On the 21st of April, Frank Long, UX Designer at frontend gave a talk in UL about the User Centered Design from the perspective of product design.
I really enjoyed the talk as it made me recall my experience as a product designer and also because Frank was enlightening and fun.
The talk was mainly focused on Out of Box experience, which is the journey after you buy the product, from retail store to operation. Ideally we should strive for a “Plug and Play” operation, where the customer is guided seamlessly thought the experience. He described that this experience, which is overlooked by many companies during the development stage of a product, is imperative to the products success and to growing brand loyalty. He reveled that only 5% of products returned were actually faulty. By lack of design and consideration on the importance of out of box experience incurs high costs for the company though customer service, returns, poor reputation of brand, environment and loss of sales. By having poor out of box experience means that companies are getting one or all of the following wrong
•their packaging
•poor visibility of system status
•error prevention
•recognising, diagnose and recover from errors wrong
One of the main ways of creating successful out of box experience employing progressive disclosure, where it starts off simple for the customer and gets more technical as you go deeper into the product.
Front of Packaging to Back of Packaging
SimpletoAdvanced
Some of the main points that Frank concluded with
•Don’t overwhelm customers with information that is unnecessary to them.
•It must work in all environments and in every case.
•Don’t assume everyone has a third level education. Ensure that the language used is clear and concise
•Make items intuitive, people don’t read the manual
•Consider time to task, don’t make it too long
It was a very insightful talk which reaffirmed the importance of user centered design and the role that it plays in all phases of design
As you may have noticed, this blog space has been a quiet over the last few weeks. It has all been a bit crazy recently due to my college workload and because of that I have neglected this space for a while! This post is a walkthrough of my dissertation presentation and what I plan to do over the next few months.
During Tuesday the 20th and Friday the 23rd of April, the class presented their dissertation proposal to their peers and to Gabriela, our lecturer in Principals of Interactive Media. It was a tiring but worthwhile exercise as it made me more aware of what everyone was doing in their projects and this then helped everyone generate of new ideas and inspirations for their projects. For me, the whole experience was great as it made me really solidify my idea and think about the feasibility and configuration of the project rather than just the idea. Although I was a bit disheartened after the presentation because I misinterpreted the issues within the project, it did open my eyes to other possibilities and opportunities of the project. While researching for the presentation I became too focused on obesity and motivations of users to exercise, disregarding the importance social communities, how they operate and what sustains them.
The initial idea for the project came from a personal experience over the christmas period. My friend, who at the time was getting married (she tied the knot last month) was looking to loose a few kg before her big day but didn’t know how to go about it in a safe and healthy way. This resonated with me as many times in the past I have dieted, trying to get into “that” dress for a big event, without much luck. I also tried exercising and fitness classes including aerobics, but would always loose interest after a few months. During my initial concept generation stage, I envisioned this product to be worn in the wrist of a person, monitoring their fitness level each day by measuring heart rate, steps taken and sleeping patterns. Results from these would calculate the energy expenditure of the person and what needs to be done to reach your target weight.
After much thought and consideration I decided that I would modify my initial idea because I don’t have the necessary skills for this project, them being nutrition and health care. Another reason was because a very similar product exists already in the market, the Fitbit Tracker (see video 1). I also wanted to create a product that generated more meaning for the individual rather that just being an generic exercise product. I wanted to develop something that would change behaviour, from exercise being viewed as a chore to being something that is fun and emotionally rewarding.
Video 1: Demonstration of Fitbit Tracker
So from this I started looking at how to promote and sustain interest in exercise. Studies, like figure 1 (source) , found that women participate in a significantly lower amount of exercise than men do. This indicates more extreme barriers for exercising exist for women than do for men. My target audience will range from early twenties upward and although men can join the site, it will be specifically targeted at women, because of their tendency to place more emphasis upon social motives. I decided to investigate in more detail on what motivates women to strive to exercise, as understanding the motives of exercise will lead to developing a system that meets the real needs and wants of the user.
So why are current methods not working?
In many cases exercise is promoted as a tool that aids in weight loss and enhances appearance. Future health benefits and final results of exercise are also highlighted in advertising campaigns for weight loss mechanisms. Therefore the reason people start exercising(if they don’t participate in sport) is to loose weight and their motivation is to get thinner so as to conform to social standard. The goal to loose weight is not promoting self-worth because if this goal is not achieved this may result in psychological costs to the individual including decreased motivation to exercise. Therefore exercising for an extrinsic reason such as weight loss is not optimal for sustaining physical activity.
