Experiential

A user-focused design blog.

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  Here are slightly more updated concepts for my app. This is what I'll be showing tomorrow for critique, but I'm not sure I want to keep with this style or how to alter it. I'll be working on another implementation style in the meantime. I've got 3 studies and how they intend to interact with the app: The Beginner: Judy has a few seeds and has just started her first garden. She's concerned that she'll forget about watering and upkeep with her busy life. She's started an account hoping that it will provide incentive her to build habits. The Expert: Alicia has found out about the app through a friend. She's interested in a way to compare her work with others and keep track of her own progress, share tips and stories and so-on. The Competitor: Darren has been looking to start a garden for a while. He signed up for the app because his friend had already signed up before him. He wants to keep up with her and see if he can plant a garden that rivals hers, due to his competitive nature.

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Here's a really basic preliminary look at my project idea. The idea is of an application that users can input plants they want to grow. The application gives feedback on how to grow them, but also allows users to compete with others from around the world if they choose to, providing an opportunity to learn more from one another and adds a competitive flair to incentivize growing food. My 3 Design Strategies will likely be: Card Sorting Generative Design Usability Studies This is subject to change depending on the needs of the project or my own desire to experiment - more could be added as time goes on. I'm planning on affecting behavior change through friendly competition and community. I'd like to make the application something that communicates through intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation (so I'd like users to feel as if they're doing it because they want to rather than because the application rewards them). A community and competitive aspect allows for this sort of feeling, and the food grown at the end acts as a reward and extrinsic motivator to cap off the experience and add flavor (haha) to the whole thing.

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Current Direction App that allows users to input plants they're growing and track the plant's progress via photo. Gives helpful hints for growing and reminders for watering and such, but acts as a progress tracker with some form of social component. The app tracks progress, ranks plants by difficulty and compares your results with your earlier results to give tips and hints. This allows for a competitive slant, as well, where users can look at each-other's plants and give their own advice to each-other or just brag to friends. Allows for more options, such as a planning board and the like.

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A few major bits of feedback stood out as I showed those ideas to my classmates and partners, as well as from the earlier project: If you make an app, make it competitive, somehow. Don't just make it informative. Include information, but don't make it purely pragmatic. Avoid falling into the same style you always do. These have informed my decision for my current direction, forthcoming.

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New concepts, post feedback. Concept 1 Encourage the audience to plant in protest via seed bombs with distribution methods cropping up in cities. Concept 2 Biodegradable bags that decompose quickly, with seed payloads in them. Littered around heavily in areas, very clearly to bring attention to them in some way. Seeds grow into food crops and are carefully cultivated. When harvested (If none remain for any reason, faux harvest), a stand is set up and food is given out with a special seed packet that has information printed on it. Concept 3 App that lets you input plants you intend to grow and gives suggestions, reminders, etc. Concept 4 Re-purposingpublic, abandoned areas in stages. Homemade boxes start showing up in various stages of build. They become plots, and so-on. Weather-proofed pamphlets show up on-site, to show the process for people to follow to do this (Budget is a heavy focus). Follows through to the end, where the remaining food is donated to homeless shelters.

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After sharing some of the feedback on my initial concepts for this project with my partners, there was some more feedback that came from them. "These ideas are amazing! I love the fact that you have a wide variety of options, it gives you so much to work with and a great opportunity to mix some ideas together. I would say try shifting away from the ideas that are so pragmatic and solely facts-based, like the website (depends on content?) pamphlet, brochure, etc. because your ebook was pragmatic. Try experimenting with ways to have the users interact in a fun, meaningful, yet informative manner. The scavenger hunt could be a really fun way to teach people what you want them to know or learn. It would be cool if they learned a fact or something informative with every object they find. The idea of a contest between friends to grow plants could be linked with the scavenger hunt where they would have to solve the clues and find the objects they need before they start planting. People are intrigued by illegal things. How do you plan on incorporating that into your exhibition? What are your thoughts?"

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My initial 3 ideas for phase two of the interactive design project.

