Reflections On NM4210

Time really flies. In just a blink or so, we have reached the end of this semester. I still remember clearly the 1st lesson that I had. “What is User Experience Design?” Before that, I only think that user experience design is just to design certain application or products according to the needs of the customers. But after attending this module, this turn out to be entirely different from what I think it is. It is more than satisfying the needs of the customers.

The main focus is actually on the users whom will be using the system, rather than to cater for the customers’ requirements. What the customers think the users need might not turn out to be the exact needs of the users. Involving the targeted users in the process of the design is a better way out. “A good design doesn’t mean that the users will also have good experience when using it.”

“Good experience” is always tied down with “Emotion”. The latter means that one’s experience of a product is always based on his/her emotions when using the product. I feel that this is very true as, for example, a product can be very appealing in appearance but there are times when it does not serve its primary uses; “Appearance VS Functionality”. Thus, there is a need to seek for a good balance between the two so as to achieve the “Maximum” experience for the users. This really enlightened me that having an outstanding and appealing appearance, is not the main vital requirement of designing a product. Maximum experience for the users should be the top priority instead.

Next, I’m introduced to the 4 different types of “Pleasure” which will incur when interacting with the product or application. Wow! Even there are so many types of “Pleasure” that can exist; “Physio-pleasure”, “Socio-pleasure”, “Psycho-pleasure”, and “Ideo-pleasure”. It is really a great exposure for me. Designing a “user-based” product is such an “authentic skill”. This requires time and experience before one is able to come out with a satisfied product.

Besides that, product marketing and branding are also important factors that will influence users’ perceptive of choosing and using the product. It is now then I realized why most people will tend to prefer iPod to Creative players. It is the aesthetics and the branding of the product that made it so successful. People will tend to buy products of a particular brand despite of its high cost, when compared to the other brands that also provides the same specifications. This is also true for me; I prefer to buy Japanese Pop music CD from Japan, to buying it locally, as I believe that the aesthetics and the marketing strategies and the sound quality from Japan attracts me more. It is the “TRUST” of the brand that made one feel confident to buy its product.

Last but not least, I really feel that I have picked a lot of skills. Like looking and choosing products not only based on its aesthetics or specifications alone, it will be better to seek a balance or incorporated the two in a product. Marketing strategies and branding are as equally important as functionalities and experiences that a person will acquire throughout the process of interactions. I feel that this really helps me in designing any products or web applications in the near future. I feel that this is a must module to take up if one wants to know more about designing, in regards of any fields, as these concepts will come into handy somehow. I do enjoy the learning process throughout this course.

I would like to thank everyone for making such a nice “learning experience” for me. All the best! =)

Reflections (User Research Smoke & Mirrors)

After going through the article, “Smoke & Mirrors”, I think I have a better understanding how certain company, like design firms, works. Most of the concepts discussed in this article, has already been covered in this module, thus, I am able to have a better or clear understanding of the concepts being discussed.

There are certain viewpoints that I feel are quite true in nature. For example, it is stated that many web designers & consultancies tried to make “scientific” user research, but in actual fact, many tend to pretend that they did use some of the research method. I feel that this is quite a relevant point as I have personally encountered it before when I was working part-time in a company. Although the company did conduct some research, there are times when they pretend that they did do some marketing research, where actually not.

Besides that, I agree that it is very hard to keep a balance between “Design & Science”. Misinterpretations of research data for the “Design”, if one interpret according in the “Science” context. Thus, one can’t map research directly to design as design is usually an emergent activity in nature. Misinterpretations can be avoided if the research data us interpreted by people with the appropriate skills in that area of field; design skills in this context.

Another point that I agree with is that, even if a designer is able to have good suggestions for the design, he/she must be able to gain the support or trust from the superiors/boss to acknowledge his/her expertise. If this is achieved, then the designer must be able to explain the user interface design strategy to stakeholders, peers, and bosses effectively, so that the strategy or plans could be carried out efficiently.

