Parting Reflections on NM4210

Saturday, April 26, 2008 4:27

I think this module finally made sense when I did the user experience evaluation for the final project. It was then when I realized that this module was pushing the boundaries of product development to, in a sense, a new dimension.

Coming from Computing, I guess we’re quite stereotyped to focus just on what our programs and products can do. After taking another computing module on human-computer interaction, the next level was to focus on how users use our programs and subsequently, how best to present the program to our final users. This module, user experience, now pushed it an even high level, to focus on what users feel as they use our programs and subsequently, how best to deliver that experience to our final users.

It was pretty much moving from: functionality -> efficiency -> experience. From a detailed point-of-view to a more somewhat abstract one. Up until taking this module, it never came across my mind to ask users how they felt after using certain products, but focused more on whether things worked or not. Very practical questions. But it was on the whole, as this entire module harped on, a good experience.

Looking back at assignments done, I believe each assignment had a unique lesson to be learnt.

 

Assignment 1: Bad Design

I initially had a difficult time in finding out products with bad designs. Normally, I just get around the “bad design” and live with just how it has been designed. This assignment thought me to be slightly more aware and critically about how things have been designed and ask questions like, “Why?” and “Why not...?” I will always remember the example raised about the placement of batteries and why it has to be in the arrangement of opposite poles. It never occurred to me that that would be considered a design problem. I would have been content just to leave it as it was. After this, I became more aware of not only how things are designed, but more importantly, why they were designed the way they were.

 

Assignment 2: Products and Emotions

This assignment taught me to evaluate emotions on three different levels:  visceral, behavorial and reflective. After a period of evaluating some products, it occurred to me that high-priced, luxurious items, tend to score highly in all three categories, whereas the lower-priced, more common goods, tend to focus only on the behavorial. Perhaps a product will only do well, and fetch a high price at it, if it achieves good emotions at all three levels. In any case, this assignment also gave a useful framework in designing future products, to make sure the product would look aesthetically pleasing, do its job, and make the user feel good using it.

 

Assignment 3: Four pleasure analysis

This assignment depended upon a fictional-yet-not-so-fictional development of a persona, as close to real-life as possible. On hindsight, after coming up with the persona, it really created a much clearer picture of the user in my mind, and that actually greatly helped the choice of the mobile phone at the end of the assignment. It was about picturing the person and phone together, and whether they made a good match or not. Not just the looks, but also the lifestyle and functionality, the whole deal really. It is a rather difficult lesson to describe, but I guess the picture just comes as time is spent imagining the person, the lifestyle, and the needs. Just a different way of going about it, as opposed to say, going out to do a survey on user needs.

Besides the persona, the four-pleasure analysis was yet another useful framework in developing products, just like the framework provided by the previous assignment. I guess the key difference would be the inclusion of the psychological-pleasure and how it affects the end user. Coupled with the persona development, indeed quite useful in determining the experience to “design” for the end user.

 

Assignment 4: Learning Experience

In this assignment, my partner and me made use of an ethnographic study – observing the different things that students do during lectures, as well as laddering – iterative questioning of some students. Again, another framework of experience design was introduced: environment, time, place, other people interpretation and previous experience. The key lesson learnt from this assignment came from the laddering process, and how to tailor and ask questions based from their responses. I thought that this was an essential skill in order to ascertain truly what were the root causes of praises and problems. However, another painful lesson learnt was that, almost everyone interviewee had different experiences, and thus different viewpoints. Yet, if the sample size was large enough, certain similarities could still be drawn, and the root cause figured out.

 

*Lessons learnt during the final project have already been touched upon in its own post.

 

Of all the tools and methods used in this course, I felt that the circumplex of emotions was the most useful and interesting to me. It provided for a somewhat comprehensive and efficient way of measuring emotions and experience, particularly for websites – a very useful tool for web designers and programmers indeed. Using that circumplex, and applying it on the GITA, I realized it can be used not just on appearances, but also on functionalities and usefulness. So all in all, a very useful tool indeed for future web development.

On the whole, this module has helped me bring the meaning of “design” to a whole new level, beyond functionality, beyond database management, beyond user interaction. Indeed it has introduced words such as “experience”, “emotion” and “pleasure” to “design” and will now be a big and important factor in any design process for me in the future.

