Finally, its the end of a challenging but yet fulfilling course. I have always loved designing modules. From NM2208, 3208,2217 and to this. But it seem that NM4210 is one which I can learn to see the expectations and difficulties involved in designing a good product.
Before this module,designing UX, is something I have always thought to be easy and 'common sense' . But through the various exercises and especially the final project, I finally understand that all the while, I have been taking the notion of UX in my own context and perception. To understand the opinions and quality of the experience of others is definitely not easy because I am not them. Even with the various research conducted to try to understand my user, it is a challenge for me not to misinterpret their opinions and the data collated. The strange phenomenon which I discovered is that sometimes even users themselves do not know what they want. This is because experience is something so complicated that it comprises on not only a single factor. It is a mixture of emotions, looks, learnability, desirability, accessibility, credibility, usability, usefulness .....and the list goes on. It all depends on what the users are looking out for in his/her interaction with the product. And here comes the biggest challenge of all because sometimes what we as users exactly what from a product is also very elusive and inexplainable. Hence, to find out and capture these hidden intuitive factors accurately also requires skill, such as the way we structure our interview questions, research methods etc. But even with the perceptions of users aptyly captured, there still inlies numerous unknown factors in balancing context, content and users.
Throughout this module, I have indeed learnt many refreshing theories, principles and approaches to designing UX. Some of these even contradict one another and it is a learning process for beginners like us to decide what approaches to use because it depends on the context of our design as well. On another note, I guess an important point which I have gotten from this module is to learn how to look at the bigger picture by simplifying and intergrating all the small details to create good UX. This is of course easier said than done as experienced in my final project. More often than not, we tend to fall into the 'functional trap' by trying too hard to be creative and add on strange functions to our product design. But feedback from Mr Reddy and the class each week never fail spur me to review my design ideas from other more wholesome perspectives. So I can say that after this module, I do sense a change in my perceptions and approach towards designing a product.
But with the end of this module, I honestly still find designing UX to be something difficult to grasp. I do appreciate all the assignments and final project in this module because they let me develop basic insights into the realm of UX. But what I believe what I have learnt about UX is just the tip of an iceberg. I guess ultimately, as what Christopher Fahey mentioned, grapsing UX design which is something so subjective involves experience as well.
Monday, 28 April 2008
Friday, 25 April 2008
Overview of Final Project
Overview of final project
My team mates and I started out this project with a wrong approach because we were so keen on specifying the functional aspects of our product design right from the start. At that point of time, we thought that this is an easier approach for us to develop our product design later on. However, we later on realize that UX is not about good specifications or even good functions. It is about how users feel when they interact with our product. To do so, we have to go through numerous steps of user testing, interviews and analysis. With that, although very tempting, we resisted from churning out specifications before we even conducted any user research. We find that in many moments, AFTER conducting user interviews, our assumption of what users what is very much different from what we thought to be. However, a challenge here is to balance out the opinions given by different users because every user gave out various subjective comments which could vary quite vastly from one another.
From the start, we focused on the elder age group because we see an impending need to focus on the age-related problems which comes with the phenomenon of graying population. After recognizing the need to focus on the elderly target group, we began with user profiling, persona building which allows us to have a better understanding of the values, problems, needs, wants and expectations of the elderly population. With these, we find it much easier to detail out the functional and user requirement of our product.
During the different phases in our project, we made effort in revising and referring back to the requirement analysis as different stage of interviews often reveal a change in needs and wants. Thus, these requirements acts as a check list for us to make sure our product design improve in terms of UX.
A challenge for our projects comes at phase 3 because throughout the 4 stages in phase 3, we see rejections in our product ideas frequently. Mr Reddy often reminded us that it is about the design process and not the product design. But somehow, it is very difficult to translate our user research to UX in our product interaction process because our respondents at times do give contradicting and vague answers. For instance, in phase 3C, we see a change in the needs of users from security to usability. This came as a surprise for us too because users right from the start kept emphasizing on security as their number one priority in a lock design. But after we developed our prototype, we observe through interviews that they are more concern about ease of use and convenience. This shows that users many times subconsciously might want other needs. Hence, as designers, we have to constant look out for hints in the responses respondents give. Additionally, we also find difficulty looking at the whole picture because we tend to develop specific features based on the requirements. It is quite a challenge to step away from these small details and reinvent them into the whole picture of UX. What we have done in later stages were to analyze the users’ interaction with our product and from there adjust the various areas to create UX as a whole.
