THE Quote

Lessons Learnt in NM4210

With the module coming to a close (submission of softcopy and report is this friday), I must say that the workload for this module is rather heavy. However, it's one of the most interesting module that I've taken in NUS, period.

I got to know and learn all the techniques taught in the lectures. Although Mr. Reddy said during classes that we have seen these methods before, but I have not, heh. Perhaps it's because I'm from SoC, and perhaps these methods are taught in other modules taken by FASS students.

I only knew, survey/questionaire, interview, VBR & focus group b4 hand. But I've got to learn new stuff like cultual probe, laddering, card sorting, 4 pleasures framework, RMA analysis, heuristic evaluation, UX evaluation and the most used item by us throughout the final project, user persona profiling.


The Execution

Learning is one thing, executing is another! We had to learn along the way, what we did right, what we did wrong and adapt from there. Of all the methods, I thought the UX evaluation, 4 pleasures framework and persona profiling as very insightful.

UX evaluation

For UX evaluation, it is really quite straightforward for the testers to evaluate. Just giving and rating on the adjectives. It's something I'll use in the future. But then, the selecting of words used is quite tricky. Some are really closely related, and thus, there's potential biasness or "double counting", making the results incorrect.

Also, the words used might be unclear to the evaluators. Term such like contempt (which we used for Park.a.lot UX evaluation) is a word that we seldom use, and thus cant directly relate to it. Further clarification was needed.

The results from this evaluation is very tangible, i feel. We can relate to the word and the direct scores to it, making it a very fast and efficient way in getting decent feedbacks (emotion) for the product.

4 pleasures framework

We used this framework in analyzing the pleasureness that the prototype can give. It's a rather difficult framework to use though, esp when for ideological and sociological. Till today, I still cant differiente a statement immediately if it came from either category. The former is about values and the latter is about relationships. They sometimes cross each other's path (at least for myself, heh) Then again, I thought this is a really powerful tool to be used, as it covers all aspects, physical, cognitive, relationships and values.


Personas

This method of identifying users for our products is really useful. It really makes things "easier" per se, as this personas prevent us from going into feature creeping, hoping to add more and more, for more and more people. This in turn compromise the system, and thus, not able to satisfy users, which is bad. Most, if not all of our in depth evaluation used personas of our system as evaluators. It's easier to remember these "fake characters" than recalling characteristics that these people possess.


Needs 1st, solutions later

More often than not, we always come up with the solution, and try to squeeze a need into it. Sometimes, that might work, but potentially dangerous. I have really understood the need to KNOW THE NEED, so that we can better cater to the NEED. That's how Park.a.lot actually came about. We really think thoroughly what is needed for drivers, and that came up. Then slowly, our solution is simply matching the needs, enabling viewing of CP info and booking of lots.


I've learnt much from this module, and will definitely keep them in check. Cheers~!

Final Project: Design for UX VIIII

Phase 4: Evaluation (Hifi proto and UX evaluation)

Park.A.Lot just presented the final version of the proto and evaluations on tuesday. It was really work till the end.

As we did not present user testing last week, we decided to combine user testing and UX evaluation together~ via think aloud protocol (tasks scenarios given) and questionaire (based on likert scale) on emotions and pleasures.

We started work on the 2nd version very much after the presentation on phase 3c. As our intention is to come out with the 2nd version asap, and conduct the 2 evaluations, and then do some final coding and tweaking based on the evaluations.

We came out with the main purpose and objectives for our studies.

Main purpose

To evaluate whether our Hifi prototype is able to provide both functionality and user experience


Sub Objectives

Does the UI affect their surfing habits?
Are they able to complete the tasks efficiently?
Are they able to adapt after a while?
...


User evaluation + UX evaluation

The overall plan is to ask 6 testers to go through our user testing. Thru the testings, they are better exposed to the appearance/visceral feel and asethetics of the website. More importantly, the interaction between the system and the testers.

We felt that this is a better way, as compared to simply asking people to test our site aimlessly, and simply based on asethetics. The latter can be achieved with static images or graphics. Our ultimate goal is to test functionality + UX combined.

Evaluators
There's a total of 6 evaluators (3 advance 3 novice). 1 advance and 1 novice is grouped into 1. Therefore, there's 3 groups of 2 evaluators each (1 advance, 1 novice).

Part 1: User testing

There is a total of 3 tasks. Each group will be required to perform 1 task.


Task 1 (for grp 1)

• To book a lCP ot at plaza singapura the night before movie
• Bought movie tickets (Plaza Sing)
• Scenario:
• Lots will be available for booking at Plaza Sing

Task 2 (for grp 2)

• To book a lot at plaza singapura, 2 hours before show time
• Bought movie tickets (Plaza Singapura)
• Scenario:
• Lots fully booked at Plaza Singapura
• Look for alternative car parks

Task 3 (for grp 3)

• To go to a mall, that has ample lots, for lunch
• Scenario:
• To evaluate normal viewing of car park information

Results

In short, NO MAJOR HICCUPS! tat was quite a pleasant surprise for us. There were some minor issues though. Such as for grp 2, the novice wasnt sure of any nearby carparks near Plaza Singapura and struggled to think of 1. We then hinted that there's the "nearby carparks around XXXXX" function. It was then smooth after that.


Part 2: UX evaluation

There's 2 fold to our UX evaluation. Mainly, measuring Emotions (circumplex of emotions) and Pleasures (likert scale questionaire based on the 4 pleasures framework that we studied in the earlier assignment)

a) Emotions
Evalutors are to rate (scale of 1 to 5, from strongly disagree to strongly agree) on 12 main adjectives (6 good 6 bad, mixed together)

6 positives

• Inspiration
• Desire
• Pleasant surprise
• Fascination
• Amusement
• Satisfaction

6 negatives

• Disgust
• Unpleasant surprise
• Disappointment
• Contempt
• Dis-satifisaction
• Boredom

b) Pleasures

Likert scale questionaire on 15 questions, categorized into physiological, psychological, sociological and ideological

1 e.g. for each:

Physiological
I enjoy navigating the website

Psychological
I feel a sense of achievement on being able to book a lot online

Sociological
I will feel proud when my peers know that I use this novelty service

Ideological
I feel like I have the control of time management


c) Results

Emotions: Inspiration scored the highest, of a perfect score 5! followed by fascination (4.67) and satisfaction (4.33). The lowest were boredom and disgust (1 - strongly disagree)

Pleasures: We scored highest on Psychological and ideological, which we were really happy with.