 

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Graduate-In-Time Application (GITA)

Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:07

Our final project was the Graduate-In-Time Application, or GITA for short. Essentially it is a graduation roadmapper/planner for university students, in this case, NUS students.

Screenshot of GITA roadmap screen

Inspiration for this project came mainly from my experience from the NUS Overseas College (NOC). Before being accepted into the program, I was forced to come up with a roadmap (in Excel spreadsheet), for NOC to determine whether I would be able to graduate in time (within 4 or 4 and a half years) if I were to go for the program. Although initially quite daunting, it proved to be invaluable and very important exercise to go through. It ultimately gave me the peaceful state of mind that I would have taken everything I needed to take, and unlikely to be caught in the accidental scenario of missing one essential module and being forced to stay for extra semesters.

NUS follows a modular system. With this system, it gives students flexibility and freedom in planning their own paths to graduation. For NUS, it also allows them greater compatibility with other universities, as well as increase enrollment. However, most students do not plan out their modules or path to graduation, preferring to leave it to just before the bidding round starts. This results in a lot of last minute changes, biddings and desperate emails to faculty administrators to appeal. While there is a present system available to most students called the FFGV (File-For-Graduation-Verifier), it only opens to students in the final year, whereas planning should be done right at the beginning. Also, each department has their own system, some do not have such a system at all, and it becomes a great hassle for students to have to log in to multiple systems in order to find out all their administrative details.

The GITA will let students know (amongst other things):

1. what modules they need to take, depending on their program.
2. the pre-requisites for each module, and whether they have fulfilled them or not.
3. whether they will be able to graduate in time, based on the modules already read and intend to read.
4. MCs and CAP attained so far, how many more MCs to go, and grades required to achieve a certain CAP.

The whole project development was broken up into 5 distinct phases:

 

Phase 1 – Project Proposal

For the first phase, we conducted ethnographic studies and interviews to ascertain the needs and behaviors of the students. We also relied heavily on our own experiences. This was like doing the whole “Learning Experience” assignment all over again, having to observe people’s behavior and scheduling interviews for laddering. Almost everyone interviewed knew someone who had to stay back a semester just because of one or two modules. This was also largely due to improper planning earlier on. Despite this, not many students actually take the time to plan, citing unpredictability as their main reason to not doing it. However, after telling them what we intend to do, our interviewees did seem piqued, and gave more comments after.

 

Phase 2 – Defining

For the second phase, we revisited the concept of personas and four-pleasure analysis framework, just like in Assignment 2. The key emotion that we wanted to give our users was the sense of a “peace-of-mind”, that all your administrative burdens are solved with our application, and even if a disaster strikes, you will still be able to graduate within stipulated time. Additionally, the ability to predict CAP scores and grades may inspire the user to work harder to achieve targeted grade.

After having gone through the four-pleasure analysis, the application of it made more sense now, and so did the product benefits specification. However, the difficult part was having to actually “design” our application in order to meet the specifications. Still, it proved to be a very valuable tool and gave a much clearer idea of how the final application should be designed.

 

Phase 3A – Information Organization

This phase introduced a new method which we utilized: card-sorting. It is a practical tool to find out how students actually organize information, in this case, modules. First, we designed a simple card like so:

Image of Module card

Then, we asked 9 students from Computing to describe to us how they would sort their modules in order to plan a roadmap.

This was a rather interesting phase. The idea of card-sorting was new to me, but proved to be rather useful. The main problem was that we had way too much “information” for the users to sort. I do believe though, that it is not just the end result that matters, and how users organized the information, but that it is just as important to observe HOW they organize it, and observe their thinking process. This gives even more insight as to how users think and may be more important than how they actually organized information in the end.

 

Phase 3B – User Evaluation

When we reached this phase, things became really hectic. The main problem with our project that it relied very heavily on the functionality of the application, in order for proper evaluation and testing to take place. Meaning to say, we cannot just “fake” and hard-code our application. It had to work to some credible and realistic degree. As such, a lot of time was spent in coming up with a workable prototype before getting down to real user testing. However, due to the very short time frame, it was near impossible to get that many students to evaluate our product. Still, we did manage to get about 3 users: 1 novice and 2 advanced.