During a talk by Dr. Dean Ornish, entitled “The power of sustainable changes” (see Video 2), he addressed the issue of change that needs to come in health care from ‘you must do’ and ‘you should’ attitude to a more holistic approach, creating amazing experiences. He spoke about the need to bring people together for the promotion of healing which can be facilitated through technology and community.
Video 2: Dr. Dean Ornish on "The power of sustainable changes"
There are many websites tailored to weight management, healthy eating and online community based support. Some of the most popular ones include Traineo and SparkPeople. These websites offer tailor made plans for exercise, eating and allow us to determine our goals on weight loss. They promote healthy living by giving tips and setting mini goals. But what they were lacking is the community aspect. Although most of the weight loss websites featured a section on communities there was many problems that I experienced including
Difficulty to navigate around them.
They often only had blog like posting which made it almost impossible to talk to others and discuss problems.
There was many posts within groups, asking about meet-ups and exercising together, but the post back were usually rejection because of distance reasons.
What difference I want to make?
What I found was lacking in these websites was a level of interaction and support at a community level. During my research I found time and time again a positive correlation between physical activity participation and social support “social support is one of the most consistent correlates of physical activity among women” (Eyler et al., 2002) This highlights the importance of connection and social interaction in maintaining physical activity.
I want to focus the attention away from weight loss benefits of exercise as they do not promote long term physical activity and ground it in a more holistic view of exercise, one which promotes well being and stress reduction which are the greatest goals in maintaining physical activity participation. I want this system to address people who have negative feeling about exercise; who have joined the gym but never went or tried dieting but lost interest when they didn’t see results; to help them find enjoyable experiences. It will address the main problem with the current system, find a way of getting people hooked on the activity so as to sustain exercise
What I plan to do
I found that the most useful information came from blogs and other social networking sites as they gave up to the minute information about the subject and gave a more personal approach to the subject matter, which is imperative to know for this subject.
Understand the motives of people using social networking sites, what they require from them to sustain their interest? What builds a social networking site? Can online meeting on facilitate face-to-face interactions and how is this done?
What will sustain people coming back to the site when they have made friends with and are part of an exercise plan with members of the community?
Its looking like its going to be a busy few months ahead!
While researching today for my dissertation presentation, I came across this really nice website and although not relevant to my project, I found it had an interesting concept and wanted to share the resource. Sourcemap.org was created to increase awareness of the carbon footprint of the everyday products that we consume, their key components of the item and their origins of these materials. The open source platform shares the supply chain behind a number of everyday products, showing the materials, the origin of it each part, the CO2 produced from each part, the distance each part travels to be assembled and the assembly location. It also shows a map with the geographic location of the origin of each part to give a more visual representation of the distance that is travelled in order to highlight the great distances some of the parts have travelled during manufacturing. The one major disadvantage of this site is that most of the products that have been added to the site are products predominately available in the America, which means that the search is quite limited, particularly for those in Europe. But all considered, it is a very interesting and insightful website that makes you more aware of the origins of everyday products, the contributions of many countries to each product and the impact of each product on natural resources. Now more than ever designer need to be more aware of this phenomena and what steps we can do to change this ever growing concern of our impact on natural resources and our carbon footprint.
Last night, as I was returning a book to the library for a friend of mine, I went searching to find something relevant for my dissertation and found lots written on the topic of sport and psychology, which hopefully will be of use to me. I checked out as many as my hands would allow me to carry, which ended up being 5 books. So for the most of the rest of the week it will be me, on the couch, pen and paper, getting some reading in!
On the 29th of March, a seminar entitled “The role of technology in Health Care” was given by classmates Lette and Collette. It had some overlaps with Cristiano's talk that took place the previous week. It was a very interesting talk and something that I related to from personal experiences. Although they focused greatly on health care and medical design, there was some similarities between my dissertation and some of the topics raised in the presentation and in the literature.
Collette and Lette addressed the idea that giving access to ones healthcare information can help motivate the patient. As I thought about my own dissertation, incorporating a function that could would allow the user to get information about how healthy they are, progress report on what they have achieved and need to achieve could be useful in focusing and encouraging the users to continue using the device. But what must also be taken into consideration is if the user isn’t progressing at a normal or desired level, that their start weight and their current weight is only marginally different. In this case a user may become discouraged and deflated if they could view a progress report, showing start and current weight. How do I find the balance? I think I need to research more into the area of motivation and reward for my dissertation as I think understanding what motivates people it is imperative to the success of the device
An important point raised was the difference between the goals of the patients and the goals of the healthcare professional (which I addressed in my seminar on 1st of March). The goals are different because the motivations underlying the action are different. Motivations are key sustaining the use of the device. The only way that I will understand the goals and motivations of the potential users is by going out into the field, spending time with the potential users, observing. Even at this early stage in the project, Ive fallen into the mistake of have a predetermined idea of what the product should do, therefore I have decided what the goals of the users are without speaking to them. It is a trap that I have fallen into in the past and must ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Another important factor outlined in the seminar is that need to consider, in all design sectors, that we are entering into a aging population society, where there is a shift in countries population towards older ages. This means that a greater understanding of older people needs to sought and we must integrate this age group into design in a greater way than ever before. For my project, I must factor in for users with reduced dexterity, visual impairment and social and emotional factors of using such a device.
