Discussion - Seminar 2

Chapter 6 
Since we are well passed the brainstorming part of the project, this chapter had more of an evaluating function for us. We think that we mostly followed the guidelines given in the book in the sense that we didn’t use a lot of technology when brainstorming. Instead we used pencil, paper, whiteboard and sticky notes as our primary tools. What could be improved for future projects is not discussing single ideas too much during the brainstorming-phase, since we want quantity in this stage of the process, not quality. 

Chapter 7 
 When it comes to constraints, the ones that apply to us are skill-constraints and time-constraints. Something that was really interesting was the poka-yoka method, where you don’t allow the user to make mistakes in the first place. We wish to have the feedback/feedforward in mind when designing our prototype. Discussion points: lag, direct/indirect manipulation, the seven rule, poka-yoka, 

Chapter 8 
We should start off with creating a non-digital prototype (other than the one we already have) to get feedback from people testing it before we make a digital version. We already have a really rough concept-prototype (low-fidelity) (http://fabd5.blogspot.se/2014/10/design-concepts.html?view=flipcard) 

Questions from the blog: 
When we create the prototype, should we create several prototypes for different scenarios in the museum? 

Three different prototypes, for three stages of the museum-visit. 

1. An informative part at the start of the exhibition. 
2. The competitive part during the exhibition. 
3. Ending screen at the end of the museum with feedback about the visit and 

What are some good scenarios we can work with? With the limits in skills and time what are good approaches when we work with prototyping? 

We should develop different scenarios for when users use our concept in different stages of the museum and in different constellations (eg. in group or single person). We also want to create different scenarios for visitors of different ages. 

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

We want to start of with a low-fidelity (paper) prototype and later develop a more high-fidelity prototype in order to first test out the concept and later make sure that it “feels” the way we want it to and gets the right “personality”. 

How do we best visualize the interaction with a product without being able to code it? Are you allowed to use video? 

http://www.invisionapp.com/ 

In our case (explain project if necessary) will we need to actually make an RFID-wristband or does a simple 3d-model suffice? 

We discussed and came to the conclusion that we will make a rough physical model to demonstrate the concept, but avoid including any technology. 

Quote of the day: 
Jonathan - What’s rights with me? 
Josefine - That’s a good question.

Seminar 2

Chapter 6 - Brainstorming and Ideation

This chapter was focusing on the starting point of projects in general and our group have already passed this part. I can say that this part is something I enjoy when I work in projects and this time was no different. It’s fun to just come up with as many ideas as possible an not having to worrying about if they are good or not. This time in our project we din’t really come up with a whole lot of ideas though, we came up with a concept that we all liked and really wanted to keep working on that single concept. However on that single concept, and the few others we had, we came up with a lot of ideas to further explore that concept so with that in perspective it worked really well for us. In our group we are all good at coming up with ideas and the whole “no ideas are bad” attitude is really accepted in our group and no one is afraid to speak up.

Chapter 7 - Refinement

We haven’t really started the actual prototyping of our concept other than discussing how we want it to look and what features we want, so the refinement have just started. We will go for a simple and timeless design because we want everyone to be able to interact and understand it, we also don’t want the museum to feel the need for continuous upgrading of the system. I think it’s important to not include a lot of new features for our design if we want to keep the simplicity and really focus on making a few features function really well.

Chapter 8 - Prototyping, testing and development

Well, this chapter is hard to discuss since we aren’t really there yet. But we will probably build some kind of web-based prototype and see if we can test it at the museum. None of us have any real experience in prototyping like this but if we find a good way to build the prototype I think this part of the project will be really fun.

Seminar 2 - Rickard Bergeling

Chapter 6 – Brainstorming and Ideation

This chapter was about a stage of the project that I feel we are well passed at this point. It’s about brainstorming and how to come up with ideas. Since we have already concluded the fact that our current idea is the one we are going to stick to, it feels a bit excessive to further analyze the different methods of brainstorming and ideation. What could be relevant, though, is to analyze our design process and how it has related to the contents of this chapter.

