User Research Smoke & Mirror

Part 1: Design vs Science
Here the author feels that we had put too much emphasize in using science as a tool to research on design strategies for good user experience. And there are too many seemingly-scientific tools available to us that the author feels that we take these as a means to avoid doing a real job to design based on deep experience and good instincts.
I feel that this is very true especially in real life situations where we are taught scientific approaches towards a good design but there are often cases of good designs that defy the scientific approaches. In my opinion, personal judgement and perception is the key for a design and comments and various feedback is the key to a good design. We should not based our design on scientific approaches but more on our creativity and aesthetic sense.

Part 2: Research as a Design Tool
The author use the example of a design tool: Eye-tracking which tracks the amount of attention span a reader gives for certain areas of a webpage. This tools is supposedly efficient as it helps companies to further improve the 'blue area' which the readers would not pay much attention or to increase the 'red area' to capture longer attention span. However, without the tool, I feel that the examples that were shown in the author's blog, example this:
Here, we can see the reason why there is not much 'red zones' as the website looks 'messy'. It is quite common logic that we can tell that the website disperse too much information all over the website and its hard to capture long attention span. However, Eye-tracking Tool does have its usefulness as it provides a good interface in generalizing 'hotspots' for a website and that can be used as a guideline for companies to further improve on the user experience of their websites.

Part 3: Research as a Political Tool
Here the author gives a concrete evidence of why scientific approaches and research towards good design experience is needed - Politics. Somehow, companies would not accept new changes or ideas to existing prototypes unless there is some substanial results from research that is recognized by the companies. They want to see results from research by surveys, user testing and such. User research also helps to futher convince companies on choices of good design or talk them out of bad design experience.

Finale: Concluding thoughts
For the rest of the articles, I personally feel that between user research for good design and good design based on own perception and aesthetic, there is a balance and trade-off between the two. In the example where Organic proposed the idea of research of 'Persona Rooms' which its catered specifically for individuals. However, it is not feasible in my opinion due to the following reasons:

1. The 'Persona Room' is for work areas and if a company has lots of employees, there will not be enough space
2. What if the employee who purchase this 'Persona Room' and quit the job halfway
3. The cost of research following by the cost of making this 'Persona Room' will not be cheap
   

In conclusion, I feel that to propose a good design experience. One must have do some work using his/her aesthetic senses and perception to come up with a prototype first. Then using the scientific approaches of user design, he/she can test the design to get various feedbacks and comments and use these feedbacks and comments as a basis to further improve on the design.

Do you organize event? (If yes) How many times a year? _____
Do you attend event? (If yes) How many times a year? _____

What are the types of event u attend/organize?
1) Birthday celebration
2) Social outing
3) House warming
4) Company dinner
5) Wedding
6) Festive Outing

What kinds of events have you went the most?
1) Birthday celebration
2) Social outing
3) House warming
4) Company dinner
5) Wedding
6) Festive Outing

If you are organising an event, what is the amount of participants that you would invite?
1) 0 to 5
2) 6 to 10
3) 11 to 15
4) 16 and above

If you are organising an event, which medium do you used to send details to your participants?
1) SMS
2) Phone calls
3) Online portal
4) Newspaper
5) Media


From 1 (most troublesome) to 10 (least troublesome), rank the difficulties you encounter during an event.

1) Contacting the participants.
2) Looking for a venue to book for the event.
3) Sometimes the information given is not enough and you have to ask for more information.
4) Putting event details in one source to transmit to participants.
5) Always having the need to reply participants' extra enquires about the event.
6) Confirming the list of participants attending the event.

Novice user for our product

User introducing: Aunt May

Aunt May is a 42 years old mother of two, Jane and James, and has a loving husband Timothy. She will wake up every morning at 5am, to prepare breakfast for the family. After which, she will send her kids to school and her husband will go off to work. Since the school that her kids study in is near a wet market, she would always shop for groceries to prepare for the meals in the later of the day. In the afternoon, she would do some house cleaning and watch some television programmes to pass time. At around, 4pm, she pick her kids up from the school and instruct them to study hard and do their homework. She will always say ‘Study hard and next time you will get high earning pay. Don’t be like your mum never study, don’t know anything at all.’ After which she will prepare dinner for the family as Timothy would come back at around 6pm.

Aunt May was brought up in a poor family. She is the fourth child in her family of 6 siblings. In the past, during depression, her father was being retrenched and it was hard sustaining the whole family. Her father found a job later on but as a constructor worker with measly income. Only the eldest son is allowed to continue his study as there is only enough income to pay for his fees. The rest of the siblings including Aunt May had to drop school. Aunt May was only Primary 3 that period. They had to even work as helpers in coffeeshops, offering to wipe the windscreen of cars and little chores to earn extra income.

