In chapter 2 Saffer writes about how to approach interaction design. He speaks about what to think when you accept a design job and that there is four major roads to design by. The User Centered Design (UCD), the Activity Centered Design, the System Design and last but not least, the Genius Design. Genius Design is the most popular and used design method because it’s not necessary to do a lot of research when you work in this way, but Saffer points out that this method is best suited for those designers with a lot of experience. A new designer should work with UCD or the activity centered design methods because they let the designer to know their audience and to think of the design from a users point of view, and that is really important if you would want to make a product that is usable.
In chapters 4 and 5 Saffer talks about how to do an effective and qualitative research and how to best analyze your data so that you can work with it later on. It’s a good thing to look for patterns when interviewing subjects. If an answer is said once, it’s a phenomenon, if it’s said twice it’s a coincidence and if it’s said three times it should be looked on as a pattern. Patterns are easy to work with and reflects what subjects think about things and how they use certain products. Saffer also points out that when you ask questions you should really think about not to say them in a leading way, and that you should be as neutral as you can be in your interviews. And most important of all, write everything down for future analysis!
After you have collected your data it’s time to evaluate it and to try and see what the problem really is and how to solve it with design! Saffer thinks that it’s a good way to materialize your data, to make it physical. It can be a challenge because you usually have all kinds of different places to store data in different formats. He brings up four different analyze methods that you can work with when you evaluate your data. All of them seems to be good and I think that it’s a matter of taste and maybe what your projects goal is. The most used method is probably the ordinary analyze method, but to know what method is most effective could be hard to know from beforehand.
In chapter 5, Saffer also talks about Personas and what an important role this design tool is. To make a virtual person that the designer can have in mind when designing a product for that target group. For small projects it’s best to keep the number of Personas on a low level.
/ Emil
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