Finale Project

Projects projectss projectsss…These things takes up a lot of time and effort out of me, or i suppose anyone who have gone through them. They serve multiple purposes and i think a full development (from endless brainstorming sessions to multiple design sketches to implementation disasters) project will definitely help in my working career in the near future. There are multiple stages in a project development process and they interlink with one another, sometimes there is even a need to revisit previous stages to redefine the product. Design for user experience is as difficult as running in a swimming pool. Resistance in many forms will be coming towards you even if its not welcome. If not careful, you will be drifted away by the current. User experience is a hype word these days. Products out there now do not just target at masses now, in fact, they are seen less desirable. They are shifting to a more individualistic and customized products.

Designing for a individual user is more important, reason being, focus on a user will yield better user experience and in return, good things will multiply itself. Even if designing a product in a saturated market, if the design experience is relatively new to users and it brings joy in using them, this product tend to excel far batter than those competitors. Examples products from Sony PlayStation and Apple’s iPod provide users a more engaging and pleasant experience. Experience is something thats intangible, so how are we suppose to design something thats intangible? We can’t. But we can probably only use scientific, empirical studies and methods that were tested and used in the process. There are also no systematic way of going about designing, however there are guides for us to follow.

Phase 1: (Brainstorming & Needs Analysis)

After brain storming ideas and coming out with a few potential, workable ideas, needs analysis is probably the most common and important method used in the whole process. The project deliverables, be it a product, website or even services have to fit the needs of the targeted users. If there is no demand, no point developing the product at all. We had a few ideas like a collaborative travel guide site, a community driven transportation site that find a shortest route to destination etc. After weighing the pros and cons of the ideas with Mr Reddy, the it might be a little difficult to implement. We need a do-able project! Then….a idea came into our discussion about project management and IVLE 7 community that we are used to. Since IVLE 7 is replaced by IVLE 8, the community service is gone too! Although there is one, but it takes at least 1 day to create it! After creating it, it tries to serve multiple purpose, such as blogging, personal website, but not much about project management. There we got it, we decided to do a Online Project Management System (OPMS) that ease project management and enhance user experience after using it (I certainly hope so). Oh and the report for this needs analysis was not easy too…because there is quite a lot of data to gather and processed…

Phase 2: (Design)

This is where i got a little weary about the idea of having such system, although the survey shows that most would like to have a system that help to manage project online. But just how easy can it be? I chance upon ZoHo project management system a free to use online site that does almost what we wanted. ZoHo interface is pretty interesting but its too wordy for me. Its fully functional and i must say it has a lot of functions too. Simply said, I like those functions in a simple, more intuitive way, but just how to do it? I certainly work around ZoHo, trying to understand their information architecture flow. We also thought of making it more graphical, visually pleasing. From this point, I have an idea of a system that is functional yet pleasing and easy to use. I was trying to get the best out of IVLE 7 easy creation community and ZoHo project management system.

Phase 3: (lo-fi)

I do not want to use paper prototype for several reasons, to save trees, can’t test with many people at one time, quite tedious for an OPMS. Although there are a few strong advantages of using paper prototype, i chose to use powerpoint instead. This is the start of many prototypes…After drafting the prototype, we tested on a few users and as a designer, it breaks your heart when listening to criticism. However, these are the exact things that you should consider. This is important because it might lead you to creating something that is not feasible. I followed quite closely to Zoho’s layout but changed the information flow. However the result is that users do not find it useful and too cluttered looking, worst still, it looks complicated. I’m new to doing a online system of such a huge scale. This system if its going for deployment, will need to take months to complete. The interface itself is the system. With little experience in designing such system in such a short time, i asked myself again what should be done to make it less inferior looking. The interface is the system. I chuck aside the 1st draft prototype, then did more brainstorming to come with a more graphical, drag and drop kind of calendar along with other functions.