Last but not least, although expertise of a designer is required, and the cooperation with the boss or superiors is essential, the contributing factor is still the research upon the customer or users’ experiences.

Although the viewpoints discussed are well supported with relevant evidences or examples, I personally feel that some of them are only true to a certain extent or to very specific situations.

To sum up, I personally feel that there is a need to conduct user experience research, either in terms of “scientific” or in “design” concepts. There should exist a trust among the developers and the users; such as the report should only reflect those research methods being conducted. And like any other areas of jobs, the developers or designers should be an expertise in his/her field, so as to portray “professionalism” and to feel proud of what he/she has developed. Maybe someone may think that I am out of mind or my views are too unrealistic, but I personally feel that everyone should take pride in their work. This way, we will be able to build trust among our colleagues or even a strong bond with the customers.

Final Project (Summary)

“GITA” – Graduate-In-Time-Application, is the proposed prototype for my team’s final project entry. It’s a system that enables students to do upfront planning of their roadmap of the modules that they want to take throughout their life in school, so that they will be able to graduate on time.

As such, this system is most appropriate to be linked to the school’s database so that the retrieval of all the modules information will be the most updated. The targeted users are definitely the students, but the school administrators are also part of the users. This is true as they will be able to forecast or foresee the “popularity” of a particular module in a semester, so that all the hassle of approving appeals of modules will be minimized.

We believed that this all-in-one application for students and administrative staffs will be essential in helping them to handle everything that is related to students’ path to graduation.

The key element of this application is the module planner, or roadmap, to aid students to plan their modules preferences, in order to graduate in time with the least administrative hassles. Moreover, this application will encourage students to plan out their modules upfront, so as to avoid frantic bidding during bidding periods if there are any last minute changes, which will in turn result in desperate appeals to faculty administrations. Goal setting of CAP scores for each semester will enable to system to estimate the grades for each module in order to meet their targeted goal.

Administrative staffs will also benefit from it. There will be better communication between students and them, and there will be reduction in repetitive and mundane requests pertaining to graduation and the necessary requirements. The staff will then be able to have a better awareness of the modules’ demands by students, and so able to make all the necessary arrangements to avoid unexpected circumstances.

The details of the “User requirements” are as such. First, to keep track of each student’s graduation requirements, the modules taken and the grades attained for each, easy access of each module’s information (i.e. workload, schedule), the pre-requisites requirements of certain modules and modules preclusion. It will be an effective and interactive application that allows the students to plan and save their personalized roadmap. This in turn will inform administration about the bidding intent for that particular semester.

“Functional Requirements” include verification of student’s ability to graduate on time; link with the school’s database will enable the students to know their progress at each stage/semester and the ability to store each student’s roadmaps for easy retrieval through the school’s network or database. The administrative staffs will also be able to gather and tabulate data/information based on students’ roadmaps for administrative purposes.

Next, we are expected to develop a low-fidelity prototype of our application and then to do “Heuristic & User Evaluations” on it. This is to enable the users and the experts in this area to do some quantitative testing on the system, so as to get some crucial and important feedback before developing the high-fidelity one.

To end with, I personally feel that I have learnt a lot through from developing this high-fidelity product/application. Besides learning all the concepts for constructing a product based on user experience as the core functionality, time management and developing low-fidelity prototype, etc, are also new and interesting concepts that I have taken with me from this module.

Lesson 12 (Evaluation)

This is the last lesson for this module. Time really flies fast. =) In this last lesson, we are introduced to the concept of “UX Evaluation”. This involves the measurement of “Emotions”; “Pleasant & Unpleasant Emotions”. Moreover, there are also emotion variation – pleasantness and activation (Physiological). This is known as the “two-dimensions of emotion variation”.

There are also other methods of evaluation of UX. For example, “Experience diaries”, “Reaction checklist, Questionnaires”, “Field observations, Interviews”, etc.

