Final reflections on UX

This is it... the end of the semester marking the start of examinations that I dread. But before I really bid this module goodbye, let me say a few things and some thoughts regarding UX design.

Assignment 0 - A good start into the module, I remembered I was trying to think of the bad designs I have came across in my life but suddenly couldn't remembered all of them for this assignment. In the end I used the clock as what I think as a bad design. From this assignment, I know how to have an eye for bad design and identify what is actually useful for the user. Sometimes when I find some things puzzling and frustrating to use, bad User Interface (UI) could be the reason, but it didn't really cross my mind at that time. And I wondered if it was my usage and being a 'bad' user really cause all the problems I was facing. But now I know that being a 'bad' user is not totally bad, it is just the bad design causing us to become one.

Assignment 1 - Wow... I have no idea that product and emotion comes hand in hand. Silly me It does. How we use a product and the emotional attachment that we bring when we use the product is very important. Sometimes this could be how experience is being build. Able to have a product pleasurable and fun to use can make the user happy and feel good. And also the subjectivity that it encompassed is wide. For a bag that I find which is practical to use (behavioural), can be a something with a meaning for them (reflective).

Assignment 2 - Difficult assignment... oops... but I remembered I spent a lot of time creating the persona for a cute Hello Kitty handphone. I learnt something new is that creating a persona from scratch is not easy, and sometimes we may be exaggerating certain aspects and ignoring other aspects. It is always useful to refer to a real person when we are creating personas for a product. I feel that a persona that we created for a product may not be the persona that the other think should be using the product. My point is that persona is another subjective thing which certain people may have different meanings and perspectives for a product.

Assignment 3 - This was called a nightmare assignment. After doing it, I think maybe it is. Although I didn't have the feeling of nightmarish doing this assignment, it could be doing this with other concurrent assignments of other modules is enough to make it nightmarish. Initally, I have no absolute idea in how to approach this other than just observation and interviews. But from what I can see, improving LT learning experience is a very big thing itself, and many factors determine the perfect environment for good learning. I learnt that there is no absolute method we can use to really improve something which is so unpredictable and subjective like learning experience which differs from people to people. The best that designers tries to do is to fulfill the needs and let the users be the ones to determine what is really for them.

Final Project - Finally the final project, I did this project with Nelson and Yee Shiang. We had a tough time to decide what product we can so before we settle on the a planner. We didn't even know we are going to do a planner when we initially were thinking about improving and imparting life skills to people, which later we realized that it is something not easily solvable by a product. Life skills is something we goes through in life so that we will learn and gain experience from. We didn't think much because we were really stuck, and then after a long discussion, we finally settle on a planner.

The most difficult part of this project is to visualise the needs and getting users to test the product. I know why the process of a good user research is messy and time consuming. It was really the case when I was doing the project. Lot of times I have to be very patient and the need to make the effort to let the user to test out our product and give us valuable feedbacks. I really want to thanks those who have give us their time in helping us in our project. Also in the process, I have learnt a lot and gain valuable experiences in UI design.

Last words - Like Reddy always said in his lectures that we cannot create experiences. I think it is a trap that designers might fall in trying to design to create the experiences, but it's just isn't the case. Experience will only come after the product is done and needs of the user are fulfilled. So needs are very important and the base where designers should use in creating their products.

Review on 'User Research Smoke and Mirrors'

The article "User Research Smoke and Mirrors" is right here.

A pretty insight read I admit. It got me into thinking of the real value of doing tons and tons user research and how it might get designers into the "wrong" track if we are not careful. I agree with Fahey point of view that it is ridiculous to make usability testing as if it is science or even make it very scientific. I feel that usability is quite a subjective matter. Some things which maybe useful to others may not be useful for others. Like some may find user interface of Mac to be user-friendly, while those who are very used to Windows might find Mac to be difficult or worse at times annoying to use. I'm not here to say that Mac is bad, but I'm just saying that things which work for some might be working for others. This is something that designers had to really keep in mind.

