Reflections on User Experience and Final Project and Enlightenment

After printing the final document and burning the final product of our hard work into a CD, I finally handed up the portfolio to Mr Reddy just now ^^. Now I am at one of the benches along AS3, writing my reflections on the module.

The thing that strikes me about user experience is that we have to put users at the core of what we designed, and how hard it is to do that. There are many a times when we almost fell into the trap of designing what is most comfortable for ourselves, only to get pulled back to reality by test users comments and suggestions. The thing is, it is easy to assume some things when you are in the process of coding/designing and realise that hey there is something that we did not cover during the interviews and user researches. I guess the solution will be to keep testing the product with different target users and make sure that in the end, the product is for them and not for us. Constant trial and error, constant testing and interviews and redesigning are very essential. A tedious process that may not guarantee to work 100% but nonetheless essential. There isn't such a thing as a final final product, every product got to constantly reinvent itself to keep up with the ever changing world. Sometimes, it is also easier to think that our product is the best. After all we have spent a lot of hard work on it. A lot of people get offended when people pointed out their flaws, thus it is essential to keep an open mind to suggestions and not dismiss them. We must alway remember the ones using the product is them and not us.

User experience is supposedly different from usability, user experience is usability plus something much more. The something much more is so hard to grasp. In a way, I guess what differ user experience from usability, where all we have to make sure is that everything is working perfectly fine and that users are comfortable about using the whole interface, is the total feel they will get out of the product. Aesthetic quality is one important factor, as I have learnt. Visceral design, behavioral design, reflective design, different type of designs will give rise to different impacts. Usability is also important, because if a user cant get the interface to work his way, the experience will be very bad no matter how nice it looks on first sight. But if the user interface runs smooth, looks aesthetically pleasing, thats already half way to a positive experience. The hard part is to make sure they can get the 'wow' experience, and it is hard to do that because every user likes and dislikes different things. It is lucky that our target users are children and easily pleased. The turning faces navigation buttons is enough to garner a positive surprise reaction "huh wa the face can turn one !!" and you realise that user experience can be something so simple, yet so hard to grasp.

User researches is a very important part of user experience. Interviews, background researches, focus groups, surveys, some of the ways we do user researches. Not only these, we have really got to know our users, by talking to them and knowing them, just to create the whole experience for them. Yet how well can we know a person through interviews and a few questions? I guess better than not knowing our users and assuming based on stereotypes. Personas, sociological pleasures, physiological pleasures, psychological pleasures, ideological pleasures, needs, wants, appreciations, tough to break down a person in these categories but we can never get away from these.

User experience is all about user user and user, but we must also take note to convey the corporate experience to user, so that when user use the product, they will relate it to the comapany. It must be in line with the corporate vision. I guess one area of improvement for us will be to really talk to the company. We have talked to Kumon tutors, to Kumon students but not really Kumon. We tried to design the product as best as we could to adhere to the corporate vision found in Kumon website, however, giving the product to the company management to try may provide us better ideas. Striking a balance between what company wants and what users want is also important. After all we are in a profit making society.

Another thing is that technical skills are also rather essential to make the total experience. Junhao was the only one who knows how to code flash, so everything was coded painstakingly by him and I really appreciate it. However, there are some ideas we have that never materialize due to both time and technical limitations. Would have really hope to see the whole product work! Oh those would have, could have will really make a better experience. I should start to learn flash.

One of the background images that we used. Very nice right? Thanks to Jialin!
And also to thanks the test users for giving us many valuable comments. Some of the little one who are not so shy of the camera:





Don't you love their smile?

On enlightenment, I guess I haven't reach that state yet =P

User Research Smoke and Mirrors Reflections

The Die Die Must Read Article.
1 2 3 4 5

Even though I think we are only required to read part 5, but reading all parts put the author argument in clearer light. :) So I will suggest everyone read all.

I especially like the argument about in Part 2 about the eyetracking device with the example shown. Sometimes these so-called scientific testing devices just do not work, there is always such a time when exceptional cases come up. If such scientific devices are all so wonderful, we actually do not need the humans at all. Producing and designing a website can be all done with machines without the human eye. Machines can use the test results to organise and hi-light information the 'correct' way. So why not just let machines take over? In scientific research, interpreting results is often a subjective matter. We often see that different TV stations have different ratings from each other, and most of the time each TV station will show itself as having the best ratings. Scientific research can be not scientific at all. Crunching numbers to suit each of our own agenda, to prove ourselves right are just ways to make us feel better about our products. By arguing that red spots are the 'hot' spots people look at longest and hence the best element of the site, it is just to suit one's agenda. Like the article states, the red spots can both mean that something is interesting or something is so difficult that people must ponder over it for a very long time. Besides, the scientific research disregard any environmental elements that might be at work, I may be thinking about something else and thus staring at one spot in a daze for no reason. Probably it could mean that the website did not catch my attention at all, yet the eyetracking result will show that I am interested in this random spot. Of course, I do not mean that these tools are useless, they could still provide some valuable insights when used with other non scientific researches. The point is we should not rely on such tools blatantly and management must also think with their brain and not just feel happy because such tools reflect that their sites are full of red spots. We can deceive ourselves but not users. When users visit and decide to come back to the site, they look at the whole site subjectively in their own ways and not at how popular the eyetracking tool shows the site to be. In a nutshell, like what Fahey says "an eyetracker can tell you what people are looking at, but not necessarily what they are seeing (or why they are looking at it)".

