The mind's workspace

What I've learnt in NM4210

2008-04-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

This is one of the modules that require a lot of works (research, designing, redesigning) throughout the semester. We learned the different methods of user research and testing. The most interesting thing that I've learned is to design for individual. We learn to make user persona and do four pleasure analysis for that user. However, sometimes I still doubt the idea of designing for each individual. I believe that each individual is unique in taste - likes and dislikes - but how can we design a product for each of the billions of people in the world? Although we discuss in class that 'Apple' designs the user experience products that make us feel like each product is designed especially for 'you'. But it is not really the case for me. I have never been a fan of any of 'Apple' product and for me, their products are just massively-produced over-prized china made non-durable products. Of course, in this case, it shows why it is important to create the persona for anti-user and make sure that our product is not designed for these users.

We learn all the different techniques of finding out more about our users because we need to put in consideration of user's experience of the product in every stage of design process. A lot of time, I learn to put myself into the shoes of users, discarding my own designer's ego that is telling me to put more functions to make things 'cool'. However, I would argue that there is also 'luck' and 'time' factors in the design as well. A designer can make a perfect product/service that has taken consideration of user experience in every process but in the end, the design still failed. Maybe the failure is partially caused by the misinterpretation of 'need' and 'want' from the target audience that we do research on.

All in all, designing a user experience is an art itself. There is no specific guidelines or processes that will guarantee a successful experience. However, I believe a good balance between user research findings and designer's professional expertise will lead to a good experience design.

Reflections on User Research Smoke & Mirrors article

2008-04-24T22:15:00.001-07:00

The five-part article on "User Research Smoke & Mirror" debates on the usefulness of scientific research to lead the design process.

In the first part of the article the author argues that the scientific approach to design process is idealistic and can hurt the practice of design. Since individuals are subjective, putting quantitative results to the subjective studies and misinterpreting these results will mislead the design changes. A good expert with deep design experience and good instincts could have rather avoided the design errors by him/herself.

I agree with the author to an extent. On one hand, I do agree that it is not 100% possible to put assign a number to user's emotion. All scientific research use preset questions that do not allow flexibility in user's feedback. If you interview 10 people, you will get 10 different answers with variations in intensity. However, scientific research constrains what the respondents can choose within a specified scale. On the other hand, I do think that scientific research, while not a good tool as a foundation of design process, could still be helpful to give general trend how a user feel about the design. Since expert designers are also individual with subjective thoughts, sometimes they could be so engrossed in their designs that they think they are perfect. The importance lies in where the designer has to draw a line analytically when to follow the research findings or when not to.

The second part of the article mainly talks about the usefulness of eye tracker to help with website designs. I do agree with the author that eye tracker only gives information of 'where' the user is looking at but not 'what' and 'why'. While pure scientific measure such as this eye tracker might not be of much help to the design process, a combination of the scientific measurements and qualitative measurement such as "think aloud" technique will be a powerful tool to have insights into user's reactions to the design.

The third part of the article reveals the industrial truth surrouding the research. The author explains why we need to conduct research methodologies for websites even though the flaws of a website is so distinct towards an expert. I would agree that it is helpful to use research data as a tool to justify the non-user stakeholders or big bosses of the design proposal because they would prefer to see a concrete figure rather than listening to the designer's explanation. However, I also feel that it is a total waste of resources just to cook up a figure for the justification.

The fourth part talks about how the professional researchers tend to make up the environments for the users to be in. Therefore, their date become more artificial than actual. However, their services are still good not from the research methodologies but from the expertise and experience that those professionals themselves. If this is the case, then why do we need the research after all? In this part, I think the examples that the author showed are too extreme to one end. I believe there are good research that are done in the controlled environments as well.

The last part does state an need for non-scientific research to guide the design process. Again this is very subjective. Just as I mention above, the designers have to be careful of whether the feedback should be incorporated into the design process or not, from their careful analysis of the feedback and situations themselves.

My overall reflection on the article is that some parts are well-argued, such as "design as politics", explaining why there is a need to conduct the quantitative research. However, a thing to be careful about is that not every single feedback from the qualitative research should be incorporated into the design process.

Final Project

2008-04-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Brigadier

Who are we?
We are a subsidiary of DELL, who makes use of the existing DELL business model and tape it onto the production of hand phone, targeting at military personnel.

