Week 10: Physical Design : Getting Concrete

Designing for different culture

When we are designing for a different culture like for international design, we should:
- Be careful about using images that depict hand gestures or people.
- Use generic icon.
- Choose colour that are not associated with national flags or political movements.
- Ensure that the product supports different calenders, date formats and time formats.
- Ensure that the product supports different formats, currencies, weights and measurement system.
- Ensure that the product supports international paper sizes, envelope sizes and address format.
- Avoid integrating text in graphics as they cannot be translated easily.
- Allow for text expansion when translated from English.

Scenarios in design
- Scenarios can be used to explicate existing work situation but are more commonly used for expressing proposed or imagined situations to help in conceptual design
- 4 roles for scenarios:
1. A basis for the overall design
2. For technical implementation
3. As a means of cooperation with the design teams
4. As a means of cooperation across professional boundaries

Used for the notion of plus and minus scenarios
- Attempt to capture most positive or most negative consequences of a particular proposed design solution.
- Help designers gain more comprehensive view of the proposal.

Generate Storyboards from Scenarios
How?
- Break into steps.
- Focus solely on screen.
- Focus solely on environment.
Designers are forced to think on the screen and also environment part seperately.

Generate Card-based Prototype from Use Cases

Paper prototype is a fast and easy way to change and re-design your interface.

Four important people are involved in Paper Prototyping which are:
- user
- person who acts as a computer
- someone who becomes the facilitator
- observer

Other ways of prototyping involves animatics and rapid sketch prototyping which uses a program to make it interactive.

Tool Support- support prototyping through sketching tools, environment to support widget and icons.

Week 8: Identifying needs & establishing requirements by DENYI

Identifying Needs:
Understand as much as possible about the users, as well as their work and the context of their work and system under development should support users in achieving their goals.

Definition of requirements:

- Statement about intended product that specifies what it should do or how it should perform.

- Specific, unambiguous and as clear as possible.

- Must know how to tell when they have been fulfilled.

Types of requirements:

Software engineering:

- Functional requirements: Specify what the system should do.

- Non-functional requirements: Specify what constraints there are on the system or its development.

Interaction design:

- Functional requirements: Capture what the product should do.

- Data requirements: Capture the accuracy and value the amounts of the required data.

- Environmental requirements: Circumstances in which interactive product will be expected to operate.

- User characteristics: Capture the characteristics of the intended user group.

- Usability goals and user experience goals: How well the users can perform.

Characteristics of Environmental Requirements:

- Physical: How much lighting, noise and dust is expected in the operational environment.

- Social: Social aspect of the interaction design - collaboration and coordination

- Organizational: How good is the user support likely to be, how easily it can be obtained and are there facilities/ resources for training.

- Technical: What technologies will the product run on or need to be compatible with and what technological limitations might be relevant.

Main principles of Contextual Inquiry:

- Context

- Partnership

- Interpretation

- Focus

Week 10: Physical Design - Getting Concrete

Design is about making choices and decisions
Physical interface of interactive product should not conflict with the user's cognitive process involved in achieving the task = DO NOT make user confuse and remember a long list. Instead, there should be a list of options for users to choose from.

Designing for different culture - Guidelines to help with International Design

• Be careful about using images that depict hand gestures or people ('thumbs-up', 'moutza', 'A-Ok', the 'Corna')
• Use generic icon (Folder, Lock and Floppy Disc for Save)
• Choose colour that are not associated with national flags or political movements.
• Ensure that the product supports different calendars, date formats and time formats.
• Ensure that the product supports different number formats, currencies, weights and measurement systems.
• Ensure that the product supports international paper sizes, envelope sizes and address format.
• Avoid integrating text in graphics as they cannot be translated easily.
• Allow for text expansion when translated from English.

Example: Coca-Cola VS Pepsi
Company can decide whether - produce 1 site that appeals across all cultures OR tailor to each country's website to the local culture?

Using scenarios in Design

• Scenarios can be used to explicate existing work situation but are more commonly used for expressing proposed or imagined situations to help in conceptual design.
• Four roles for scenarios:

1. i. A basis for the overall design
2. ii. For technical implementation
3. iii. As a mean of cooperation with design r
4. iv. As a mean of cooperation across professional boundaries - in a multidisciplinary team.

• Used for the notion of plus and minus scenarios
• Attempt to capture the most positive and the most negative consequences of a particular proposed design solution.
• Helping designers to gain

Using Prototypes in Design
Generating Storyboards from Scenarios

• A storyboard represents a sequence of actions or events that the user and the system go through to achieve a task.
• A scenario is one story about how a product may be used to achieve a task.
• How? - Break the scenario into a series of steps which focus on interaction. Then create one scene in the storyboard for each step.

High Fidelity & Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools

Prototype:
an early sample or model for a product before it is finalise and mass produce.It is also use for testing  by replicate a lot or learned from errors when testing.


what can considered a prototype:-
- paper based outline of a screen/sets of screen.
- Electronic 'picture'
- 3 dimensional paper/cardboard mockup 
- stack of hyperlinked screen shots 

Benefits of having prototype models :
- hand on testing in realistic setting as many as possible as long as prototype models are a lot.
- explore imagine uses *some of the setting sometimes is impossible to create.*
- interact with envisioned product

Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools :

- different design then the final product.

