Reading Seminar 2 - Mathias Bylund

We read three chapters from the book Designing For Interactions for this seminar, namely chapter 6,7 and 8. It was an interesting read with a lot of different views to visualise a project, test the project and make improvements.

Chapter 6 Ideation and design principles and it sought to give an overview of how you can develop your idea into something more concrete. There’s is a lot of different principles for ideation and I think it’s a good idea to at least try most of them to know what works for you and especially your group. Some of the more common principles that the book explained was structured brainstorming, personas and metaphors and I think they are all good ways to start developing your concept. I think that you gain the most from having a lot of discussion but it is also important to use these tools to create the interesting discussions from which your group can take applicable knowledge from.

The next chapter was about refinement and how to structure your concept before starting to prototype it. The refinement process is about making good decisions made from research and knowledge that you can apply on your project. One part of this chapter with the title Standards quoted an axiom from Alan Cooper Obey standards unless there is a truly superior alternative, and I think this a smart viewpoint when making decisions for your project albeit a bit boring and maybe not so creative. It was also a lot about principles and my personal favorite was the Poka-Yoke Principle because I think that this principle is something to always take into consideration especially when designing for a wide audience. They went through different approaches on how to make design decisions by concretizing the visual aspect of the concept in last part of this chapter. Personally I think that you don’t necessarily need to use a lot of them but I think it is good to have an idea to know what tools different designers typically use to be able to make smart decisions on what your group should use.

The final chapter was about prototyping, testing and development and all of them are crucial parts to ensure that your project is taking shape the way that it was planned. I think prototyping is all about being creative and analytic to produce good prototypes to gain further insight of how the product should be developed. Also here they give examples of how you can prototype, for example physical, low- and high-fidelity prototypes, you should take these into account but I think the most important part is to constantly question and try different approaches to improve a project. When it comes to development I really like the idea of an agile-development approach as it provides and efficient way to develop larger problems by dividing them into smaller parts I am not sure if this is something we as a group will be able to use for this project but I think this approach is something to consider for bigger projects.

Question: The first thing Leisa Reichelt said on the question Why should designers bother with  being involved in the development process? where she answered: Firstly the design process is the development process and the development process is the design process. The idea that they are seperated from each other is a tragic misconception. Is it common practice to go back from development process to the prototype process? And if so, is it usually on smaller parts or the project as a whole?

Group meeting 16/10

Today we had a group meeting where we evaluated group B5s project and discussed reflections and thoughts on their project and ideas. It was fun to get a bigger view and insight on an other groups project and it gave us some perspective of how to think when we design our own project.
During the meeting we also brainstormed about some good names and slogans for our project where one of the most popular name ideas was "Bubble".
We also made a very simple prototype of our product by drawing the interface on a whiteboard to get a good overview of how we might want the product to look.
The next step for us now is to make a simple prototype app in css/html so that we can get a good perspective of how we want to make the design even better.

  

Reading seminar 2 - Björn Lundkvist

The chapters that we have read for this weeks seminar are about different aspects of designing your product. The chapters cover a lot of great methods of making a good design and they mark some points that are important to take in consideration when working with interaction design.

I found chapter 8 most interesting and I think that it is the most relevant chapter for where we are in our project at the moment. It is about prototyping, testing and development and I think that all those three things are something that could be good for us to put some thought on. We have come up with our final design idea and I think it could be good step for us to make a prototype of our final design so that it is easier to get a grip on what we want to do with our idea. I think that by doing this it will be easier for us to make a good interaction design. We have put a lot of focus on that our final design should be easy to use and understand. We want the user to feel comfortable with our product straight away. Another reason for making a prototype and testing it is because we have created our final design idea mostly based on the genius design perspective and on the interviews that we´ve made. If we don´t test our product by making a prototype it could be easy for us to overlook things that are obvious for us who came up with the product but maybe not as obvious for the user. The one and only unbrakeable law in interaction says “Design for the users” as is stated in chapter 6 and you don´t simply mess around with chapter 6 so I guess the only logical thing to do here is to follow that unbreakable law.

In the text the writer recommends the interaction designer to make several different prototypes rather than just making one prototype. A prototype can be anything from illustrations on a piece of paper to an almost finished functioning product. We have already tried to illustrate our design idea as sketches on paper and simple drawings and I think it could be time for us to make a prototype that looks more like the finished product on the computer. Since we are making an application for mobile phones I think it could be a good idea to try to represent the application by different images in the computer describing every page and function of our final design so that it is easier to understand and view. We can test it by letting some of our class mates have a look at it and have them trying to explain back to us how our product works and how it is used. By doing this I think that we will get a good view on the users perspective and that is important when working with interaction design.

Reading Seminar 2 - Alexis Tubulekas

In chapter 6 we learn how to actually designing something based on your research. By brainstorming you can come up with a lot of concepts, which we did during one of the exercises. You will most likely not come up with your final design straight away but maybe the spark that in the end ignites the fire that is your final design. It is quantity and not quality that is the main objective with brainstorming. The brainstorming sessions should generate dozens of ideas and they should be done “analog”. Meaning with pen, paper, post-its and so on. According to the author, messing around with technology steals time. You need to get your idea down as quickly as possible. I’m skeptical to many of the brainstorming methods in the book. I would like to use reason and careful thinking, but I can only speak for myself.

Once you have your concepts, one must organize them to make them easier to distinguish. This can be done with labels and names. By taking requirements of the design into consideration, or so called design principles, you can determine which one to pursuit. We have, more or less, been doing this when deciding what ideas to pursuit.