Our team comprises 4 members from different backgrounds, namely Yi Arn, Wei Wei, Weiye and myself, Nilar.

What we have done?

During the initial stage of the project, we had done user research and defined our target audience and come up with user profile and user personas. From there, we move on to do four pleasure analysis of our product on the personas - advanced user, novice user and anti-user.

After we have done much research on our target audience, we moved on to card-sorting and information organization of our product, which is a website offering the service of customizing your own hand phone.

After the card-sorting, we come up with the different fidelity prototypes and the endless process of designing, gathering feedback, redesigning, gathering feedback follows.

I will not talk much about the detailed tests and research that we have conducted for the design process, as they can be found in full details in our report.

My reflection

Looking back at the report and what we have done for the project, I realize that it has been a really long journey of designing and redesigning. As a novice designer, we all tend to be out of track during our design process. There have been a lot of time when we just want to discard our idea and come up with a totally new idea to work on because we feel that we can't figure out how to continue our current one. However, throughout the process, we also tried to stick back to our original objective for the project and moves on with our initial idea.

In the class, I have seen some groups that really discard their original idea and come up with a new product. I believe that the journey to become a good user experience designer is to be able to make correct judgements on the users' feedback. I believe that if we ask the users what will increase their positive experience towards a product, most of them will reply 'the more the better'. I have seen the group working on breakfast delivery service totally change their target audience and services after the user research. I have also seen some group starting to create a totally new version of prototype each time after they've done user testing with it.

A lot of time, I have also wanted to give a little bit more to the users. I think it's the designer's ego and pride that we need to learn to discard during the design process. After the user testing from the low fidelity prototype, we are to make a decision whether to discard the 'slider' and 'calm shell' design phones because they connote 'weak' design phone for military. However, I had argued that since we already have the design for them, why don't we just leave the offer there for the non-military audience. This reminds me of the spicy chili crap example given in class. In the end, our team decided to offer products specifically for our target audience only. This is what the 80-20 rule is about.

Another lesson that I learnt from the project is how much changes we should do to our prototype after each user testing. If the design process is an endless cycle and the product should improve a bit after each cycle of designing and redesigning, how do those groups that come up with a totally new prototype, with all different looks and features, etc continue this spiral process of design? I learn to be always aware that each small change can lead to a big difference, thus before doing any changes, we have to justify them professionally.

Assignment 3 - Emotion Design Probe

2008-04-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

For the assignment 3, we are tasked to improve the learning experience of students in Lecture Theatres. In order to gain sufficient insights into the user experience of students in lecture theatres, our group members decided to use 3 different approaches - Cultural Probe, Laddering and Ethnographic study.

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Cultural Probe

To perform cultural probe, one of our members, Weiye, took a convenient sampling of 3 NUS friends and asked them to give a probe on a notebook. The duration of the experiment is 1 week.

Our findings are summarized into 2 main categories: non-lecture related and lecture related experience.

The non-lecture related experiences indirectly affect the overall experience of learning in lecture theatres. They include 1) tiredness due to the long journey to and from campus, 2) the lack of seats on public transports, 3) insufficient sleep in the previous night, and 4) the lack of time to have breakfast in the morning. As a result, students are not able to concentrate on the lectures, hence affecting their learning experiences. Another non-lecture related experience is the day of the week when the lecture is held. We gained feedback from our participants that the 'Monday blues', 'mid-week crisis' and 'TGIF-syndrome' also affect the experience of learning. In additions, students are unmotivated to attend the class right after public holidays. On the other hand, peers/friends also play a role in influencing you to skip lectures.

The lecture related experiences are broken down into 5 sub-categories.

The lecturer - a good-looking lecturer may attract more students to attend the lecture regularly. Like-wise, the reverse is true.
The lecture content - affects the overall user experience of learning in lecture theatres.
Lecturing style - Participants generally feel a decline in learning experience if the lecturing style is monotonous, lecturers reading off the slides, and lecturers having incomprehensible accents.
Lecture timing - Participants do not like to attend lectures that are too early or too late.
Peer influence - reportedly reduces other students talking during lectures, skipping lectures or sleeping during lectures.

Laddering

In this approach, we interviewed a third year Arts student a series of 'why' question to sieve out the roots of the problem.

Big size -> Students sitting scattered -> Talk very loud -> Distractions -> Can't make full use of tuition

From the interview, we realized that the root factor contributing to the overall user experience of learning in lecture theatres is related to the amount of tuition paid (cost) and the perceived amount of learning (benefits).

