2016 User Experience in Design

Assignment 7+8 Part 1: “Future World”

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Part 1: Write a response to the exhibition “Future World”. Keep in mind the following questions – What is experience design and what are the possibilities of responsive environments? How might this change the way we think about the world around us and the ways that we communicate with each other?

The visit with UX class to Future World exhibition at Marina Bay Sands was not my first time visiting. I had been there a month before. The experience was different as for the second visit, we had a representative from Team Lab give us a tour.

Comparing the two experiences, I definitely became more aware of the possibilities of the exhibition after hearing from the Team Lab rep.

For example, I did not know that I can control the crystal universe star colours using my mobile phone on my first visit. What my friends and I cared about was taking photo of the beautiful scene.

However, my lack of knowledge that I could control the colour animation did not make my experience less enjoyable. I love the sensation of being in the outer space. This installation intrigued my senses: hearing the ambience music, touching the LED strings, seeing the movement of the stars.

Indeed, after knowing that I could participate in customizing the experience from my phone excited me even more. It’s amazing what science and technology can do to create an artistic experience. We do not get to experience these in daily life.

So, what is experience design? Marc Hassenzahl, in his book Experience design: technology for all the right reasons, explains that

Experience Design asserts design not to be about products anymore but about the experiences they deliver. This requires a broadened perspective, with the fulfillment of psychological needs (values), which in turn creates meaning and emotion, as the prime design objective.

Since experience design concerns about how the audience will experience, this Crystal Universe, which is an example of designed experience is very different from conventional artwork, Mona Lisa.

https://whyaminotthere.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mona-lisa.jpg

https://whyaminotthere.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mona-lisa.jpg

🙂

My take is, experience design is immersive and is considerate towards the audiences’ experience. In contrast, a painting is a restricted only for the audience to view. Certainly, Da Vinci did not design how the art viewer should enjoy his artwork.

For now and in the future, we will see more companies changing their approach of reaching their customers by elevating their customer experience. Read more here.

Assignment 6: Mobile devices behaviors

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Over a two-day period, do the following:
DAY 1 – create a diary of when, why and what you use your mobile device for. Observe how others are using their mobile devices. What are the most common uses and where do you see these behaviors?

I spent most of my time on my phone chatting with other people. Be it discussing about organizational matter, assignments, or just informing about my well-being to my family and boyfriend. When I was idle, I would spend my time scrolling endlessly on social media to read random articles, news, and friends’ updates. In addition, I played Pokemon Go.

To navigate in the city, I used the GPS feature on my phone. It could tell me which was the nearest bus stop I was at, and when the next bus would come. Google map would also come in handy to tell me how to go to a foreign destination.

Other than that, I used alarm on my phone to wake me up in the morning. I also used my phone as my personal agenda.

After eating or buying something, I always key in my expenditure on an app. Sometimes, I used OCBC bank app to transfer funds or check my balance as well.

All in all, I felt that my life was consumed by my phone. I felt very anxious if I did not hold my phone and check it.

I took note of how other people used mobile phone, and here are some photos to show the behaviours:

DAY 2 – Do not use your phone, computer or electronic device for 24 hours. Create a diary documenting and describing the difference in your behavior patterns. How did you do the things you would normally do with your phone? What other alternative behaviors did you develop? What else did you notice about the difference in behavior?

Time

I purposely set my no-phone-day on a weekend so I did not have to do my assignments and email people. The day before my abstinence day, I set a meeting time and place with my boyfriend so we would find each other easily. We did meet at the exact timing and place, and we reflected on the experience. It was about trust. Trust that the other person will indeed come according to appointment, without we having to track each other’s position prior to the meeting.

Next, since I could not access my phone to track time, I looked at my watch more often. I also relied on my analog alarm to wake me up in the morning.

Place

I happened to have 2 seminars at different places on that day. I memorized the address the day before, and relied on my boyfriend who used his phone to navigate our way. If he weren’t present, maybe I would check on google map the day before, and trusted my instinct the next day to find my way.

Spending

Realizing that I could not key in my expenditure right after my action, I kept my receipts on my wallet. I also tried not to spend a lot so I did not have to memorize so many to be recorded the next day when I would have access to my phone.

Relation to others

  • Prior to my experiment, I told my family who live overseas that I would not be able to be contacted for 24 hours. During the day without phone, I felt liberated for not having to inform about my whereabouts. (hehe).
  • Any emails or chats that came that day, I replied the next day. Apparently, there were only 3 important chats that I needed to reply, out of around 15 spams.
  • To kill time during travel, I tried to strike a conversation with a stranger. However, he casted his eyes back to his phone after a minute of short conversation.
  • I observed that people on the bus or train usually always occupied themselves with something. Be it their phones, books, or their companies. People that could stand being alone doing nothing were usually the elderlies.

