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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