For user testing, we asked our testers to perform 2 tasks:

1. Plan a roadmap and ensure you can graduate in 4 years
2. Estimate the grades required to get a CAP of 4.2 in 4 years

We also performed heuristic evaluation, the experts being ourselves. We followed the framework given in class by evaluating our application based off:

1. Meeting Expectations
2. User is Boss
3. Errors
4. Keeping it Simple

Actually, user testing and heuristic evaluation was not new to me. I had done this before in another computing module, only this time, I had a lot less time to do it. It is extremely useful and important, and given more time, I’d be sure we would have gotten much more feedback and be able to effect more changes. For me, the key lesson learnt during this phase was simply: start programming earlier.

 

Phase 3C – User Experience Evaluation

This was the culmination and the most interesting phase to me. Initially, I could not really understand what this phase was for, but after going through the circumplex of emotions and designing the questionnaire, it proved its use and importance. In the end, we designed our questionnaire and circumplex based off the four-pleasure analysis we came up with in Phase 2. It was a simple mapping of:

• Appearance of application (physio-pleasure)
• Intuitiveness of application (psycho-pleasure)
• Usefulness (social-pleasure)
• Peacefulness (ideo-pleasure)

The range of emotions used were:

Negative		Positive
Unpleasant-Excited	Disgusted	Pleasant-Excited	Inspired
	Frustrated		Desirable
Unpleasant-Average	Dissatisfied	Pleasant-Average	Fascinated
	Disappointed		Amused
	Unpleasant		Pleasant
Unpleasant-Calm	Confused	Pleasant-Calm	Peaceful
	Disturbed		Satisfied
	Bored		Curious

 

Sure it might be a bit dubious and questionable, but well, it did serve our purpose well and help give us a very general impression of how users felt as they used our system. It was only after completing this phase did I understand how all the other phases, tools and methods linked up.

Still, I am glad this project is over. But if possible, and if NUS is willing, I’d be happy to continue it and see it implemented some day.

 

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Smoke & Mirrors

Monday, April 21, 2008 3:59

A strongly worded article that said what needed to be said about science, design and research. I think a lot of what has shared made a lot of sense, being somewhat of a web programmer and designer myself. Each part of the article spoke to me in different ways.

 

Part 1: Design vs. Science

A good, sweeping introduction to give a taste of what is to come, but what struck me was, “...the array of seemingly-scientific tools available to us ... is sometimes seen as a means to avoid doing our real job: being expert designers who draw on deep experience and good instincts.”

Coming from a more scientific, computing background, designing websites used to be a functional and scientific thing to me. It was all about efficiency and just copying whatever has been done before and has seemingly worked. Even when it comes to testing, I always seem to be satisfied just so long as everything “worked”. Essentially, I am all about objectivity. The terms “deep experience” and “good instincts” sounds very subjective to me, but as I designed more and went through this module, subjectivity is just as important to consider, and might perhaps make all the difference between an excellent website, and a useable website.

 

Part 2: Research as a Design Tool

The whole example of eyetracking was an amusing story. I think the essence of this part was just that one result of a scientific research could lead to multiple conclusions if not done or interpreted properly. Information in the wrong hands is not useless, it is misleading and disastrous. Yet, it could be extremely useful. There is then, that very fine line as to what research data tells us at face value, and what research data truly means. It is a blight that plagues even surveys and lab experiments. The key lesson drawn would therefore be, to be cautious and creative in design research, not flippant and naïve.

 

Part 3: Research as a Political Tool

Very useful information for UI designers. It simply states that research helps to justify seemingly obvious flaws to stakeholders, who most of time do not have sound design principles themselves. Practical advice, yet unavoidable.

“not that user research is the foundation of good design, but rather that user research can (among other things) help explain and justify good design decisions to people without deep design skills or instincts”

Unfortunately, I think the next problem would then be, if the stakeholders do not have deep design skills or instincts, quite likely, neither will the users or the testers. As with all surveys and experiments, the choice of subjects (can’t think of any more unscientific term to use) is extremely important. I mean, if a website had an obvious flaw, say in the layout of links, users might also not question that, but just take it that it is normal and live with it.

