DSGN 361 Process

Hannah Shaffer was here.

[shaffeh]

Design the Beginning- Reading Response

In summary, Zhuo is saying that you have to design bearing in mind that most people who interact with whatever you design won’t have the perfect context or knowledge base that will allow them to use it and for you to succeed. You must take into account a marketing strategy, what screens/pages will look like when you don’t have content to fill them, strategies for getting someone to use the design a second/third/nth time. 

In regards to our service design I will answer the questions she laid out now:

Where and how will people first hear about your product or feature? Thankfully, a print and social media campaign has always been in the works. The goal is to create a non-intimidating, local presence that reminds people about voting. Seeing material distributed around town and promoted on platforms will help our audience begin to identify our branding, and thus recognize our voter’s guide when the time comes.  Design issues that must be taken into account: -How will print materials be distributed? What permissions must be granted? Will someone have to be hired to post flyers? -Sustainability? Will this cause environmental harm? -Is print effective advertising these days?

What should people understand about your product at a glance, and is that compelling enough to convince them to go through the trouble of trying it out? At a glance, VIA provides reliable information on registration and ballot items. We make it easy to find the info you’re looking for, reducing the time you’ll need to sift through sources and poorly designed sites.

What should people’s first-time experience through your product be, and how do you plan to demonstrate to them its value within the first minute? Of course it depends on what aspect of VIA you’re using, but the app should be simple and provide obvious paths to information. Everything should be readable and accessible. On startup, the app will prompt for location data and allow the user to input info necessary for voter registration. After that the information available on the app should be tailored to the user.

How will you build out the social graph, content inventory, marketplace, etc. if the success of your product is dependent on those things? This is definitely a project that cannot be a startup with 5 people working on it. There will need to be marketing teams, research/fact-checking teams, engineers and designers, an HR team to organize volunteers and staff on the ground and deal with legal permissions for property use. This service cannot just be launched. It must be kept up. 

What would compel somebody to come back and use your product a second or third time? With reliable, condensed information, we aim to simplify the voting process. If we can make the design cleaner, the information clear of jargon, and create a reputation for truth and transparency through brand presence and consistency, our users will remember us and come back for each election cycle.

I feel like we have successfully designed for the beginning given that we’re allowed to make assumptions about the resources we’d have access to. If we were trying to launch this as 5 designers alone, this would absolutely not work on any plane of hell. We do not have the expertise to dissect and refine every memorandum, nor do we have the money or resources to have a large scale campaign. But those assumptions aside, we have a plan for how to make this work.

[shaffeh]

Podcast Response

You know that thing that happens with blogging platforms like tumblr that don’t auto save your work. Well. Here I am in class writing this, because I logged out at work without publishing my thoughts.

Gentry Underwood. What a guy. I appreciated what he had to say about critique, how it’s vital to use it as a source of improvement rather than opinion. The whole “turn your lumps of coal into diamonds” thing is of course banal, but has a worthy sentiment behind it. Every flaw found by eyes besides your own is an opportunity to make your project all the better. When you’re receiving feedback, it’s critical to ask, “what would you do to make this better” because without getting new ideas you’re left with problems and nowhere to go. Giving feedback requires a certain level of involvement as well. You can’t just say something is weak without explaining why and ways you could see improving it.

The Steve Jobs bell curve analogy of project flow seems particularly fitting for our experience in this service design project. It first you identify a problem that at surface level seems relatively simple, and you’re confident your skills are such that you can find a worthy solution. But as you research and ideate and work through it you discover the complexity, you struggle with finding an appropriate solution. The theory is that if you continue on with that curve, eventually you’ll reach the other side and the complexities begin to fall in on themselves, and you’ll eventually arrive at a solution that to someone who has no knowledge of the complexities, it appears to be an obvious solution. I feel that we’ve rounded the curve in our project and narrowed in on a general solution. However, I’m sure we’ll find many new problems to solve that will reveal infinitely more complexities. 

Lastly, I appreciate his discussion of collaboration as a necessity for the human species. He says that as designers, one of the most important things we can do is design for the collective, and for improving resources that will help us function better as a cohesive, creative group. There are indeed many problems in our world that we aren’t able to solve right now in large part because we’re not yet masters of working together.

[shaffeh]

Service Design Reading Response

What a clarifying reading. First of all it’s helpful to have a better understanding of what service design is not: it’s not a tangible product, though it can include tangible items that are interacted with. Good services account for as many negative scenarios as possible. What’s the protocol if machinery breaks or systems are down?

