Concluding the NM4210 experience

From the 4 pleasures analysis, to Norman’s emotional framework, to the numerous testing (heuristic, usability, user) among many others, the best part of the module is that you take away all of them through the hands-on application. I think that’s really fantastic and it made me hold slight regrets that I didn’t take on more design modules the past semesters.

With the submission of this final blog entry, my NUS life has reached the end of the road as well. This module has been humbling to a certain extent. I love designing and this module has opened me up to a new arena, one that is slightly commercial but densely focused on the concept of designing.

If you ask me what is design, prior the start of this semester, I’ll probably tell you, design is something that makes you feel good, it’s intangible, hence unspeakable. On retrospection, that’s probably art I was talking about. But art was design and design was art to me. And rarely do you question the work of an artist.

Then NM4210 came and made me realise that design, a close relative of art but absolutely distinct, is the work of many people behind it – the idea conceptualisation team, the design team, the users, the clients and not forgetting, the numerous interactions between the parties to bring about the “perfect” design so as to say.

Dynamism. Interactivity. Synergy. Experience.

These are the terms that kept surfacing through the semester. Is the website dynamic? Is it interactive enough? Is there synergy? How do we bring about an experience? How can we better assure the user? All very desirable but reaching them is one tedious journey that you must be ready to go through. ‘Cause indeed, the end is sweet, the journey on retrospection is even sweeter.

Park.A.Lot™ which we have spent half the semester working on is the evidence of our very “sweet” journey.

Please Park A Lot! : )

If you call the earlier LT experience assignment a nightmare assignment, this must be the mother of all nightmares – one that you never seem to wake up from. I mean, it’s a lot of work. Testing after testing after testing, and more testing. But on hindsight, it’s through the hands on application of all things taught in class that you really learn more and absorb far beyond the typical theoretical sit-down-and-listen classes.

Fortunately, I had a team of 2 really tech savvy guys – Chee Boon and Alvin – and they really made things easier. For those who gasp, it’s them who created the flash animations. What I could only do was to come up with the graphics and prior to that, I never really expect that the graphics that I’ve done could exude that kind of feeling. They surely did take my breath away as much as they did to yours. If anything, that must be the experience factor that we have been talking about through the course.

We didn’t start easy of course. Many of our ideas were trashed right from the start of our first statement. I guess Mr Reddy had seen so much over the years, he seems to know what’s up our minds and many of our ideas were thrown out of the windows in a jiffy. Like Chee Boon’s female urinal idea, or my 2-in-1 toothbrush and toothpaste idea. I am sure till date, we both secretly still think our idea will work. But in Reddy’s words,

Think of the idea/concept, not the product.
And so we did and finally zeroed in on Park.A.Lot™ and after moulding it into shape the last few weeks, our random pebble has turned a gem in my opinion.

Throughout the module, one design dilemma that I acquired from my other design class (NM5206), albeit the theoretical one, kept surfacing. Do you design by committee, or design by individual (one with foresight to lead the team)?

For design of this project, it is probably more of the latter. I could remember struggling with the graphics ‘cause the black background and graphical images conceptualised by Boon just isn’t my “style”. And it got difficult at some juncture that you simply couldn’t capture the “feel” despite working on the same page repeatedly. I believe in “flow”, my term for implying that once you’ve capture the feel of the overall design, the rest of the inspirations just come at the snap of the fingers (Voila!).

But we pushed on with the theme, with belief in his artistic impression. Refining big time along the away and I’ve to say it really turned out to be pretty impressive, and suitable for a high tech product like ours.

I could really see it executable, and in terms of the experience aspects, it seems we covered most grounds (not all ’cause there’s always room for improvement yea). Perhaps we could really bring it into execution one of these days. If you see the Book.A.Lot™ service up one day, don’t doubt, it’s probably one of us behind it. And please do not hesitate trying out the service, we’ll be sure to bring you the experience factor. : )

As a finale, revisiting one of the slides in our very first presentation:

My take on user research smoke and mirror

In My Humble Opinion, the ridicules of how some researchers and clients choose to deceive/convince themselves by massaging subjectivity into objectivity in order to support an opinionated cause is not a surprise. The industry of web-design is simply too complex and hard to grasp given its nature; human’s interaction with technology, that “scientific” research can’t be carried out without disputes and billion-dollar investments can’t be merely based upon conjectures of so called experts.