 

Part 4: Research as Bullshit

I’ve seen the IDEO video, and it did look too perfect to be true. However, I also know that for every one “successful” invention, there have been tons of failures.

“Real projects are messy and imperfect. I suspect the same is true at IDEO ... their use of research helps the designers make decisions, but ... their designers are the foundation of their design process.”

It’s about the people, the talent, the skill. Supposed to make designers feel special I guess. It works.

 

Part 5: Non-Scientific Research Isn’t a Bad Thing

“... user research for the Web should delve into the qualitative aspects of design to understand how and why people respond to what has been created, and, more importantly, how to apply that insight to future work.”

Indeed. We’re not overly concerned with the “how” now, but with the “why”. It has been pretty much, the main question trained to ask this entire course – WHY. Always subjective, always different, therefore always interesting and exciting. Routine is boring but constant change also frustrates. However, like what the article writes, even “wrong” user feedback is valuable and gives insight into what users really see and why.

The most lasting quote from the entire article to me was, “The user is never wrong because experience is experience, not fact.”

 

All in all, the article seems to exalt the importance of good, fundamental design principles mixed with a little bit of common sense, wisdom and experience. All those can never be replaced by quantitative, scientific design research. Leo Tolstoy, in “What is Art?” also argued about the meaning of art, beauty and aesthetics. He questioned if art had been reduced to just science, and the true meaning and skill behind it had been lost just to please the aristocrats and to earn the money. In this age of mechanical reproduction, the problem seemed to have heightened, and it is said everyone can be an artist. If design were to be made simply into science – quantifiable, repeatable, and predictable – then truly, everyone can be a designer. We’ll just all have things that look and work the same.

 

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Learning Experience

Saturday, March 15, 2008 3:39

For this assignment, my partner (Jianda) and me had to find out some problems that affected the learning experience of students in the lecture theatres of NUS, and suggest ideas for improvement.

We relied on an ethnographic study – observing the activities of students in LT23, as well as laddering – interviewing of 15 students from Business, Arts, Science and Computing.

 

Ethnographic Study

Sample observation
7.50am – Lecturer arrives. Less than half the LT23 is full.
8.10am – Lecturer decides to wait for another 5 minutes before starting the lecture.
8.15am – Lecturer go ahead to start the lecture with the LT slightly more than half filled.
8.30am – Students start wearing jackets and windbreakers. As late comers arrive, students started looking at them as they come in groups of 3-5.
8.35am – LT23 is almost full as most students arrived.
8.40am – Some students started to slough their back against the seats

Lecture Theatre 23

From the ethnographic study, we observed that:

• Class started very late and ended late
• Temperature was too cold
• Chairs in this LT were uncomfortable
• LT started to smell of food after the break
• A lot of noise created as many students left early

 

Laddering

For laddering, we started off with the basic question of “Do you like the learning experience in LTs?”

Sample interview
M: Do you like the learning experience in LTs?
S: Yes.
M: How so?
S: I like the mobile, roller chairs in LT31.

Lecture Theatre 31

M: What do you like about them?
S: There is a lot of leg room.
M: Why is leg room important to you?
S: It gives me a sense of freedom and easy movement.
M: Why is the sense of freedom useful to your learning experience?
S: It makes the environment enjoyable, so that I can concentrate on learning and not on discomfort.

Finding-> Comfort aids in concentration during lecture.

 

 

Roller chair in LT31

From laddering, we found out that:

• Temperature of LT affects concentration
• Tables are not typically designed for left-handers
• Big lectures are too distracting
• Relevance of module to real-life aids in comprehension
• Shorter lecture hours aid in concentration
• Laptops (and therefore power points) aid comprehension
• Creaky chairs affect concentration
• Intrusive tables affect concentration

Example of intrusive table

We thus concluded that the “learning experience” can be explained by:

• Concentration level during lectures – this can be affected by the physical and emotional condition of the student and includes things like comfort, noise, smell, etc.
• Ability to comprehend what is being taught – this depends on the cognitive aspect of learning and is mainly affected by the way the lecture is conducted and the lecturer’s style

 

Improvements

Therefore, to get a good “Learning Experience”, we must improve on the level of concentration and ability to comprehend in LTs.

