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.