However, i must admit, a more indepth study, with more evaluators, are needed to really, and truly, determine whether our site is both functional and provides UX.


Demo of proto
We ended the presentation with a short presentation of our demo. Not exactly complete, or not exactly bugfree, but it was a good representation of what we set out to achieve. We were happy with the output and response that we gathered after the presentation. We'll improve on it slightly to complete the high fidelity prototype and give the module a nice closing. :)

Final Project: Design for UX VIII

Phase 3c: Design (Hifi proto, heuristic & user testing)

We had to rush our hifi out by weekend, so that we could be able to do our heuristic and user testing. However, as murphy's law (not really ah, just that we wanted to do a realistic hifi proto), we had to spent much time on doing the asethetics out. We also had to change some of the layout.

We knew then, that we are not able to complete a "complete" hifi flash proto. Thus, we did a static version, but with graphics that are as close as our intended version. Below is what we came out with, the 1st draft of hifi proto. As we only have time for one evaluation (prep and execute), we chose to conduct heuristic evaluation + (4 targetted personas, 2 advance 2 novice) 1st, and snowball user testing to the next week (blessing in disguise will explain in design 4)

We based our evaluation on Jakob Nielson's model - the 10 heuristics

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html)

Heuristic 2: "Match between system and the real world"

one pointed out that the information button "2nd button on the navi bar" as shown above, is somewhat conflicting the 1st button. Both terms are widely used and understood as the "same meaning". Therefore, we decided to change it to "Carparks", as it was meant for the viewing of carpark information.

Heuristic 8: Asethetics & minimalistic design

Negatives

This heuristic gave us much problems, in my opinion. As we wanted to venture into providing a better UX, and really wanna find out whether a slightly more animated and graphics based website can give that. But based on feedback, it wasnt what we expected.

It was too graphics intensive, and the usage of different cars on different page, was distracting. I think that we went a bit overboard, and it was a good reality check for us, the designers. This gives us a very good platform to gauge what we will be churning out for our 2nd version (flash based)

Positives

However, all is not lost. They are able to spot the consistency of colors used, our corporate colors, black red white. That helped saved us from "failing" of this heuristic, heh.

Heuristic 9 & 10: Help users and help documentation

We knew that our website might potentially need some "adapting to" by some users, and its not exactly the most "user friendly" site, esp for first time users. Even for IPOD, which is a simple design, you do suffer a bit during the initial use, such as browsing us the wheel and thumb, the organising of cateogries etc. Therefore, we placed the HELP button quite prominently (the 4th button). This is to aid users that might potentially stuck while using (that's the extreme case).

The testers knew where the HELP button was, which was good. But they cant test it, as there wasnt much "errors" to be occured in this draft version. But, it was a good feedback anyway.

The next deliverable (final one) is the 2nd version of hifi proto, user evaluation and UX evaluation)

Final Project: Designing for UX VII

Phase 3b: Design (Analysis of paper proto)

We conducted our paperprototype user walkthru and analysed what our tester said. And they were really accurate in spotting mistakes and to helpful. Perhaps becos they are rather IT savvy. It was great for them to be critical, such that we could develop our hifi prototype easier and faster.

As it was on paper, the proto was not able to give out errors or feedback, thus users cannot test that portion. However, the testers pointed out some stuff. Such as,

• there's no next or back button (we didnt/forget to add that) when booking
• they didnt understand what is "book-a-lot" (which is part of the navi bar link for booking)
• some was confused with the words, "News" and "Announcements" (suppose to be the same thing)
• layout was somewhat weird (we intend to use more graphics then the usual static sites. It's quite difficult to convey our "flash idea" to them, esp on paper. Although this was against what our initial studies have told us. They preferred clean, simple but pleasing site. But we felt that it might not be able to give a good "UX". We decided to do a "out of the box" approach, and do the testings that will either slam or support our intentions. )

Its good to have the small little things ironed out, as they are usually hard to spot as designers. We tend to "assume" a bit (just a bit. heh)

Presenting to Mr. Reddy

We were required to inform our lecturer about our progress, findings and what we have did so far, based on our paper prototype. We summarised some quick pointers of our analysis to him and it ended quite quickly. I guess so long as our team is progressing, it should be ok. Also, its rather hard to present the findings of the paper prototype (not that its not important), or spend time preparing to present the paper, as we are heading to produce the hifi proto within a week (and conduct heuristic and user testing!)

Final Project: Designing for UX VI

Phase 3b: Design (On paper prototyping)

Paper prototyping has been a well known and widely used technique to test navigation and usability. However, I'm still curious as to why it is still so successful, even in today's context.

I chanced upon this website that i feel was quite useful. It answered some of our project's issues (and my doubts). Its called, "Five Paper Prototyping Tips" (http://www.uie.com/articles/prototyping_tips/)

Here's the 5 rules/tips mentioned, which i feel is very relevant, and some key takeaways from the site:

1. I’m proficient with HTML. I can create a working prototype fairly quickly. Why would I want to use paper prototyping?

"changes can be made on the fly during a test"
With just an eraser and pencil, changes can be done quickly. What I liken about paper prototype is that, its PORTABLE. It can be tested on the go, on the bus, mrt and places without internet connections etc.

"users feel more comfortable being critical of a paper prototype"
I think it's very true, esp for myself. I will usually not critise people's work, esp when you see them spent so much time and effort doing it. But when presented on paper, it feels more comfortable for me to voice out something that I feel is somewhat not right.