Factors that influence learning experience:

• Environment (architecture, temperature, furniture)
• Time (duration, time of lecture)
• Other people’s interpretation (reviews)
• Conducting of Lectures (lecturer, methodology, size)

We then came up with suggestions for improvement for each factor.

Sample suggestion for Environment - Architecture

Solution	Problem	Improves
Semi-circular seating arrangement	Straight and box arrangement	Concentration
Sufficient elevation for line-of-sight between lecturer and student	Line-of-sight is blocked due to poor elevation	Concentration
Chairs in front row need slight modification	Viewing angle in front is awkward	Concentration

 

Lessons learnt:

• Ethnographic Study produced a range of observations
• Laddering produced both specific experiences in LTs as well as some very good suggestions
• It soon became apparent that many of the experiences were converging and could be categorized
• It seems that all that is needed are small tweaks
• Combination of existing elements from various LTs

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Four Pleasure Analysis

Sunday, February 3, 2008 15:06

Imaginary Persona: Denny Chin, the *-Lawyer

Denny is a 29 year old lawyer working in one of the most successful and reputable law firms in Singapore. He deals mainly with corporate cases although he has also handled a couple of civil and criminal cases. Since graduating from the National University of Singapore law school and getting his bar 4 years ago, he has gone on to win case after case and has not lost a single one to date. He has thus brought a lot of money into the firm and is very well-liked by founders and partners. For all his success and abilities, he now earns an obscene six-figure salary a year and is practically indispensable to the firm.

Life for the last 4 years has been pretty routine for Denny, as far as routine for a lawyer goes. If he’s not in the office doing paperwork or meeting clients, he would be busy litigating in court. Work hours can extend from early in the morning to late at night, after which he would just go home to rest. If he does happen to have a free night, he might spend it on a date or with colleagues at a nearby pub. To maintain his appearance and fitness, Denny visits the gym twice a week for a good work-out. Every Saturday, he gets together with some of his colleagues for tennis at a nearby country club. Sundays he might again spend it on a date, but this time a much longer one, or simply spend it at home, enjoying the ambience and comfort his home provides and reading a good book.

Denny stays alone in an expensive and luxuriously-furnished apartment near the city. He owns a sports car that he drives on the weekends and another luxury type car he drives to work. Being the only child, Denny was brought up to be extremely independent and confident. Since young, his parents left him very much to his own, concentrating instead on their own careers and lives and always encouraging Denny to take care of himself and survive on his own. When Denny entered university, his parents migrated to Canada and have not met up for a long time.

Red is Denny’s favorite color. It characterizes his intense passion and love, particularly about himself. A narcissist at heart, he has been known to turn people off with his “king of the world” attitude, yet at the same time, his self-affirmed and confident attitude also makes him attractive to many. Handsome, suave and charming all at once, Denny has often exploited his gifts by flirting with various colleagues in his firm and getting his way with them. Surprisingly, most of them actually do not mind, but are instead very flattered by his sometimes chauvinistic advances because he is simply just too attractive, and he knows it. A connoisseur of the arts, he often brings his dates out for plays, exhibitions and musicals before having a meal at some posh restaurant and bringing them back to his home where they spend time getting intimate with each other. However, it is now also well-known that Denny is not one who is ready to settle down as yet and his relationships always end prematurely.

In general, Denny lives on a very big budget and is not shy of flaunting his wealth. He will not hesitate much in spending lavishly to upkeep his sophisticated lifestyle. It is Denny’s dream to one day be made a senior partner in the firm within the next 5 years or to start his own soon.

