Goal-Directed Product and Service Design

Design and Art

Upon reading this, I was interested in the author’s point of view regarding design and art. Although at first I was rather sceptical about design specifically having a purpose and art not so, I understood that design still incorporate artistic elements and while art need not have a purpose rooted in human need, design is perhaps a sort of subset of art; art which serves “human needs and goals”.

Interaction Design

I think that the list of questions that interaction design answers (e.g. “How wil users move from one activity to another?”) could be very important questions to ask ourselves during the course of our final project and making the proof of concept. These will ensure that our interfaces and experience we create to be human-centered and user-friendly.

Personas

The concepts of personas were also interesting as they, without having to prototype and test on numerous people of that specific demographic, could identify potential problems and ratify them before launching the product. This could save energy and time on the designers’ and stakeholders’ part. Of course, I still think that the best way to identify problems and nit-pick would be to launch it to a large group of people and subsequently gather their feedbacks but imagine the frustrating experience the users would have to go through before finally receiving their products as they want it. By the time it had been revamped, users could have a bad impression of it already. It would be like the game company releasing games on Steam and subsequently keep releasing ‘patches’ for users to update- and users were definitely not happy with that.

Time and Budget

I am rather embarrassed to say that when designing, I rarely think about the stakeholders’ point of view. After reading this article, I realized that stakeholders paly a very important part, especially as ones who control the time and budget.