Group meeting 30/10

Today only Mathias, Anton and Emil could attend the meeting.

Since last time we've worked separately with the design of different aspects of the app following some main guidelines we worked out together. This is the first meeting since, and since the deadline for these separate designs has not yet run out, only Mathias and Emil could show their designs. We decided that we could work from them together to flesh out our design even more before designing the last bits of the app.

Right now we're focusing mainly on the interface and the layout of the app, we chose to work mainly in the mockup-program called Balsamiq.

We showed each other our thoughts on the interface and layout for the different windows of the app. We're designing for the iPhone platform and try to stay true to the standard conventions in designing for that platform.

We've worked hard on enforcing consistency in the app, especially in how the user navigates in the app, where buttons are placed and what they do as well as keep a uniform color scheme throughout.

Another important aspect we've worked on is the main flow of the app, and much thought has been put into response when interacting with the app so the user will always feel like the app is responding to every user decision.

During the meeting we discussed and reinvented the design we had largely according to our own experiences of what makes an app good to interact with and with motivations from Fitts´s Law to make interaction as effecient as possible.

We also decided to do a small evaluation before our "think-aloud", so we used the Heuristic evaluation method to test our current design. We were positively suprised to see how many of the points we actually had considered during our main design process.

Here are some screenshots of parts of our mockup showing the initial tutorial/help and the main group interface. The second last picture demonstrates what happens when a bubble is pressed (it expands and shows an overview of relevant information about the group) and the last shows what happens if the expanded bubble is pressed, which is moving into a more detailed group view.

Group meeting 21/10

At the group meeting today we discussed the interface of our app. Emil had made sketches based on our drawings and previous discussions which are presented in the images here: 

We used these sketches as a base for our discussions of the interface and focused on how to make the interface easier, more understandable and relevant for our target group. With the new discussions and views we made new sketches using the same sketch program and after the meeting the interface sketches looked like this:

We wanted to streamline the experience for the user by making it super simple to reach the main function of our concept. That is why we got rid of the menus and instead direct the user to the group finding page. We also decided to have a fixed set of group bubbles of 3 different sizes (the bubble size indicates match with your personal interests) so that it wouldn´t clutter the screen. The reason for having a fixed amount of group bubbles is because Hick´s law states that it is easier to make a decision from a one set of bubbles rather than having several subsets of bubbles. We also decided not to make the bubbles to small so that it would be easier to navigate between them according to Fitts´s law.
To eliminate jumping in and out of bubbles all the time we made it possible for the user to quickly get an overview of the basic information about the group without proceeding to the group page. We worked really hard to make it user-friendly and easy to interact with.

Until the next meeting we decided for each group member to refine different parts of the interface that we feel aren´t finished.

Thoughts from seminar 2

Our findings from the group discussion was fore mostly that we would liked to been told to read chapter 6 (which was partly about brainstorming) before we had the exercise about brainstorming. We felt that this information was brought up a bit too late in the process. Therefore we didn’t have much use for this at this phase.

We further discussed chapters 7 and 8 which was about refinement and about prototyping your product. We are still in the refinement phase and we feel that the book gave us an idea of how to approach the rest of this phase. A flow chart, which was mentioned in this chapter is something that we found was a really helpful tool for the group to get a common picture of our product. We got a more clear idea of our concept.

The book also talked about low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes and we concluded that we, in our group, probably will use a low-fidelity prototype. The heuristic evaluation method will most likely be something to have in mind when prototyping our product. And this, we think, can also be useful in the iterative-design-prototyping-process.

Some questions we discussed was: “How does the relationship between developing and prototyping work and do we think it should be?”

• We concluded that you would like a technological foundation when you build an evolutionary prototype. Some design decisions might not be possible without technology. It certainly is a good idea to think about…!

Another question we discussed was: “How do you introduce a shift in technical paradigms?"

• Our discussion lead to some thoughts how much trust a user must have for a certain company to adapt the design innovations that they produce. We also talked about having a perspective where you know that a new innovation is better through an analytic point of view. This is something that the book called a superior design cause of the fact that it should work better. We also talked about how leading companies easily can force a new design on the user and that later on becomes a standard.

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?