Phase 4 (Hi-fi Prototype)

The final phase of the project was not easy. firstly, I’m new to using the power of javascript along with other web toolkit that help us in achieving what we had. I wanted to do up a calendar like Google calendar but i’m short of time. So, i link it directly to Google! hah. Cheating…but hey at least it shows what i wanted to be in it….right? Besides the main calendar for all projects, i find it hard to make them link without a storage for data. I could use XML and a storage system provided by web toolkit, but I realize it too slow. After hours and days and nights of doing it, i finally completed coding only the project and members paart. Thats the main purpose and something thats different about the site. Other functions such as adding documents, announcements, forums and changing profile can be done…later. It really took up most of my study break week to do these, and im not satisfied with it yet. Even if some users do grade the system relatively good, i’m always thinking i could do more and better. till then…and oh it is highly possible to deploy such a system!

Reflection

The course have open my eye to more methods and methodology(kano’s analysis, culture probe etc) that i did not know it exist. User experience to me can not be designed. But we can design for a better user experience. Methodology’s and method are out there for you to use, but ultimately different products will need slightly variation of methods or even a completely new method. There is no fixed rule in design. Thats what makes it difficult. Along with the knowledge of Human Computer Interaction, this module have widen the scope of my interest area.

Reflections on Design v Science

Firstly, I would like to clarify that my title actually means reflections on design and science. Just like how you read a legal case title. That’s because I think both of them goes hand in hand. There is certain amount of cognitive science, psychology in design but yet design itself is subjective, so instead of competing with one another, i believe they should compliment instead.

Non-Scientific Results

Methodologies and empirical methods of user research does somehow influence the design, eventually it is design for users. User centric design is definitely useful and I think it is the way to go. But some of these research is evaluating something that is apparent on the first few glance, so why research? Besides being a political tool in companies, I think that’s because it is easy for people to follow. There are many who thinks that there is a certain template in the design process. Well they are just guides, they serve us a good purpose in finding our own research methods for different design product. To make full use of it, it must be carefully planed and executed. Vary some of these methods to suit your product. Non scientific research serves as the quantitative approach and can usually tell much about the product if the target users were selected carefully. It does certainly give you some insides about how popular your product will be or will be used. So designing for target audience is important? Well, not quite. Designing for a specific group or individual may lead to success as well, look at Apple’s iPod. They did not follow what is out there, they design for specific group of consumers. It is not for most people since there is a need to sync with iTunes and only iTunes. It does not work like an extra storage disk and with no radio built in. They just need to do one thing right. Play music.

To me, conducting an empirical research can be good if you interpret results correctly. It is easy to find assurance that your product is good if results are skewed towards success. However, how accurate are these methods int he first place. Take for example, survey questions, or interviews. Questions asked maybe bias towards our own perception. Interviewees might not wanted to share so much information or worst provide wrong perception of the product especially if the interview involves such reward.

Scientific Results

The eye tracking tool does not provide anymore information than what a good design will know. Spending less time on certain area does not make the content bad. interpretation of the result is most important factor in using such a device. There are also certain methods that calculate the amount of time one will take to click a button or link in a website. For example, the total amount of time to complete certain task is calculated based on researched average time. It is called the Keystroke Level Model that estimate certain specific time to do things such as reaching for the mouse. In average it takes about 0.4sec for user to reach to the mouse, the model defined it. Such a calculative method is said to used when creating a manuscript editor. It is also now being used in website usability testing. There is even a calculator that will do the job for you. Completing a task in the shortest amount of time is important and it will help to better the experience, but it should not be given much emphasis. Shortest time does not necessary means enhanced user experience. The aesthetic part of the product is important, along with many other aspects such as affective engineering, cognitive science etc to better user experience.

Design is an art, and like music it is subjective. Take music therapy, there are now neuroscientific studies to try and provide evidence of what is considered as soothing or relaxing music. It is hard to prove which is soothing music since in the first place music is subjective; it could have different meaning to some. With a mixture of both quantitative research and science, the user experience could be better if a good and seasoned designer interpret it correctly. Which brings me to my view of having both compliment one another instead of excluding any of them.