Upon reading chapter 6, I was intrigued by the concept of designed and conceptual norms. As stated in the book, “a norm is an accepted behavioral pattern that’s learned and that helps within a specific culture or group.” To some people, having an all touch screen phone may be the norm whereas some may think phones with keyboards are. As technology advances, these norms continue to change at an extremely alarming rate. Designers are responsible for making subtle or dramatic changes designs that have the power to alter the way we use technology for years and years to come; all while keeping in mind usability, functionality, and likability. In today’s society, media norms change much faster than social norms do. Years ago, I would have never imagined being able to connect speakers wirelessly to any device in my house or have a fridge that allowed me to watch the news while I eat breakfast in the morning. Slowly yet surely, these things are becoming norms; in the near future, they’ll be nothing but old news. In the large scheme of things, it’s important to understand how crucial the role of the designer is when creating new media. Their ideas build our future and without them, we’d still be using cave drawings and sending carrier pigeons.
Objectified Response
Objectified is a documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and with the people who design them. It takes a deeper look into the creativity behind developing everything from household items to tech gadgets. The film documents the creative processes of some very influential product designers and how we can learn from what they do and enhance our lives just through design.
While watching the film, there was one particular quote that stuck in my mind and resonated with me for the rest of the film: “Almost everything that fills our world has been designed.” I had never really thought about how everything I use everyday was designed for a reason. Although the film touched upon items like computers, phones, chairs, vacuums and toothbrushes, every single item we use has been designed for a reason. The objects we use every day “reflect a personal narrative.” From what brands we wear to what color pencils we use, every aspect of design is communicated through how and when we use a product. “Good design is aesthetic, honest, obstructive, long-lived, and consistent.” As our demand for the newest and trendiest items increase, so does the supply. Companies are constantly developing new ways to enhance what has already been made. Watch designers in the documentary find new ways to change old products was truly intriguing and hopefully, some of the film’s ideas will become popular trends in the near future.
There is no telling what the future of design holds for our world, but if Objectified was any indicator, there are endless possibilities waiting to be explored and there is no stopping it.
TOID: Ch. 3, 4 & 5 Response
What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? (pp. 48-54)
Ethnographic tools are tools that provide an alternative to traditional quantitative research. Tools such as interviews, observations, and surveys could help improve the interactivity of an online banking website by:
- observe people using the website to see how they react to certain features
- survey users to see if they trust the banking system
- ask if they would refer the system to a friend/family member
- watch users navigate the website to see if it functions the way you intended it to
- conduct a personal satisfaction survey after the first use of the service
- select several random users and interview about their experience using the website
At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)
Designers are in the unique position to improve all aspects of human life. When designing a product, it is important to take into the consideration of the user first before the designer puts in theirs. A design is finished once it is functional, easily understood by those who didn’t make it, and it meets consumer needs. After these needs are met, the product is able to be used for human consumption. If the design is successful, it is well reciprocated by users, performs its intended purpose, and meets user needs. The purpose of the design is how designers plan on solving an issue or completing a task in front with their design and how it will impact users in the long run.
Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding effected your use, relationship and experience with the product? (pp. 78-84)
Ever since I was in elementary school, I was surrounded by Apple products. I was taught how to type on a Mac Desktop computer and was awarded an iPad in Middle school when our school was chosen to test a system develop online learning. I have never once tested or used an Android product because my heart and my opinion has always been set around Apple products. I find it annoying when people don’t have iPhones so I can’t send them emojis. I hate people who don’t know how to navigate through my computer as well as I can. I think PC’s are chunky and unnecessarily large. But the funniest part is, I don’t know why I feel this way. The Apple brand has played a huge role in developing the kind of technology I use and how efficiently I use it. I know how to use universal programs such as Microsoft Word much easier on Mac computers than I do PCs. I 100% will always be an Apple user until someone proves there is something better out there for me (which is very unlikely).
TOID: Ch. 1 & 2 Response
- What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry challenges?
Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and product, service, or system. It is complied with many different aspects; some of which include media accessibility and usability, user understanding and learning ability, and physical and emotional dialogue between user and design. Although the concept is growing, there have been some challenges within the industry as a whole. The novel expressed the theory of “The User Is Not Like Me.” Sometimes, it is hard for designers to take into consideration the wants of a user since they are the ones designing the product. It is important to remember who you’re designing for and what they may want from you. Just because a design works for its creator does not mean it may work for everyone else. In return, it may become challenging for designers to be new and innovative with ideas and concepts. With demand for new media and technology growing at an alarming rate, it tends to be difficult to be new and creative; one of the biggest challenges of the industry is the industry itself.
2. What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?
As stated previously, interaction design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and product, service, or system. As demand for media evolves, so does the media itself. People are beginning to experiment with new ideas and concepts and incorporate more cultural and personal aspects into their designs. It draws knowledges from fields like computer software development, behavioral studies, data analytics, and construction (but on a different, non-building sky scrapers kind of way). It utilizes parts of each of these fields to effectively create new ideas and concepts.
Scope vs Strategy
Our app is being designed to help a potential user, Jerome, more efficiently put gas in his car on his way to work. During the process of developing this app, the creative team discussed that not only was the “big picture” to make his morning better, but we wanted the app to inform users on where and how to save their money at different gas stations, create a user-friendly experience for each app user, avoid having to see so many people for one small process, as well as give them security and accessibility. In doing so, there were a lot of different tools and features we wanted the app to possess.
We imagine the app to allow the user to connect to their device like Apple wallet and allow the user to connect all of his/her membership cards to any gas station they use to be stored within the app. This eliminates the need to carrying dozens of cards in their wallet. The app would then be able to compare prices for gas within in a certain location radius that the user has selected. Once the station was selected, the user can then order their gas ahead of time and have the pump ready to pump gas for you when you arrive there; the amount of gas you need and the payment would already be programmed into this order as well. The more you use the app, the more rewards you get through the app’s awards program. The programs also tie into store-specific rewards programs that allow you to earn specific things from each station once you collect a certain amount of points. The app also alerts your car when gas is low and tells you if you forgot to put the gas cap back on before you leave the pump. On a more technical note, the app comes with a support feature that allows users to troubleshoot any of their problems or concerns. It is also protected via password or thumbprint so no one can steal your card information or charge you for gas that you aren’t getting.
Response Questions to Elements of the User Experience
- Apple’s website serves as both an informational outlet for potential customers to do more research on Apple’s products and software as well as a way for current Apple product users to troubleshoot any problems they may be having with their devices. According to “Elements of the User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett, user needs are important. If a new Mac owner needs help setting up their device or needs assistance on how certain features work, Apple’s website breaks down step by step how to fix the problem. Each device Apple offers has it’s own tab on the homepage which allows users to easily navigate the page to find what information they need. Apple also lets their customers have the option of getting help from an Apple professional straight from their website.
- Facebook’s wall showcase a particular user’s profile picture and general information (education, relationship status, birthday, number of friends, etc.). It also shows what and when the user posts statuses or pictures, shares an article, video, or picture with their friends. The wall is also a platform for other users to post on to send that particular person a public message. The wall is in sequential order and has a scrolling function that allows users to scroll through a person’s activity throughout the week, month, and even year.
- Four types of Architectural Approaches:
- Hierarchy – tgifridays.com (The homepage has options to take you to several different options such as lunch, dinner, and catering. Each of those links then has their own page which take you into the more specific features of that particular section of the website.)
- Matrix – target.com (When searching for products, the user is able to specify exactly what they are looking for by color, size, quantity, etc., and the website narrows the search for you to make it easier to find the products you want.)
- Organic – perezhilton.com (A famous blogger, Perez Hilton formats his webpage so his users can scroll down the page and read article after article, but users have to click all over the place if they are searching for a very specific topic. This, in return, may make it hard to find the same article more than once.)
- Sequential – pinterest.com (Pinterest allows its users to simply scroll freely down the webpage to look at and pin anything they want to their board. It’s very easy to go back and forth between pages if need be but it doesn’t take you all over the place.)