Chapter 7 is about how to execute your concept and work with the details. The execution and details depend on the constraints of the project. These constraints could be time, money or technology. When designing, there aren't any fixed rules, but there are principles and guidelines that should be followed. One example of a principle is feedback. Feedback in this case means an indication that something has happened. Without feedback, the user would repeat the action they just did over and over again. We are given a great amount of principles as well as do’s and don’ts in chapter 7. I found most of them interesting and hopefully we can apply some on our design.

In chapter 8 the author talks about the final steps in the design process; prototyping, testing and development. The prototype is an incomplete version of the final product that shows the intended interaction. Without a prototype, the developers of the design can have another vision of how things should work. There are different kinds of prototypes that serve different purposes. A paper prototype is a fast way to demonstrate a product, but maybe not the type of prototype to test on users. A high-fidelity prototype would be a better choice in that case. We currently only have simple paper prototypes, but until next exercise we’re supposed to make an online interactive prototype. Now we have some great tips in how to make a good prototype. 

Question: How does one chose how much effort and time to spend on a prototype?

Reading seminar 2 - Anton

This reading seminar involved chapters six to eight which in short were about the stages in the design process where you come up with ideas, refine them and finally concretize them as a prototype.

One of the things I found worthwhile considering brainstorming is that you need to give room to be a little wild and not to criticize any idea that comes up. I found during our own brainstorming sessions that that kind of climate in brainstorming did help us to really dare to approach our problems in new ways. Earlier we kind of had ideas of ways of solving our project, but I found the ideas we came up with during this brainstorm to be superior.

Right now we’re in the process of refining our main idea, so reading about that chapter felt relevant, although I felt much of what was written were not so much about what to do, but rather things to watch out for as to not confuse users. For example you don’t want to two lines of text aligned and looking similar if the texts themselves are not related.

We probably will start to think about prototyping soon so we can get some user input about the small details we most assuredly will miss. I think we have a strong concept so far, but to really make something people will want to use, we’ll have to spend time making the interface understandable for the users. I didn’t feel like I got as much from the eighth chapter as I did for six and seven, but I think I realize how important this step is in the iterative design process. Prototyping can’t be done the last thing you do, because after you let people try your prototype you’ll end up with a long list of things that need to change. It will be longer the longer you wait because a lot of functions often are tied in to each other, so to change one thing you might have to change another.

My question is: Is it better to involve users during the process of refining your idea, or rather to independently work out a version and then develop a prototype to test on the user if you only have the resources for one test study

Reading Seminar 2 - Emil Westin

For this seminar we were supposed to read chapters 6, 7 and 8 in the course literature. These chapters explain and process the basic tools and methods for HCI design, both for different brainstorming methods, refinement and prototypes and product developing. Throughout the entire HCI industry most of the designers agree that the design process often starts when the designer starts to design a prototype. It's at that step that the product is concretized and become reality; it's the step from thought and sketches to physical form.
  When you have a prototype, you'll have a bigger chance of detecting problems that you might not have thought about before, problems that can not be seen until you actually try to use the product. It could be functionality problems but also things like sizes of buttons, colours and choose of fonts; you can more easily see what works in reality and what doesn't. There are different kinds of prototypes. A designer could choose to create a more lifelike, high-fidelity, prototype, i.e. programming an app in code, or do a more primitive, low-fidelity, prototype, i.e. draw on paper/the computer and then simulate a user session by showing different slides depending on "where the user clicked" on the paper slide.
  I think that our project could really benefit from a prototype, as it is a way to see our work in real time, though I think that a real programmed prototype would mean lots of work and time spent. A conclusion I draw from this is that we should do a more primitive, but still lifelike, prototype, i.e. digital pictures that we use in a simulation.
  Saffer also writes about some guidelines that a designer should think about, when creating adaptive products. These guidelines bring up the importance of how a design should be designed in such a way so the product feels personalized for the user. The designer should help the user to learn by combining doing with understanding, but try to not steer the user in the right way. Rather, the designer should set up a path in such a way so the user can choose to follow by choice. It's a fine line to not steer the user and at the same time "push" them in the right direction so that they can learn the product easily. Another guideline of importance tells about sensitivity and responsiveness. The designer should try to focus on making the application personalized for each user, and that each user should feel as if the artefact is alive and responsive. This, I think, is of great importance in a modern design. As the technology is sprinting ahead and we, the users of todays applications, are used to products that respond for every click we make, it should be one of the main focuses of designing a product. Personalization and responsiveness are two key terms that I think my group should keep in mind when we design our product, which as of today, looks like it's going to be an application for a mobile phone.

/Emil

Design process - "Museipoolen"

Final design!

Main idea: A museum pool for people to form groups with new people and visit the museum together.

Functions:
- Finding and creating new groups, both public and private which people can join.
- Each group has a group leader which manages who can join and the total number of people in the group.
- Each group is represented by a graphic bubble on the main page. If one presses a bubble it expands and covers the screen. In it, you will find all the information; group name, museum, time, address and so on. If you join the group, you can access the group chat. Pressing the icon of the museum will show information regarding this specific museum (people often feel like it is hard to find information about museums). 
- A friend or acquaintance system where you can friend people you had a good time with. It is very simple, and only offers you to invite them again if you create a group or decide to visit a museum.
- A system for showing information about museums in the area. They will pop up like a list of museum icons sorted after your preferences and which museums/exhibitions you've visited before.