Ethnography Study

For this approach, one of our group members, Wei Wei, crashed a lecture to observe and take notes of the whole process of learning in the theatres.

The behaviors observed are as follow:

1) Students brought own notebook, surfing the net or chatting on instant messenger during lecture.
2) Most students sit at the back seats, talking amongst themselves. The front rows are empty.
3) Some students eat and drink in the lecture.
4) Some students are sleeping during lecture.
5) Sometimes, the lecture notes and writing materials fell or were almost falling off the writing tablets.
6) The lecturer's voice was drowned in a hissing noise produced by the loudspeakers.
7) The projector screen was out of focus, with the lecture theatre's lighting casting a glare on it.
8) The flipping and jostling lecture notes and paper were observed.
9) Lecturers give too short a pause for students to copy notes, as evident from some turning their head to their fellow course mates to copy what they missed out, or too long a pause, as evident when students start talking amongst themselves.
10) Questions asked by students from front rows cannot be heard from the back.

Findings

From the three approach, we've concluded 3 common problems of learning in lecture theatres.

1) The lecture theatre's design - the theatres are generally too big for most classes, resulting in empty/half-filled lectures. This leads to students sitting at the last few rows and starting to talk amongst themselves.

2) Lecturer factor - the lecturing style, accents of lecturers affect the user experience of learning. The lack of 'crowd control' by the lecturers may negatively impact the learning experience of students who genuinely want to attend the lectures.

3) Student factor - Many students are affected by their fellow students' improper and insensitive behaviors/attitude during/towards lectures.

Solutions

Based on the findings, we proposed that

1) the lecture timing should not coincide with peak hours (office hours) as this may indirectly affect the traveling to and from campus for lectures. Back-to-back lecture timing should also be avoided so that students can have time to have breakfast or lunch.
2) On the student part, they should be nurtured to have good time management skill and positive attitude towards learning.
3) Students need to be aware of and considerate to other students who are attending the lectures, by not talking, eating, or doing anything disruptive to the lecture.
4) Big-sized lectures should be replaced with seminar style teaching with maximum capacity of 30 students per class. The smaller class will allow lecturers to perform better crowd control.
5) Lecturers should also improve their lecturing style by making the lecture more interactive. Accented English is acceptable as long as it is comprehensible.

My reflection on the assignment

User experience varies greatly among individuals. I think it is not possible to ask users what can create positive experience for them because they will just ask for the best thing, which is idealistic.

Now looking back at our proposal, I realized that most of the points that we proposed are idealistic. If they could be achieved, the problems would not exist in the first place. Therefore, I have to re-analyze whatever we have done for this assignment. If subjective interviews/collections of feedback such as laddering and culture probe are not very helpful feedback because the users will tend to ask for the perfect solution, which could hardly be achieved, would the 'objective' observation method, such as ethnography study, helps us in improving the user experience while we would only know 'what' is happening but not 'why' the students are behaving this particular way?

My answer is that each of them, standing alone, might not yield very helpful information towards improving the user experience. But a combination of them might be very useful. I think what went missing in our 3 approaches is the link among the three. We did the 3 approaches independently. And it could be that the sample size is too small. Therefore, I find that the findings from each approach does not concretely support one another.

Another thing that we have to be careful about is that we need to draw a clear line (as a professional) between what is improvable and what is idealistic.

Assignment 2: Four pleasure analysis

2008-02-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

Name: Kim Jun Jin (Jolin)
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Status: In a relationship
Occupation: Museum Project Manager

Jun Jin is a 24 year old Korean girl and has a 28 year old boyfriend, a successful music composer in Korea. Jun Jin completed her university and obtained a Bachelor Degree in Management one year ago. She has been working at California Museum, being a project manager for museum exhibitions and events.

Jun Jin is the only daughter of a very rich family. Her father is a successful businessman in Pharmarcutical trading and her mother is a housewife. After her graduation from the university, she decided to lead her own life, thus choosing to leave her home in Seoul and work in California. She lives in a medium-sized apartment alone near the coastal area of southern California. She has a maid who will come to clean the house daily while she is away at work. She also has a pure white cat.