- Huffington Post’s index page is about 10 percent content and 90 percent navigation. The homepage has a navigation bar that will take you basically anywhere on the website as well as tabs that take you to all of their social media pages. It also is filled with pictures and link that take you to all of the articles on the website. This part of the index is also part of the content of the website. Since there are so many articles listed on the homepage, it covers a lot of the recent content on their site. Google on the other hand, is 100 percent navigation. There is no set place that the website will take you; it all depends on what the user wants to search for and what he/she needs. Wikipedia is probably close to 99 percent navigation besides the small amount of text that states who Wikipedia is sponsored by and so forth. Etsy is definitely a content heavy website: 70 percent content and 30 percent navigation. Since most of the content is visible once the user does one singular search, the navigation doesn’t take up most of the surface. These numbers, though, could be interchangeable because the navigation could be related to the content.
- Landor.com has a scrolling feature that focuses on specific aspect at a time. Once the user has read one section of the website and scrolls down, the section previous begins disappear slowly and the new one slowly begins to appear where the old one once was. Once the scroll is complete, the portion of the website that wishes to be active becomes perfectly clear. This makes the website easy to navigate through without having to click all over the place to find things.
Review 4
Our group decided to join Mexican and Chinese cuisine together to make a fusion restaurant called “Panda Loca.” In order to get inspired and also to take a look at what kinds of restaurants we could potentially be competing with, we looked at and analyzed websites for restaurants such a Mad Mex, Kiyoshi Bistro, TGI Friday’s, and Olive Garden. The one website, though, that could ultimately be one of our competition restaurants was Mad Mex. (https://www.madmex.com)
Looking at the layout of their website, it is very plain. Their background is a solid color and does not make it very exciting to look at. The content of the website is centered in the middle of the page with a navigation bar, a cover photo, and a logo for the restaurant. The text is very simple, but there is a lot of it on a majority of the pages as your navigate through the website. The homepage does good job of creating a “site identity and mission,” one of the main things Steven Krug talked about in Chapter 7 of his book; it is very laid-back and gives visitors a sense of the restaurant’s atmosphere.
The colors used throughout the website are very warm. The use of deep burgundy, gold, green, and white all work very well alongside one another and good a job of complimenting one another. This scheme, as defined by The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is an analogous color scheme; the colors are not the same, but they all work together to make the page look cohesive. I do not think this website has much texture to it. Texture, as defined by The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is anything that gives a distinctive appearance or feel to the surface of a design or object. Mad Mex’s website is solely designed of solid colors and pictures that have no additional pigment, pattern, or texture to make them stand out in any way. On a positive note, the website is very easy to navigate and allows users to find anything and go to any tab using the fully functioning navigation bar on the top of the page.
Since the content on the website is very bland, it is hard to read through since there is so much text in such a little space. A lot of people get bored and don’t feel like rummaging and reading through long paragraphs at text to get to the point. A lot of sites choose to use bold, large headings and short sentences to not only keep visitors interested but to make sure space is being utilized and is even. Being that all of the text is also going straight up and down the page, it is sometimes easy to get lost in the words and forget about what you were originally trying to find or read.
Panda Loca’s website combines accents and colors of both Mexican and Chinese cultures. Our background uses texture by incorporating bamboo in the website’s background. We use light, neutral tan colors and accent our most important features with yellow, black, red, and white. Each page that the navigation bar takes you to a new page that maintains the overall tone and atmosphere of our restaurant but also adds variety and makes the viewer want to look at the every different page. Our overall vibe is more laid-back and fun compared to that of other websites. The Panda logo on the top of every page adds a comedic effect and keeps the viewer interested. We have tabs in our navigation bar for every occasion/customer need and we overall do a better job of representing our company compared to others.
Review 3
The two websites I chose to analyze for this assignment were the restaurant websites of Olive Garden and TGI Friday’s. Olive Garden is national Italian restaurant chain with several locations throughout the greater Pittsburgh area. TGI Friday’s is also a national chain restaurant that serves classic Bar and Grill restaurant and has several locations throughout the Pittsburgh area as well. Although both are high in popularity, each restaurant has a completely different atmosphere; they also offer to very different types of websites.