"With paper, all the team members can gather around one table with their eyes on the same design"
Very good point! I'm sure most of the peers experience this. Whenever there's project meeting, and when each of the individuals' lappy is on, there will usually be no focus on discussion. Everyone will be doing their own thing, and usually, one 'facilitator' needs to step up and get everyone's attention. Thus sometimes, I prefer meetings without lappies, or with lappies off. :)

2. How can I use paper mockups to test new technology? Trying to mimic Macromedia Flash using paper mockups sounds like a nightmare—and how would we create rollovers?

"The goal in testing a prototype is to create a usable site"
As the project requires interactivity, we will most likely turn to flash as part of our designing tool. So we faced a similar question on how to present visual that we intended to do, on a paper. Is it necessary? I guess not so, perhaps just a rough one.

"The inability to prototype a fancy effect on paper may be a warning that the effect is not usable"
I kinda 'disagree' though. It might not be usable per se, but it might have additional effects, such as UX.

"Users often choose a link to click on before seeing the associated content in a rollover"
True and not true. Some sites are really straight forward. But there's some whereby the links are actually 'pictures' embedded into the background. I cant help but just move my mouse around the screen and see is there any animations played (indication of a button).

"Paper mockups don’t need to incorporate all the frills of technology"
We will keep this in mind. :)

3. Our product has been up and running for a while. Why go back and create mockups to test an existing product? When should we start from scratch with paper?

(omitted for the purpose of this project)

4. How do you create a prototype that relies on a database? Do you create fake accounts? It seems like a ton of paperwork.

"it’s often impractical to have lots of data available"
As our team proposes a site that has a huge database of car parking info and booking data, i'm glad i read this statement. heh.

"In cases where users must look up data that is not provided in a prototype, we create tasks in such a way that we can predict the data"
As mentioned in the article, make testers do specific items, for our case, a specific car park.

"When a user enters real data into a field and the data needs to appear somewhere else later, we rely on sticky paper"
This will come in handy for stuff like registration page, or booking page.

5. It’s not easy to make links look like links in a prototype. How do you help users identify a link?

"If we see users click something time and again that isn’t a link, it’s clear what’s needed—make it a link"
Biggest takeaway.

Final Project: Designing for UX V

PHASE 3b: Design



Just had a discussion with boon and min for next week's 3b deliverables. They are mainly,

• conceptual design
• paper prototype
• user walkthrough
• analysis

We are all rather excited to see how the website will turn out to be. Anxious is the word. It's ways nice and fun and we reach the 'implementation' stage of the design, where we put our knowledge into practice. Hopefully in 2 to 3 weeks time, the prototype is ok looking and decent to use. :)

Conceptual Design

We're heading back to 'basics' for this part, looking into how we can design our website into one which is both usable and has UX. Not easy. We'll most likely take into consideration Norman's theories in designing. Lots of issue to discuss and design. Visual, navigation, visibility, affordances and others.

Paper Prototype & User walkthru

We chose this as our low fidelity prototype. Although i think that doing a high fidelity prototype of our website might be more suitable, but time is not on our side. High F enables a more complete user research and analysis, and allows users to have a better feel to the final prototype. Paper wise, we cant get as much out of it, but something is better than nothing, heh. At least they can roughly "navigate" through our system while we study them.

Our PAL team is pretty much packed this week with our other modules' submission and quizzes. So not much choice but to stick with paper. We'll be coming out with something like this: (but neater :) )

Analysis

I'll post this part once we conduct our user walk thru this weekend. Till then...

Final Project: Designing for UX IV

PHASE 3a: Design

Our team presented our slides earlier today and the coverage included:

• our products
• our target audience
• experience strategy (overall)
• functionality (brief summary)
• information structure + sitemap(the focal point)
• flowchart (user common tasks)

Information Structure (card sorting + site map)

As there was no report submission required, we could focus more on the information structure / site map (card sorting) and the flowchart.

During the weekends, we discussed and decided on using card sorting achieve our information structure. We felt that it was most appropriate as we are doing up an interactive website with much contents that needs to be organized.

We had a total of 30 items to be sorted and we made it an 'open sort', allowing users to label the categories as they deemed fit. We really wanted to see how 'users' sees them differently, from say, the designers of the system (us). Ethnography studies was took into consideration, but we felt that card sorting is something we have yet to try b4, thus, an additional 'excuse' to use execute it. heh.

We targetted 12 participants in total, 8 for a general card sorting exercise done @ optimalsort.com (http://park-a-lot.optimalsort.com/parkalot/userwelcome.php) but the online activity expired/closed on the 24th March 08. It was a free tool that we chanced upon when researching on information architecture and card sorting. It saved both the PAL team and the respondents some precious weekend time and allowing us to process the analysis quicker.

Personas card sorting

As for the other 4, we improvised the card sorting a little by targetting directly at the 2 personas profiles that we highlighted previously, mainly the convenience seekers and the price conscious. We had 2 personas for each category (total 4) and conducted a live card sorting activity with them.


We analysed all the 12 participants, and came up with mainly 7 categories for our site map:

• car park information
• booking info
• member's detail
• viewing of live info
• search
• faq
• statistical graphs and charts

This is the 1st draft from our findings and analysis. I forsee us finetuning it based on future research, such as paper prototyping and etc, or based on other factors and comments from users.

Comments and feedbacks

Some questioned was raised by Mr. Reddy with regards to the security of the transaction, the booking procedure (users supposed to key in credit info everytime they book etc) and the issues of the physical landscape, along with the potential troubles and problems that we might face, such as people exceeding his parking / booking period. We have gave some thoughts to them previously, and we will be very much finalised our proposed solution (the 3 possible implementations mentioned in earlier posts) We have to weigh the pros and cons and think thru the possible outcomes and things that can/might happen.

