Seminarie 2

In preperation for this seminar we had to read chapter 6,7,8 in the book.

Chapter 6 - Ideation and design principles

When you have done your research it is time to come up with various types of concepts. This can be done by brainstorming. When brainstorming the use of technology may only act as a roadblock that slows down the creative process so instead of using computers you should go back to basics. By using papers, pens, highlighters, post-its etc. you are free to quickly draw, write or via art express ideas, emotions and insights regarding the project. To add a little structure to your brainstorming you could create personas, scenarios, pain points, metaphors or opportunities so that your ideas has a fundament to originate from and thereby also be able, in a later stage of the process,  to combine some of the concept ideas.

In this chapter they also introduces us to design principles, they use this example:

“Let’s say, for example, you are designing a new recipe display for kitchens and you’ve noticed people’s hands can get covered in flour or other foodstuffs while cooking—too soiled to be able to operate most controls easily. Thus, one of your design principles might be Operate with Messy Hands. It’s almost a requirement, but it applies

across a number of features and suggests the concepts that might work well for the product…”

It is almost like loose boundaries for the project so that the design ideas stay on taget and do not include totally redundant or ineffective suggestions. A principle should be applicable to many parts of the design if it’s not, it is probably a requirement. 

An example for us could be “Should be able to be operated by anyone”.

Chapter 7 - Refinement

Constraints, standards, principle and laws you have to or should abide id the main focus of this chapter. Personally i was triggered by indirect/direct manipulation, feedback/feedforward, Magical number seven and the Poka-Yoke principal. Except from the Magical number seven all of these explain what to think about when users are “communicating” with the interface. They need to know what is going to happen, what is happening and how to manipulate objekt on screen. The Magical number seven is a rule of thumb to keep in mind when the program asks of the user to remember things. You can usually only remember up to 7 things and this number should not be exceeded.

All of these techniques we have to use to create a system that is both quick, easy to use and keeps the user interested.

Chapter 8 - Prototyping, testing and development

This chapter is what we as e group is currently working on. By creating a prototype with a basic interface design and operations you can test your concept on yourselves or other to see where it fails. A system fails when it causes confusion, anger or is time consuming. We should use the Heuristic Evaluation when we evaluate our prototype. We shouldn’t put to much effort into making it perfect either, just a shell for the original idea so that you get what it is all about.

Questions for discussion:

What kind of prototype do we want to create? Have we have got pronounced design principles?