Now she is happy with her lifestyle with a good husband. But she does not want her kids to be like her and thus drilling them with the mindset: ‘Must study hard to get high pay jobs’. Recently they moved to Park Oasis when her husband got promoted to Senior Executive. She wanted to invite her relatives and friends over for house-warming. Using SMS to invite them is too expensive in her opinion as her family is rather big and that would mean having to SMS like 60 people. She wanted an easy and cost effective method as she does not have a lot of time calling people to invite them. Her friend recommends this product of free online event organizing. However, being lowly educated, she is not as IT-savvy as her kids or husband is. She heard from her friend that the product is free and can easily send information to the people, she is very interested in using the product but she does not know how to go about using it. And furthermore, the website is in English and she is English illiterate. Thus she has no choice but to leave the task of organising to James who is more IT-savvy.

Draft Proposal of our product

Producer:
Event Organizing Agency (Organize4u) www.organise4u.com.sg/

Who are they:
Plan & Provide service to secure/look for resources needed for an event.eg, food, bookings, MC eg.

What they do:
All in one event organizer. 1 stop service

How does it matter:
They wish to develop a product / interface , to allow consumer to employ their services online.

What product:
Create a social networking event management portal. During creation of event by end user (consumer ), organize4u services will be offered to the event organizers.

Designer:
LNR (LJ, Nat, Ragnus)

Skills:
Web Design (jsp, Flash)
Facebook application development
Web Development

Having set our main players for our products, we come up with a persona profiling to try see if our product will appeal to this person.

Subject : James, 20 year old undergrad at NUS, SoC

Having come from a low-income but loving family, James used to spend his childhood hanging out at family gatherings, having fun with his cousins and relatives. Being an only child, his parents take very good care of him, providing him whatever that he needs as best as they can. However, these materialistic toys are not what James want. What he wants are friends with whom he can play together with, to have stayovers with and to hang out with. Thus, whenever he goes to a new school, he tries his best to take part in camps and social activities, to know as many friends as possible.

Recently, James signed up as a Freshmen Orientation Camp group leader in order to make more friends.During the camp, James felt a close bond to his group, as they were very active, lively and enthusiastic. They became a tight-knit group who shared stories about themselves and supported each other in team games.

Now that the summer camp is over, James misses his group often and would thus try to organise outings in order to keep the group together. Being someone who wants his group to have thorough fun, and to ensure that everything goes well, James does the contacting and sending out of sms-es himself. Although he finds it difficult to include all the details of the outing in an sms, James still thinks it is the best way to get everyone's responses. And when someone replies and asks him questions such as "how to get there?" "who's going?" "want to meet somewhere first and go together?", he replies each and every sms without complaints.

During his free time, James engages in online gaming, going out with his girlfriend, playing basketball with his friends, spending time with his family and of course, organising outings for his favourite group. James is a responsible young man. Now that he is already 20, he tries his best not to rely so much on his parents. Using his monthly allowance, he pays for his handphone bill, transport and food. As he is a somewhat thrifty person with a huge handphone bill to pay(because of the organising of outings), James would only eat the cheapest food that he can find in school, and refrains from buying drinks or snacks.

Despite always having a busy schedule, James would still try to make time for his girlfriend. They spend most of their time playing online games together, and watching dvds at home. Once in a while, James would surprise his girlfriend by taking her to dine in a nice restaurant, even though it means that he would have to eat lesser in the following days.

Assignment 2: Four Pleasure Analysis

Our 'heroine': Lily, 28 years old, Senior Executive, Singaporean
Likes: Branded stuffs, high class foods, spas
Dislikes: Fast food, high fat content, lousy fashion sense

Story:
Lily is a Senior Executive in the AIA Insurance company. With her good persuading skills, she never fail to clinch less than 20 deals per month. She is among the top performing agents in her company. As a career woman, she has high expectations of herself and of course, her ideal man. She is very confident of herself and her capabilities and she expects high performance from her subordinates too.
Lily is from a rich family background. With her parents pampering her with allowances that is almost triple of any normal students, she tends to shop for clothings and accessories of latest trend. Being a smart student, she would enter the top schools and had a smoothing sailing in her education.
Now, with her high basic salary and commissions, she would spend her money to have a highest quality of life. Her motto: "Life is short. We should enjoy the most of what we can". As she is a Senior Executive, she is often invited to company dinners and conference with foreign companies. Thus she would keep herself dressed up and presentable.

The following is her schedule after work:

Monday: She would go to her weekly appointment with the Good Earth Nail Spa to for her pedicure and manicure. Depending on whether she goes to official dinners or casual outing, she would do her nails accordingly. For example, during clubbing, she would do her nails more fancifully.

Tuesday: As her work is rather stressful as she has to maintain her high position in the company. She would go to the HAACH spa for relaxation and de-stressment. Maintaining a stress free lifestyle is part of her motto too.

Wednesday: LADIES NIGHT!!! Even though she could afford the entrance on other days, but she would always go clubbing with her friends. Here, she would dress up sexily and not surprisingly, she is always the attention grabber in the club. Being very confident of herself, she is not hesitant to flaunt her asserts around.

Thursday: She would either go gym or go to Expressions to keep her body in shape. Lily is not a particularly sports person but she would go gym to accompany her friends for jogging on track mills. But the main reason is that they would go fine dining every now and then, thus its like a 'mindset' to make them less guilty as they would work out to excercise.

