User Experience in Design

Way Finding ADM// Week 3 Assignment

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For this assignment we made the approached it by putting ourselves in the shoes of a student trying to find his/her way to b1-17. The journey would showcase the problems that we face with way finding in ADM.

We each took a entry point to the basement and documented our path finding towards the room

Beyond the open space, the classroom was easy to find as the pathway was wide and classroom linear.

Donald A. Norman // Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things // Week 1-2 Reading Response

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Good designs are designs that you take for granted. The biggest take away from this reading is this. Good design often goes unnoticed , while bad ones usually get the most limelight.

Its the little things that designers must pay attention to in order for good design, its always good to put yourself in the position of your user, they do not understand the things that you do, and that not everything is about aesthetics.

Discoverability, is the learning process that the product has. The learning curve of the product, its components and likewise

Understanding is the pre-knowledge that comes with experience, certain signs and designs that reminds you of it’s function.

And with complex devices with more and more functions coming together , we do indeed have the need for instruction or certain levels of guidance, but inevitably i feel that sometimes what is lost from the designer to the person with the product is the loss of the transference of intention . Designers and their teams would set certain expectations and considerations, which should be expressed through the design. However , when there is no base of comparison, how are we to then appreciate these considerations. One of the examples would be the aluminium textures engineered for the macbook, however unseeming it is, one would only appreciate the tactile skin like feeling only when you read or watch their videos featuring them. If you have not used any other kinds of laptops , you would then never appreciate the subtle differences and efforts placed into this feature.

Image result for apple aluminium macbook

Design is inevitably a give and take issue, the balancing of trade-offs, and with every consideration to features, affordability and form. And thats why design is hard, because you can never please everyone. However, i feel a big change that considerations should be showcased, to let us appreciate the everyday product. And the psychopathology and reception of good and bad design would then greatly differ.

Jan Chipchase : You are what you carry // Week 4 Reading response

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You are what you carry best illustrates the conditions in which our current day situations influences the important items in our lives. The three items, the wallet, keys and mobile phone each represents a different need in which best describes the needs of an urbanite.

However as they have pointed out, as technology continuously progresses, everything is increasingly becoming less intangible. About 4 years ago, the lightest I would travel would be my identity card, credit card and my phone. And looking at today, all I really need is my phone. Even the hardest of things to prove such as identity can now be squeezed into your phone, though fingerprint and facial recognition. Even systems such as governmental bodies and private establishments such as shops and service providers as slow to catch on to implementation. You’ll still need your physical identifications in some situations.

The chapter then moves forward in expressing and presenting our needs in the different levels of importance and our behaviors surrounding them. This to me is interesting as most of these items do not actually have a object value to me, I could do without them, but i cant do without their function. The importance of usage is more important and the only pain is the inconvenience and cost of losing these item. More and more redundancies are in place, such as a cloud backup of your phone data and fingerprint locks.

I am however excited to see where does all these improvements in technology take us, to reduce the physical value of this to of nothing for everyone else, to put away the risk of theft and the benefits of it as a motivation. Which then in turn will make our society a much better place.

However certain things are irreplaceable, from the inhaler you need in a event of an asthma attack to the bottle of water you need to carry. These are the things that I feel really stand out, and are they inevitably are the things you carry that defines you.