“Experience diaries” is a method for recording a person’s activity, and his/her evaluation of this activity. This method allows the capturing of infrequent events in inaccessible places, like use of laptop during a journey. In short, it’s a record of a user’s lifestyle. “Reaction checklist” is a checklist of potential reactions that a person may have to a product. The reactions may include those in the 4 pleasure categories – “Physiological pleasure”, “Psychological pleasure”, “Sociological pleasure”, and “Ideological pleasure”.

Last but not least, it is the presentation of our high-fidelity prototype and heuristic evaluation and user evaluation. =)

Lesson 11 (Design - Looks)

This lesson is on the “looks” of a product. In other words, it means the aesthetic (usability) effect of the product. This is one of the important element is design as it has significant implications regarding the acceptance, use, and performance of the design. This is true as people do judge books by its cover, so impression (entry point to a system) of a system greatly influences subsequent perceptions and attitudes, and even the quality of the quality of interactions.

Attractiveness bias also plays a major role, as there’s a tendency to see attractive people/elements as more intelligent, competent, moral, and sociable than unattractive ones, and they tend to receive more attention compared to the latter.

Next, we are introduced to “Berlyne’s model of aesthetics”. In short, this relays the message that people don’t enjoy products that are either too simple or too complicated; like those that are moderately familiar and will be averse to the novel and the over familiar. Besides that, there’s also a trade-off between flexibility and usability of a system. “Flexibility is inversely proportional to Usability”.

To enable users to have a perfect experience of using a product, there must be “perception management” (looks, function and feel), and to take care of the “touch points” (Product, packaging, brand, distribution, retail, office, support, media). This involves “Usability Testing”, which compromises of “Heuristic Evaluation”, and “User Evaluation”. The 1st component is performed by an expert in that particular field of the product, while the latter involves the interaction of the users and how they feel about the product.

Thus, this means that a high-fidelity prototype, and heuristic and user evaluations must be ready for next week final presentation.

Below is the interface of the low-fidelity prototype that we have developed.

Lesson 10 (Design - Stage 2)

This is the 2nd part of “Design” lecture. In the previous lesson, we were taught on the different techniques on how to create “perception of pleasure”, and different methods to define structure of the content layout.
In this lesson, we are exposed to the 2nd stage of “Design” – Prototype. The 3 main key elements are, “Concepts”, “Interaction/Interface Design”, and “Sensorial Design (color, visual design, perception, visual thinking)”.

First, we have to know the concept of “UI” design, which compromises of “Usefulness”, “Effectiveness”, “Learnability”, “Satisfaction”. In short, this means to have an early focus on the users’ needs, allow them to involve at every stage of design decision and evaluation, so that there will be constant evaluation by the users on the initial prototypes and to make all the necessary amends.

Usually the initial prototypes are “low-fidelity” ones; which means that they are fast and cheap to be constructed, rather than “high-fidelity” ones that takes more time and resources, where the appearance is very close to the finished product.

The more common type of low-fidelity technique used is the “Paper Prototype”, where it is faster & cheaper to build, and able to get feedback from the users earlier. In this technique, the designers are able to concentrate more on the users’ needs & requirements. As such, the designers will be able to get constant feedbacks from the users, and to do the necessary amends immediately. This means that we have to come out with the concept generation, low-fidelity prototype, and the users’ evaluation (walkthrough of the prototype), for the next lesson’s presentation.

Last but not least, it’s the presentation of the last week’s assignment. Our group has changed our product and targeted users to students, whom are very concerned about their studies and to do upfront planning. Our product is to ease the students to do planning of roadmap for their modules throughout their studies in NUS. This means that the students or even the school administrators will be able to access the school’s modules and the administrators will be able to know the students’ preferences on certain modules on every semester without much hassle.

Our product name is GITA – “Graduate-In-Time-Application”.