The X of UX

2008-09-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

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The X of UX

2007-04-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

Mission Impossible IV: Talk about your experience with User Experience Design

As we learned from the start, Experience is something that is not definite enough to defined, to be created or to have a framework to base our judgments on. So, just as users, I'll base my experience with User experience based on my values, what I have experienced in my life and in NUS and my own intuitive judgments.

In the first few weeks we tried to understand experience. It's a complex combination of all socio, physio, psychological and ideological processes. These processes aim at DESCRIBE the experience more than DEFINE experiences. We found out something that we have been using casually and taken for granted is actually more complex and complete than that. All factors affect the experience a user has. Timing and location also contribute to the product (Hence, many isolated user testings failed). So given the class room time and location, my experience with UX in these aspects are:

On physio level: The room is kinda cold and it's like 2pm-5pm every Tuesday (nap time) hence it affected the feeling I have for the class

On socio level: A lot of classmates are there and they are all cool CNM students. Sharing the experience of users experiences with them is great. The process of the project was amazing. Although, there are a few debates where I felt they go more into personal level rather than being constructive and helping other groups out

On psychological level: This is the first time I have the look at different aspects of "Experience". It's interesting and attractive. The various method of user testings taught me to go beyond my own world, my own connections to connect with strangers and other targeted audience

On ideological level: I always believe Arts and Design is about making a statement, reflecting and changing lives in the perspective of the creators. I had a little discomfort at first about catering to users need and going opposite the directions of my designs ideas and ideology. However, I learned to look at different view and striking a balance between making my statement and getting this statement across to the users

Moving on to defining and understanding users. It is important to realize that we designers are restrictive by our own view and experience. Even our friends and acquaintance are from the same circle of thoughts and ideology. Hence, it was important for us to learn to reach out for people outside our circle to research about our products. It's hard to understand people because they might not always tell us exactly how they feel (Again, experience is a hard thing to define in the scope of words). Writing a persona as a reflect of what you know is so much easier than finding a new persona that you are not familiar with (while they are still maybe your target users)

Problem is another issue. The design aims to address a problem, preferably those that has a dominant impact (hence, large curstomer base) and have yet to be explored (so the market place is not saturated and we are not a me-too product). Ideas are many. Coming up with ideas is not the tough part. However, being able to identify one that satisfies the above is hard. Furthermore, novel ideas tend to get shoot down by others since they don't understand it that well. Also, user testing meets a lot of difficulties as it is unfamiliar and new to users. But these problem pays off as coming up with a new and novel innovation will guarantee us a place in the market rather than what has always been there.

The methods were taught and we tried different combinations of them. It was fun and although they all have their pros and cons, we found the ones that was the most suitable to us. Designing for experience sure takes our focus away from what we know to what the users want. And that is important since we are designing for them. We had a lot of difficulties with technical issues like Flash and programming. However, the knowledge we gathered from users and other similar functions from other website out there gave us a sort of guideline to move on. The low fidelity mock up was a great save of time for us in wasting our effort banging into walls of technical issues.

The most painful process, I must say, is the refining of the product. Every week one prototype after another we have to restart at least twice. Every small subtle details like color scheme, logo appearance, intro paragraph, etc. have been refined and argued within the group. And the more solid the prototype is, the more users we tested it out with. The more users are tested, the more mixed ideas, opinions, solutions were suggested. It was really hard to keep focus. And we had to restart once more even after the final prototype presentation, changing the entire layout, look and feel of the site.

The time limit put on the project didn't allow us to have more and further usability testing. We felt fortunate that we are doing this in a class of CNM major, who are all experts that helped us greatly with our evaluation. However, being in a university context, it was difficult for us to reach out for a sufficient mass to confirm the usability of our product. We tried to use all the method like thinking aloud, group discovery, etc. to the people that we can reach. If time allows, we would really hope to develop it further, functional wise and usability testing wise

So there it is, the experience I had with UX. It's kinda vague and many different trends of thought here and there. But as we said, experience are always like that, abstract and random, not necessarily definite and describable in words.