Next week will be crunch time, Phase 3b, which is very much the start of the 'technincal work' of our product. We have already done our paper prototype and we will get them evaluated this week, before proceeding with our website.

Deliverables next week are:

• concept generation
• low fidelity prototype (there's no way we can do up a high fidelity prototype without the expense of other modules! heh.)
• user evaluation: walk thru

till then.... :)

Reflections on reading: User Research Smoke & Mirrors (part 1 to 5)

link to article (http://www.graphpaper.com/2006/07-10_user-research-smoke-mirrors-part-1-design-vs-science)

Design vs Science

I was really surprised at how straightforward the article was written. Direct and no holds barred! It's always nice to read a paper from a "designer's perspective" as to "philosopher's perspective"), especially when I'm from Sch of Computing. Ha.

Back on the article, there's this discussion on design vs science, and particularly, eyetracking technology.

I have to admit that I would have agreed fully to what Christopher Fahey have said on the perks of design and the downside of science. My initial feel (and i always thought so) was that so long as the site is visually pleasing, navaigation is done properly, content organized in an uncluttered manner, the website can do its job of communicating information and serve its purpose. Design truimphs.

However, taking "NM5210 - critical interactive media design issues" gave me a really different light to website designing, or more particularly, enabling a positive communication of knowledge and ideas to the users. Although I have much trouble reading the papers and readings, I somewhat and somehow (i hope) am able to grasp some key insights as to what science is able to provide.

Of cos, if the website is mainly just about "our products" "about us" "contact us" etc, then design truimphs in doing so, and user research can pretty much suppliment the goodness of the website, without much help needed from science. But then, cognitive science is really something that designers should have in mind when designing stuff, and that carrying out experiments is rather crucial.

I had a hard time understanding cognitive science (and still do) because the scope of this term is extremely large. Psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, and biology etc. But then, from the papers that i've read, it seems to indicate that design and science are "separate entities", i.e. to say, most designers are not made known to science's research based principles.

Designers usually apply design principles, like norman's visceral, behavioural and reflective, affordances, feedback, mapping, visibility etc, applying ad-hoc principles to their website designs, and do not take much into considerations of the science's portion, things like scaffolding and learning theories etc. There seems to be a gap needed to be bridged between design and user research, with science and its theoritical, empirical studies etc, in order to provide users with websites that are both functional and provides UX.

Convincing the boss / clients

It was really funny how the writer mentioned about convincing the boss or the clients, throwing in all sort of "supporting documents" to induce them in giving them the nod of a job well done. Having some personal experience on freelance jobs and school projects, it is somewhat diffcult to convey the design issues to them, esp when one doesnt know what he or she wants, or when they dont browse their own websites often. I edited the mario pic that he posted in his article, and hopefully, he can use or try this tactic in the future. Who knows? It might work . :)

The bullshit thingy is quite humorous though. Finding means and ways to clinch deals. There's really lots of issues for one to ponder.

Designing something u think is good

Designing something u think end users will like

Designing something u think boss will like but u know clients wont like

Designing something u think clients will like but end users wont like

and the list goes on...

Final Project: Designing for UX III

PHASE 2: DEFINE

The deliverables for this phase is quite a bit, esp coming out with the persona and experience strategies (something that is quite 'open' in a way)

Deliverables are:

i) report on phase 2
ii) 8 min presentation
- Need for product
- Possible solutions (based on user research)
- Target users and user profile
- Personas - advanced and anti user
- Functionality specifications
- Experience strategy
- Product benefit specification

Need for product (Focus Group)

To finish up where we started off, we decided to do a quick focus group with 15 respondents, with the aim of gathering more data and info on the needs and proposed solutions for PAL, as we felt that the initial interview results was decent, but not sufficient.

The focus group was proved useful to us, with most agreeable with what we are proposing, but suggested some interesting stuff ( to be elaborated below )

The 5 main takeaways (in brief) from our analysis are:
i) timeliness info (high accuracy of information, 24/7, up-to-date)
ii) navigation (ease of browsing, organized website)
iii) concise booking procedures (for both online and sms. Step by step guide preferred)
iv) secured and cashless (major credit cards and topping up via AXS stations/7-11)
v) affordability (low or minimal booking fee)

Target Users and profile

The Assignment 2 that we did did proved useful! We were able to churn out the persona profiling with previous knowledge of the dos and donts. We finally came out with "The Convenience Seekers" and the opposing "Price Conscious". Ultimately, our product does cater/ or hope to cater to users/drivers who wants to be in control of their time, being able to book a lot @ their own convenience and enjoy the perks of the seamless and convenient booking system. Time saved. As the saying goes, a happy customer is a paying customer (my saying, haha), making it a win win situation to both parties (users and client).

Functionality Specifications

The entire research and project is pretty much user based, thus our approach of the user-centric design. With much info gathered from the interview and focus group, we were able to come out with the functionality requirements, which are mainly,

i) Aesthetics (simplicity, visually pleasing, balance of images, text, animation)
ii) Workflow & Info Architecture (Uncluttered, 3 clicks approach, speedy system response)
iii) Interactivity (one of our key in providing UX in our website. Must have visibility, affordance and mapping in an unique and interactive format)

We try to keep our focus in these 3 main areas first, if not, there will most definitely be a tendency of having a feature creep. We will then be stuck in the 'overpromise, underdeliver' situation.

However, we will still keep users in the loop thruout the creation of our product life cycle, making appropriate changes and additional features when necessary.

Experience Strategies

This was sort of the 'toughest' part of this phase's deliverables. Although we firmly believe in the user centric design, we are also aware of the cons that it potentially brings. One harmful aspect as mentioned by Norman is the possibilities that we change something/feature for a certain group of users, but indirectly making another group 'unhappy'. It seems like a double edged sword. We should weigh the cost and benefits before doing the change. This leads to one of our X Strategies: Increase adoptions and conversions.

We will and want to make improvements and changes, but the end product that we are seeking from changing, is to get new conversions of users, and not losing current ones!

