WEEK 4

Watch the video of Bill Verplank s opening keynote talk to the IXDA conference in 2011

Bill Verplank is an interaction designer, and he has an amazing ability to draw at the same time as he talks.

In this video he explains the context of interaction design with paradigms that serve as patterns for the way people think about the subject. He describes the process of designing interactions with a concise diagram, and gives an example to illustrate it.

(Picture 1. Lijie’s sketchbook)

How user experience can be broken down into what the user does, thinks and feels.

“It is very hard to know what people thinking, designers should pay much attention of people’s think and how they know.” Bill said.

(Picture 2. Lijie’s sketchbook)

People have a certain kind of knowledge and ability to do things, some people know that what they see and some people know that what they do.

There are three questions: How do you do? How do you feel? How do you know?

“Even the simplest appliance requires doing, feeling and knowing. I can flip a light switch and see (feel?) the light come on; what I need to know is the mapping from switch to light. The greater the distance from input (switch) to output (light), the more difficult and varied are the possible conceptual models; the longer the delay between doing and feeling, the more dependent I am on having good knowledge.

How do you do?

What if the light can be dimmed? Then I might use a continuous control or handle. One basic choice for how we do things is that of button or handle; discrete or continuous.

A handle allows continuous control both in space and time. When I press a button (e.g. ON) the machine takes over. Buttons are more likely symbolic. Handles can be analogic. With buttons, I am more often faced with a sequence of presses. With a handle a sequence becomes a gesture. I use buttons for precision, handles for expression.

How do you feel? The choice of senses (hearing, seeing, touching, etc) determines what we feel about the world. The medium is the message.

Marshall McLuhan divided all media into cool and hot. Based on the sensory qualities of media, he described indistinct or fuzzy media like TV as “cool” after the jazz of his age (‘50s). In contrast, the high definition of things like print, he called hot – think of them as too “hot” to touch. McLuhan’s cool media invite completion and participation; hot media are definitive and already complete, they discourage debate. Designers are continually faced with this choice of suggestion or clarity, metaphor or model, poetry or law.

How do you know?

The new challenge for Interaction Design is the complexity of behavior possible with ubiquitous computers. Some simple theory of how people know may be useful. A conscious consideration of what we are expecting of the people for whom we are designing is essential.” (Bill Verplank, 2009)

The experience design techniques

 

 

 

WEEK 3

Persona

This is week 3, in this blog I will think about persona.

What is personas?

A persona is not the same as an archetype or a person.

Personas are a kind of method based on real users Personas are used for Information Technology system development to being used in many other fields, including development of products, marketing, planning of communication, and service design.  A persona across to design a particular audience segment for a website, product or service, based on various types of qualitative and quantitative research. ‘It captures a person’s motivations, frustrations and the essence of who they are.’ (Chris, 2013).

“A persona is defined by its personal, practical, and company-oriented goals as well as by the relationship with the product to be designed, the emotions of the persona when using the product, and the goals of the persona in using the product (hence Goal-Directed).

In other words, it is the users’ (work) goals that are the focus of the persona descriptions, e.g. workflow, contexts, and attitudes. And, as implied, the advantage of the method is that it provides a focused design and a communication tool to finish discussions.” ( Lene, 2017)

There are ten steps should in a good persona:

• 1.Data collected.
• 2.Formation hypothesis
• 3.Hypothesis accepted by everyone
• 4.Establish the final number of personas 
• 5.Personas described
• 6.Situations prepared
• 7.Acceptance is obtained from the organization.
• 8.Knowledgedisseminated
• 9.Prepares scenarios for everyone
• 10.The future life of the persona descriptions
• Personas could give a great start in understanding about designing, and a very practicality tool for our study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Picture 1, Lijie’s sketchbook)

Why personas might be useful to a design team and any criticisms of this method?

The persona approach stems from IT system development where in the late 1990s many researchers had begun reflecting on how you could communicate an understanding of the users.

Creating user personas is a fantastic way to get stakeholders to focus during design and content creation. “Ask for what you want and you’ll get it. If you don’t ask, people won’t know what you want.” (Theresa, 2011) A persona is a single, fictitious person who represents the needs and wants of many people.

Designers, whether they be information architects, interaction designers, visual desigers, design for tasks and scenarios based on personas. When we know what specific types of people need, we could create effective designs.

(Picture 2)

WEEK 2

Design Thinking

This week, I had read two articles, Lucy Kimbell’s ‘Rethinking Design’ (Thinking part 1. Design and Culture) and Jon Kolko’s ‘Design Thinking Comes of Age’, and watched a video called ‘What is Design Thinking.’

What is design thinking?

‘Design thinking could be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy could convert into customer value and market opportunity’ (Tim Brown, 2008). After reading the above data, then I start thinking about the relationship between design, designer, design thinking, and culture. In my opinion, culture could influence design, designer and design thinking, design, designer and design thinking  create culture.

(Picture 1. Lijie’s sketchbook)

Design thinking as a way of thinking, it is generally believed that nature has the ability of comprehensive processing and it could understand the background of the audiences. A small cup, a large building, tangible products such as intangible, such as IOS system, a team, a regime – could find the shadow of design thinking.