After this seminar I have become more focused on what I need to do next in my dissertation. So lets get reading!
Last Monday, 22nd of March, we had a very interesting talk Cristiano Storni, how is undertaking a post-doc at the Interaction Design Centre (ICD) in University of Limerick. He was speaking to us about the Health Care Sector, which specifically focused on patients with chronic illnesses, particularly diabetics. He spoke at the start of the talk about the Social Shaping of Technology Theory and its application in the Health Care Industry.He spoke about the current hierarchical system that is present in the Health Care system, where specialised doctors and surgeons are seen at the top level and patients are seen at the bottom level of the system. This is dangerous as it creates conflict between chronically sick people and doctors. The system currently being employed by some medical practices, where doctors give orders to patients (traditional practice) must stop as patient and doctor must work in together. He also spoke about breaking the traditional way of looking at the medical profession, and stated that we have to stop looking at the traditional ways of looking at the body as a machine, at patients as a problems to fix, at data and trying to solve it in a one dimensional way. We must take a more holistic approach, not only examine the disease but rather try and understand the patient. Changes need to be made in the way the practice views things, from the perspective of the patient rather than the disease. There has been a dehumanising approach when visiting the doctors, where patients are seen as data and doctors are seen as dispensers. In this culture, many people will not ask their doctors on how to deal with the disease, but will turn to other suffers of the ailment, support groups etc.. For product design, it poses huge challenges for the designer, as it is not about decreasing the buttons or making it more usable. It goes deeper than that, in understand and making something that first and foremost understands the patient, their requirements, their wants, while also delivering the correct medicine to correct the disease.
This topic is of great interest to be and it resonated some of the aspects I spoke about in my seminar on the 1st of March. The current system, as Cristiano highlighted, is not working for those suffering with chronic patient illnesses. In my life personally, this is very true for my uncle who suffers for the past 10 years with diabetes, hypothyroidism and high blood pressure. Because of his age, family history and the degree of severity, he visits the doctors surgery once a month for a check up. He has attended support groups for these illnesses, all of which he sourced himself. He has never once been asked or would feel comfortable discussing how he is being affected by taking 4 tablets per day, how he had to change his lifestyle, his eating habits etc. with his doctor. He is so disconnected from the patient doctor relationship that he never requests to see the same doctor during his monthly visits. When I asked him recently about his view on doctors he told me that “I go in, get my check up done, get my prescription and goes away and that’s the way I want it”. He said that he is not there to chat or get to know the doctor; he is not there on a personal capacity I really became interested in this topic discussed but questioned how achievable this would be in the “real world”. I did a bit of searching on the topic and found anlink to Experience based design approach which is centred around designing a better healthcare services. This system is being developed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement as a way of improving the health care service by making patients feel safer, happier and more valued and making doctors and nurses more positive, rewarded and empowered. But I really question how easy this is to employ, particularly in this economic climate where doctors and nurses hours are being cut, money is not being provided to expand and redevelop hospitals and where there is reduced confidence in the health care sector. Another factor that needs to be considered is the different approaches and personalities of doctors and patients and how easy it could be change their behaviour. And how can this change be achieved? Where does it start? Ideally I think if it could be achieved it would of great benefit to patient and doctor by saving time and saving lives but I question how this could be achieved
Today I came across a news report in BBC News online edition “On/Off: Can South Koreans survive without the web?” link here, which reported the story of two families, living in the country which considered the world’s most wired society, who decided to live without the internet for one week. South Korea has the fastest average broadband speed in the world and were schoolchildren are asked to file their homework assignments online, were most TV channels are wired to homes over the internet and were their e-commerce market reached more than $600bn per year. It reports about their struggles and difficulties as well as the positive experiences they found like spending more time with each other, reading more books, playing board games and having meals together. Even after all these positive experiences, the articles concludes on this note by one of the family members "Lose the internet for another seven days? It's a real 'No thank you,' I'm afraid. I don't want to go through this again."
