Thursday, 10 September

Week 3: Assessing User-Interaction 1/2 

Logotype Project Review

How are Your Group Projects Going?

Mentor Kartik Rao to Present

Yesterday's Announcement: 
 
"Project 1 is due in less than a week so it's very important that you have a clear understanding of what you need to do to successfully complete it.

What we've done:

1. Developed a basic understanding of the project requirements
2. Developed an understanding of the key concepts of Affordances and Constraints, their aspects, and what makes one good or bad. 
3. Identified your group members. 
4. Found some preliminary examples of good and bad affordances and constraints.

Thank you to all of you who have volunteered to present; yesterday's were exactly appropriate for that stage of the process. For tomorrow, however, groups will want to identify a few more complex design situations that conform to the requirements of Project 1 and to identify the good and bad affordances within those design situations. Specifically, as the brief says,

Examples of design situations that might be appropriate to choose from for the case study itself include:

• Self-service gasoline pumps
• ATM machines
• Self-service checkouts
• Microwave ovens
• Smart appliances

In general, from the point of view of this assignment, the more complex the design situation addressed in your case study the better. Additionally, each design situation studied must have physical aspects and a display on which feedback is given. In particular you should go through the process of interacting with the chosen design situations, e.g. filling your tank with gasoline, checking out groceries – what is the first aspect of the design that you interact with? The second? Which are successful? Which are not? Why (in terms of the affordance/constraint framework)?"

Ultimately, for your final project, you will choose the single most significant design situation you found and that will be the focus of your submission.

It is very important to read, and re-read, the brief critically. A number of the Mini-Project 1 submissions lacked an "Overview" section -- this is a basic requirement and there is no point losing points by omitting it. Further, you always need to let the reader know the nature of any work that's to follow.

Finally, while Powerpoint may be an appropriate forum for presenting your interim work in class, ultimately your final project will be done in Word or InDesign and saved as a PDF for submission. As noted in the Designerly Formatting Guide, Powerpoint should not be used for any of your Final Projects -- it's too "gross" a tool for our purposes."
Student Group Presentations (for those that meet the criteria listed above)

Yi: Group B: Brennen Horton, Shawn Horty, Ellen Hough
Karthik: Group B: Brennan Lill, Tyler Mayer
Shankar: Group C: Megan Brazeal, Nick Booth, Skyler Booth
Yi: Group G: Scott Johnes, Nicholas LaNeve, Andrew Laszlo


Group Meeting Time

Homework for Tuesday, 15 September:

Continue work on Project 1 (due Wednesday, 16 September at 11:59 pm)


Prepare for Week 4 Quiz by reading UXD, pp. 54 – 55, “Emotional Responses” and pp. 80 – 87, “Fun” through “Challenge”

1. What are the three “levels” of Emotional Design outlines by Donald A. Norman? What is the importance of each? Please give an example 
2. How, according to the authors, does one “design” a fun experience? Cite an example from your own experience. 
3. What is usability a “measure of,” according to the authors? 
4. What is the value of simplicity in UXD? Cite an example from your own experience where it is present and where it is not; what are the consequences of each? 
5. What, according to the authors, is the importance of feedback in a design and what happens if appropriate feedback is not present? Please give an example from your own experience.
6. What is your favorite of Dieter Rams' design principles? Why? Please give an example.