Jun Jin has very fair complexion and has a very cheerful and up-lifting personality. She adores comfortable lifestyle. She works during work and relax during leisure. She would never work over-time or bring work back to home. During weekends, she likes to get up early in the morning, sitting at her dining table by a window, sipping a cup of coffee, listening to classical music and feeling the morning breeze. After her breakfast, she would stroke her cat for a long time until the sun has completely risen at around 8:30 am, she will go out for a walk along the beach. When the sun gets hotter at around 10 am, she will come back and read a book at her apartment.

She doesn't have many friends in California but she has 3 close Korean girl friends there. In the afternoon, Jun Jin would go window-shopping with them or sit at a coffee shop to chit-chat. Jun Jin's boyfriend is not in California. Usually Jun Jin will take a lot of pictures of her daily activities and herself, and write blog posts about her happenings for her boyfriend to read. Jun Jin is very fashion conscious and she likes casual, trendy and comfortable things. Especially in terms of appearance, she likes to show her demure side to her friends and boyfriend.

Physio-pleasure

Classical music keeps her mind in peace. For her it is a need pleasure to keeps herself fit in shape.
Taking a walk along the beach keeps her physically healthy, taking the morning sunshine for Vitamin D. – need pleasure
The cleanliness in her apartment makes her feel clean and fresh. – need pleasure
She likes to read a book, sitting on her sofa to entertain herself and keep herself knowledgeable while enjoying the luxury of the sofa. – appreciation pleasure
Stroking tenderly on the fur of her purely white cat gives her the physical pleasure of love and tenderness. – appreciation pleasure

Socio-pleasure

Jun Jin is proud of her family and appreciates the status associate with it. She likes to make her friends and others envy of her affordable and care-free living. – appreciation pleasure
She also takes secret pleasure in that her boyfriend is so successful and famous in her home country. – appreciation pleasure
Her basic social need is to be emotionally attached to her parents and boyfriend and be loved by them. – need pleasure

Psycho-pleasure

Jun Jin’s job is stressful and demanding as she needs to meet clients and vendors, and maintain relationships with them to make her projects/events successful. As such, she is very conscious about her appearance in public. Her good fashion sense is the need pleasure for her to be able to look impressive.
She is good at photography and creative writing. She feels a sense of achievement when she describes her daily life activities on her blog – how she maintain the look and feel of her blog, how she portray her mood and feeling through writings and snapshots, etc.

Ideo-pleasure

Jun Jin has a great personality. She can separate work from life. – need pleasure
She always strives to be perfectionist, worry-free for money, relationships and social networks. It is a need pleasure for her.

Physio	Socio	Psycho	Ideo
Comfortable lifestyle	Rich family background	Fashion conscious	Work-life balance
Luxury of feeling a cat	Rich and successful boyfriend	Sense of achievement	Ideal personality
Tranquility at home	Glamour	Creativity
Cleanliness	Status among friends

Product Benefit Specifications

Appearance

The product must be -

1. Sleek
2. Slim
3. Light weight
4. Mirror effect screen
5. Shiny metal body
6. Light green color
7. Beautiful and fashionable with a touch of artistic designs
8. Easy to clean
9. Exclusive

Technical Aspect

- Good graphical interface
- Simple functionality (no need to have Internet access or check email)
- Very Good camera
- Built-in Bluetooth and infrared so that she can transfer her photos to the laptop to upload on her blog
- Music player

Others

- Luxurious brand image
- Expensive and different (limited edition)
- Good battery life and durability

Assignment 1 - Product and Emotion

2008-01-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

Visceral Design - Nokia 7360

Visceral design gets people's attention primarily from initial impact to its appearance. For this product I chose Nokia 7360 that comes in golden and pink colors, which is part of L'amour co llection, designed for female. In terms of features, it is just a very ordinary phone with

128 x 160 pixels 16-bit color display
FM stereo radio
Integrated VGA camera
Integrated handsfree speaker
XHTML mobile browsing
IrDA
Pop-Port™ connector

Visceral: feminine, cute
Behavioral: Not a great performer, not durable

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Behavioral Design - Nokia 1112

Behavioral design is about the total experience of using a product. It is based on the thought process on usability. This Nokia phone that is priced at $60 has the most basic features to make a call, send a text message, etc.

Visceral: Not attractive
Behavioral: Affordable, reliable, easy to use, practical

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Reflective design - Continental Luxury mobile phone

Reflective design is about how it makes one feel and about the social status that one is telling others.