Of course this experience is just a starting for a career that we have chosen in CNM. And the class experience won't end until we receive a grade (preferably an A) in our transcript. Right? :)

User research: The science of subjectivity

2007-04-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

So you are telling me all that we learned about user research and user testings in all our CNM courses are ultimately just common sense? It seems to be upsetting at first, but it made sense. We have all too much maths and science and precision and principles in University sometime we have NO common sense.

While formal testings like eye-tracking or isolated persona rooms may just be fancy ways to spend more research funding and prove certain political points to the less experienced or not very design-incline clients, they can be helpful in different ways. They can help confirm or prove a design concept is great or not to the mass.

However, it's a deceiving process trying to mask quantitative numbers and statistics to subjective comments and feelings or even experience. It's unethical to use this deception to gain reputation and credibility in design. However, as most of the world don't have deep design understanding and they tend to look for logical explanations (esp engineers), they tend to fall for this deception

That doesn't mean user research is bullshit. It's not. But the fact remains it's subjective. Casual methods like card sorting, or random interviews, etc. can be extremely insightful and helpful to designers. It's feeling and touching and other subjective perspective of human.

So in order to have a good design, it is important to admit that all users are subjective and they judge base on their own life experience. User centric design will go around searching for the right representative users, asking the right questions, accessing how they feel and design around the most important aspects and through their insights.

But then again all this is subjective. The writer himself said he might be wrong. So I could as well might be wrong. We could all might be wrong. Science might have exceptions. And trying to have all deception and special rules to mask those errors to make them explanable and quantizable is just plain wrong

Advance user for Yahah! Website

2007-03-08T07:10:00.000-08:00

Name: Alvin Lau
Alias: The geek
Age: 26
Height: 1m72
Weight: 70kg
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Working 45 hours a week at Phillips Electronics
Status: In a relationship
Hobbies: Photography, chess, online game, read books, anything that is geeky

Alvin loves Yahah! For one thing, he is an engineer with intense workload. Sometimes when taking a 5 or 10 minutes break, he would want to find some quick and hassle free relaxation to free his mind for a while. He loves the variety of things that Yahah! can provide. He already have enough stress at work so he didn't like to read serious news and depressing stuffs on the media. He loves witty jokes that is smart and with a lot of implies, which are so hard to get out there, since people are so shallow, he feels.

Second thing is the customization. Alvin doesn't like YouTube, because everytime he goes there he has to search for something. Sometimes he just didn't know what he wanted to see. And sometimes it's frustrating to see or fast forward through the entire clip just to know they are not what he wanted to watch. With Yahah! everytime he log on he already have clips there for him. If he doesn't like it he just needs to click a thumb down, and it will automatically skip to the next relevant clips. The more thumb down he puts, the less frequent these annoying content appears. Which is great, he thought

What else, after a Youtube video he has to pick a similar video to watch. With Yahah! he moves straight to the next content. The more he watches and puts thumbs up or thumbs down, the more relevant and accurate the content will get.

Sure, he has to participate pretty often. But he didn't mind. He wants to be involved and decide the content he will see. And he wants to know the system is interacting with him. For youtube he has to fastforward and search again himself. Everytime he rates the system doesn't do anything for him and it never learns. Yahah! is like a smart friend to him. Everytime he commented on something it will just get better, learning from his preference and also dislikes.

Sure there are a thousand things out there to waste your time on, but he didn't consider Yahah! a waste of time. It gives him the entertainment he needs with less time. Youtube is so over. Yahah! is the new things and sooner or later, these shallow, novice users will realize it.