The other important point is to enhance customer satisfaction thru maintaining the system's interactivity and asethetics. It is somewhat agreeable to the phase "Attractive things work better", and this goes inline with BJ Fogg (Stanford)'s emphasis on persuasion (thru visual designs and expected content)

These 2 major experience strategies, along with UCD, are pretty much our focal point in our PAL system.

Comments and feedback

There wasnt as much feedback to most of the groups as compared to the presentation on phase 1. Perhaps most of the people were rather critical initially to the novelty ideas presented (something which Mr. Reddy forced us to do, ahah.)

One quick note from gerald was that he mentioned the high take up rate of GPS in the states and he believes that our system can go hand in hand with the GPS system rather well. We agreed totally. As per our 1st presentation, we mentioned GPS as one of the medium that we are hoping to use. However, the take up rate is still not high at all. I think its like, less than 5% of the private vehicles are equipped with GPS. HOWEVER,

if you read the news recently (a blog's perspective - http://blog.simplyjean.com/2008/02/07/singapore-to-adapt-gps-for-erp-and-other-miscellaneous-stuffs/) it seems that in the near future, most, if not all vehicles will have GPS "connectivity" onboard them. This will really make our system high integrated to the GPS technology, and thus, more convenience to the end users.

Final Project: Designing for UX II

PHASE 1 : DISCOVER part II (Need Analysis)

Immediately after the approval of the idea, we (PAL Team) went straight to our fav brain storming area (discussion room @ central library) and started another long session of storming... brand name, taglines, product name, company name, client, end user etc etc. We spent a long time thinking of the name "Park-A-Lot", ahha. REALLY LONG.

Then came the thinking process for the deliverables for Need Analysis,

i) 1000 words report (proposal)

ii) powerpoint presentation of need analysis

We drafted out our present scenario, looking into and fine tuning our original idea of the need, which is solving the car parking issue, and better time management when people drive to town/cbd. We also went to find some local statistics from government sources and are really overwhelmed by the statistics.

In 2006. 71% of population has household access to internet
In 2008 Jan to June, there's 5.8 million mobile subscribers

We also then conducted a short interview session with 20 respondents, asking them about the present scenario of car parking and getting a response from them. As we had less than 1 week, a full scale interview was difficult. Nevertheless, the response from the were extremely positive.
Most of them felt such a problem and would gladly see what we can offer to solve the problem.

Some quotes from them:

"parking very expensive"

"difficult to find place to park"

"try not to drive there"

"sian"

Business Objectives

With the above mentioned, we aim to achieve and implement a full fletch system to cater for the needs of the service in providing

i) higher certainty of parking lots

ii) better time management to drivers

iii) providing better overall car parking experience (directly or indirectly, to both clients and end users of the system)

Target Group

We then went on to define our target group: Mainly driver of all age groups. For the initial phase, we aim to target at shoppers in town, along with workers and frequent travellers in CBD. We also tot of narrowing down to the young working adults and middle class workers, who are mostly likely IT savvy.

Park-A-Lot System

Although we were only suppose to present the Needs, we thought that we should have something tangible for our "clients" (peers) to have a better feel of what we are proposing. We have not think too in depth, just the medium that we are going to use and a one liner description of the system.With the strong supporting statistics that we have gathered, we decided to aim both the online and mobile group to better cater to their needs. Website + SMS + GPS (future, based on future take up rate) These 2 + 1 services allows users to view and book lots 24/7.

Comments and feedback

The response was generally ok. Not much critical feedback (phew~) but some concerns and positives were raised.

Problem on specific lot

Wei wei mentioned about the issues that might occur if we are to implement and allow people to book a "Specific Lot" in the mall. Our group has actually went though a lot of storming regarding this, and we came up with 3 initial solutions to the implementation of the idea (booking of lot).

i) Booking of specific lot (best and most marketable, but will run into many forseeable and unforseeable problems, such as people overrunning their booking period etc etc)

ii) A lot at an enclosed booking region (perhaps 10% of the total capacity of the mall and will adapt accordingly to market situations. Will have less problems)

iii) By entry booking (Suppose there's 1000 lots, and 50 booked by users. The gantry will only allow 950 non-bookings to go thru, leaving 50 empty lots for the 50 users)However, these 3 ideas are not fool proof, and there's some actual assumptions that we have/will make/made. Such as, the mall will not be fully parked throughout the entire night etc etc.

Problem on physical landscape

Another issue pointed out is of course, whether the users are able to make their way to the gantry without avoiding the long queue that is already present. We also tot of this before the presentation and some suggestions and assumptions are:

i) supposed the client agrees to the idea, they are willing to make additional entries solely for season parking users and users of PAL

ii) allowing back door entry (like season parking works), usually thru loading bay etc

iii) and etc

the next phase is the define phase, a deeper analysis of the needs, persona profiling and experience strategies.

Final Project: Designing for UX I

PHASE 1 : DISCOVER part I

For the past one month, we have been busy with the final project for NM4210. I'm teaming with boon and min, the same team for assignment 3: Improving the learning experience @ lecture theatre. This time around, the workload is 2 to 3 times more!

Here's the project description: "For final project you have to actually design and develop (prototype) an interactive product. This could be a website, a software application, a game...." Yap, short and sweet, with many possibilities. Heh.

With much research and the lectures given by Mr. Reddy, we somewhat know what is 'user experience'... but the tough part is the idea! We were initially quite blurred by the requirements, as we tot that it was supposed to be an "IT" product, something that got to do with technology. After clarifications, we were told that any product or idea is ok, so long its a good and money making product. Heh. So that widen the scope, a little.

Initial Ideas & Brainstorming

It is always the toughest part, thinking of a novelty idea or product that can earn millions. Especially when we need to come out with something that has the fine elements of usability and UX. The former is already quite tough, let alone combining both of them together. And then there's this common human tendency tat we always try to think of a product first b4 solving a need. Very wrong.