“Brainstorming requires some tools. First, because of the limitations of today’s available technology, brainstorming should never be done digitally; it should be done with paper, pencils, pens, markers, and possibly whiteboards and sticky notes. You need to be able to jot down an idea quickly, set it aside, and move on to the next idea. Fumbling with technology just gets in the way.”

This is something that I feel has worked very well for us, even though many of the members in our group frequently brings laptops and tablets to school, we have kept brainstorming using as little technology as possible. Something that also went well was the fact that we have a great tolerance in the group for different ideas and perspectives.

Something that I think could be improved for the next group project when it comes to the brainstorming-phase is that we shouldn’t spend too much time on a single idea. In our group, we really wanted to evolve the idea as much as possible as soon as we saw even the slightest potential. I think it could be better to move on and come up with as many ideas as possible and then go back to get the best features from each idea.

Chapter 7 - Refinement

When it comes to this chapter, what I found most interesting was Direct/Indirect Manipulation and The Magic Number Seven-rule. Since we have not started on our interactive prototype-development yet, we have only stated in words how we want the interaction to be. We have said that we want an ageless design that is intuitive to use. Therefore I think that we will benefit the most from using Direct Manipulation as our main concept when forming the interactive tools. Also, this chapter state that you should not deviate from the standard unless your design significantly improves the program. I therefore believe that we should design using the guidelines of application-making for tablets and try to deviate as little as possible. Our products “personality” will come in place with the choices of fonts, colors and so on. Not by using a weird layout.

The Magic Number Seven-rule states that a person’s short-term memory can only hold 7 (plus-minus 2) pieces of information at a given time. If given too much information the person will naturally forget some of it. I think this is something we can use when deciding how much information the visitor should be exposed to before our product indicates that he/she is able to answer questions about the exhibition. 

Chapter 8 – Prototyping, testing and development

Since we do not stand to actually develop our product, my discussion about this chapter will be limited to prototyping and testing. This is something that I am really excited about, although I am not sure of how we are going to make the prototype since none of us have experience in application-programming.

A quote from this chapter that really stuck was: “Eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak”, stating that we do not want excessive options or such that will plotter the application and make it hard to use. We have stated previously that we want an ageless and simplistic design, which I think will aid a lot in eliminating unnecessary elements.

So far we have not yet discussed whether or not our product should use sound as a tool for feedback to the user. My instinct tells me that we should limit our use of sound as much as possible since we have clearly stated that we don’t want our screens to take focus from the exhibition itself, and using sound-queues might be distracting to the other visitors.

Questions for the seminar:

How do we best visualize the interaction with a product without being able to code it? Are you allowed to use video?

In our case (explain project if necessary) will we need to actually make an RFID-wristband or does a simple 3d-model suffice?  

Current Design

So our current design, which is the one that we are going to present tomorrow is one that combines the best parts of our previous designs. It is essentially a refined version of our most recent concept (Adapted Position Questioning).

The main ideas for this concept is to make the visit memorable and individual. We also want to utilize competing as a tool for learning by customizing questions and rewarding interaction with the exhibition. One vital part of our design is that we don't want it to take focus from the exhibition, but rather be a complement to enhance the experience and make it more memorable.

We believe that this concept could be adapted by all sorts of museums, but the one we had in mind when designing was The Museum of Natural History.

So how do we plan to do this?
Screens - The museum already has integrated screens as part of the exhibition. We want to utilize these, but in a different way. We also want to separate the informational screens from the screens assigned to answering questions.

RFID-tags - Using RFID-tags we want to identify where the user has been and what he/she has been interacting with. This tag is to be integrated with a bracelet that is assigned to the visitor upon arrival. When you have gathered enough information, the bracelet will let you know that there are questions for you if you like. We plan on making this alert visual by a light source. When you are being notified you can go to any of the screens assigned to questions, which will then notice who wants to answer question by the RFID-tag and then give customized questions for that particular user, based on its previous interaction.