- it is simple,cheap and quick to produce

- using material like paper and cardboard rather than create in computer software and show to screen

- important during conceptual design are never intended to kept and integrated into final product.They are for exploration  

  only.

High Fidelity Prototyping Tools :

- using good material that would expected like final product including appearance and also material.

- prototype tools -Flash ,Visual Basic, smalltalk

- issue for creating high fidelity prototyping = 1) take a lot of time to built

                                                                       2)reviewers and tester tend to comment on superficial aspects rather than  

                                                                          content

                                                                       3)developer reluctant to change something that they crafted so long

                                                                       4)a software prototype can set expectation high.

                                                                       5) 1 error can destroy the whole model.

Week 6: User Centred Design (Chean)

User Centered Design:
User-centered design (UCD) is an approach,which prevent the process in information about the people who will use the product.It is process for user  to focus on planning, design and development of a product when they are interacting with product.

The interface of the produce are created with relevant of information from daily life of user in actions or what  to make association when looking at them and can continue next task that they one by clicking or etc. 

Method of involving user :-

-Contextual Interviews + side views

-Interview

-prototyping 

-Focus group

-Direct observations

-Indirect observations

-Studying Documentations

Difficulties of UCD:-

-Good design not always satisfied user.

 *due to users itself not really have the knowledge of design and they are more focus on what they see is nice (visually).

-Design is a collaborations between designers + customers.

*to produce a better product not only understand by 1 user or the designer itself but it also need to apply to all.

-Design envolves 

-If the input from user is wrong ,then the system will suffer.

 *user trying a lot and clicking non-stop on webside button or etc to archive what they want.Making the system hanging and lagging to continue any tasks.

The only solution to interactive to user:

- Talk to them , face to face to know the exact thing they want and expected.

Week 9: High Fidelity & Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools

What is Prototyping?
Prototyping is the process of building a model of a system. In terms of an information system, prototypes are employed to help system designers build an information system that intuitive and easy to manipulate for end users.

Type of Prototyping:
- Horizontal prototyping - breadth
- Vertical prototyping - depth

Low-Fidelity Prototyping
You can use hand-drawn sketches to create a paper prototype. If you go this route, you may also want to help your users get into the spirit of things during the test by creating a complete low-fidelity, paper environment. This could include a cardboard box made to look like a computer and an object to hold to point and click with. These techniques help users to suspend their disbelief and get their imaginations involved so that they can better visualize the interface. The advantage of using rough sketches is that users will have an easier time suggesting changes. They may even grab a pen and start making their own changes
Tools:
- Storyboarding - Sketching - Index Cards - Wizard of Oz

High fidelity Prototyping
This approach takes you as close as possible to a true representation of the user interface —screen-quality graphics. All of the blanks on the page are filled in, and it looks good. However, you might not have all of the technical or backend problems worked out yet, or you might have only a small part of the entire site rendered. That’s why it’s still considered a prototype. For example, it might consist of a small series of Photoshop images or HTML pages with just enough functional links to convey the feel of the site’s flow. You may need to enlist the help of a graphic designer or web developer to build these in a reasonable amount of time. Advocates for high-fidelity prototypes argue that they are easier for users to understand just by looking at them. There is no disbelief to overcome, and it is easier to determine when they really do not understand the design. If you choose a high-fidelity prototype, make sure the you have enough of the design fleshed out so that users can complete several tasks. Decide on these tasks early, so you know which areas of the design need to be represented for your tests. Otherwise, you will be in for a great deal of preparation work.

Tools:
- Adobe Flash - Visual Basic - Smalltalk - Microsoft Expression Blend

Warawit Whangpakdi
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Week 9: High Fidelity & Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools

What is a PROTOTYPE?
When you hear the term prototype, you may imagine something like a scale model
of a building or a bridge, or maybe a piece of software that crashes every few minutes.
But a prototype can also be a paper-based outline of a screen or set of
screens, an electronic "picture," a video simulation of a task, a three-dimensional
paper and cardboard mock-up of a whole workstation, or a simple stack of hyper linked
screen shots, among other things.

Low-Fidelity Prototyping
A low-fidelity prototype is one that does not look very much like the final product. For example, it uses materials that are very different from the intended final version, such as paper and cardboard rather than electronic screens and metal.

Low-fidelity prototypes are
- simple - cheap - quick to produce.
-quick to modify so they support the exploration of alternative designs and ideas.
-never intended to be kept and integrated into the final product. They are for exploration only.

Tools:
*Storyboarding
*Sketching
*Index Cards
*Wizard of Oz

High-Fidelity Prototyping
-uses materials that you would expect to be in the final product
-produces a prototype that looks much more like the final thing.
-full-fledged development environments
-building prototypes using them can also be very straightforward.

Tools:
*Adobe Flash
*Visual Basic
*Smalltalk
*Microsoft Blend

Compromises:
The intention is to produce something quickly to test an aspect of the product.

2 common type of prototyping:
Horizontal prototyping - breadth
Vertical prototyping - depth

Conceptual Design
Concerned with transforming needs & requirements into a conceptual model

Conceptual Model:
An outline of what people can do with a product and what concepts are needed to understand how to interact with it.