"It's always cool to be THE GEEK!" He concluded :)

The debate - The good, the bad and the ugly

2007-03-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

During the idea presentation of the final project, the class was divided into 2 groups, one is supposed to support whichever group from their side and one is supposed to shoot the idea down. While this certainly is a more interesting way to present things than just sit there for hours listening passively, it has certain drawbacks and certain things I realized. And perhaps no one will read the blog so I thought I took my thoughts down

The good:
- People are more involved and they actually listen and talk about what was presented
- Pressure helps the group to present better
- Time management was good (or at least not as bad as it used to be). And the time limit imposed on the presentation make it more realistic to real-life presentations

The bad:
- A lot of time I feel people get the idea, they just purposely dig deep into some minor or really irrelevant points for the sake of attacking.
- It's always easy to criticize than to defend. Especially when the one who understand about it the most cant explain. No one is protecting your dreams the way you do. But everyone is just gonna shoot you down. I believe when YouTube started out a lot a lot people also said it was a stupid idea (I still think it is).

The ugly:
- The class got split to half and basically some arguments don't make sense at all. After some time I just decided there were too much negativity so I gave up.
- Some comments/attacks turned to personal and making fun of classmates. It's not helping and not constructive at all. I believe the purpose of the session is to suggest to the group how to improve, not discourage them

But I guess it's a pretty close simulation of life where people, because of politics and competition, they will just dismiss your ideas. Guess our group will just have to persevere, which is exactly what we will do because we know we are providing something very different, something more than an extension of what already is there. And we are happy funny people, so we shall come up with a happy funny interactive site :)

Summary of lecture style studies

2007-02-26T06:40:00.000-08:00

After the presentations of lecture styles in NUS, here are a few conclusions that i had:

- Everything everyone said was similar, simply because we studied the same University :)
- Everyone has different approaches, however it all comes down to 3 different elements: The lecture theater, the students and the lecturers

On lecture theater:
- Feng sui study from one group shows many blockage, long path and lack of scenic and round shapes. Improving in the ambiance of the lecture halls is important.
- Compare with other universities' lecture hall, we are not behind in facilities
- Location is key: toilets, food, etc.
- Air con temperature needs to be JUST RIGHT
- Size of the theater is important and it varies based on needs of student, size of the class, the frequency of students who skip class and other elements...

On lecturers:
- Accent and presentation style is a major theme. Many requested lecturers to be lectured on how to lecture
- Humor is important
- Speed and speech
- Lecture's timing, punctuality and ending timing. Break time was emphasized a lot too

On students:
- Many like to sit at the back, except for some (and it's too racist to repeat it here)
- As students, many talk and sleep and get distracted
- Rarely admit lecture's style is partially affected by them and hence bad lectures are always not their fault.
- Learning attitude is more important than anything else

To improve on the style:
- Build new infra structures
- Have new technical devices such as sleeping alarm chair, translator devices, slow down beeper, etc.
- Have more cultural teachings on the right lecture style

Limitation:
- Funding, as always. How can we improve it without spending millions and raising tuition fee like we are doing now
- It's all on perception and attitude of teaching and learning
- It's simply impossible to please like millions of different people having different preferences and ideology

Assignment: How to improve NUS lecture style

2007-02-04T06:55:00.000-08:00

Lecture: CS3242S – Morning 8am to 10am Thursday

Observations:

- At 7:55am the lecturer arrived

- He usually waits until 8:10am and start, when the class is about 1/3 filled

- Many students come in late

- Lecturer speaks in monotone and the English is not really clear

- Sometimes he speaks too fast

- The slides are clear and well presented

- Very few students came and the lecture theater is very big

- Lecture theater is very cold

- Lecturer always discussed project assignment before the end of class

- The lesson always ends late

Effects of this:

- Early class, big class room and cold temperature make students sleepy.