This article really made me think about my internet use. On average, I spend at minimum six hours of everyday online for which I usually use it for researching, Facebook, youtube (and such like sites) and tutorial websites like Lynda.com. Since starting college, the longest break I have had from the internet has been five days, which occurred over the Christmas holidays. How difficult would I have found this exercise? How would I carry out research for college projects? How would I communicate with people without the use of Facebook and email? What would happen if I needed to query a feature or setting in a software package like photoshop? How would I find out directions without Google maps? How would I carry out module assignment on Moodle without the internet? We, as a society, have come to rely so much on the internet to carry out daily activities. While the internet has contributed greatly to a more knowledgeable society are we dismissing other important contributors of knowledge like our family members, our work colleagues, our neighbours, our community members, our lectures in college. Have we lost the important face to face relationship and communication skills? As an exercise for myself I will try to not use the internet for one week after finishing my masters to try and see how difficult life would be without the Internet.
This is one of the most difficult thing that I have ever had to write as I find it very difficult to express. When I started writing this, I decided to Google “definitions of a designer”. From this I found many definitions of what a designer is, which I found to differ greatly from different disciples. For me, coming from a product design background, a quote from the Design Institute of Australia that I related greatly to was the following “A designer is a business professional who develops solutions to commercial needs that require the balancing of technical, commercial, human and aesthetic requirements.” But on closer though, this quote is lacking something vital, the user!
Then I decided to examine ‘who is the designer’ and ‘what is the distinguishable factors that makes someone a designer’. Is the programmer, who is given a list of steps that the company want to include in a device designing? Is the graphic designer, who is told by the customer what colour and shape they want their logo designing? Is the toolmaker, who is given a AutoCAD drawing by the product designer to make designing? Is the craftsman who is making pottery designing? Is the user designing when the decide what features to use in the system or product or when the modify their system e.g. change the skin on their phone, add a youtube clip to their Facebook page?
During this month a article was written in Design Reviver “So you call yourself a Designer?” link here , where the author discusses how some people call themselves a designer because they have a computer, have Adobe Photoshop and they had some spare time to learn and how this is far from what we needed an what is a designer. He speaks about a designer a being a very complex and knowledgeable person who has “ critical thinking skills, understanding of design principals, knowledge of grid systems, typography and much more.” He speaks about the importance of critical thinking as being fundamental in a designer so a to develop design that has meaning rather than just decoration.
So from this inspirational article I started thinking about what I personally means to me to be a designer. And to be honest I really not exactly sure! With every major experience, I change my view on what a it means to me to be a designer.
When I was a young girl, I was encouraged to paint and draw as my family saw that I had a talent in that area. I didn’t particularly enjoy the method I was being taught, which was sit down, put a bowl of fruit in front of me and start drawing or painting. What I did enjoy was making and fixing things around the house and taking things apart to see how they worked. What it meant for me to be a designer at that age was merge artistic and mechanical skills to produce a beautiful design. I then went to college and studied product design and technology, which focused on aesthetic design, ergonomics, model-making, usability, material science and manufacturing design. I highly enjoyed projects which focused on aesthetic design, ergonomics and usability. At the end of my undergraduate education, what it meant for me to be a designer was to have the ability to blend form with function so as to create beautiful products that help people in their everyday lives. When I finished my undergraduate course, I worked as a product, packaging and graphic designer in a in-house product design firm in Shannon in Co. Clare. Here I worked for 18 months in a company that designed, manufactures and packaged low cost household products. The company was in formation for only a few years so money was tight so pressure was on to design things as quick as possible. I was the only designer in the company for the majority of the time, with an accountant and two toolmakers being my other work colleges. Sometimes this caused a few problems during some of the design phases as it was sometimes difficult to illustrate the value of spending time and money on improving the aesthetics and understanding of the user. For me during that stage of my life, what it meant to be a designer was to be a business professional who develops a marketable solution that attracts the customer to purchase. And now, as a masters student in Interactive Media, where we focus greatly on understand the user and capturing the best experience in a design, for me now, to be a designers means that I make an impact on lives, on communities and on individuals. A designer gives back to the everyday person, they see the possibilities where none were seen before. A designer emphasises, listens and understands.