In regards to our prompt (the voting system) it’s helpful to think about touch points. Where do people interact, how do they interact, why do they interact? What prevents people from voting? Discriminatory policies? Difficulty of registration and a lack of centralized organization for updating info? No access to polling centers or no time to get there? What does it look like when one is actually voting? How difficult is it to get your ballot? Are there issues with identification that need to be addressed? Is the ballot clear and simple to complete? And what about after the ballot has been submitted? How is it counted reliably?

I think the anecdote about banking services hits home with the voting system as well. What was necessary and applicable 40 years ago may be outdated and underwhelming to today’s users. 

[jdgz]

harvestr

@shaffeh

the case study

[shaffeh]

Case Study Outline

@jdgz

Here’s a link to our outline

[jdgz]

[jdgz]

[jdgz]

[shaffeh]

Testing: Digital Prototype

@jdgz

Observations:

Hannah A.:

Difficulty selecting dimension units. Needs some sort of indicator that the units can be changed.

Same with directions on compass.

Search button needs to be clearer when searching for plants.

Clipping/seed options aren’t clearly buttons

Ashley Z.:

"These buttons are small” relating to the dimensions page.

Needs a cancel/back button on every page.

Kylie O.:

"Cool”

Same difficulty with the dimensions page. It would be helpful if the “okay” button didn’t light up immediately after inputing the last number.

Struggled with the search button. Got lost in a loop

Some sort of animation to show dragging the plant into a spot.

Didn’t click around on search page. Greyed out might have been too effective. Pop up windows look smaller than necessary.

[shaffeh]

User Test Tasks

Task goal: create a garden Task phrasing: Create a garden specific to your home.

Task goal: research information on a specific plant Task phrasing: Find out how much sunlight and water Basil needs

Task goal: edit garden information Task phrasing: you realize you’ve made a mistake regarding which direction your window faces. correct this information

[shaffeh]

Our test with Micah confirmed our previous participants’ experiences. There has to be better feedback for selecting option and more clear labeling/indication of tutorials that don’t require immediate input.

[jdgz]

4th User Test - Jacob Cummings: 

Changes Made:

possible removal of 13b, reconsideration of 16b, adding an enter button on the “search” screen so that people can execute a search, adding a text prompt on the dragging screen that can afford the motion, adding a clearer exit to the profile and settings screen.

[jdgz]

3rd User Test - Claire Ott:

Changes Made: Added a prototype keyboard to afford typing in information, considered rethinking the way the reminder buttons appear.

[jdgz]

1st User Test - Reese Murakami:

Changes Made: Remade 14a, 18a, and moved 19a to be after 22a. Removed the needle of the compass for choosing directions since compasses always point north. 

[jdgz]

1st User Test - Reese Murakami:

Changes Made: Remade 14a, 18a, and moved 19a to be after 22a. Removed the needle of the compass for choosing directions since compasses always point north. 

[shaffeh]

User testing notes:

Claire and Jacob didn’t give us written feedback, but stated individually that they thought the app was straightforward. The struggles they had with navigation seemed to be due to messy wireframes and poor handwriting.

That being said, across the board there were confusing bits of interface that tripped all participants up.

Clicking a right arrow to navigate to the next screen was rarely intuitive. Mostly the participants clicked one of two options on screen and waited for the screen to change. Perhaps using the word “next” would help, or eliminating the button altogether on screens with only a few choices.

The compass for choosing which direction your sunlight is coming from (indoors) would be most effective by showing which way is North and using the built in sensors on phones to show a “real” compass function. The user could point their phone towards the window and confirm.

It made sense to switch the placement of screens after testing on Reese and Bailey. We discovered that moving the “Reminders” page to the very end of the plant choosing process reduced confusion about seeing more information about the plant.

No one saw the “close tutorial” button at the start of the app. Instead of “cool thanks” at the bottom of the screen, it would be worth considering having it time out after a few seconds or on touch.

Other notes:

Other than small refinements to the position of elements and buttons as well as the order of certain screens, our navigation is relatively simple. My main concern is with the content of the app and the actual usability of such a system. Will people find it useful to have reminders to weed and water? What will the tutorials look like and will they be integrated with the reminders?

For now, we’ve eliminated the community aspect of the app because we wanted to ensure that the app focused on growing food, first and foremost. Our example tutorials will be growing garlic from a clipping, and kale from seed.

@jdgz

[jdgz]

quick wireframes of profile and settings screens, dead-end purely usability focused pages.