- Lecture starts late make student assume that everything will be late and hence they always arrive late

- Normally students come late just to know about the projects and CA

Ladder analysis

What don’t you like about current lecture style? I feel very sleepy during class

Why do you feel sleepy? It’s too early in the morning

What time is too early? 8:00 am

Why is it early for you? I stay off campus. It takes me 1 hour to travel to class. That means waking up at 6 am to prepare to go to school

How does sleepiness affect you? I can’t really get what the lecturer saying

Why can’t you get it? He speaks to fast and sometimes I jus can’t focus

How does not getting it affect you? I don’t understand the lecture

How does not understanding the lecture affect you? I can’t do well for my tests and exams

How do tests and exams affect you? I’ll fail

How does failing affect you? I’ll be kick out of NUS

How does failing NUS affect you? I’ll be doomed

Conclusion: I’ll be doomed because of 8am class…

Suggestion for Improvement:

- All NUS classes should start at 9am earliest

- Lecturers are required to at least pass ET1000 or above.

- Even if there’s only 1 student, the lecture should start on time with exam information and test conducted at the beginning of the class

Four pleasure Analysis - User Profile

2007-01-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

Imaginary Subject: Rachael, 27 years old real estate agent, living in Singapore.

Currently working as an assistant director at a real estate company specializing in private luxury house. This is her second job since graduation, where she obtained a second upper honor degree.

She wants to be in control and to have the best thing possible. She wants to attract attention and be the center of every occasion. Rachael loves to shop. Shopping gives her the control she wants over things that she buys and also the empowerment of beng the one: incharge. She likes to express herself and want the world to see her as a smart and pretty woman. For her public appearance and people's favorable look toward her are extremely important.

Rachael is dating James, her 5th boyfriend in the last 3 years. She changes boyfriend often, no matter how long they have been together. As a smart woman, she wants to consider her "options" before making a commitment. She wants to see who can provide her the best and can be the most "fun". She wants to be in control of her boyfriends, too. The guys normally follow her to shop and pay for her meals and expenses. And she is always the one to break up with them as a new one comes along.

Rachael's parents are divorced, each is successful with their carreer. She stays with her Mom. She has a lot of friends, mostly shopping buddies and male follower.

Rachael loves to club. She went clubbing twice a week. She enjoys being the center of the party and having fun, hanging around with good looking guys on the dance floor. It makes her feel pretty, powerful and young.

Four pleasure analysis of Rachael:

Physio Pleasure:
- Rachael wants to be in shape and appearance possible. She watches her diet closely and carefully - Need pleasure
- She sometimes like to spend the days at luxury relaxations, probably paid for by her boyfriends - Appreciation pleasure

Socio pleasure
- Rachael has a strong need to be liked and admired by others. She loves to attract attention and be the center of attention - Need pleasure
- Rachal also wants to be an appealing and powerful woman. The fail relationship between her parents made her think very carefully about commitment in relationship and changes boyfriend easily as she wants to be with the best. She doesn't want to get hurt, so she chooses to hurt others if neccessary. Self-centered with a strong need of social interaction
- She wants to be around people and admired by them. That's the reason she clubs a lot and likes to hang out with a lot of friends, even when none of them matters

Psycho pleasure
- Rachael's job needs a lot of going out and meeting client. Hence she always need to be pretty whenever she's out and about. She finds pleasure in shopping and hanging around with guys, preferably those that have crush for her. Having guys indulge her and care for her and spend on her give her a sense of empowerment. She's independent and can buy things on her own, but she still prefer to have the guys spend, as a way of proving her worth of beauty and social standard
- She considers herself to have good taste in things, especially guys.
- She's very strict with her self in term of achievement and satisfaction. She's hardly satisfied with things that she is having, always keep looking for better things.

Ideo pleasure:
- From her parents' unhappy marriage, Rachael's idology is to make the best of life. She wants to have options and being able to choose from them. She wants to live life without regrets. She wants herself to be happy, no matter how many others get hurt. Self centered and powerful are important to her.
- In term of moral values, she's extremely liberal. She doesn't want to be bounded by society and their notions of what is right. Changing boyfriend quickly, sometimes having many at the same time give her this sort of fun, empowerment and in control she always wanted. She's a Christian. However, she doesn't want to come to church or hang around with her religious cohort. She has strong admiration for young, pretty and powerful women such as Paris Hilton.