Last Monday, the 1st of March, the first day of Spring, our group presented the topic "Interface Usability, the Designer and User" for the Principals of Interactive Media Seminar. The three of us, Aladdin, Sophie and myself, each decided on a section within this topic to discuss that directly related to our dissertation proposal. I spoke about "Usability is no longer enough" where I discussed this new idea of the power of Emotion and Empathy as ways of relating to the end user and designing more effective solutions. I spoke about the need for changing our way of approaching design, to break away from the norms of design and to thinking outside the box. It was for me one of the most interesting topics that I have ever researched or spoken. I feel quite strong about this topic as I feel from my experience in industry that there is a real need to understand the user in a more holistic view so as to design products or services that add "real" meaning to peoples lives. There are so many products and designs on the market that are designed from a marketing perspective without understanding the user, where companies main aim is to get the user to buy your product or sign up to your website. If interested in finding out more of what I have being discussing above please click here
Saturday, February 27, 2010
During my Research for my Seminar for Principals of IMedia, I found this very cool video about human interaction if humans were computers. It is a very inspired video which was very well executed. It really made me think about the difference between computers and humans and how certain tasks seem very simple and can be done so quick by computer and not so much for humans. It really shows how manual certain tasks are and how computers have helped in reducing these manual tasks
As I was researching my topic for next weeks seminar talk entitled: Interface Usability, designer and user, I found this really interesting link (which can be found below) that really opened my eyes to how restrictive and emotionally unengaged desktop interfaces are and how little they have developed throughout the last 10 years. Why is interface display so rigid? What is it so impersonal? Can it be changed so as to be more personal and help us carry out our tasks in a more effective maner?
After much thinking and burning ears, I have finally decided on a topic for my dissertation. The idea came about a few weeks ago while talking to my friend about her wedding plans. She is getting married in 6 weeks time and wants a loose few a few kg before the wedding day so she will fit perfectly into her dress and look her best. As there is so many diets and fitness regimes out there she has no idea which one would be the best for her or weather she will be able to achieve her desired weight loss by the date. I sympathies with her as I have dieted in the past to fit into a dress for a special occasions, with never much luck. Although there are a lot of diet and exercise regimes published every year, very few actually work in obtaining peoples desired weight loss or maintaining a continued exercise and healthy living regime. Because of this, and because it is something that I struggle with from time to time, I decided to undertake in developing a product that would tackle this problem. At this stage in the project, I have just picked the topic and done some brief research, which can be seen below, but over the next few weeks I will be hopefully more clear as to how the project will progress.
Dissertation Proposal
Introduction: Thousands of people each year follow crash diets in the hope of loosing weight, usually for a special occasion, in a very short period of time. This dangerous way of trying to loose weight is generally not effective in reaching the desired weight loss as well as having serious health side effects. During this project, I will aim to develop a successful tool in helping people reach their desired weight by a specified period of time as chosen by the user (or by the system if goals by the user are not feasible or safe). It will be an inclusive design but will be specifically targeted at the female market. How it will work: The device will calculate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis how many calories the user will have to burn in excess of their consumption to reach the desired weight by a specific date chosen. The user will enter in their height (m), weight (kg), waist circumference, current level of fitness, desired weight loss and the date in which they want this weight loss achieved by. The system will then calculate the users Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of a persons body fat based on height and weight, and together with the users waist circumference reading ascertain if the user is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese and thus tailor the exercise and dietary plan accordingly. It will also be designed to consider the current level of fitness of the user, so that initial exercise intensity level can be tailored to the individual and then increased with time and fitness. Features: The system will be flexible enough to allow the user choice on what they want to consume, but will inform the user that if their food choice exceeded their recommended daily calorie intake and recommend an exercise they should do. It will be fun to use and will reward the user for achievement. This will be achieved by including an LED interface display that displays an interactive game when using with in conjunction with exercise devices, like Mario Cart on Wii, where the Interface display works like the TV and the exercise device acts like the remote. Other features that should be incorporated into the device include
• Connect to “Touch Code”, designed by Aladdin Kishk via Bluetooth, allowing the user to choose recipes from the device that are health and with low calorie consumption • Can be connected to exercise devices including treadmills and exercises bikes and information about calories burned will be collected by the device • Can be connected to the computer and information upload and downloaded from a custom made weight loss website so the user feels part of a social community, as there is a strong link between social factor of exercising and participation, particularly amongst women
Hello all. This is my first blog, so please be patient with me, I will learn!
After a lovely long break for Christmas, where too much was eaten and drank and too much of "Murder she Wrote" was watched we are back to college, to the second semester of my Masters in Interactive Media. I think it has taken the last week to get back into the idea of work again but I am slowly adjusting.
Right now Im feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work expected to do over the next 6 months, the pressure (most of which is self induced) is being felt more this semester, but the laughs and fun amongst all of the class has not been lost.
This space will be a record of my journey through my Masters course. I hope, through this blog to discover myself both at a personal and academic level. I am going to finish with this quote that I found one day that I really liked and found very inspirational to me.
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself."ALAN ALDA
