Seminarium 1, gruppdiskussion

During today we discussed the reading as a group and how the concepts in the book relates to our project and what we plan to do. 

We all thought that the book did a good job at managing to put into words things that might be obvious, but at the same time something we don't always reflect over. We also discussed how defining usability is not an easy task and what a broad term is can be which the ISO-texts is a good example of. 

In terms of our project we discussed different approaches we could take and we believe that taking the users into consideration and involve them is something we want to do as much as possible. But we also realise that we might have to do some activity based and genius design even though genius design might be difficult since we are not expert designers so we should limit that approach as much as possible.

We also discussed how we want to make observations during our museum visits and how to approach our interviews. Since we want to interview children there are some ethical guidelines to take into consideration. We also talked about how personas might be a good way to structure our data.

During next week we will make museum visits and interview visitors. We have quite a good idea of in what direction we would like to take our project but the visits to museums will most likely give us new insights.

Seminarium 1, Textreflektion, Kyriaki Sarampasina

After having read the three chapters I found myself reflecting over the four major ways to analysing data which are noted in chapter five. As mentioned, there are four ways to do so. And these are the following:

• Analysis 
• Summation
• Extrapolation
• Abstraction

These four are all of course useful in different ways. I personally thought that the extrapolation way of analysing data was the most interesting one, and this may be because it is so different from the way we usually learn to analyse data. So what is it that makes it so dissimilar? Well, instead of breaking data into tiny parts (as analysis does for example), extrapolations focuses on making new, different  whole from different parts. I think this is an interesting approach of analysing data, but I do not know if we will apply this method on this project. But I think it is an intriguing way of seeing data differently. 

In the project group we have not yet come to a conclusion of how we will process data, which is not that odd, since we just started this project. But it is an important stage in the process, and in time we will see which one or ones of these methods we will choose.

Question: What is the best way to analyse data? Should one diced to go with only one method or combing them?  

Seminarie 1, Textreflektion, Maria Hjorth

The texts we had to read until this seminar gave us a first insight in how we design and why. The second chapter in the book described the four different ways of approaching design. These were: User-centered design (UCD), Activity-centered design, systems design and Genius or Rapid Expert design (RED). A good designer is able to use all of these approaches when designing and quickly switch between them. UCD focuses on the users goals and needs and every aspect of the project circulates around these in contrasts to Activity-centered design where the users activity and the completion of that activity is the main focus.

The system-based design is the model I think I have seen the most as an engineer student since we try to see the bigger picture or system and then create it or solve the problems of that system. The system based method does not take into account the users needs or goals, only the systems. The last approach is the one that is the most commonly used today and also the one approach which needs a very experienced designer. Using the genius method the designer only rely on their own knowledge of the users and their own experience.

The fourth  and fifth chapter of the book describes how we should do our research and how we should prepare and analyze our data from our research so that we can see the problem clearer and maybe find new connections between seemingly unrelated data.

There were also so called ISO-standards in our reading list and their main purpose is to create a structure to rely on when designing eg. interactive systems. How do we create products with outstanding usability? Maybe start with looking at the ISO-standards and try to create something effective, efficient and satisfactory?

In our project i believe that we should use the UCD or acitivity-centered approach and since we shall interview people we need a moderator script so that we all ask the same questions and get comparable data. Maybe we should glance at the ISOs so that we have something to rely on while developing? I think that we also should post everything on the blog so that we have an easier time seeing the bigger picture.

Questions for the discussion:

How do you measure satisfaction since it is so subjective? Which design approach should we use in our own project, UCD maybe? How will we handle all the data we get from our research?

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?

Seminarium 1, textreflektion, Josefine Martinsson

That there are so many different approaches when designing something is very interesting to me, because even though it does feel obvious I do at the same time think it is something one might not reflect over as a regular user. At first glance I felt that user centered design would be the most widely used approach, but the more I thought about and read on I realised that this might actually not be the case. But not only is usability very hard to define it is also hard to measure. When reading the texts about how to measure usability and the one trying to define guidelines for what user centered design is I realise how hard it is to actually make something which is usable. 

In our group’s case I still believe that making the user a part of our design process would be ideal. But going as far as to having a solely user centered design process would not be possible in my opinion, mostly due to the time that would require, my desire would however be to involve the users as much as possible when making decisions during our project and having them in mind. The user group and main idea we have discussed using during this project does however also make activity-centered design an approach worth looking at and discussing. I also consider personas a good method of information structuring to try during our project since we will have very specifically different kinds of users to take into consideration and I would also like us to be able to make some sort of observation of a group at our museum. 

Question for the seminar: Would it be easy for you yourself to specify when you would find something usable? Or would it be easier to pinpoint when you think something has bad usability?

Seminarium 1, textreflektion, Jonathan Söderin

It is not easy to design a product or system that meets all of the demands from the companies that want the product and the actual users themselves and still maintain a highly user friendly product or system.

The texts are about exactly this problem and I agree with many, if not all, opinions raised in the texts and I do think it is a very interesting subject. It’s interesting to read about actual cases when user-centered people have worked with companies with the goal to keep high usability in focus. It becomes clear why there are some products out there where thoughts about the actual users are almost non-existent. High usability is a vague subject and is hard to see as profitable, therefore focus often lies on finishing the product and that it should have all the functionality that was planned in the beginning of the project.

I agree that it’s important to be able to change the way you work and your approach in the design process although it can be hard at times. You rarely want to change something you are comfortable with and that is one of the many problems you meet when designing a product and also want a high usability. And since high usability is such a vague subject it can be difficult to evaluate if you succeeded or failed with that topic. If you develop a product that you find super easy to use and likeminded people also find your product easy to use but people not like you find it very hard to understand the interface or how to use the product in general, is it still user friendly? And if not, is a truly user friendly product an illusion?