Although we might end up with the same end product (coincidently), looking for the perspective of solving a need is very much more critical than taking care of the functionality the product has. It is something Mr Reddy strongly emphasize on, even on other modules, like 2208 or 3208, and even 4205. If we started off with a product, what we will be doing is to fine tune the product, and not finetuning the needs. I'm sure most of us are caught in similar situations before. Heh. (Staying true to this methodology or philosophy did help us coming out with PAL, and some other critical projects, like the stock market stimulator in 3208.)

Apart from that, we had to define our end users, our clients and our very own company~ There are just many needs to be solved. But the solutions to it is either already created or it's not fanatastic at all.

It was rough initially, having some of our ideas rejected by Mr. Reddy during class. The 1st was to solve the problem of the long queues @ most, if not all, ladies toilet. I think there is a general need for this problem, but our proposed solution is some what already been done, overseas. And according to Mr. Reddy, was quite a failure. Sigh. We kinda knew of 2 products that can indirectly solve this problem, make that 3 (<--this is quite nonsense and straightforward)

1st was a urinal meant for ladies. 2nd was the paper funnel thingy that allows ladies to use the normal mens' urinal. The 3rd, well, is to simply allocate more space allocation to the ladies toilet when architects are designing new malls etc...

Our idea was actually to build a small compartment, big enough to allow ladies to do their thing, but much smaller than the current cubicle. As our product was meant to allow ladies to do "small business" only, it allowed us to make the "compartments" small. We also wanted to redesign the urinal (ladies) and to promote a "new experience" when using our "compartment".

I felt quite positively for this idea, but when Mr. Reddy told us that the whole urinal thingy was a failure, we didnt pushed for it further (although i still feel something can be done! i might, if i have the $ in the future.)

The 2nd idea was from boon. He felt that the IBM lappies are kind boring, mainly black and mechnically looking. Something can be done to it. So we tot of ideas to repackage it into a more vibrant product, as we know that IBM are known for their stability and fine architecture for their lappies. But then, the feedback was that it was kinda turning into a "campaign" or a sales or marketing thingy... Thus, no more pursuing of the idea.

Some other ideas came to our minds too, but most are rejected too. ARGH.

So finally..........

Draft Idea

We met a couple of times more in school @ library and cracked our brains... trying to think more novelties..... And we had 2! After many hours of brainstorming and feedbacks from one another...
Boon went to meet Mr. Reddy as min n i couldnt make it during that time slot. And we have some positive results.

The 1st was something to do with weight management. (which died too).

The 2nd and the final idea that got "accepted" is....... PARK A LOT SYSTEM!

This system/product serves and tries to solve the need of looking for a car park @ town / CBD (better time management) As most drivers will know, securing a lot at the major malls are rather difficult, esp so during peak periods.

So this system, Park-A-Lot (PAL) allows 24/7 viewing of live car park information and also the booking of a lot! Yap. We envision that drivers are allowed to book lots even b4 reaching their destination. This saves precious time queueing and hunting for a lot. less hassle. more convenience.

And so, we stayed on with this idea, and pushed on...

Assignment 3 - Designing Probe

Nightmare indeed. We were warned by Mr. Reddy that it was the proclaimed "Nightware assignment" by past students of the module. Yes it was.

Its not so much about the workload per say, but trying to find a solution (which might never exists!) No right or wrong (which sometimes happens to be more difficult!) Boon, min and myself spent quite a bit of time brain storming, what methodology to use and all.

To make matter worse, it was e-learning submission week~ Meaning we had to submit our presentation online (which was nightmare to us - our submission just hung it there for several times. Finally got it uploaded though)


General Theme

As it was e-learning week, we thought of using the theme of a Radio show to convey our design probe for lecture learning experience. It is similar to radio shows that invites guests into the record room to "learn from the experts".

Methods

We used mainly 3 methods, VBR (visceral, behavioral and reflective) analysis on 4 lecture theatres, cultural probe and laddering. It is quite a weird combi per se, but Mr. Reddy did mentioned that we ought to improvise and mix-&-match techniques and methods. That's what we did. Heh.

Research and execution

We sought of spent quite a bit of time surveying suitable lecture theatres, and executing the laddering and cultural probe. Most were not sure what they were, so we gotta explain and show-tell what to do etc. It didnt turn out too bad, as laddering enabled us to go down to the root of the problem.

Recording voices and dialogues

We brainstormed for quite a long period as to how we can convey our dialogues through a "conversation". In the end, we came up with 3 fictious characters, a lady DJ (min), a prof (Boon) and a research assistant (me!). We chose the library discussion room for the recording of the dialogues as there's this "echo" feel that the room can provide, which mimics the recording studio's.

NGs

Yes, we cant possibly record the entire conversation at a go! And guess what, we had a total of 62 NGs, heh. We spent like around 3 hours recording in the room.

Analysis

We finally came out with a conclusion, based on 6 factors that affects the overall experience.

They are:

Main factors

• Lecturers
• Students
• Content

"Minor" factors

• Technology
• Time
• Place

Below is the proposed cycle that all can use it as a reference in providing a better LT learning experience.

Preparation work must be done by the lecturer, knowing the subject matter and preparing the teaching materials (interesting ones if possible).

That's how you can get the students engaged and have a 2 way interaction/communication. With this achieved, students will thus be interested in learning.

To further engage students, there should be challenging activities and content that students can construct new knowledge and higher order thinking, and not memorization or other traditional way of learning.

There will be decent payoff, say students construct new knowledge, and will be able to apply the knowledge to new scenarios etc.

