age of 19 she moved to Stockholm to study at Stockholms University. In her last year she met Niklas, a law student at the same school. After a few years together they got married and decided to move to the suburb, Upplands Väsby. There they are raising their two kids, Erik and Linnea, 9 years old and 7 years old. In their vacations they usually go to their cabin in Dalarna.

Personality
Marie is outgoing, helpful and involved in her family and friends. She is usually very calm, but has a busy schedule and is therefore not always patient. She is very tidy, which she demands from her children to be as well. Her childrens’ well being and education is very important to her, and she likes to activate them, for example with museums and sports.

Today

Marie has been working at the same school for many years and is happy with that. She recently became a Friskis & Svettis leader. Todays she is tired from a long week at work preparing exams.

Scenario 1

Marie and Niklas had been planning their Tom Tits visit for a couple of days. They both knew they wanted to go there after seeing an ad in the local news paper. Marie had been there once before when she was young, but for the rest of the family this was the first time visiting the museum. Therefore, she is slightly more excited so she visited the webpage in advance. When visiting the web page she saw there would be a soap bubble show, that she thought especially Linnea would appreciate. They also found information regarding prices and opening hours there. She is hoping that this museum visit will take her thoughts off all the stress she has been experiencing at work the last couple of weeks.

When they arrived at Tom Tits she saw signs about the new “Tom Tits Exp” app but she didn’t have an internet connection and the museum didn’t have Wi-Fi. Niklas downloaded it on his phone and she decided to have a look with him. She borrowed his phone and oriented around quickly on the app to get an idea of what it was about. She saw general information, maps and experiment explanations and thought this could come in handy during her visit. Then she focused her attention on her family. Her children was eager to start experimenting and Marie and Niklas were just as excited and did a lot of experiments together with the children. They noticed that there wasn’t a lot of staff, which made it impossible to do one of the experiments. Marie found it sometimes hard to explain to her kids. She realized she needed the app to get the most out of the visit and borrowed Niklas phone frequently. She noticed that she was almost alone using it at Tom Tits though.

At lunchtime they stopped by the cafeteria, which was quite expensive, but they just got their pay check so it was all right. They appreciated the food being ecologic and organic, and explained why that was beneficial to their children.

They ended the museum visit by taking the slide down. Erik nagged about doing it another time but they had to go back to the car since they hadn’t paid a ticket for a longer stay.

After the visit, both Marie and Niklas recommended the museum to colleagues at work and said it was a good place to take the family.

Scenario 2:

Holiday season starts and Marie and her family are planning to go hiking at Tyresta National Park for the weekend. Just when they are about to leave, it starts to rain. Thus they decide to go to TomTits, since a colleague had recommended it to Marie. Her husband is disappointed, because he was looking forward to being outside in the nature. But since they didn’t come up with any other idea they decide to go. This was an impulsive decision so they didn’t have time to look up the museum before the visit.

When they arrive Marie sees all the kids running around and with slightly panic in her eyes she asks at the desk for some information pamphlet but they are just offering a simple map. The staff refers to the app or proposes buying the book. But Marie's internet volume is already consumed for this month and she is not willing to pay for a book in addition to the entrance fee.

She accompanies her children to the experiments. After a while they reach a complicated water experiment which fascinates her children. It is a construction, where half of the injector are pointing from inside to outside and the others reversed. Marie don’t know nor the explanation on her own neither how to explain this phenomenon. The experiment is missing an information sign. She asks a stranger who is using the app about the description to the experiment and gets disappointed as she realizes that the brief explanation not satisfies her own need for explanation. Therefore she finds herself not able to explain it to her kids.

When she goes back to her kids, they have already vanished. She finds them running around on another floor. Everything attracts their attention, but only for split seconds. She experiences troubles to motivate her kids to observe intended phenomenon.

On her way out she passes a  TV screen which advertises a bubble show. She just wants to motivate her children to watch it as she is realizing it has already taken place. So Marie and her family decides to leave the museum and go back home.