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Comprehensive Design PDF

Shared with Dropbox

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Reflection

I really enjoyed working with my partners on this project despite some of the difficulties that I personally found myself facing, the experience working with another class across the ocean was definitely a positive one. I learned an awful lot about iBooks Author, mostly in regards to how to work it. This is probably to be expected, given my lack of experience with the software in general. Other than that, I would say I learned a good bit about keeping international audiences in mind. My biggest learning moment, though, was to narrow my scope. That’s pretty self-explanatory scope is, generally, my biggest problem. I want to do so much more than I find myself with the time to do. I feel that, visually, my eBook was fairly sound. The use of imagery and the way I explored visuals as background instead of panes of color or more illustrative methods was something I genuinely feel was a success. Likewise, it really meshed well with my audience it doesn’t feel like it’s talking down to the user, and it feels like it’s engaging on a meaningful level, instead of just doing so. Particularly challenging was getting the popovers to work (and to be entirely honest, they really didn’t in the end). Finding a way to make it explicitly interactive was kind of the hardest part for me there just wasn’t a lot of opportunities for that in my book that didn’t feel like I was putting information behind a gate. I’d like to re-explore that with a more interaction friendly concept in the future. As for what I would do differently, there’s quite a bit: Lighten the background Add more information Remove the pointless page markers Fix the table-of-contents issues Update it with some of my own photographic content Work on the interaction just a bit more I feel as if that about covers what is possible to fix before next thursday, as well. As for collaboration, as I mentioned it was an overall positive experience for me. The only thing I’d change about that is perhaps trying to get more communication in, especially via real-time and video. As it stood, we mostly communicated via email, and though it worked, it would be nic

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Final(ish) Book

Shared with Dropbox

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Usability Testing: Round 1

I took my current iteration of my eBook around to a few users within my audience - here are some of the major observations made: User 1 Can’t see the contrast in the images. Likes the tabs on the side – thinks that the navigation would work well. Interested in the food wheel concept. Confused about the typing of vegetables – thought all were based on color. Not sure what size it’s supposed to be: doesn’t fit properly on non-apple tablet. Too unguided – gets the idea, but the book feels a bit aimless. The breakdown was too long to remember what the sections before it even said. More images would be very useful – currently feels sophisticated, but more images/illustrations would break the information up. Last section looks too much like a math problem. For a long-term solution – consider breaking it down into a series, instead of keeping it all put together. If breaking the nutrition book down into its own thing – it’s important to introduce money into the nutrition talk, breaking it into income and family levels. Explain to the “lowest” on the list. If the poorest can make do, so can people with more money, etc. User 2 Contrast is a huge problem for the background. Resolution is off for the tablet used. The bordered lines around the sections on the pie chart upset this user – mostly from a design standpoint, however. Information on the weekly vegetable needs could be more clear: It's currently a bit too list-like. Over-all, pretty alright. Colors are a bit too neutral: Too dark, perhaps. User 3

A bit of a problem with contrast being an issue.

The navigation makes sense.

Confused about the font – thought it might be Times New Roman – Doesn't care for serif fonts as a rule.

Consider including metric! Vertical slash in logic means 'or'. Remember that. Also line the vertical lines up! Genuinely cannot make out the images in the pie chart.

Likes that the sections on the pie chart separate during explanation. Finds it easy to visualize the navigation. Worries about scaling to a smaller screen than the tablet owned.

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MariamYou talked about your eBook being informative and full of facts. I think it’s interesting that you are going for a more pragmatic approach. I know that what you designed is still not final and I would say try to experiment with type, placement, and color. Sometimes, we are naturally drawn to images and visuals, and since your eBook is more pragmatic and information dominant (which is perfectly fine), perhaps experiment with making it more visually appealing. For example, if there is a lot of text in a page, people can often skip the page, so figuring out what information to include, what not to include, and how to spread out that information can make all the difference. My Response This is absolutely correct! With this in mind, I decided to head back to more basics - pen and paper, no design in mind - and I decided to instead hash out how the book is going to flow. I realize now that I've been getting caught up in two major places: I've been too design focused instead of problem-focused, and I've been getting caught up in too large of a scope. In response to this, I realized that extreme climate farming - while it is important in places like Qatar and Rochester - is not quite what needs to be laid out for my audience. I'm instead focusing more on how to save about 20 dollars on food per month by growing your own. With that in mind, I'll move forward keeping the extreme climate concepts of indoor farming in mind, but with cost minimization and yield maximization as the primary focus.