These elements essentially gave rise to all these debates and arguments. I personally have no issue be it ethical or methodologically about the conjuring of seemingly ill constructed research and its translation into the twisted truth that may seal web redesign deals. What should be of concern is the realism researchers construct the “scientific” approach and interpret their findings to be. Researchers should be given the authority and discretion to fully utilize their judgment based on years of experience, and not feel inferior in using such ways to frame their user research. However, great care must be taken in achieving representative samples and identifying key issues to be addressed, as wrong identification of problem is synonymous to ineffective solutions that waste company’s money. Though realism should be emphasized, but the attempt to build user personas to the extent of simulation of everyday lives of target consumers is interestingly unjustifiable in any economic sense. It’s as much a marketing research gimmick as it is unrepresentative, negating all principles of marketing research.

Another aspect that is harder to control but should be given equal weightage of attention is the interpretation process of key findings and statistical data. This can be said to be just as deterministic as the problem identification process in making the research a success. Eye-tracking and many other research tools that aid web-design may prove to be very useful in generating insights, but without in depth and experienced-based knowledge in the relevant field of research, it will be like letting a greenhorn driver maneuver a BMW, preventing the achievement of full potential.

Its use as a political tool in the corporate world hasn’t been a real shocker too. It’s intuitive that CEOs and senior management can never be comfortable with speculative recommendations founded upon qualitative findings. It may be a waste of money for redundant research to be carried in such purpose but think of the potential losses that may occur if redesigns are not passed on due to “uncomfortable” stakeholders.

The article has in its best effort tried to plea for greater acceptance of qualitative and “less-than-scientific” method in this field of web-design centered upon the end-user. Risks and sure-win recommendations simply does not co-exist in this arena.

Lastly, IMHO, the smoke (in title) should be referring to the illusionary and vague existence of solutions based upon scientific and quantitative data, while mirror (in title) tells us how self-reflective some problems in this field is, that more often than not, research is redundant and unnecessary in devising solutions.

Design Probe of NUS Lecture Theatres

This week, we embarked on our first group assignment - the design probe for NUS lectures theatres.

If you asked me, I think we should have more seminar classes – one of the reasons why I enjoy modules like NM4210 and all my other business modules a lot. The class is much smaller, and somehow, people are much friendlier. Sure, lecture theatres are efficient in teaching large numbers of students within the same period of time, but teaching and the consequent learning are two different ball games. I find myself learning much more in seminar classes. The atmosphere is much more stimulating and interactive but of course, all the above have to be nicely wrapped up with a great lecturer that teaches, not preaches (which is often the case for lecture theatres).

Ok, enough of ranting. I’ve brought out several factors in creating a positive learning environment:
- Place
- Students
- Lecturer
- Content

And there are two more noteworthy points that we uncovered in the design probe process:
- Time
- Technology

I shan’t bore you with the details. In fact, what you should really do is to go download the .mov file that we uploaded. I promise you, it will be like a zillion times more interesting than textual ’cause we shifted from the norm by presenting our research results in the form of a radio talk show (affectionately named Get Red-dy).

It was hard work – nightmare is an understatement – especially for Alvin who had to piece up the audio recording and the powerpoint slides together. But Alvin, Boon and I for sure had a hilarious time doing recording. A pity we couldn’t insert the NGs into the submitted file ’cause the file size was like 34mb already.

This is what we proposed eventually – a 3 degrees cyclic model, which underlines lecturer’s initiative, student’s empowerment and technology.

 

We started with the design probe of the lecture theatres but realised in the end, quite honestly, the physical environment only serves as an enhancement/bonus in creating an ultimate learning experience. Rather, there should be on-going involvement of lecturer-student Interaction by introducing appropriate contents (activities) to build interest; the level of interactivity (low/medium/high) should be adapted to match the content.

 

One more thing I take away, I certainly do NOT have the flair of radio DJ.