The phone for Rachael:

- Physio pleasure
+ Small and lightweight: Need
+ Sensitive keyboard with good predictive text - Need
+ Pleasing texture and open easily - Appreaciated

- Socio Pleasure
+ Unique/customized design - Appreciation
+ Large phone books to store contacts - Need
+ Using the most famous brandname

- Psycho pleasure
+ Camera and good playback of music/video - Need
+ Good design, must be really eye catching but not overly flashy-Need
+ Personalized and unique - Need

- Ideo
+ The phone that is perceived as expensive, classy, trendy and bold

Products experience in Behavioral, Reflective and Visceral

2007-01-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

User experience with product: Digicam

1. Olympus Evolt-500 Digital SLR camera:

Behavioral: great performer, bulky and not easy to handle
Reflective: cool, show-off
Visceral: very exciting with every shuttle sound, very thrilling with quality of pictures taken

2. Canon IXUS 750

Behavioral: good performer, very portable, very convenient
Reflective: not much show off value in term of gadget
Visceral: not very thrilling when used

3. Nikon Coolpix

Behavioral: good perfromer, not very portable
Reflective: Not a show off camera
Visceral: Not very thrilling or exciting to use

Assignment 1: Bad user experience

2007-01-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

In this assignment we will analyse a bad user experience and what made it so bad. Below is a screencap of my example

-User Experience: Let us hear a day of Fushan, a year 3 student in Computational Science
+ He woke up at 8:00am and was excitedly waiting for the clock to strike 9:00am. He then could start the bidding process, which is a process to register for his courses in Nationaly University of Singapore through a computerize bidding system (Think ebaying for courses)
+ 9:00am He logged on, key in his User name, Password. It should be "smooth and straight forward", he thought
+ The server returned error
+ He tried 10 minutes later. He tried again 30 minutes later. And one hour later. He was getting frustrated. He had another class, but he decided to skip so that he could bid for his very important course that he didn't get earlier on.
+ 2 hours later, the site admin relreased a statement that the server had some error. "Please check again for further notice".
+ So he checked every hour, only get more and more frustrated.
+ 11:00pm, they finally announced they fixed it. However, Fushan couldn't log in until next morning 9:00am. That night he went to sleep with the same anxiety of whether he could get his module. He prayed to God "Please let me log in to CORS tomorrow"
+ This experience already happened to Fushan for at least 3 semesters in his University life.

- Lessons learned:
+ Servers do have problem once in a while. But we don't see sites that support thousands or millions of access worldwide like Google or Yahoo screw up that often.
+ However, this problem has occured almost every semester. In Fushan's year 1 he had know that the problem was caused by "All Freshmen are not sure of the system's rule and thought it was first come first serve. Hence they jammed the system". Any system like this must be able to support multi thousand concurrent accesses. Blaming the freshmen just won't do it.
+ There are peak hours of accessing because, as students, we tend to be really nervous about courses and sometimes some students just log in to see their bidding and make sure things are going right.
+ Anxiety and annoyance when you cant get your courses in a University and you are graduating soon is really unbearable.

- Suggestions (This is just blind shooting, some may have been done by the system administrators):
+ Have alternative servers and be able to switch if one jams. Maybe dedicate one server to a few Facs and another for the others.
+ Be prepared every semester, at every round
+ Have longer period and duration for each bidding round, to reduce the anxiety in students and thinning out the peak hours.
+ When problem occurs, don't blame the freshmen or student because they all logged in at the same time. As users they are supposed to have the priviledge to log on when they want.

First post

2007-01-15T00:43:00.000-08:00

This blog is to track my progress of a new design course in NUS
A pathway = the pathway to an A (I know it's kinda lame but cant help it. Lame is the word that best describe me).
OK, just testing and talking kok with this post so the "real stuffs" will come next week.