Lesson 4 (Understanding User 2)

Today is the 4th lesson for NM4210. After going through the previous lesson on RMA techniques, I realized that designing a product is a very “demanding” process. “User Experiences” is the most important factor of designing a product.
In this lesson, we are exposed to 2 more new concepts or approaches to Experience Design. First, it’s “Laddering”, which is a very popular marketing technique that has very powerful procedures for eliciting the values a person holds. It involves direct links between specific features of the product and aspects of pleasure of the user.

The other is, “Ethnography study”, where culture probe could be clubbed under ethnography. “Probe” is to capture signals & samples from places where human researchers cannot go. The final design proposals were inspired from and based on the data collected using the cultural probes. “Ethnography” is naturalistic, where its studies should be of real people & their activities, operating in their natural environment.

Besides that, we are also introduced to a framework for analyzing experience with technology, which consists of 4 intertwined threads of experience (Compositional, Emotional, Spatio-temporal, Sensual), and six sense-making processes (Interpreting, Reflecting, Appropriating, Recounting, Anticipating, Connecting).

Last but not least, we are given the next assignment, “Emotion Design Probe”, on improving learning experience in lecture theaters, which will be due 2 weeks later.