Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Assignment 3: Four Pleasure Analysis

RMA profile
Subject: Paul Lim, 28 years old single Singaporean marketing manager in a renowned multi-national company based in Singapore. He is 180cm and 80kg.

He has always been on the dean's list since his first semester in NUS, and after which the top business student for his cohort, graduating with a first class honours in business management. Subsequently, he got in to the MBA course in Oxford University under a scholarship from Temasek Holdings and graduated with excellent results. He was invited to join his current company as a marketing assistant manager upon his graduation in 2006, where he did his intership during his undergrad days. 6 months later, he rose to marketing manager. He wants to be as successful as possible, hoping to be a regional head manager in his current company in 2 years time.

With an monthly income of approximately $20,000, he owns a bungalow at Sixth Ave along Bukit Timah. He lives with parents as well as his dearest companion, a Jack Russell. Though he lives in an exepnsive town, his bungalow's exterior and interior designs are not very complex, as he enjoys simplicity. Though he is rich, he chooses not to buy a car because he has no time to maintain his car. Therefore, his daily trasport revolves about taxis.

He is a very hardworking person, and is prepared to put in a lot of effort as he believes hard work is the key to success. His working hours are not very stable, but it averages out to about 16 working hours per day, 6 days a week officially, but he stays at home to prepare his documents on Sundays on his new VAIO laptop. Though he works hard, he knows when to relax. While working, he likes to play some music from his cd collection to ease his mind and to reduce the stress that he might have. He only appreciates instrumental and accapalla, and has a huge collection of them.

As he spends most of his time in the office or out meeting clients, he has got very little leisure time. In fact, he thinks that interacting with new clients has became part of his main hobby. His clients are not always based in Singapore, therefore he spends large amount of time flying and travelling around too. Thus, travelling has became another of his hobby.

During the off-peak periods where he needs to meet relatively lesser clients, he goes to a country club for a swim and a session of golf with his friends as he knows that it is important to keep fit, providing a good balance to sendentary nature of her job. Sometimes, he meditates and perform light workouts after a busy day at work. Occassionally, he meets up with his old classmates and friends for a social gathering. During festivals like Chinese New Year and Christmas, he sends greeting cards and SMSes to all his friends and clients.

As he has to interact with many clients, it is inavoidable for him to carry a namecard book (like a photoalbum), with all the namecards carefully categorised and managed.





Four Pleasure Analysis of Paul
Physio-pleasure
  • Takes meditation and workouts as part of her de-stress routine, which he needs because of extremely hectic work schedule (need pleasure)
  • Listen to soothing music to ease his ever-thinking mind (appreciative pleasure)

Socio-pleasure

  • He is a member of a country club, so that gives him a distinguished status to many of his rich clients. (appreciative pleasure)
  • Meeting up with his friends to know their well-being helps him maintain social interaction and friendship bonds despite hectic schedule (need pleasure)

Psyco-pleasure

  • He meets up with his friends occasionally for social gathering to clear his mind from work. (need pleasure)
  • He plays golf occassionally with his friends where he can learn from one another. (appreciative pleasure)

Ideo-pleasure

  • He works very very hard to maintain his position in his job but makes sure that it is done efficiently and not over-stressing to the extend that he cannot cope. (appreciative pleasure)
  • He does not believe in any religion, but he reads on Buddhism as he believes that Buddhism studies changes a person's way of thinking and let him see things more positively. (need pleasure)

Product Benefits Specification

  • Internet calling with intergrated web camera
  • Email application and support for webbased emails.
  • Easy chatting over SKYPE
  • Waterproof, so that the phone can be used even when he goes swimming.
  • A maximum of 2 colours and elegent as he prefers simplicity.
  • Being a music lover, the phone should also be equipped with a MP3 player
  • Internal large storage so that he can store all his favourite music and listen to them whenever he wants to. It is also required so that he can organise his appointments in the phone. Furthermore, it hould be large enough for him to store all his clients' information and phone number.
  • East transfer of music from PC and laptops.
  • Built-in, high quality stereo speakers.
  • Integrated GPS receiver

Therefore, with the above analysis, the ideal phone for Paul will be merge of Nokia's 8800 Arte physically and N76 technically.

Nokia 8800 Arte



Description

  • State-of-art design and craftsmanship. Made from exclusive materials including glass and metal.
  • Tap-for-time to display time and missed events by double-tapping the steel surface below the display.
  • Turn-to-mute to gracefully silence incoming calls and alarms by a simple turn of phone, screen-side down.
  • Ambient light sensor adjusts the brightness of the screen according to its surrounding to provide vibrant display of light and contrast.
  • Living wallpapers specially designed to match the design of the phone, and provide a truly unique decoration
  • View your pictures on the brilliant, 2” OLED QVGA display, supporting up to 16-million colors


Dimensions

  • Volume: 65 cc
  • Weight: 150 g with battery
  • Length: 109 mm
  • Width: 45.6 mm
  • Thickness: 14.6 mm

N76

3G Internet in a Beautiful Package
Surf the Internet in landscape on a 2.4" up to 16M color display
Your favorite Internet services in your pocket including Amazon and more
Find what you need with Mobile Search
Use Download! to personalize your N76 to your daily needs
Send & automatically receive e-mails with attachments

One-Touch Music
Control music and FM radio without opening the product with dedicated music and volume controls
Listen with compatible 3.5 mm headphones
Take up to 1500 songs* with you on optional 2GB micro-SD card

Memory Functions
Up to 26 MB internal memory
microSD memory card support (hot swappable)
Approx. memory capacity indication with 1GB microSD card:
Video (QVGA @ 15fps ): up to 250 min
Photos (2 megapixel) : up to 2200 photos
Music (AAC): up to 750 tracks