 

Physio-pleasure

A physically undemanding job although it does take up a lot of time. However, it is essential to Denny that he maintains his appearance and fitness, just to keep himself attractive. (Need pleasure)

Socio-pleasure

A very proud and self-made man. Loves it when people praise him, especially after winning a difficult case. (Need pleasure)
A ladies man, constantly flirting with women in the office and knowing that most of them actually appreciate it. (Appreciation pleasure)
Being an independent man, it is not essential for him to always be with company. It is more because of his job that he is constantly meeting people. (Appreciation pleasure)

Psycho-pleasure

A psychologically demanding job, needing to think and articulate all of the time. By nature, being a lawyer is stressful and challenging, but Denny always enjoys a good challenge. (Need pleasure)
He is self-affirmed, but praise will only boost his ego. (Appreciation pleasure)

Ideo-pleasure

Denny has an extremely lavish and sophisticated lifestyle. He will not hesitate to spend to keep himself happy and comfortable. (Need pleasure)
A very independent man, and at this point of time, not ready to settle down. He believes in working alone and at many a times, will refuse help from others. He also does not believe in helping others in their cases very much, preferring that they stand on their own feet.
He is a very objective and somewhat unemotional man. He will do and say anything to win a case, even when he knows that his client might be guilty. However, at times, he does struggle with his own sense of ethics and morality.

 

Physio	Socio	Psycho	Ideo
Looking good	Prefers to be alone	Enjoys challenges	Weak ethics and morals
Staying fit	Womanizer	Self-affirmed	Sophistication
Intoxication	Enjoys being talked about		Independent and Individualistic

 

Product Benefits Specification

Based on Denny’s lifestyle, his main uses of the mobile phone would be to:

1. communicate with his clients and colleagues
2. flaunt it

Since he is not exactly the most sporting type of person, the phone does not need to have a very sturdy design, nor does it need to have many fanciful applications. Since every mobile phone should have the basic functionality of communication, perhaps the most important aspect the phone then needs is to catch people’s attention and to tell others that Denny is a self-made, sophisticated and rich man.

It has to be a phone that would also pique a woman’s interest, since that is who he might spend most of his time with. A phone that appeals not only to men, but also to classy women. Perhaps an in-built organizer might be useful to him, but it would not seem that Denny would use his phone for advanced functions. Although red might be Denny’s favorite color, for a mobile phone, that might be too gaudy if it was all in red. Perhaps if the backlight, or just some parts of the phone were intense red, that would suffice.

Essentially, it just has to be sensuously designed – a phone that exudes sleek and sophistication all at the same time.

With that specification in mind, perhaps the LG KG800 would fit Denny very well. It is described as the latest luxury fashion icon with a minimalist black design enhanced by a sleek yet subtle red backlight. It also received a design award and would be a good talking point for Denny to impress others with.

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Products and Emotions (Part II)

Sunday, January 27, 2008 16:37

Breakfast Cereals

Post
Post is my all-time favorite cereal. Although slightly more pricey than simpler offerings from Kellogg’s and Nestle, the variety they offer is much more interesting and tastier. The cereal offered also sounds much healthier, more than just a sugar-coated cereal.

Visceral

Its clean and uncomplicated design makes it attractive and interesting. Together with bright and enticing colors, they can stand out easily when put together with all the other brands of cereal with complicated designs and gaudy colors.

Behavioral

It certainly tastes better than other brands such as Kellogg’s and Nestle, but is also significantly more expensive. However, the way they name their flavors do make them sounds a healthier choice and is a nutritional fact.

Reflective

On a deeper level, Post cereal isn’t really all that much different from cereal offered by other brands. It is slightly more expensive with a more enticing packaging. By itself, it doesn’t really tell much more about my eating habits than compared with other brands. Personally, it does make me feel happier eating it though.

 

Kellogg’s
Kellogg’s is probably one of the oldest and most well-known brands of breakfast cereal. Say Kellogg’s and cereal would probably be the most immediate connection. They also have the largest variety of cereal products, possibly to appeal to all manner of people, most of all the kids.

Visceral

The complicated design detracts from its overall taste. Colors used in most of their packaging are usually not a good color for food-related products either. Also, images used on packaging are also usually unrelated to the actual food inside. It is thus hard to be immediately attracted to this cereal based just on packaging.

Behavioral

It has just as much nutrition than any other cereal might have, although it might also be the most unhealthy. This particular one is really just sugar-coated cereal. However, they do have a much wider range of cereal than most other companies do and are also significantly cheaper. Their usual complement of toys will probably attract more kids to buy it, although that has absolutely nothing to do with food.