Like the eyetracking example that Fahey mentioned, eyetracking might be a very cool method to use as a form of user testing method. However, it will fail if it is not used appropriately. I completely agreed with Fahey that it is obviously weird and nonsensical to use eyetracking when you already know the reasons for certain aspects of design problems. I feel that if it is plain obvious that the real reason of the design is because of an serious design error, there is no need to waste time and money on superfluous user testing methods.

Certain interesting things that Fahey pointed out for example, research is completely useless when you have a capable UI designer. Although I feel it is a debatable point, it is not wrong to say that. It is completely okay to do without research if the designer really know what's good and useful for the user, and should use research whenever it is not obvious and there is a need to get unbiased feedback from the users so that the designer would fall into the trap of saying his design is definitely good.

But I feel that it is not completely fair to say that those in the senior management positions have bad design concepts and need these research results in order to be convinced. If these senior management staffs aren't good with their design concepts, probably it will be good to educate them in this area and maybe let them be the users
themselves. I feel it is also important to let them understand design flaws so that they won't make the same mistakes again. It is not exactly wise to use research especially if the method is just too devious to let them understand that unless it is justifiable. My point is it important to let those involve in the design process to know the reason for such and such design.

Since user experience from what I understand is a mostly subjective and a hardly 100% graspable topic like Mathematics or Science. It is obvious that subjective and non-scientific user research method should be employ to understand usability problems. I feel there is no hard and fast method in user research, and also it is nothing very scientific either. What we need is just common sense in helping us determine what is good for us.

Assignment 4 - Improving LT learning experience

I did this assignment with Nelson and Yee Shiang on improving learning experience in lecture theatre (LT). We had taken several types of study, mainly using laddering technique and ethnographic study: observation. We went to crash a lecture in the engineering faculty to observe the behaviours of students and how the lecture is conducted in an objective manner. The lecture that we attended was IE2101 Introduction to System Design.

We decided to embark onto this journey as we wanted to sit in the lecture to observe a lecture from a third person point of view.

And here are some of the observations that we found:
- students not paying attention
- chatting
- eating
- MSN-ing with that laptop
- lecturer droning throughout the whole lecture
- late-comers
- bland lecture slides
- students sleeping

Overall the whole an hour lecture was bland, boring and noisy (restless noises from the students). Even those who tried to listen attentively to the lecture were beginning to feel bored, started to fall asleep and find entertaining things to do like chatting with their friends. It was quite appalling for the lecturer to keep on lecturing without bothering whether the students were paying attention or not. I thought usually lecturers would pause to let the students know that they should be keeping quiet and pay attention. But in this lecture, it was really weird. Maybe the lecturer wasn't that experienced or he just didn't bothered.

Another thing was that the lecture slides were extremely wordy. Since the topic he was teaching was quite theory-centred with complex ideas, I thought he should give a clearer explaination by illustrating with diagrams and examples. Worse, he did not even pause to ask whether the students had any questions or not.


We also did the laddering approach to find out how students in general felt about the learning experience in LTs. Although by the end of the interview, many of them were quite irritated by the style of the laddering approach, most of them replied the environment was a huge factor in determining a great learning experience; while one of the them replied that all didn't matters as long as the lecturer is good in teaching and the lecture is interesting. Basically, having the mindset to learn in an interesting lecture is enough to raise the learning experience.

What the solutions that we proposed:
- compulsory effective communication courses for lecturers
- a committee to review the teaching ability of the lecturers
- graded participation for the students
- students can text message the lecturers questions via some system


From the results of these observations, I find that learning experience in LTs depends on a lot of factors. Mainly, having a comfortable environment like air-con at the right temperature (not too cold or hot); lightings comfortable on the eyes, soft-comfy chairs, visible projector screen etc. I felt that having an interesting lecturer was an very important factor in raising learning experience in LT. If the lecturer was droning on and on non-stop without injecting any humour or jokes, the lecture would probably be very boring and made students want to sleep rather than concentrate. Distractions from other students could proved to be quite fatal as other students would not be able to be concentrating on the lecture.