In phase 3c, we developed a ‘high’ fidelity prototype. But due to limited resources, we did not manage to build up a prototype which resembles our real product in detail. Therefore, we do see disappointment in our users when we showed them our prototypes because they were unable to visualize our final product properly. Hence, we decided to develop a better albeit still not good enough high fidelity prototype. This time, users gave more positive and assured comments to rate our product specifications.
In the final stage, our product specification draws down to :
- tapping key control
- central locking system
- stainless steel foldable gate
- automatic unlocking and locking mechanism based on sensor tapping detection
- automatic lock mechanim based on infrared body move sensor detection
- sensor alarm to detect cut through of lock
- conventional key as back up plan
At each stage, we held back ourselves from falling into the functional trap by reviewing if each of these features do add on to the overall UX. After this project, I finally understanding that simplification is the key to enhancing UX.
My team mates and I started out this project with a wrong approach because we were so keen on specifying the functional aspects of our product design right from the start. At that point of time, we thought that this is an easier approach for us to develop our product design later on. However, we later on realize that UX is not about good specifications or even good functions. It is about how users feel when they interact with our product. To do so, we have to go through numerous steps of user testing, interviews and analysis. With that, although very tempting, we resisted from churning out specifications before we even conducted any user research. We find that in many moments, AFTER conducting user interviews, our assumption of what users what is very much different from what we thought to be. However, a challenge here is to balance out the opinions given by different users because every user gave out various subjective comments which could vary quite vastly from one another.
From the start, we focused on the elder age group because we see an impending need to focus on the age-related problems which comes with the phenomenon of graying population. After recognizing the need to focus on the elderly target group, we began with user profiling, persona building which allows us to have a better understanding of the values, problems, needs, wants and expectations of the elderly population. With these, we find it much easier to detail out the functional and user requirement of our product.
During the different phases in our project, we made effort in revising and referring back to the requirement analysis as different stage of interviews often reveal a change in needs and wants. Thus, these requirements acts as a check list for us to make sure our product design improve in terms of UX.
A challenge for our projects comes at phase 3 because throughout the 4 stages in phase 3, we see rejections in our product ideas frequently. Mr Reddy often reminded us that it is about the design process and not the product design. But somehow, it is very difficult to translate our user research to UX in our product interaction process because our respondents at times do give contradicting and vague answers. For instance, in phase 3C, we see a change in the needs of users from security to usability. This came as a surprise for us too because users right from the start kept emphasizing on security as their number one priority in a lock design. But after we developed our prototype, we observe through interviews that they are more concern about ease of use and convenience. This shows that users many times subconsciously might want other needs. Hence, as designers, we have to constant look out for hints in the responses respondents give. Additionally, we also find difficulty looking at the whole picture because we tend to develop specific features based on the requirements. It is quite a challenge to step away from these small details and reinvent them into the whole picture of UX. What we have done in later stages were to analyze the users’ interaction with our product and from there adjust the various areas to create UX as a whole.
In phase 3c, we developed a ‘high’ fidelity prototype. But due to limited resources, we did not manage to build up a prototype which resembles our real product in detail. Therefore, we do see disappointment in our users when we showed them our prototypes because they were unable to visualize our final product properly. Hence, we decided to develop a better albeit still not good enough high fidelity prototype. This time, users gave more positive and assured comments to rate our product specifications.
In the final stage, our product specification draws down to :
- tapping key control
- central locking system
- stainless steel foldable gate
- automatic unlocking and locking mechanism based on sensor tapping detection
- automatic lock mechanim based on infrared body move sensor detection
- sensor alarm to detect cut through of lock
- conventional key as back up plan
At each stage, we held back ourselves from falling into the functional trap by reviewing if each of these features do add on to the overall UX. After this project, I finally understanding that simplification is the key to enhancing UX.