Takeaway

By not being able to access my phone, I was abled to observe my surrounding more. I saw the signages that I have never seen before, sceneries I never noticed, etc. This tallies with what Chapchise argued in his book “Hidden in Plain Sight” about illiteracy.

There are also moments when otherwise literate people function as if they were temporarily illiterate: when we forget, or we’re distracted, or we’re tired, or for any other reason that could cut off our ability to apply our mental capacity to something that requires some form of literacy. In that sense. a person walking across a street with a phone in hand is inherently partially sighted: either she’s looking at the screen or she’s looking at the vehicular and pedestrian traffic, but either way, she’s blind to one of those (page 202)

 

Assignment 6: Thoughtful Interaction Design

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Reading
CH 1 from Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman, Thoughtful Interaction Design

To handle the complex nature of interaction design, a designer needs to be thoughtful. Interaction design is complex because it is dealing with digital artifacts which is evolving rapidly. This chapter argues that reflecting on this rapid changes to find reflective position is essential. It becomes designer’s responsibility to ask a question what is a good design and what is a bad design.

A good design depends on the context. Who use it and what’s its relation with the environment. Hence, it’s relative, and continuously needs to be redefined. A designer should develop her judgment muscles to define what a good design is.

A designer’s job is to challenge status quo. She is a problem solver who wants to make this world a better place. As designing is also an ethical matter, she should discern whether to grant all of her client’s wish or not if it will affect the societal goal negatively.

As a follow up to this reading, I have found a video by the author. This video contains his view about sketching to do exploration, doing execution as a form of sketching, and doing exploration (while working with experts).

At the last part, he mentioned that for collaborative art, the work will just begin after the product is launched. He gave an example of a group of students in Sweden hijacking mannequins on fashion stores. They modified the mannequin to look like a human being, dressed it, and put it back to the store display. This work, then, foster a discussion about our distorted perception of women.

I think that these excerpts and video will help me outlining what I should be doing for my FYP process:

  1. Sketching the solution, making prototypes for people to test out
  2. Explore the possibilities of the outcome, working side by side with the experts of the migrants: researchers, activists, and the migrants themselves
  3. Continue the project beyond this 1 year period of FYP, making real changes in the society.

Questions
1. In Singapore, which type of company will hire this kind of thoughtful designer who can really make changes in the society? Maybe because so far, I have only worked as a graphic designer, my job scope is pretty limited to creating visuals on the screen, I can’t really see the impact of my works..

2. How to deal with difficult client who do not understand the need of creating the best solution amidst any obstacle? What if he/she only cares about his/her personal goal without thinking about the society it will give impact to?

Assignment Week 5: Place, Mobility and Ubiquitous Computing

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  1. Read Ch. 4 from Chipchase Hidden in Plain Sight.  Write a response and two questions and post it by midnight on Saturday to OSS.
  2. Based on the lecture on Place, Location and Ubiquitous technology, post an example of a product, service or design concept and post it on OSS.

Reading response

“You Are What You Carry” chapter starts by talking about how people in general always carry 3 things everywhere: money, keys, and mobile phones as survival tools. People also have developed the habits and strategies to know where their belongings are. The places to put the objects we usually carry are called “centers of gravity”. For example, I usually always put my keys in my front part of my bag.

In addition, people also tend to want to keep their belongings safe. Chipcase introduced the term “range of distribution” which means “the distance that people are willing to let physical objects stray when they are out and about.” Knowing about this fact, one might see a business opportunity that offers safety. One example is Bobby, anti theft backpack.

Lastly, I want to discuss about the last part of the chapter about network and connectivity. Being in the “future”, we are already used to being connected to a lot of information, from accessing digital map using GPS to shopping online using our phones. The effect of losing one’s phone while he is so dependent on it might make him feel vulnerable. Chipchase argues that losing cell connectivity, for him, means that he is loosing his entire support system. I will experiment to not use my phone for the whole day tomorrow as part of week 6’s assignment, and I shudder every time I think about it 🙁

Q1

If someone loses the money-key-mobile phone in one go, how panic will you get? What is the first thing that you will do? For me, I think that I need to memorize someone’s number so that I could borrow someone’s phone to call him or her. Somehow, we still need to rely on our brain, not so much on our phones…

Q2

How safe we really feel about our data on the cloud? Think about the time when finally Whatsapp intended to share user data to Facebook.

Example of ubiquitos technology.