In The Design of Business, Roger Martin presents a different way of thinking about design thinking. Martin argues that design thinking gives business a competitive advantage. “In contrast to Brown, who does describe what professional designers do and make and what they are attentive to, Martin focuses on methods used by successful managers he interviewed and examines how firms as a whole function. His version of design thinking deals less with individual cognitive styles and doesn’t present sets of material practices; rather, he focuses on systems of organization. Finding a better balance between exploration and exploitation, and between abductive as well as inductive and deductive reasoning, is what Martin calls design thinking.” (Martin, 2009).

(Picture 2. Lucy kimbell)

Some ethnographic accounts of design thinking do not make distinctions between designer and world, or between re- searcher and object of study and produce “thick description”(Geertz 1973) of what goes on during designing.

What Is a Design-Centric Culture?

• Focus on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones.
• Create models to examine complex problems.
• Use prototypes to explore potential solutions.
• Tolerate failure.

References

Lucy, K. 2011. “Rethinking Design Thinking”: Part I, Design and Culture, 3:3, 285-306

Geertz, C. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, pp. 3–30. New York: Basic Books.

Martin, R. 2009. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is theNext Competitive Advantage. Cambridge MA: Harvard BusinessPress.

WEEK 1

Reading “The Future of Design” and “The People Formerly Known as the Audience”

I have read two online articles recently, they are “The Future of Design” and “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” respectively. Here are some of my personal impressions after I’ve read these two articles

The role of the designer

Design as a craft, Designers as “design thinkers”.

with the 21st century’s increasing sophistication of the technologies for home, business, education, and entertainment, the skills of the craft no longer suffice. As long as designers remain craftspeople, they can add value, but they cannot take the lead. Engineers and business people decide what is to be done: designers help enable the results, but they are seldom the leaders. Design as a craft is an admirable profession, but one that is limited in both aspiration and capability.

Traditional craft-based design had no need for formal evidence: the proof of their efforts was visible to all who viewed it. The designs were guided by the finely-honed intuitions of the designer and could be appreciated by any discerning viewer. Designers do both doing and thinking:  the design philosophy is to think by doing. Designers do their research by designing. Instead of long periods of deep analysis, thought and planning, designers move rapidly to experimentation.

(Picture 1.)

Today, more and more by the joint work of designers and non-designers (most commonly cognitive and computer scientists). Modern design differs from most disciplines in academia by being a field of makers and doers rather than of analysts. Designers are practitioners.  Designers can provide lectures, workshops, and coaching sessions. Formal grades and degrees are no longer necessary.

Design and audiences

Designers understand audiences should with good research

Understanding means that designers should make informed decisions when designing for a target audience. Doing research to establish who the audience is and then digging deeper to understand them is always time well spent.

(Picture 1.)

By understanding the audience could make informed decisions with regard to colours, tone of voice, typefaces and imagery. Understanding the cultural situation of the audience, so if a certain colour has different connotation in one culture to another, then you could choose the best palette so as not to offend.

Other thinking of mine

People in a period of information explosion and multi media integration in modern society. There are countless information flooded with people’s life almost everyday, and carious kinds of information are presented in front of people through a variety of platforms (media, design, network, etc.) In this era, the attention of users /audiences /consumers had become very fragmented, and a large amount of information received through various channels every day. From traditional media to new media, technology continues to develop, and the information is diverse. Then how to create a set of visual design laws to help information to communicate with audiences in nowadays is my concern.

Media and visual design are mutually reinforcing, and the emergence of new media promotes the development of visual design. In today’s new media age, the way people acquire information and the changed the ways of people’s thinking led to the future development of visual design has attracted much attention (including the participation of the audience), The audience is not only the receiver of information, but also the disseminator of information.

(Picture 3. Lijie’s sketchbook)

Nowadays, technology has penetrated the art and design more deeply, and has more direct affect on contemporary art design, thus forcing the performance of art forms more complicated. The phenomenon of “Pan art” in people’s life has become a manifestation of the impact of science and technology on today’s art and design, non art and art, and the boundaries between non professional and professional art designers become increasingly blurred.

Reference list：

Nielsen Norman Group, 2016. The Future of Design [online]

Rosen, J., 2006. The People Formerly Known as the Audience. Press Think, [online]

 

ABOUT ME

My name is Lijie Wang, but you can just call me Lijie. I am a postgraduate student major in MA Communication Design in University of Southampton to do my second Master degree. Before I came to UK，Advertising is my major.

Although I might seem soft-spoken and reserved, I actually have an overwhelming zest and enthusiasm for life. I love drawing (I almost drawing 10 years), handwriting ，Photography，dancing (I study Popping since in 2009) and Classical music (I studied piano when I was a child). Recently years I am very interested in Graphic Design, not only it is a kind of skill of advertisement, but also it can help me to change the way of my thinking —— Creative thinking. Therefore, to improve my English language skill is the most important work I want, that can provide the basis for my main course study in the future.

Now I had a language struggle going on, such as how to write essay more academic, how to speaking English more authentic, how to improve my vocabulary and how can reading fluency in English. I’m trying to break through those ‘HOW’.

My birthday will be coming a few months later, and I hope I can accomplish some meaningful goals before my first birthday in England, such as breaking through the ‘HOW’ or completing some works of art.

Let’s wait and see.Nice to meet you.

Warm regards.

LIJIE