Journal Summary: What I've Learned Through the Course

In this quarter we have discussed a lot of concepts about the usability, which was not only focus on online users, but also the physical things. The previous journal entries are some observations on web sites and everyday things and those assignments are really useful because we actually did some researches and observations. Learning by doing and observing is the main purpose of this class.

It’s hard to forget the second class that we played tones of games and discussed about the trends of game designs, the methodologies of interaction designs and so on. All in all, the design of human interactions is really important in nowadays’ game designs. If the designers failed to insight the target market’s needs, it is hard to be a successful game. That includes the art design, the convention of interaction design and the innovation of game devices. The interesting trend is the interaction between players, which is the game community or some other multi-player games. This trend has become the unavoidable element in game design.

Also, we can see some other designs in the physical world include a lot of interaction between the devices and human or the designers and end-users. In the classes, we learned a lot about the design of everyday devices as well. I took a close look at the Seattle parking meter, Do-It-Yourself furniture and the luggage. These everyday things or any other devices that we might use very often all share a similar design process: problem defining, research, brainstorming solutions, mock-up alternatives solutions, test, refine, prototype, re-evaluations and production. Without these process or ignore some of them might result in failure of the product. The best research is to observe the interaction between users and the existing devices so that designers could insight the problem and make improvement, which is a way to have a better solution.

As for the web site design, we also talked a lot about it in classes. Except for the discussion in classes, I and Sharlen did a lot researches about the web site design for the final project. We observed the current cake web sites to see their merits and flaws as a reference to design a better web site with deliberately designed functionality, usability, and consumer insight. We also read some books about the online business designs, usability principles and online consumer psychology. The final flash file is what we’ve came out with all the researches. We focused on the basic web design principles and tended to make the web site clear and user friendly. However, we might ignore the graphic design and the art design, which are also very important in web design. That is crucial because the customers might feel not really delightful while shopping with the web site. We changed a little bit in the final deliverable and I hope the web site has become more effective to reach our goal of boosting the business.

All in all, the classes were really focused on the course objectives and I think I’ve learned a lot of principles about the interaction design. No matter it’s useful in my future career or not, I think the class opens up another way of thinking in my mind. The skill of observation, the way of thinking and so on are some useful techniques to apply to any kind of works. Although, I might not be a designer in the future, I’ll be more interested in observing every man-made thing and examine them carefully to ponder over why the device is designed like this, the good and the bad things about the design or if I were the designer, what would I do about the design. All of the above statements are what I’ve learned in the class and I feel content about the whole course design.

Journal Entry #5: an obsevation of everyday things

Not long after coming to Seattle, I bought two pieces of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) furniture from Target. I was really excited and looking forward to building them by my own hands, but the building process was not as pleasant as I’ve expected. I had the experience of building IKEA DIY furniture, which was well designed for the customers and I felt a sense of accomplishment while doing the work. I don’t have to prepare any tools to hammer at the furniture or screw the pieces together, everything was just matched. If I did something wrong, the pieces of the furniture wouldn’t match, and if I did something right, the pieces give off a clink sound as feedback. The pieces of the furniture have natural signals that each joint only matches to another joint. The design reduces the chance of making errors for consumers. IKEA considers conceptual models of the customers while doing the design. It also did good mapping to guide the customers.

The DIY furniture of Target was a different story. They frustrated me again and again. The designers didn’t consider every little part thoroughly and it matters. We can exam the Gulf of Execution first: I intended to screw some of the parts together, but I couldn’t distinguish what kind of screw I should take, there were at least five kinds of screws all packed in one little bag. The instructions were vague, and I actually screwed the wrong ones into the holes, which then took me more time to separate them. Some bolts are much bigger than the holes that they should be inserted into, which made me wondering whether I did it right or not. My intended actions were not directly match the system and it took me extra effort to figure it out. Accordingly, the Gulf of Evaluation was big, it was hard to interpret and wasn’t hatch the way I thought of the system.

