NM4210 Thoughts

NM4210 Review

User Experience Design does not online confine to good web design and usability. It also encapsulates business idea generation, marketing, good services and a whole lot of areas where there is interaction between human.

Prior to taking this module, I thought that User Experience Design is about good web design or interface design that gives the best usability experience. But its underlying principle, such as knowing the customer, branding, usability testing, laddering interviews, can be used in other areas such as business, depending on what view you look at it.

In this new era where business competition is high and emphasis is on service and quality products amongst the thousands of similar imitations, knowing the right customer and building a product or service that is tailored just for him is the way to go. Thus, taking this module gave me better insight in how to approach a problem when involving human interaction. Giving the best and making a end-user happy is what I really love, which is how this module has taught me too.

But it does not end here. Further readings has to be done and experience matters. I will need to apply these methods in order to horn my skill in obtaining the true problem so I can give the best solution.

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Smoke & Mirrors Review

Chuang Xuejin, U065250L

User Experience Design, NM4210


(Web) Design itself is subjective, not objective.

That is what I feel summarises the 5 articles in one line and strongly support as well.

Many web design companies rely on scientific tools based on scientific researches to use a measure when designing a “good” web site. I do agree with the author, however, that using solely on scientific tools and quantitative results to obtain a so called good design is purely not going to ENSURE a good web site design. There are many factors that affect a so called “good” design; and because it is a design, it is subjective as a result. When different people view the same web site, the experience each feel will definitely be different across. Some reasons would be because of the different backgrounds, culture, education, and current state of mind.

Example

David who is in a rush to obtain certain data over a web site on cars will want information quick when, compared to William who is casually viewing the web site at his own pace. David will scan the web page quickly for the information he really needs, thus heavily filtering information or skipping information no matter how or where information is placed. William, as the casual surfer will, rather, read through information slowly and slowly filtering out the information.

“There is a limit, I think, to what a so-called “empirical” user interface test can tell you. At some point, the results must be interpreted in order to be useful as a design tool — and interpretations can easily go wrong. They can overlook a critical objective or even reach the wrong conclusions, especially when interpreted by people without the appropriate design skills.” – Smoke & Mirrors

I do agree with the author on the statement above. People with different knowledge background can interpret the data gathered by scientific tools differently. Because data itself doesn’t tell the problem but rather needs interpretation, this often causes design conflicts or just wrong design by misinterpretation. The author’s example on Eyetools is a good example of the “usefulness” of such scientific tools. The hot spots, or red areas, on the Eyetools graph just tell us that the eye has been looking at that area more often. It does not explain why the eyes were fixated there more often.

And it is also true that a good web designer would have known the reasons for the color spots on Eyetools. In Seth’s Blog: What I learned from eye tracking, the author mentioned that eye looks for anomaly in the web page. If the web designer controls his design by adding good anomaly around his web page, he can control the eye flow of the user. That is design.

“Hell, you should probably hire a better UI designer anyway, because only a good UI designer is really qualified to interpret the results of an eyetracking study in the first place.” - Smoke & Mirrors

A web designer can produce the web design he has made based on the user testing he has made. BUT, because design is subjective, the client (hiring the designer for the web site), may have a different opinion and business agenda about the web design. This is where the author of Smoke & Mirror addresses the need for scientific tools. These scientific tools can help to prove scientifically or empirically to convince these clients that this is the PROBLEM and thus why you used this design to solve it. Clients, who run businesses such as the web site, do not want to take such risks that may lose more of their current customers unless the design is PROVEN that it is BAD for their business.

“So how does a designer or a design manager convince their boss that a good design decision is in fact a good design decision if the boss has no design instincts? What if the site won’t get redesigned at all unless the boss can be convinced that the current design stinks?” – Smoke & Mirrors

Some scientific measurements on web site design can be quite useless, as mentioned in article 4 “Research as Bullshit”. Forrester’s Brand Image Reviews Of Agency Reference Site chart is totally useless, for any web designer. Every web site has a differential business proposition that attracts its customer to their site. Thus, they will want to portray their branding differently. As such, it becomes a subjective issue. Organic’s Persona Room as a usability tool it also another of a expensive tool which can be addressed with a cheaper option. Unless the designers can completely change their characteristics and personality to the targeted persona, staying in a “persona room” does not help to achieve better knowledge of the targeted audience.

In conclusion, I strongly agree with the author that design instincts are better than scientific tools when it comes to web design. We should use scientific tools to help strengthen our background knowledge of the targeted user that shapes the foundation of our design. Cardsorting, information architecture, and performing all kinds of information gathering about all stakeholders will ensure that there is well-enough information during the design process. Performing this will be one step closer in achieve a good web site well-received and liked by the customers.

Smoke & Mirrors is very good set of article that strengthens my beliefs after taking User Experience Design module.

Beauty is the eye of the beholder

- interpreting: it is subjective -

Final Assignment Review - Naptop

You can download the PDF version, with better formatting and easier to read, hosted on NUS server.
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The last project aims to come up with a problem and its solution. This is much like creating a product for a business. This makes it very fun.