Review : User Research Smoke & Mirror
After reading Christopher Fahley’s article, I do very much agree that user experience is a subjective matter. Ultimately, every different person has their own perspective and opinions towards experiences. Hence, as a designer, it is not feasible to entirely use scientific quantification as the basis of our design process because that will be an over-generalized cum shallow approach towards making sense of experience.
Yes, quantitative research does make it easier for designer to make a head start to understanding the general target market. However, I believe that to design successful UX, it is not enough to understand what users are thinking. Rather, designers should listen to subjective views in order to investigate HOW users process their thoughts. Moreover, as iterated throughout my course of NM4210, it is impossible for a design to satisfy everyone, hence it will make more sense for designers to focus on the valuable opinions of a selected few and build up our innovations from there.
On a further elaboration, Fahey pointed out a very important but often neglected point that research is NOT everything. User experience, in my take constitutes a spiraling relationship between designer and user. This means that there must be a constant negotiation between what user wants and the designer’s designing process. For instance, sms (short messaging service)first started out as a notification service. But overtime because the way people use it, it went back to the designer to build on users’ needs and wants to develop a more advanced sms system or even mms. What I am trying to illustrate is that user’s subjective opinion is more effective than general scientific research to enhance UX.
This notion of subjectivity is very relevant throughout the design process to designers. But when it comes to selling our design product, it will be another matter. The reality of today’s society relies and trust statistical proof. We can always see advertisements bringing out humongous numbers to proof that their product is good. But does these quantitative research data really translates to good user experience? I doubt so. In my opinion, these statistical research are just a form of packaging to sell our product as being reliable. As Farhey mentioned, user research is more of a kind of gimmick to convince non-design minded people that our design is good.
I also find Fahey’s take on pseudo-science interesting because more often than not, many poorly designed scientific research try to fake professionalism. In my own experience with NM4210, I believe that this is true because many designers possess some kind of ‘designer ego’ whereby they are not willing to deviate from their original designing path. Being subjective towards their own design, they will think that their own design is the best. Hence designers tend to interpret the scientific results to suit their own design. In this way, this is not UX anymore. It is what designers want and not what users want.
Yes, quantitative research does make it easier for designer to make a head start to understanding the general target market. However, I believe that to design successful UX, it is not enough to understand what users are thinking. Rather, designers should listen to subjective views in order to investigate HOW users process their thoughts. Moreover, as iterated throughout my course of NM4210, it is impossible for a design to satisfy everyone, hence it will make more sense for designers to focus on the valuable opinions of a selected few and build up our innovations from there.
On a further elaboration, Fahey pointed out a very important but often neglected point that research is NOT everything. User experience, in my take constitutes a spiraling relationship between designer and user. This means that there must be a constant negotiation between what user wants and the designer’s designing process. For instance, sms (short messaging service)first started out as a notification service. But overtime because the way people use it, it went back to the designer to build on users’ needs and wants to develop a more advanced sms system or even mms. What I am trying to illustrate is that user’s subjective opinion is more effective than general scientific research to enhance UX.
This notion of subjectivity is very relevant throughout the design process to designers. But when it comes to selling our design product, it will be another matter. The reality of today’s society relies and trust statistical proof. We can always see advertisements bringing out humongous numbers to proof that their product is good. But does these quantitative research data really translates to good user experience? I doubt so. In my opinion, these statistical research are just a form of packaging to sell our product as being reliable. As Farhey mentioned, user research is more of a kind of gimmick to convince non-design minded people that our design is good.
I also find Fahey’s take on pseudo-science interesting because more often than not, many poorly designed scientific research try to fake professionalism. In my own experience with NM4210, I believe that this is true because many designers possess some kind of ‘designer ego’ whereby they are not willing to deviate from their original designing path. Being subjective towards their own design, they will think that their own design is the best. Hence designers tend to interpret the scientific results to suit their own design. In this way, this is not UX anymore. It is what designers want and not what users want.
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