This diamond encrusted 24 carat yellow gold plated hand-made Continental mobile phone is from the Obsession collection, which is sculpted and touched with the beauty of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust and beauty. Obsession mobile engineers work painstakingly hard to create a handset which is visually and naturally stunning in every sense. This skill in itself can take a lifetime to achieve. The price of the phone is around S$5000 and the features are as followed:

Sapphire Crystal Glass LCD screen 2"
HD colour resolution
2 Megapixel integrated digital camera
PC Synchronisation via USB/USB connectivity
MMS (multimedia message service)
EAT (Enhanced Acoustics Technology)
Multi Lingual
Dual Sim card technology - allows the use of 2 different sim cards remaining active on the phone at the same time & during conversations.
Unique Ocean Blue Floodlit keypad. The Keypad also uses a patented "soft key" technology which allows effortless key strokes
External Memory - T-Flash Card
Handsfree facility
GPRS
MP3
MP4
Calculator
World Time
To Do List
Unit Converter
Standby - 120hrs
Talk time - 5 hours
Travel charger
Dimensions: 110*47*18mm
Operating Frequency: Dual band GSM 900/1800

Visceral: Attractive, Luxurious
Behavioral: Have the features that most average 3G phones would have
Reflective: Status symbol, self-image, show off

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My reflection

I think the impressions of the different products are very subjective and personal feelings, and those impressions can change over time. For example, when I first saw Nokia 7360, I was very tempted to own one immediately. However, after a few days of visiting the stores and looking at the phones, I feel that it's just an eye candy phone and I would rather go for a more functional and affordable phone. On the other hand, when I first saw the Continental phone advertorial on a news program, I thought the phone was ugly and is more suitable for old people. However, now when I have a look at it, I feel like owning one like that. And I am currently using the cheap practical phone like Nokia 1112.

Assignment 0 - A bad design

2008-01-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

Start…

While I was contemplating to come up with a bad design, this idea of a toilet-restaurant popped out in my mind. It has been disgusting me since the first time I saw the news about this restaurant. Therefore, I would like to present this ‘crappy’ restaurant to you.

It is a restaurant in Taiwan that serve food out of toilet bowls and the whole restaurant is themed 'toilet'.

Picture taken from http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/30/crappy-restaurant.html and google images

User Reactions

While some of you might think it’s a novel idea or a fun thing to dine there, a lot of customers are turned down by the thought of dining shit-like food out of a toilet bowl. Here are a few feedback I gather from online forums:

“........... OH C R A P !!!........

.... well someone had to say it!! and yukkkkkkk... i wouldnt want to eat there.. just the idea alone of eating out of toiletshaped dishes... ewwwwww!!!!!!..........”

“I bet more than one person has tried the chocolate ice cream and yelled out "ewww...this tastes like sh!t!!!"

Impressions on the brand

From my interviews to a few of my friends give a mixed reaction. Some have the brand image of it as fun and cool idea for a dining place where they wouldn’t mind trying it out once. Others said looking at the pictures along disgust them, especially the ice-creams in the toilet bowl, and think that it’s a crappy idea.

My reflection on the product

Functionality/ Usability

It is just a restaurant that claims to have good food. People can go in to dine and maybe they have good services.

Aesthetics/ Sensorial design

I think the main problem is on the restaurant’s sensorial design. It might seems innovative yet at the same time very ironic. According Patrick W. Jordon’s Hierarchy of consumer needs, pleasure is the highest level of consumer values. But in this case, I don’t think the toilet design brings pleasure to the diners at the restaurant.

Hedonic Quality

In terms of branding, the restaurant is trying hard to portray it as a hip and innovative place for the fun-seekers. While I believe that this branding strategy might impress a niche of consumers, the question is in ‘customer loyalty’. I personally do not feel that the restaurant can maintain a long-term loyalty from the customers if they want to brand themselves as innovative. The restaurant will need to define their value proposition and convince the customers why they have come back to the restaurant.

My reflection on user reactions

Although I was totally turned down with the idea of eating out of a toilet bowl, I also appreciate the different individual preferences – those who think it is fun to dine there. However, I believe a good user experience design is to attract the majority in the bell consumer bell-curve not those from the edge of the curve.

One possibility of the sustainability of its business despite the controversial outlook is that the setting somehow provokes uses with challenge. It is too bad that the achievement of daring to eat the restaurant gives diners satisfaction of accomplishment. That is how the restaurant sustain the customers' loyalty.