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Critique Round One

Aisha: I really enjoy the focusing you have going on with your eBook, where it starts on a global scale, and pulls in to the very personal. It gives readers a lot of perspective about what's going on, and it lends humanity to the information being presented, which I think is something that will help in conveying your point. The harsh angles in your illustrations also fit the story you're trying to tell, so I think you're going in the right direction with that, as well. I initially suggested you try out a red for your accent color (like in the page with the icons of women on it), but I think what you said about it being a bit cliché really does fit. I still feel as if the purple might be a bit out of place, for some reason – it might just need a bit of tweaking to fit your color scheme a bit more.

I'm not sure yet what could use changing, to be honest – I feel that you've got a fairly consistent and interesting concept to work with so far. Good luck! Mariam: I really like this sort of word-cloud style of idea. I'm curious if you could expand the idea by stressing connections between the effects to show that it's all interconnected, like a mind of concept map that we did earlier in the semester? It'd be interesting to see. Also, is the size of the word relevant to the effect on the person? Your use of color is interesting, but I would say you might want to make it really obvious what it's for up-front, so people know what they're looking at and who it applies to. I like the idea, but I can see people getting confused by it fairly easily, you know?

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The second user is more concerned with the feasibility of farming over winter and in extreme heat, with a heavy interest in cost, space and time. Methods that emphasize ease and recyclable methods appeal to this user a great deal. Their progression includes almost all of the steps of the previous user, with more care for the specifics of planting in general, and especially how it relates to extreme climate farming. Information this user brought to my attention: How deep planters should go, and when to consider planting bulbs and root plants Cost-effective solutions included, but not overpowering the rest of the content (Such as using containers and things you already plan to discard as components for your garden) Self-gardening techniques - that is, finding ways for the farm to be relatively self-sufficient with minimal upkeep The specifics of preparing a planter, and how gardening differs between an indoor and outdoor setting - what to look out for and what not to Placement of grow lights The advantages and disadvantages of starting with a seed vs seedling as it relates to price and time commitment What plants should absolutely NOT be put next to one-another A table of plants with their plant and harvest seasons How to grow trees in-doors Methods for dealing with vines In terms of usability: The best advice given by this user was how they'd like to see information broken up They said that they would best be able to read this information if it were displayed as a series of diagrams that broke the information into easily digestible chunks. More infographic than illustrative, however. All of this reminds me of a book I've been considering using as inspiration: The Guerilla Art Kit.

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This participant was reluctant to sketch in the first place, so in that respect we'd decided that verbal discussion on the progression of information was more useful, and it absolutely was. This user would prefer this sequence of information: 1) How to build a green-house: What materials Pricing Instructions 2) Dirt and Fertilizers to Use 3) What temperature the plants should be kept at 4) When to plant 5) How much light is required 6) When to Water Plants 7) When to Harvest This is really important in that I now know what my audience is most concerned with, when it comes to the subject of over-winter farming and farming in extreme heat. This user's priorities are less in line with cost and more in line with learning what needs to be done. When pressed for further information, the user continued with expressing an interest in over-winter preparations outside of farming throughout the year. This was primarily found in how to can and freeze foods, if dehydrated foods are viable, and basically the logistics of storing and keeping canned and frozen food. From this, the narrative would follow a plant from seed to jar - in an abstract sense. That is to say, the narrative of this book would start from pre-seed preparations to following the canning process and the storage process.

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3 ways good design makes you happy

In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at design that makes people happy. He names the three emotional cues that a well-designed product must hit to succeed.

I actually watched this a long time ago. His style of speaking is very relatable (and from a usability perspective, that's something I've always been interested in - public speaking as experience design. Pardon the tangent, my brain has been oddly wired lately.) I've been wondering, actually, if I could employ some of these methods to making my ebook more useful to people - or rather, more likely to be used by people. It would be interesting to see how people can build a narrative of their own out of interacting with the eBook, and how that would influence the overall interaction, as he was talking about with the knife and juicer. The idea that in using the object, it gives you a story you can relate to others. Interesting stuff!

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This blog is due for a bit of heavier curating - I'm still getting used to the earlier is higher ordering. Over this weekend I'll be rearranging things and adding new pieces to explain the process better than I already have.