The combination of these two phones will definitely enhance Paul's user experience because it has got a simple yet elegent design, coupled with advanced storage and technical capabilities.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Assignment 1: Pleasure with Products

Reflective
Product 1: Croton Women's Stainless Steel Bracelet Watch


This dazzling timepiece is made beautiful with a white mother-of-pearl dial accentuated with roman numerals at the 6:00 and 12:00 positions, and diamond markers at the 3:00 and 9:00 spots. The reputable "Croton" name and logo are situated below 12:00 with "Diamond" scripted above 6:00. Stunning stainless steel crafts the rectangular case in rose-tone, silver-tone or gold-tone, and is set with 80 diamonds on the bezel and lugs for breath-taking drama. Dial hands coordinate with the bracelet in either rose-tone, silver-tone or gold-tone.
Retail Price: US$1250 (approx. S$1900)
Bracelet: Stainless steel
Crystal: Sapphire
Crown: Push/pull
Clasp: Push button flip lock closure
Bracelet Measurements: 16"L x 9mm W


Viseral: Expensive, yet attractive and visually pleasing.

Behavioural: There is no emphasis on clarity and accurate reading of the time under all conditions (clearly marked digits, easily visible hands, large watch faces, etc.).

Reflective: has great show off value and more for self-image. The diamonds on the watch tells people their social status which others can tell how wealthy their family are. It apeears to others that the watch is collectible.


Viseral
Product 2: EleeNo's Eclipse watch






Image from: http://www.tokyoflash.com/en/watches/eleeno/eclipse/

A Total Eclipse is a rare event, but with EleeNo's Eclipse watch you can witness one every hour.The watch features 2 dials, one indicating the hour, the other minutes. At one point during each hour the spheres will intersect, hence the name Eclipse.
Retail Price: ¥13,700 (approx. S$200)


Viseral
: attractive, artistic, pleasing to the eye

Behavioural: not a good watch for timely reading. Needs some time before user can read the time off fast from the watch face.

Reflective: not something which has great show off value. Looks like a normal watch from far. Does not look like a collectible.



Behavioural
Product 3: Smiths Shockproof Mchanical Wrist Watch




Image from: http://www.woodford.demon.co.uk/watch009.htm

Offered for sale is a Smiths British made mechanical Wrist Watch from the 1960s, these watches were made at the Smiths/Ingersoll factory at Ystradgynlais near Swansea in South Wales - the factory closed in the early 1970s. The watch is in exceptionally nice condition and is fitted with a new and unused black leather arm band with a gilt clasp. This watch winds and sets smoothly, runs nicely and keeps good time - it would certainly make a good watch to wear everyday or a nice addition to your collection of British watches.

Viseral: Common and not very attractive. However, visually pleasing.

Behavioural: great performer because the watch runs forever without having the battery to go flat. Easy to use and easy to read time from the watch face.

Reflective: Not something which has great show off value. It looks like a common analog watch that many people have.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Assignment 0: Bad Design

Below is the bad design that I will be writing about- Samsung Universal Controller.




Oh, how great, I've got 2 controllers that look quite similar. But, the left one is the universal controller that I'm talking about. The right one, it's the DVD remote control.

My dad bought us a new universal controller that controls the TV, DVD player and cable box. It's amazing you might think, "Oh! What a great invention. Now with one remote control, I control all everything". However, when my sister and I decided to watch DVD at home, we pressed the red button on the universal controller, yet nothing happens. It took us quite some time before we realised that we need to press on the individual button "TV", "VCR" or "DVD" to operate different machines. So we pressed the TV button followed by the red button. Tada, TV's on. Next, the important thing. How to we switch to the Video channel? There's no button that says video or whatsoever.

Sister's reaction:

"This is so troublesome.
Wonder who came out with this user-unfriendly remote control.
And the best part, how do I use this controller to open/close
the disc tray?
Now, how do I go to the video channel?
(ok, when it's fianlly done)
And I have no idea how to fast forward my disc now.
Does it mean that I still need to use both the universal and DVD controller to control my DVD player?
So what's the point of inventing the universal controller?"


On another occassion, my mum was watching a korean serial with dual sound. She wanted to change it to mono chinese sound, but she tried all means. There's a dual sound button, so we both assume that that's the right button. But, pressing the button doesn't work at all!

Mum's reaction (in a very irritated tone):
"I don't know how to use this remote control.
I took so long to figure out which remote control is for which.
And now, it's too much of a trouble to look through the user-menu just to change the sound.
I've pressed all the possible buttons on the remote control.
But it's not working.
And now, I'm confused about what to press for each remote control to watch the DVD.
I give up. "


I stood there, completely helpless because I don't know how to fix that thing. It looks complicated to me too.

My reflection on this product and user reaction:
This product is absolutely useless to me. And for me, there's no way I will meddle with this remote control because I don't know what to press. It does look like a normal remote control right? But it's functions are just too different. I rather not watch TV, or wait till someone who knows how to handle such remote control to assist me. Right now, only my dad knows how to use this remote control. I can't be bothered to learn how to use it now, and I don't think i will in the future.
Ok, someone might just say that I can go over to the TV set to press those buttons. however, there's no button on te TV set for me to control the volume, channels etc.

TV remote control is something that we use ver often. Therefore, I think that remote controls should be made and designed as simple as possible. All we usually do is to on the TV< adjust the volume and change the channels using the remote control. How many people will bother to read the instructions before using the remote control?

This product is just one of the the many bad-designed products. I believe there are many much worst products that we'll encounter. Sigh.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

WELCOME

Welcome to my NM4210 User Experience Design Learning Electronic Journal.