We rely on GPS to play Pokemon Go to locate the pokemons, Gyms (for pokemon battle), and Poke Stop (to retrieve game items).

Assignment 3: User Experience of Hawker Centers & Food Courts

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Assignment

Document your observations using a combination of photographs and/or video, audio recordings and notes in your journal. Observe the following: how do customers find what they want, find a place to sit, save a table, choose, communicate what they want and what languages are spoken, how do vendors advertise their products to customers, how do they compete with other vendors? Why might some places be more popular than others? What else do you observe in terms of user behaviors? Carefully observe both customer and vendor behavior and document them. Notice lighting, sounds, smells and other factors and how they might affect the way people experience their environment.

 

Assignment 2: Navigating Public Transportation

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Question

Managing how people move through public spaces is a very carefully designed user experience. Make sketches, notes and document with photos to carefully analyze the user experience during this field trip. Make observations on how other people move through public space. What are some unusual things that you notice?

Assignment:  Organize your documentation and notes from the field trip and create a slide-show presentation that you’ll share in class Week 3.

Assignment 2: Reading Response

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Response to reading from 

CH 5 Jan Chipchase, Hidden In Plain Sight: How To Create Extraordinary Products For Tomorrow’s Customers.  (2013)

The best way to get a gist of how people do the things and they do and how they do it is by being with the doers. The result would be much richer than just analysing existing collected data. In this chapter, the author discussed about “rapid cultural calibration” as a technique to put ourselves in the local mind set and to put local phenomena into global perspective. The rapid cultural calibration can be done by observing the city at dawn and rush hour time, participating in the city’s commute, going to travel hubs, barbershops and international fast food chain, and finally, reading urban signs. By doing cultural calibration, designers could have a deeper understanding about the consumers who would use their products.

Questions:

  1. How could we interpret data into insights? What are some practical things that we could do?
  2. In the case of going to foreign country with foreign language which language we do not understand, how could we communicate with the locals to get some insights to their lives? I get the feeling that by employing a translator will not give 100% essence to the researcher.

Assignment 1: 2 Objects

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Question

Choose two objects that you use every day (you cannot pick mobile phones or laptop/computer) and analyze their design using the principles described in Chapter 1 of The Design of Everyday Things. Imagine describing what the object is and what it’s designed to do to someone who has never seen it before. Is it intuitive or frustrating? Come up with three ways to alternate the design for that object and see how it changes its function. Make drawings and notes in your journal.

Assignment 1: Reading Response

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Response to reading from CH 1 Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things  (1988)

The first time I read the text, I frowned. Firstly, I did not use the older type of telephone that much when I was young. I held my mother’s mobile phone already when I was in elementary school. Hence, I had a hard time imagining the example of complicated telephones. Secondly, I am not a good technical drawing reader. Again, I had difficulty deciphering the refrigerator’s conceptual model.
These experiences actually help me to understand the frustration of being faced with undecipherable instructions or non user-friendly products. A good design should have good visibility of certain feature. The person using the product should know how to interact with the feature naturally without having to read the manual book. In addition, the product should also give back a clear feedback whether the product has been used correctly or not.
My questions about this readings are:
1. Can the answer to homework assignment on page 31-33 be a smartphone? Would my answer be counted as a lazy answer?
2. There is a statement on page 29 that says “it takes five to six tries to get an idea right, … and if a newly introduced product doesn’t catch on in the first two or three times, it is dead.”
Would the recent emergence of online crowdfunding platform be a remedy to the problem? The crowdfunding platform usually provides the visual of the product and the use in context. The project will only kick off if enough number of people support the project and enough funds are raised. This crowdfunding platform is good to see how people react to the product, and prevent the loss of money producing non user-friendly products.

Assignment 1: Maps

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Question

Find two maps of a building or place you have visited – one map is badly designed and the other is well designed. Be prepared to explain your examples and bring maps to class.

Think of a time you were lost in a place and write in your journal how and why you got lost. What about the user experience didn’t work for you?

Bad Map Design

  • No presence of map grid: bad conceptual model
  • The places’ icons are not put according to their true location; hence, the map looks cluttered
  • The map does not reflect all four routes in one big picture
  • The route lines below is quite confusing for me as they only have one arrow as direction indicator each
  • I remembered read the Campus Weekend Rider’s direction wrongly that I went out of NTU while I wanted to go somewhere inside NTU complex

Good Map Design

File_000 File_001

  • The presence of map grid: good conceptual model
  • The places’ icons are put according to their true location
  • Although there are many bus routes, it is not confusing due to different color codes and bus numbers’ repetition along the lines