Lessons learnt

It was a tough "need" to satisfy, and there's no one solution to this demanding need, as no students learn the same way. However, we can assume that there are several distinct groups whereby the way of learning is similar. We hope our framework can be applied to all the groups though. :)

Assignment 2 - RMA, Story, 4 Pleasure Analysis & Product Spec

Reverse Marketing Analysis

Product Feature

• Ralph Lauren Leather Boots

Physical

• Fair type skin
• Black dark hair
• Long tied hair
• Perfect eyesight (but will wear no degree spects)
• Denim. fur and leather person

Background

• 27, Female
• Singaporean
• Graduated overseas
• 175cm, 55kg
• Chinese
• Only child
• Merchandiser with Club 21
• Family stays in a bunglow at Holland village

Character

• Highly independent
• Well to do
• Individualistic
• Westernized
• Sociable

Hobbies

• Riding
• Shopping
• High class dining
• Jet setter
• Extreme sports
• No pets

Story of Fion Lim

Background

• Being the only child in the Lim family, Fion, 26, is not really exactly spoilt per say but extremely pampered. Since young, she had in possession of many things that other kids can only dream of. Branded clothing, expensive toys, posh meals and a well-decorated room fully customised to Fion's liking
  
• Although her family has their own family business dealing in importing and exporting of canned foods, she did not liken the job industry. She was really interested in the fashion industry. Thus, immediately after her O levels, she applied for a fashion-designing course in France and studied for 3 years before returning to Singapore. She would have likened to work overseas, but her parents objected aggressively

Career

• Being a merchandiser with Club21, she gets to enjoy the frequent travels that her job requires her to. She never fails to clinch business deals. For that, her company recognized her achievements and treat her with high regards

Fine dining and posh restaurants

• Fion has never stepped into a hawker centre or an ordinary food court. What she prefers are posh restaurants at city/town area. But she can’t do without a company. She enjoys gossiping with them while enjoying her meals

Extreme Sports and Riding

• Apart from her classical hobbies such as shopping and dining at posh restaurants, she does have an extreme side of hers


• She likes extreme sports, such as adventure rides into the forests in Malaysia, water skiing and mountain climbing. But in order to maintain her fair type skin, she will never go without her XXX sunscreen during outdoor activities. She simply enjoys the thrill of taking part such activities but hated the ugly tan lines and uneven tones

Riding a Harley and BMW

• Once a month, Fion will always meet up with her riding partners for a trip up north to Malaysia. Having owning 2 bikes, mainly the BMW 1200 GS and the Harley Davidson 1200 Roadster cruiser, she is able to cruise and tour around Malaysia


• Alternatively, she can do her adventure rides, riding and conquer terrains in the forested and deserted areas in western Malaysia


• As a lady who enjoys wearing leather and fur, it isn’t difficult to know that she is not an animal lover. Despite the fact that her family owns an Alsatian dog, she usually avoids interacting with the dog

Shopping and dressings

• On average, she usually spends almost half of her monthly salary in shopping. Her dress code changes daily. From the posh dresses to rugged look to classy shirt and plan. But, the denim and leather are definitely found in her clothing.


• Boots are a must have for her. She bought a two by four metres square cupboard just to store her collection of boots that she bought around the world


• Regardless of her perfect eyesight, she enjoys shopping for no-degree specs, especially those in bold colours such as red or yellow

Hair care

• She enjoys keeping her hair in shape to maintain her classy look. She also likes the feeling of her hair being washed and styled. Fion usually visit her hairdresser once a month to get her hair trimmed


• Even her hairdresser, Goliath, joked on her frequent visits to his salon,” Easy money for me. It’s usually ½ a centimetre off her hair ends and fringe. 10 minutes work. $250. I would love to have more customers like Fion.”

Boy-Girl relationship (BGR)

• Of all the five relationships that Fion had previously, none of them actually exceeded 3 months. It is mainly due to her frequent travels that her boyfriends are unable to cope with

4 Pleasure Analysis

Physio - pleasure

• Extreme sports enable her to burn off her calories (from dining fine class food) and stay in shape (Need pleasure)


• Enjoys the thrill from extreme sports (Appreciation pleasure)
  
• Enjoys splurging money on high end goods during shopping (Appreciation pleasure)


• Enjoys hair salon sessions. Likes the feeling of her hair being cut, washed and styled. (Appreciation pleasure)

Socio - pleasure

• Enjoys being with her friends, especially during riding trips up north (Appreciation pleasure)


• Owns the most expensive bikes (she has 2) among her riding friends, thus most are envy of her (Appreciation pleasure)
  
• Liken the enjoyment and company during fine class dining, where good food, gossiping and chit chatting must haves (Appreciation pleasure)

Psycho - pleasure

• Always have a sense of achievement after completing a long distance trip (say to Kuala Lumpur or Hainoi) (Need pleasure)
  
• Feels good when she is able to communicate with foreigners on foreign land with different languages each time, whenever she flies out of Singapore for her overseas business trips

Ideo - pleasure

• She seeks to be an aspiring and successful career woman. She never fails to clinch business deals. Thus her company and her fellow colleagues recognize her deeds and accomplishments (Appreciation pleasure)
  
• She is always seen and perceived as a very classical and posh lady, be it when working or riding or during extreme sports. Her dressing to details and personal etiquettes ensures that she is perceived as one (Need pleasure)

Product Benefit Specifications of a handphone for Fion

Introduction

• With such a lavish and luxury lifestyle of Fion's, only a handphone that is elegant and posh will be able to match and protray her image and status


• One handphone that suits Fion perfectly is definitely the Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte

Specifications

• Has a gemstone on directional pad of the phone (posh and class)


• Wrapped with coffee brown leather at the front and back of phone (elegant look, suits her dressing)


• Tri-band phone type


• Networks: GSM 900, 1800 & 1900 (allows excellent connectivity in Singapore and overseas


• 3G and GPRS supported (able to surf the net while travelling)


• Lightweight and slim (able to store it easily in handbags or carry)

Assignment 1: Products and emotion

Being a vespa rider myself, I've decided (quite instantly) that I'll choose 2 wheelers as my subject matter as soon as this assignment was announced. Heh.

Task:

• To choose 3 products from a category choice ("2-wheelers" motor vehicle) and to list down my reflections, based on Norman's framework of Visceral, Behavioural and Reflective.

