Reflections on NM4210

Reflections on NM4210

After going through a series of lectures and assignments in NM4210, I learnt a lot of things that I never pay attention to and that those little things that we see actual reflect a lot on that person.

In the first lecuture, we were tasked to find a bad design. It was tough for me initially. I thought most of the products were good, if not I had forgotten those bad designs. However, along the way, i foung many bad designs. I realised that we need to pay attend to those bad designs. Sometimes, they don't occur to be a bad design immediately. Only after using and observing it then you'll notice that it is truly a bad design. After attending this course, I often take the initiative to ponder if it's a good or bad design before actually buying, and if it's a bad design, why.

Subsequently, we were taught that objects talk! I never realised that an object gives others the image of our status, eduacation etc. It was really interesting. Sometimes, when I look at the objects that people have now, I tend to wonder why they buy this object. Is it because they want to feel good about themselves, or is it because it's something that they need?

While working on the project, I realized that it is important to conduct research and surveys before producing an actual product. It is absolutely impossible to design an item or service and expect everyone to like it. Furthermore, I learnt that though a team of designers might come to a consensus that such a function is the best for the users, but users might think otherwise. Therefore, it is very important to identify a group of target audience and their similar needs. As all of us know, there are unlimited wants. Everyone hopes to have a product designed specially to suit their needs. If that’s the case, I think we need to increase tenfold the current number of designers, or probably more to meet the unlimited demands by the customers.

Therefore, what we can do is only to target on a specific group of audience to determine their similar needs. From there, we can determine what type of product is necessary, the look, functionality and appearance of it amongst the other factors.

Although some of the concepts taught were not new to me, since they were covered in other modules before, I thought laddering was effective and useful. It helps us understand how the users exactly feel and find the root of the cause.

During designing process, I was taught the low and high fidelity prototype. Initially, I saw no point in working on the paper prototype for our project as it would be a chore to put every screen (in our case the ePan). That would add up to about 30 screens! However, after doing the paper prototype, I realized that paper prototype is a good method before the actual design actually. Imagine one going through the high fidelity product straight away using expensive materials. The outcome might not be desirable and it would be a huge waste of resource and money to re-make a new high fidelity prototype for testing.

Even when the high fidelity prototype product is out, we cannot make sure that it is really suitable for the users. Therefore, we need to conduct further tests to ensure that the product would be the best tat the product can be. In reality, huge amount of money is spent on designing. Therefore, the designers would hope to have a successful product so that they can earn back whatever is lost during the production.

User experience design may seem difficult in my opinion. We need to understand users thoroughly, and target this group of people. However, it may not seem easy in any sense too, because what we eel is most appropriate for the users may seem otherwise when the users actually uses the product.

This module is useful and has learnt the tedious processes designers have to go through. Though the steps look easy to follow, it is actually difficult to follow in real world.

Relections on Article

User Research Smoke and Mirrors

After reading this article, I thought it was insightful. There were some things that I knew or heard about before reading this article, but it didn't occur to me that it would be useful when it comes to user design experience. One example is the eyetracking. However, the concepts in this paper did enlightened me.
One example is the eyetracking. It is a good technology in my opinion, because it allows companys and designers to know if it is easy to locate some important buttons on the websites and thus if it needs any changes. From the article, I realised that eyetracking can to used to tell the way they look at the website, However, I did not realised that though it can tell us what people are looking at, it does not necessarily meant we can tell what they are thinking when they look at it, whether they are trying to understand what's on that particular view or whether they find that interesting for longer viewing.
In the article, the author mentioned that research is not required, when you have a good user interface designer. I beg to defer. In my opinion, no matter how good the designer can be, he cannot understand how the product users will feel when they use a certain product that he designs. He may understand, but not totally. Therefore, I think that research is still required no matter how capable the designer is.
I was surprised tthat the autor mentioned card sorting, usability testing, user personas and other research methods are subjective and even a little touchy-feely in nature. However, without such such testing methods, we will not know what's actually best for the users. perhaps we have missed some important components in the process of designing the product that may seem obvious to the users.
This article discussed both scienctific and non-scientic methods. Personally, I feel that both methods should be employed during the designing process. Focusing on just one method would not be desirable. Most of the times, we are uncertain if the numerical data we obtained from scientific research methods are totally unbiased and if it totally reflects the needs of the users. Therefore, we still need to conduct non-scientific methods to ensure that what we got from the scientific research tally with the non-scientific methods we proposed. This will thus help designers to undestand the users better and design something that is what the users really need.

NM4210 Final Project

Our final project is about ePan, an entertainment system for Fish and Co. My group consists of Huiyan, Joel, Eunice and myself. Initially, when we first met to decide on our project, we had other ideas in mind- an administrative database system for an orchestra, a product to aid Singapore’s tourism and an interactive camera manual. Eventually, we decided on the ePan that allows online ordering and entertainment.

In the early stages, our system consists of an ordering system as well as an entertainment system. We decided on this project theme because more and more fish and seafood based restaurants are coming in Singapore and it is difficult for Fish and Co. to survive as the sole competitor. During peak hours, Fish and Co. quality of service seem to decline. We hope that with our system, faster and more accurate orders can be received and while waiting for the food to be served, they can use the entertainment system to keep themselves occupied, thus improving dining experience.

However, during the first few presentations, we realize that the ordering system was not very well received. Sakae has such technology already therefore the classmates think that it is not a new idea. Therefore, we decided to focus on the entertainment system only.

Our entertainment system consists of games, cartoons, nutritional calculator, drawing pad and gallery. Our target audience for the system would be families with kids, big groups of friends and health conscious adults. We had initial doubts on our system initially because of our broad target audience. Classmates commented that we should focus on just one group of target as it would be difficult to meet the needs of three different groups of people. However, we thought that it’s possible to cater to three groups of people because our system will be in a form of flash which is able to cater to different groups of people.

Generally, the games will consist of roughly 4 games, 2 of which for multiplayer and 2 for single player. The games will keep huge groups of friends entertained. Kids can watch the cartoons available on the system so as to minimize the chances of them running around in the restaurants. Parents can eat in peace without having to look after their kids most of the time. For the health conscious people, we have created a nutritional calculator that shows them the nutritional values in the food that they have chosen. It also provides fun facts about fish and marine life to enhance their general knowledge. We realize that students like to scribble and draw on their lecture notes when they are bored. Therefore, the drawing pad gives them the space to showcase their creativity, which can be saved to the gallery for future viewing

Classmates were generally pleased with our idea. However, My Reddy posed a question on how the entertainment system will be placed in the restaurant. We had an initial idea to clamp it on a holder that is adjustable and extendable, but comments were that it would be troublesome and distracting to the rest who are not using it. Therefore, during the final stage, we decided to have a holder under the table so that users can take the ePan out when they want to use and slide it back to the holder when they don’t want to use it.

During final reviews and feedbacks, some people suggested that the ePan is too childish and only the kids may like it. In response to complaints that the interface was too “childish-looking”, we might in future even provide customizable “skins” consisting of a variety of different colour schemes and themes to choose from that personalize the look and feel of the ePan based on individual diners’ preferences. We might also have added more interactivity to the ePan by using more animations and sound effects which would have made the ePan more visually and aurally appealing.