I was laughing abit when I read about the persona rooms in Part 4. The first thing I thought of is how filthy rich these people are. I imagine the designers trying to think and live the life of a persona they have created and eventually become the persona. The point is no amount of persona rooms is going to make a designer into a real "Bob, the single dude” or “Mary, the homemaker”. It may help one live and create the imagination more vividly, but just one room doesn't bring you into the world of a real Bob and Mary. I think it will be more fruitful to seat down, talk to a real Bob and Mary, know them personally, ask them about their dreams, ask them about their lives, ask them what they hate, ask them about all places they lived before, try to think in their shoes and keep those money for something more meaningful.

This bring to the discussion of the less rigorous methodologies like card sorting, focus groups, usability testing, and user personas. I have done card sorting and did usability testings, heard about focus groups, but the first time I have come across user personas as a form of user research is in NM4210. I remember writing for the first time my first user persona Skye. We were suppose to come up with a user persona using one type of product and then choosing a phone to suit the persona. The hard part is that I tend to want to write Skye with a particular phone in mind, but I try to think Skye in the terms of sunglasses that she would buy. Because Skye is whatever I made her up to be, I didnt really get the gist of persona yet until the final project. That was when we interviewed real target users and talk to them. Then we came up for the personas, which are partly true and with a little of our imagination. Then we tried hard to think in terms of these users, of what their expectations of the learning portal would be. I guess the personas feel more real with a real persons behind them. I will think back about the people we have interviewed and imagine their expressions or exclamations when faced with certain product elements. But of course what I imagine is totally based on my assumption about how I feel they will feel, with the background information (sociological pleasures, physiological pleasures, psychological pleasures, ideological pleasures, need, wants, appreciations) I have on them. It may not be 100% accurate, but it is something for me to base on.

I like how Fahey used the analogy of the work a novelest does when researching her characters, historical events, and locations in preparation for their to the impact and value of these non scientific kind of researches. I mean everyone can get the facts of history from textbooks, scout the location, interview people who are similar to the characters they are building, but ultimately the novel is purely his creation by weaving together his imagination with research data. Although he has created a more convincing world to readers. This does not mean that everyone might agree with what he wrote, they will still use their own experiences and encounters to judge the book. They may love it, but they may hate it too.

Even after we do user testings, personas and what nots and build a product with users in mind, there is still no 100% guarantee that the final product will be a success, because no one user is the same and everything is subjective. Like what Seldman said "If web design were not an art, then we would always get every part right. But it is an art, and, like all arts, it deals with the subjective. The subjective is something you can never get 100% right." Furthermore, no matter what, the product is still build with one's impression of target users. There will never be a time when we can totally be in other people shoes, we can be very close to, but not totally. Our encounters and expertise would have interfered with all these. Hence I feel most products, even those which claim to be totally build around users, will still have a little shadow of what we like ourselves. And it is easy to just fall into the trap that I think I know what is best for users.

I feel that qualitative research is more useful than quantitative research. However, sometimes we are so used to the numbers, to the nicely charted graphs that we tend to need quantitative research to justify findings. Moreover, qualitative results can differ so extremely, so I think a lot of people would rather stay safely on the figures and charts. Some more these impressive charts can be shown to the management. I myself is more used to qualitative research like surveys because they can give the number you want. But now, I feel that I must try to do more qualitative research, especially with users experience design so hot now.

I find this line by Zeldman very meaningful. "The user is never wrong because experience is experience, not fact." But I think as designers, we are prone to think that the user is wrong, especially when something so obvious is put right smack in front of them. It is hard to think that users are never wrong, because more often than not, we will think of thinks our way and not as others. Like in real life, being in a waitress position, we may think that the customer is over demanding. But when we switch position to the customer position, we may think that we have every right to demand good service and that the waitress should have better attitude. I think that sometimes we need to think ourselves as users too and not as designers. Sometimes, when we design something, we are so bent on seeing our own way that we neglect some elements. It takes a user to point out the mistake, and a designer to listen for changes to be made accordingly. Many a times, designers don't take bad comments well, and its easier to say that the users don't know anything. Well they might not know all the technical jargons, but at the end of the day they are the one who used a product most. This is a point we must remember and take suggestions, good or bad and however hard openly. I have encountered this myself a few times as web designer and video editor, and it hard real hard to hear someone criticize my hard work. It easier to bitch about to friends who agree with you that those people don't know anything about web pages or video editing. But at the end of the day, I try to take it in my stride and see it from their point of view. And sometimes, not all, those suggestions are not that bad after all.

"The user is never wrong because experience is experience, not fact". I will remember this ^^.