I found it particularly difficult to come up with the problem. There are just too many possible problems and I did not know where to start from. My group deduced that many of the problems that we encounter in real life are usually worked around, thus blinding us from realizing there is a problem. We, or myself, only see a problem when I cannot solve it and the problem still persist right in front of me!

Luckily, one of our members mentioned about napping in school.

Before the problem of napping in school, we proposed a problem of carrying heavy things, especially for ladies. However, after laddering interviews and probing the ladies, we found that the root of the problem & its suggested solution was not attractive enough for the project. Hence we switched ideas to napping in school. This showed us that laddering interviews can be a very good way to obtain rich details of the problem & its rough solution.

During the laddering interviews, it was quite encouraging raise solutions to the problem of napping. We know the problem, but not the root problem that entails the solution to it. It was during one of my interviews that I had a spark and asked these questions:

1. Do you like to hug your bolster when you sleep?
2. Do you like to keep yourself warm during your sleep?
3. What makes a good sleep for you?

Raising the right questions, questions that asks how to make them happier or feel better regarding the problem, will help to give light to the solution. This I feel is one of the most important things I have learnt in this project. We cannot just keep shooting questions and accepting any answer that we think it might be the solution. In addition, we did not prepare ourselves the factors affecting the problem, as we did earlier for assignment 3, thus it was difficult to find the actual “root” solution.

Our end product is a physical product rather than an informational web site. Many of the principles taught in lecture can be applied to product design. I found that during interview sessions and testing of our prototype are the times that revealed more questions for our designs. They were questions which were not previously thought of, such as hygiene issue (laying the head on the cushion), the use of different materials such as zip (hair might be caught in the zip). The reasons why these questions weren’t raised earlier is because of the lack of prototype and some conceptualization of the final product. We really appreciated these comments and took them into consideration for our final design.

Many people loved the idea of our product, Naptop. They thought it was cool and why no one thought of it before. This comments made me very happy, and it showed me that this can be used in marketing and entrepreneurial context!

A simple problem can be solved with the simplest solution: Naptop.

Below are pictures of our High-fidelity Prototype.

An inflated Naptop. The top part is the pillow.

The "Clean" or underside of the pillow. This is where our heads rest on.


Where we can put our laptops in

Assignment 4 Review - Learning Experience in LT

It has been quite a long time since this assignment when I'm reviewing it now. I'll try my best to recall what I thought of during the assignment.

You can download the PDF version which might be easier to read.

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We were tasked to determining and propose solutions for improving the learning experience in Lecture Theatres (LTs).

Before any study was made, our group discussed what are the different factors contributing to the learning experience. They are:

1. Subject being taught
2. Motivation of students
3. Teaching style of the lecturer
4. Cultural background of students and lecturer
5. Lecture Theatre Environment
6. Teaching cultures of University

This helped us to internalise our thoughts and highlight what are the key points to take note when performing our study (ethnography & laddering interviews).

We decided to use an ethnography approach and laddering interview to experience what it is like in a Lecture Theatre (LT). We ourselves are students and thus we would have the necessary knowledge to determine problems. However, we used laddering interviews to gather more different opinions about the learning experience in LTs.

Ethnographical study was a straight forward. We took down notes while experiencing the learning conditions. However, we were only taking down notes pertaining to environmental factors (temperature) or problems that were at the tip of the surface of the learning experience (such as interactivity between lecturer and students). This is because we were not students of the Lecture itself, we were just seating inside experiencing. We could not obtain information if whether students were actually learning or absorbing information by the lecturer during our ethnography study. Different student have got different learning abilities. Thus, a person who is talking constantly during lecture might be actually learning better than someone who is totally quiet and focused in listening to the lecture.

This is where laddering interviews came in. Laddering interviews helped to expose more problems about the learning experience based on individuals. It also helped to expose some underlying problems when some solutions were proposed. These problems were such as culture or shyness hindered interaction with lecturer in front of a big LT.

I learnt during laddering interviews that it is very hard to expose problems in greater detail as the conversation will sometimes drift out of topic. Also, the interviewees might sometimes not understand the underlying meaning of our question, which I purposely made it “abstract” or “general” to get a interpreted answer. I thought that if I asked questions that were too specific to a problem, the answer in returned is specific to that question. That was why I asked questions as general as possible.

Later, I found that it is easier to ask from general then to specific if a problem area surfaced. Then after I have asked enough questions regarding the problem area, I would go back to the general questions and probe in deeper once again. This was my technique used in later laddering interviews for the final assignment. Laddering interviews require experience and good communication skills to really probe out the deepest information to find the root of the problem.

I find laddering interviews and ethnography are a very interesting topic or way to obtain information. As a computer science student, I have learnt to gather information in a empirical or quantitative way. But I particularly like such qualitative information gathering methods as it really reveals important details which is difficult to obtain in the formerly mentioned way. I have always knew that interviewing is a way to obtain answers, but never have know that probing as detailed as possible can lead to find the root problem!

These methods also particularly applies well in marketing or product conceptualization where the end product or service is made for the customer, so we need to know how to design for the customer. Which i feel companies should invest money into these areas.