Reflective

Eating this cereal leaves me nothing to think about, other than that it’s not the most tasty or nutritious cereal out there. It may leave people with the idea that I’m unconcerned about my food and/or I’m too poor to spend lavishly on breakfast.

 

Kashi
Organic. Their tagline reads, “Healthy good is good. Great tasting healthy food is better.” Kashi is all about all-natural food products. They are a relatively new company, compared with Kellogg’s and Post, although Kellogg’s did buy them just a few years back. Few people would probably have heard about them by now since organic food and healthy eating isn’t high on people’s minds in Singapore.

Visceral

Very clean and simple design, even more so than Post. Although colors are not as bright and enticing, but they portray a very healthy product. This does make the packaging stand out from other more complicated brands. Also, because the actual food is prominently displayed, with related information easy to find and read, it makes it all the more enticing for the potential buyer.

Behavioral

Very expensive – twice that of Kellogg’s - but being organic, possibly the most healthy of the lot. Boxes are usually smaller than standard sizes and serving sizes will also possibly be smaller. For a simple cereal eater, or people who don’t have the time to enjoy a good breakfast in the mornings, this might be over-the-top.

Reflective

The afterthought would be that I am eating a very healthy meal and that would be a happy and healthy start to the day, assuming I am eating this as breakfast. It also gives off the impression that I am striving for a clean and lean diet.

As far as breakfast cereals and mineral water bottles go, it seems that the more visceral and reflective the product is, the more expensive they are. They also tend to offer more user satisfaction, more than just what the product is meant to do (to quench thirst, or as a breakfast). The only downside is the price. It could perhaps further be observed that buyers of the more visceral and reflective products are those who have a higher-end income and desire more than just a behavioral product.

People now want more than just products that function as they are supposed to. They want the pleasure that comes from using it and being seen using it.

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Products and Emotions (Part I)

Sunday, January 27, 2008 15:45

Mineral Water Bottles

As a warm-up to this assignment, I guess I will just observe what Donald Norman himself used as an example for a visceral product - Perrier Spring Water – and compare that with two other mineral water bottles.

Perrier
A brand of bottled mineral water made from a spring in Vergeze, France.

Visceral

A green glass bottle with a metal cap. Looks more like wine or beer than just simply mineral water. An initial glance will leave one with a sleek and interesting kind of emotion that does make you want to pick it up and examine what it is.

Behavioral

Definitely not very practical for mineral water. Heavy to carry around and troublesome to dispose of. However, it does do its job of containing water, although the metal cap is not as easy to screw back as plastic ones. Further research also reveals that glass is used mainly to keep the taste of the spring water and to retain the 50 million bubbles in there.

Reflective

One on hand, it might give others the impression that you really enjoy your mineral water (assuming they know that it is mineral water). On the other hand, they might think you are really wasting a lot of money just for spring water.

 

Evian
Another French brand of mineral water from several sources near Evian-les-Bains, located near Lake Geneva.

Visceral

A very simple, functional and uninteresting design. Its size does make it slightly less standard than other bottles, but it offers no keepsake value whatsoever.

Behavioral

Does its job simply and perfectly. Light, small and easy to dispose, or even to reuse as a personal water bottle. Although considered pricier than other local brands, it is still less expensive as compared to Perrier and Ty Nant.

Reflective

Nothing to talk or even think about. It would not be difficult at all to find another one with the same bottle. In fact, it probably does not matter to people if they were holding an Evian bottle in their hands.

 

Ty Nant
A natural spring mineral water from Ceredigion, Wales. In English it means “House by the Stream”.

Visceral

Stylish, elegant and expensive. This bottle won the British Glass “First Glass” Award for Design Excellence. Might be mistaken for a wine bottle, but hey, why not! It just looks too expensive to consume and throw away.

Behavioral

Like Perrier, a glass bottle would be heavy to carry around and difficult to dispose of. But again, like Perrier, it does its simple job of containing water, and probably the bubbles that also come along in it.

Reflective

Take away the label and it can be mistaken as a flower vase or a wine bottle. If I am seen drinking this, then I would really have too much money to waste on mineral water, or I would be mineral water’s truest connoisseur.