Intervjutranskription

Brukar du gå på museum?
Barnet - *Tänker efter och verkar inte komma på vad han ska svara på frågan* 
Barnet - “Vet inte…”

Har du gått på museum förut?
Barnet - “Mmm”

Okej gick du dit med mamma eller gick du dit med skolan?
“Mamma”

Vilket museum gick ni till då?
Barnet - “Vi spelade spel…”
Mamman - “Vi var på spelutställningen på tekniska museet, vilket (barnets namn) tyckte var jätteroligt! Eller hur?”
Barnet - *Nickar*

Okej vad kul! Vad var roligast där då?
Barnet - “Mario Kart”

Varför?
Barnet - “Har spelat det förut.”

Okej, men tror du att du har lärt dig någonting nytt idag?
Barnet - *Tänker efter*
Barnet - “Vet inte…”

Okej, är det någonting som du tycker att du kan nu som du inte kunde när du kom hit?
Barnet - *Tänker efter*
Barnet - “Vet inte…”

Vilken del av utställningen tyckte du var bäst idag då?
Barnet - *Tänker efter*
Barnet - “Vet inte…”

Okej, men om du fick ta med en del av utställningen hem då, vilken skulle det vara då?
*Här börjar det verka som att Barnet tycker att det är jobbigt att svara på frågor*
Barnet - “Vet inte…”

 *Tackar barnet för att han ville vara med och vänder sedan min uppmärksamhet mot mamman, barnet springer iväg till sin syster*

Vad var anledningen till att ni kom hit idag?
Mamman - “Vi ville göra någonting kul med barnen, först funderade vi på ett lekland men vi tyckte att Tom Tits var bättre. Det passar (barnets namn) ganska bra också eftersom att han har en ADHD-diagnos.”

Det här är en väldigt interaktiv utställning, vad tycker du om det?
Mamman - “Det är väldigt bra! Det underlättar ju för (barnets namn) också i och med hans diagnos när han kan få springa runt och testa massa saker!”

Tror du att han lär sig någonting?
Mamman - “Det är svårt att säga… Han är ju bara 6 år… Jag tror inte att han lär sig någonting konkret men det kanske väcker ett intresse.”

När ni kom in idag på utställningen så stod det ju en skylt med information om hur man laddade ner utställningens digitala guide, såg du det?
Mamman - “Mjoo, jo men det såg jag nog…”

Laddade du ner den?
Mamman - “Nej det gjorde jag inte.”

Varför inte?
Mamman - “Jag tyckte inte att jag hade tid med det liksom… Det är rätt mycket att göra med att hålla koll på de där två” kastar ett öga mot barnen “så då hinner man inte riktigt med att titta i mobilen!”

PS. Barnet i intervjun är 6 år gammalt

Seminarium 1, Textreflektion - Rickard Bergeling

A thought that occurred to me when reading the book, more specifically chapter 5, was that the notion of using personas for designing for different demographics is simply basing your design on prejudices. I believe that this could be a handy tool in the later stages of the design process, but that it should be strictly complementary to the rest of the research.

When it comes to our situation in the group project, I think that we should make a hunt statement that we can proceed from. We should also form a moderator script for the interviews.

After conducting the interviews, we need to structure the data in some way to get a good overview of what we have to work with, and to be able to distinguish patterns. However, since we do not have an office or a room which is dedicated to the project.  

Another reflection that I made while reading, was that there are a lot of different approaches to designing something. It also got me thinking about what method we are going to use in this project. I think that I would instinctively go for the genius approach and draw conclusions from my own experience within the subject. However, I don’t think this is the way to go about the task in this project, since we are focusing on museums and I don’t have too much experience within this field. I believe that a user-centered design would be more ideal in this case.

Question for the seminar: How can we pinpoint the faults in a system or where there is room for improvement if the user doesn’t experience any? Also, how do we identify a need or want in a user that the user themselves does not know they possess?