Friday: Today is buffet day. Lily and her gang would always pick a hotel or high class restuarant to dine to 'celebrate' the coming of weekends. Places they chooses are like Ritz Carlton, Shangri-La Hotel and etc.

Four Pleasure Analysis for Lily:
Physio-Pleasure: As appearance is very important for women especially Lily, she is constantly keeping herself slim and in a 'figure of 8'. Presentation is important for conference and such thus she would need to be presentable and look neat. Those are taken care of when she went for pedicures.

Socio-Pleasure: Lily is a rather happening person. Other than work, she doesn't like to stay at home but rather spend her time outside. She would often ask her friends out to shop at Paragon and fine dine at hotels. And every Wednesday she would go clubbing and get the kick when she always get hitched by guys.

Psycho-Pleasure: Lily has a stable income and she has no worries for lack of money. With her good looks, she has a lot of guys wooing her. However, none seems to match up to her expectations. But she has the satisfaction when guys are wooing her. To her, it is a proof that she is still young and attractive.

Ideo-Pleasure: Being a high position in the company, Lily is always the center of attraction. Other departments would sometimes use Lily as a role model for their workers to follow. Lily is a very practical and up-to-date woman where her ideal man must be able to support all her materialistic needs.

Product Specifications:

1. Able to reflect her high class status.
2. Must be a branded good and not common among others.
3. Feel unique and must attract attention.
4. People would 'WOW' when walk past her.
5. Able to support bluetooth.
6. Must be light and compact as she does not like bulky phones.
7. Able to have coverage overseas for overseas call.

So the phone I feel that is very suitable for Lily is the:

Vertu Ferrari 1947

Assignment 2: Products and Emotions

The product I am introducing here is on watches. I believe that watches is a form of a representation of the owner.

Rolex: GMT-Master II

Visceral design: I would rate this watch as 8/10 for its design as this is the kind of watch that most people would stop by and take a second look at it. Mainly its because of the gold plated covering and the diamond bizels that attracts people the most.

Behavioral design: For functionality, this watch would be a normal 5/10 as it doesn't really have multiple function. It behaves as a normal watch which you can buy anywhere which is to tell time and date.

Reflective design: Rolex has always been a well known brand among everyone to be a watch of high status. In the past and till now, people would always awe in astonishment when there is a Rolex on your wraist. Thus I would rate it 10/10 for its reflective sign of status and class.

Tag Heuer: Diamond Fiction

Visceral design: I would rate this watch as 9.8/10 for its design among the ladies. As the saying goes, "Diamonds are women's best friend." This watch is perfect in terms of design and the materials used (diamonds mainly).

Behavioral design: This watch is rather hard to use as its digital and there is no obvious knob like a normal watch where you can turn the knob to adjust the time. Also, the owner must be especially cautious as she would not want to scratch the precious diamonds on the watch. Thus this watch rates 4/10 for behavioral design.

Reflective design: For reflective design, this watch could be rated 8/10 as diamonds on a watch contributes as a sign of wealth and status. This is not a watch meant for middle-income group but more for women with high income.

Omega: Seamaster Aqua Terra Chronograph

Visceral design: I would give this watch a rating of 6/10 for its design. It does not have an outstanding visual impact as compared to the previous two watches. The Seamaster Chronograph is designed to withstand extreme conditions and thus could not afford to be lavish in its design.

Behavioral design: The Seamaster Chronograph is capable of reading short time periods in addition to the standard function of displaying hour and minutes. The calibre precisely design to denote the time accurately with respect to the movement of the needle up to 2.256mm per second. This watch rates 9/10 for behavioral design given also that its able to withstand waters depth up to 500m.

Reflective design: For reflective design, this watch could be rated 5/10 as this watch is mainly meant for people often out at sea like voyagers or divers. It is not meant to be a reflection of status but more on the functionalities that attract the buyers.

Horrible stove (Assignment 1: Bad design)

Well I remembered going my friend house to stay over, and I was rather hungry in the middle of the night. So I decided to cook something to eat like maggie mee. My 'helpful' friend lead me to the kitchen which he said 'The stove is there. Help yourself.' So when I went to the stove, the design was like:

Fig.1 Picture taken from the user manual.

and I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what knob corresponds to which stove. And my 'helpful' friend was there laughing. So I get my other friends who were staying over too to take a look. And their comments are:

Friend 1 (Yi Ru) : "Haha! Playing mix and match ar?"
Friend 2(Gilbert) : "What the ****? Which is which?"
Friend 3(Zhiqiang): "Wa so troublesome. Don't cook liao la, go da bao*"
*For non-chinese people, da bao means go buy food instead

So feeling irritated, I ask my friend how he used the stove? He said, "Starting i was also fed up. Don't know how they design one. So trial and error lo."

My reflections on the stove

I will DEFINITELY not buy this kind of stove. The user interface is really bad and it is not obvious which knob will correspond to which stove. And the user have to read through the user manual to find out.

My recommendation is that they should at least label the knobs and the stove.
Rating for the stove: 9/10 (Bad among the bad)

My 1st post

Hi all. This will be my blog for all assignments for NM4210. Please feel free to leave comments and such.