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A Bad Design

Monday, January 21, 2008 13:45

This is a Sony Ericsson W710i. It is a rather rare clamshell, flip-top phone that I find appeals to me a lot more than the everyday “open-top” mobile phones. It is advertised as the phone for the actively mobile, complete with music, communications, imaging and all the essential active accessories.

With all the friends I know that own a mobile phone (that is basically everyone), I have yet to find one that has the exact same model as me. In fact, I know only one other friend who owns the close relative of the W710i, that is the SE Z610i. All my other friends use the more traditional “open-top” mobile phones, or the Nokia “push-up” type of phones like the 5300. It intrigues me as to why the clamshell design has never been exactly very popular, partly suggested by the fact that there are not many clamshell designs in the market in the first place.

And so I went to gather some thoughts and reactions about my clamshell phone.

1. “Why is it purple?”
To which I answered, “Because they ran out of orange.” Which is true, as the phone is only offered in two colors – purple and orange. Orange was my first choice.

2. “It looks cute and compact!”
Yes it does.

3. “It’s quite troublesome to have to flip open the top everytime to use the phone.”
Which is entirely untrue. On a practical step-by-step level, it takes the same number of steps to answer a call or respond to an SMS as it would take on an “open-top” phone. That number of steps is actually only ONE. Instead of having to flip open the phone, one has to unlock the phone before anything else can be done. However, it can be argued that flipping the phone requires more effort than pushing some buttons.

4. “I have to use two hands to flip the top.”
While I can demonstrate that the top is easily flipped with just one hand, this friend did have a point.

5. “I’m just afraid someday the hinge might get loose after opening and closing too many times.”
A valid fear. It does make me wonder if opening and closing the phone until the hinge loosens is part of the phone’s QA test.

It was hard for me to get a more functional kind of criticism since nobody has used my phone model before. It seemed to me that as far as phone criticism goes, most of my friends go only for the looks and durability, but not the functions.

For me, I think the design of the phone is perfectly fine, despite some of my friends’ comments, until somebody actually called me while the phone was still closed. It started ringing and vibrating when I was in the middle of a meeting and to my horror, there was no way to immediately reject the call while in “clam” mode. All 7 buttons on the shell, and none of them rejected the call. It just kept ringing and vibrating until the caller decided to hang up.

It then happened again, when I took it out running and listening to music (this being a sports and music phone), when the phone started ringing and vibrating again as I was running along the Kallang River. Again, there was no way to stop the call other than to answer it or just wait for the caller’s patience to run out.

After yet even more incidences of this occurring, I believe this to be quite a severe oversight of the designers, that while it is advertised to be a phone for the active and mobile, it has apparently missed out on one of the very basic functions of rejecting a phone call. All the elements of accessing my music files are on the shell, yet not one of them lets me reject a call without having to flip open my phone.

I cite this as a bad design even when it may not be obviously so, as simple comments from my friends show. One might not realize something is a bad design until using something for a period of time.  I feel that nowadays, designs get to be so simple and shallow that some may just entirely miss its basic function. While design does seem to be swinging now from the “technical-orientation” to “user-orientation”, I believe there needs to be more of a balance instead of just simply making things simple and stylistic. Of course, if designs could be simple, stylish and yet function as they are supposed to, then that would be an absolute winner.

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A Beginner's Guide to UX

Monday, January 21, 2008 5:18

My final design module in NUS.

This time round, I will try updating the design of this blog as this module goes along, hopefully incorporating certain “UX” principles into it, and perhaps other fancy stuff that I can think of and find in the next few months.

This starter design will thus be very minimalist, and by the by, it actually doesn’t look all that bad! (to me that is).

As the semester goes on, I will probably just keep a journal of all previous blog designs as well as other ideas I can think of.

If you’re interested, this blog is coded entirely in HTML/CSS/pHp/mySQL. In the future, maybe some Flash will work its way into this. Feel free to drop me ideas on how to improve the overall site! (The comments section isn't up yet as I'm still trying to resolve my domain name issue, but it will be up soon!)

Thanks and good luck for this module.

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