Olive Garden’s website is very classic and rustic looking. It uses neutral colors like green, tan, and brown. The layout is vertical and requires the user to scroll down the page. There are several tabs, including Menu, Specials, Gift Cards, and more, that allow the user to easily navigate through the website. One of the most prominent features on the website that Krug discussed in his textbook is the site’s use or promotions. A majority of each page from the navigation bar features some sort of promotional effort to get people to come to the restaurant. The website also has a very cohesive layout; a majority of the content is in a square shape and they all are relatively close in size. It all looks like one cohesive layout and showcases it’s food through lots of visuals.
TGI Friday’s website is very up-to-date with technological trends and demands. The website’s homepage includes video backgrounds of the food being prepared and tossed; this not only makes it stand out from other websites, but it also makes the food much more appealing. Like Olive Garden, their site also does a good job of emphasizing their features and promotions. Krug’s book tells readers to “use as much space as necessary” when trying to get their promotional messages across. TGI Friday’s does have a lot of white space on some of their pages, but it does not take away from the quality of the website. The traditional colors and balance of images make the website very classic and true to the restaurant’s vibe.
I think TGI Friday’s website does a much better job at catching the attention of users. The layout is much more visually pleasing and the colors aren’t distracting. It also easy to navigate and understand and all of the text stands out. It looks like one cohesive website and has an overall better visual appearance than Olive Garden’s does.
Review 2
The single-page website I chose to describe and analyze was http://www.ashleyandjeffwedding.com, a website highlighting a couple that is planning to get married this upcoming year. The website seems to be acting as an invitation/information page both about the couple and the day of the wedding itself. The website scrolls from top to bottom is separated into five sections: the home page, info. about the couple, their engagement photos, details about the wedding with a schedule, and link to their registry. The website as a whole is very simple.
As described in Chapter 2 of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, it is important to create a color palette when creating a website because it gives you more options to work with than a color scheme would. The website, though simple, is not very visually pleasing. I believe the theme they were going for was rather calm, simple and rustic/outdoorsy. They chose shades of tan and creme to match their engagement photos, all of which were taken outside in the woods. Green somewhat acts as an accent color because our only see it in the picture on the home page and in their engagement pictures. The text is very light in some sections and could be hard to read on certain low-resolution screens. I think the palette works cohesively and visually goes together, but it is very bland and could use some warmer colors to make it a little more exciting. Not that I would know what the color scheme of their wedding is, but I would make the website match those colors (I highly doubt the wedding colors are tan, green and more tan).
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design defines texture as “anything that gives appearance or feel to the surface of a design or object.” The first thing you see when you open the web page is a picture of the couple in front of a beautiful rock waterfall. The picture gives the home page texture through the texture of the rocks, the wood, and the water. When continuing to scroll through the remainder or the website though, there is absolutely no texture. I don’t necessarily think the website needed a lot of texture for its purpose, but this continues to make the page very bland and boring.
The website as a whole is easy to navigate and flows in a very natural pattern. The text, though light in color, is easy to read through and tells a story. I do think the website’s design works well, but I think it could have been more creative and more visually pleasing. I do think, though, that a website is a cool way to get information out about a wedding.
Review 1
I decided to review colourpop.com, a website that sells various types of online makeup products. I visit the website quite frequently because of the company’s reliability and product quality. The site is aesthetically pleasing and reflects the style and mood of the products they sell. It also visually captures and targets their primary customer market. Upon viewing the website and examining it in a much more thorough and complex level, though, I find there to much more to both love and hate about the website.
As mentioned previously, the website is visually pleasing. The homepage shows several tabs with drop-down windows that allow the viewer to browse through their products more specifically. They show each physical product and give it a brief description. They even go as far as showing swatches of their different types of makeup on different skin tones so people can get an idea of what it would look like on their faces. The website also has an easy checkout process which makes shopping very efficient. They also recommend other products someone might like to buy based upon what they put in their cart. Overall, the website was a solid functionality.
One of the biggest flaws the site has, though, is its cursor. The cursor on this website comes up as stars instead of the average arrow. The stars are rather distracting and they make it hard to see when you are physically capable of clicking on something or not. Also, the pictures they show may not necessarily accurately represent the true color of the product, which may make customers disappointed in the long run.
Overall, the website does everything it’s supposed to do and effectively functions the way a makeup website should.