Another problem of the furniture is it didn’t provide me certain feedback. For example, while I took the wrong screws, it should have an obvious signs to indicate that I was wrong; while I took the right bolts to insert into the right holes, it should be really easy for me to do so. However, it came out to be opposite to my expectation. My mental model was helpless in building the furniture.

There are still more problems with the DIY furniture. One of these problems is visibility. The visibility of the furniture was poor. The serial numbers of each part was chaotic: some numbers were on the side of the part while some were on the corner or in the middle of the part. The problem took me a while to find the right parts to screw together. The send problem is mapping. The problem generates even worse thing: some of the serial numbers of the parts were different from the instruction, which means the mappings that the designers designed were contradicted to the reality. The failure of mapping made me blamed the wrong cause, which is the third problem; I thought the instruction was wrong while actually the serial numbers were making mistakes. Thus, I spent extra time to find out the real problem and fix what I have done wrong. How confusing and frustrating was that?

Although DIY furniture of Target seems quite easy to build at first, after a close exam, it has a lot of design deficits. While designing everyday things, the designer should stick to the principles of design and also do the test before put the product into the market.

minute paper

The article concerns that the branding should be a main stream practice, and how come A-Ron is going to succeed in the market. I think first of all, the channel of communication has become really open and broad. The Internet has provided incalculable channels to anyone to advertise and generate issues, which also benefits to buzz marketing. Comparing to the mass media, the words of mouth through other channels like social networks, blogs, etc. sometimes are more effective. That’s one of the reasons why A-Ron is going to succeed. Especially, A-Ron targets his audiences on rebel young people. One feature of this market segment is that they just don’t do the same thing as their parents do. Accordingly, the mass media are just not the choice for them to get information because they don’t want to be like their parents. A-Ron doesn’t spend a lot of money to advertise, the only thing he needs to do is generating the buzz. Second, A-Ron just creates the brand that really touches his target market, because he is just one of them. He knows exactly what do they want and the brand expresses their identity. How customers perceive the brand is more important than anything else. A-Ron also sticks to the brand foundation: distinct, innovative, verify and awareness. The style of products is nothing similar to other brands. He perceives the consumer insight of the rebel young people and generates these young people’s awareness. A-Ron also provides consistent message to his customers, and that is rebel, and anti-mainstream. All these elements result in his success.

In the class, we were discussing about how to integrate all the sub brands of a big company and make the customers perceive they are using the product and services from the same company. If all the brands are working well, they are not necessary to be perceived as one brand. In that way, all different sub brands can attract different target markets and generate more benefits. The global company P&G provides a broad range of products, such as food and cosmetics, all of the brands are working well and attracting different markets. Sometimes it may be awkward that customers know that all the product come from the same company. Some people may even feel very angry, because they don’t like a company to earn so much profit.

Journal Entry #4: comment on the designing process of Henk

http://www.frogdesign.com/case-study/henk-hand-luggage.html

Traveling is always full of headache issues for most people, such as jet lag, heavy luggage and long waiting hours in the airport. One frequent business traveler saw the potential market of making travel easier by improving cumbersome luggage. Thus, he proposed his concern to the Frog Design.

The Frog Design researched the elite travelers’ needs by speaking with them. After the market research, the Frog Design took the features of successful businessmen into consideration. They not only demand their luggage to be light, but also demand the special design that meets their only needs, superior quality, and aesthetics. To respond to the market segment’s needs, the frog design adopted carbon-fiber and titanium to enhance the mobility, lightness and hardness of the luggage. The decision comes from the ergonomic research and the advice of engineers of another company. The luggage includes a cigar case, anti-theft chain, maximized inner space and some other traits that are designated for successful businessmen. The price is $20,000, which assures the ordinary public wouldn’t have any interests and makes the product unique to the target market. The inner design and exterior appearance can be customized, which adds extra value to the customers.

According to the designing flow provided by Amanda, the Frog Design did well on defining the problem: while they see cumbersome luggage as the main problem, they also conducted research to the target market and sighted more latent needs of the market. They did brainstorm solutions with experts of engineering and ergonomics before deciding the final product.