First up,

Brand: VESPA
Model: GT60
Type: Scooter
Info:

• Produced to celebrate Vespa's 60th Anniversary
• Limited edition
• Only 999 pieces in the world (only 2 in Singapore)
• Fastest Vespa scooter to date
• 250cc engine

Visceral:

• Retro & modern cool
• Attractive
• Lifestyle item
• Stylish
• Timeless

Behavioural:

• Comfortable to ride (big seats, automatic)
• Safe to ride (2 disc brakes)
• Good for city riding
• Excellent handling
• Practical (huge storage space - front glove box, under seat, optional rear box)

Reflective:

• Professional
• Self Image
• Classy

Second product choice,

Brand: BMW
Model: R 1200 GS
Type: Sports Tourer
Info:

• Titled "Ultimate long distance enduro for the globetrotter and adventurer"
• 1170cc twin boxer engine

Visceral:

• Attractive
• Thrilling
• Exciting

Behavioural:

• All terrain motorvehicle (On and off road riding)
• Dynamic performance
• Riding comfort for long distance riding
• Bad for city riding (bulky)
• Powerful
• Functional & roomy

Reflective:

• Adventurous
• Self Image
• Elegance
• Outgoing
• Show off
  

Lastly,

Brand: Honda
Model: Super Cub 50 ("kapcai")
Type: Scooter
Info:

• Named "Greatest ever motorbike" in 2006 by Discovery Channel 's Greatest Ever Series
• 50 million units sold worldwide
• 50cc engine
• 1 litre of petrol => 146km

Visceral:

• Not very exciting
• Timeless
• Simple

Behavioural:

• Easy manoeuvering
• Versatile
• Very Robust
• Excellent fuel efficiency
• Able to carry heavy loads
• Good for city riding
• Sturdy
• Reliable

Reflective:

• Not a show motor vehicle (no showoff value)
• Outgoing
• Not trendy
  

Some quick peeks at why the CUB is so popular worldwide!

"Greatest Motor vehicle" by Discovery Channel

Norman's Framework

A quick refresher of norman's work. Came across these terms when I took NM2216 and CS3240. Quick pointers.

Visceral:

• Initial impact of the product's appearance
• The "I WANT IT" factor
• Physical beauty that hides all of its possible flaws

Behavioural:

• Look and feel
• Behaviour of the product
• Total experience of using it

Reflective:

• Image presented to the user
• The message that send to others about the owner's taste
• Brand power
• Proud to own one

Assignment 0 - Bad Design

Product: BBQ pit Shelter @ a Condo

Bad design: Open air-styled shelter

Users: Susan & Fern
Scenario:

• Vespa Club Singapore organized a BBQ gathering @ the Condo
• 22nd Dec 07, 1800 - 2200hrs
• It rained heavily from 1630 till 1845hrs
• Users are asked to recall the experience during the gathering
• They will also base their comments on a similar BBQ gathering (which did not rain) that was held on the previous year

Users' reactions are as follows(direct quotes):

a) Feelings towards products

i) Susan

• Ventilation is good, if no rain
• Best if no shelter at all (she was commenting this as she feels that the shelter did not serve its "purpose", which is providing cover)
• Sucked

ii) Fern

• Good for non rainy days, but does not cater for bbq during rainy days
• The metal grills above the pits, provides good ventilation, however, it also allows for rain water to seep through

iii) @lvin

• Useful if it does not rain
• Helps to filter off direct sunlight (for day BBQ)
• Should inplace glass panels or retractable shutters in the event of rain
• Not user-friendly
• Cause extreme inconvenience in the event of rain

b) Lessons learnt from the product

i) Susan

• Will use it again, provided no rain lor

ii) Fern

• Only certain areas under the shelter can ward off the rain. And that the structure is only good for non rainy days

iii) @lvin

• To always plan for contigency plan when organizing a BBQ at the condo
• Book a function room in advance to cater for wet weather

c) Impression of brand (developers of the condo)

i) Susan

• Bad designer / contractor
• Whoever built that has no experience with BBQ

ii) Fern

• Overall good pit design, but the shelter is not catered for rainy days

iii) @lvin

• Unfavourable
• Failed to weigh all factors when building the structure

Summary

• Although we live in an equatorial country, the occassion rainy days and the seasonal raining period during the year will make the shelter a badly designed product
• BBQ sessions are often hard to come by, difficult to organize, and a time whereby family and peers gather for some fun and laughter. Thus, cancelling a session due to rain is rather uncalled for, especially when the venue is at a premium condominium and when a "shelter" is provided

Solutions

1. A "dual role" shelter (for either sunny and rainy days), that has shutters that can be user-controlled depending on weather
2. Upgrade the current shelter by installing glass or aluminium panels to the existing metal panels
3. Installing a BBQ shelter that is weatherproof, using materials such as concrete, bricks, glass or decorated zinc sheets

A simple flash demo showcasing Solution 1

Usability vs User Experience (UX)

These are 2 terms that were introduced during our 1st nm4210 class. I first met them when I took CS3240 and NM2217. Its pretty confusing initially, but there's always Google. Heh. Some quick definition:

Usability: the ease of use of a product

User Experience: something (feelings towards the product) that makes you feel happy or enjoyable while using a product

A quick analogy:

Usability: Driving a car via CTE from A to B (exclude the peak hour jam and erp charges, heh) It gets you from A to B quickly, but its pretty boring driving on expressways.

User Experience: Driving a car via small/trunk roads from A to B. There's more things to see and feel, such as the shopping malls, heartlanders, more greenary etc etc. But the time taken will definitely be longer (most of the time)


But question is, can we have the best of both worlds? Are we able to combine UX & Usability together to create a product that can win the hearts of many? It's not as easy as it seems, but it's not impossible. The one product that you and I can think of off our mind that has achieved that is, the iPod,
and most definitely, the iPhone as well. =)