However, they ignored some designing processes. Some of these steps may be ignorable while some may be crucial. For example, at the very beginning of the designing process, observing people is a great way to find problems. They could go to the airports and hotels to see how the travelers deal with their luggage and what are the difficulties the travelers encountered. The design team will get a more thorough scope of the problems.

As Moggridge mentioned in his book, designing a new version of something that already exists, “state of the art” is the most useful starting point. The design team may extract knowledge and guidelines from the precedents. They can also take some similar product as reference and modify that product’s weakness. In this way, the product can avoid committing the same mistakes as other competitors and learn some strong points of the precedents and existing products.

The processes of test and refine are what the design team should follow, but they didn’t. Although they are the masters, they still have to test their products before entering the market. They can conduct the test through the body-acting, simulating every possible situation to see if there is anything they ignored while busying in the labs. They can also provide the prototype to some of the businessmen within the target market, and ask their experiences of using the product. They may receive some complains and that’s a good basis of refining. These processes were not followed; therefore the product could be better.

Although, the design team did ask for advice from the experts of engineering and ergonomics, they seem not brain storm with artists or other related disciplines. This may be a flaw in the designing process, because the design may not think of problems other than physical, such as psychological and sociological. In my opinion, the positioning of the luggage is in the super luxury market, but it seems too low-profile to show its’ true value. Other than that, I think there may be some other problems that related to sociology and psychology aspects, such as how the ordinary public would think of the luggage, does the target market really think the luggage is worth the price, etc.

Journal Entry #3: What Makes Xbox Fun?

In Last week’s class, Shelley introduced the true color of the Xbox 360 for us. What makes Xbox 360 successful? The way the development team worked together and shared their ideas is a key for the Xbox 360’s success. First of all, Shelley is a great project manager. She uses innovative ways to motivate the team, such as asking everyone on the team to provide and combine their ideas by writing their thoughts on the wall. This is a good way to stimulate more ideas and make the working environment fun, relaxing and efficient. Although, the designers and engineers are always in conflict and some people may be disappointed that their ideas get replaced, they know that they will always have to make certain sacrifices to meet the best solution. They work like a family and stick to a topic unlike a “Swiss army knife”, focus on one work at a time. Without these compromises and faith, the Xbox 360 would not exist.

The Xbox 360 is successful even though the development team does not let the consumers design things for them, but they know that they need to listen to the customers. In this way they provide the customers the power of participating in the designing process, but they still take control of it. They are the masters, and they have the confidence that customers should trust them. One way they listen to their customers is by providing them the ability to customize the appearance of the console, which provides the feeling of possessing something unique to the customers. The Xbox 360 sales volume proves that the development team really caught the consumers’ appetite. They did market tests before launching in several major cities in the world, to have close contact with the consumers and understand what consumers really want globally. For example, at first they made a little mistake because of the giant controller and console and people in Asian countries did not like it. They fixed it because they knew their customers were complaining. Moreover, from the design of packaging, they create the product value by really cool big box packaging with a lot of surprising gifts inside. The console is designed to looks athletic and it sticks to the key design points that it is clear, open and consistent, which is really neat to the customers. The ring of light on the console is also an innovation, and it’s a kind of way to make the wait more tolerable.

The direct interaction to other players and experience sharing process is still one of the major keys to the Xbox 360’s success. The Xbox life arcade provides players the chance to interact with each other and download updated version of old games or new games from the Internet. The system is intuitive and it can work well even if the players only know a little about it. We can make comparison to its close competitor: Play Station 3. Like the Xbox 360, PS3 has neat appearance and great user interfaces. However, it ignored the importance of the in-crowd feeling of the customers at the beginning. It didn’t provide the online interaction with game providers or other players for customers and it has just started to do so, but it has lost its predominance. Also, the quantity of games and the price are also reasons why PS3 works not as well as Xbox 360. Because of its’ development process and willing to listen to its’ customers, the Xbox 360 has a better sales volume than PS3.

Journal Entry #2: wire frame (colorful version)

Journal Entry #2: wire frame