Ames' syllabi

Ethnographic tools can allow someone to gather how and why someone would use an online banking website. These tools can show how the user goes about exploring the website or what areas they use the most. It can also show why a person uses the banking website from what aspects of the website the user uses.

A design can be considered finished when it is ready to be implemented and taken to the next step. The design then can be considered a success after user testing has been completed, this will usually consist of taking people from the target audience of the design and have them work with and experience the design to see if it works as intended. The purpose of the design is to complete a goal or solve a problem, what exactly that entails differs between each design, but usually it can be found in what the target audience desires from the design.

A favorite drink of mine is Pepsi, whenever I get soda it is my go-to as long as it is available. Pepsi has very strong visual branding, the iconic logo with the blue wrapping around it. This branding and colors have become linked with the drink for me, if I’m ever in a store or looking for a drink, the logo and color will always stick out to me before any other option.

1. Ethnographic tools assist in helping us designers understand how our consumers use our products. By using these tools, we gain information on the steps our consumers take, what is analyzed by them, and if our intended goal is occuring. From this information, for an online banking website, we can learn how to streamline the process and make it easy to understand. We can see if some steps are not needed and can be removed, or if some steps are made unclear and would be frustrating to consumers. With the importance of banking, it is essential that the website is clear and easy to interact with, and ethnographic tools can assist us with that.
2. A design is not finished after the product is made, but after it has been tested and the intended results occur. As designers, we can try our best to make a design we think consumers may find easy to use, but we are biased from experience and may percieve a process to be simple when a consumer would actually find it very difficult. A design is only finished when our intended result works as intended, when the consumer can use our design as we hope they would. Our design is successful, then, when we can make one that the consumer can truly understand properly.
3. A product family I use regularly would be the Pepsi product family. I tend to consume its products a lot, especially Pepsi and Mt. Dew. I see its products everywhere, and in my past I have seen marketing for it a lot. Whenever I think I need energy in the middle of my university day, I immediately just think of Mt. Dew since I tend to rely on its caffeine so much. Overall, its branding has developed a bit of a dependency on it for me, and I choose it very often over other products, even coffee.

• What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? (pp. 48-54)

Ethnographic tools will inform us on how to improve the interactivity of an online banking website by observing how people interact with it in the first place. Ethnography is all about watching how people naturally interact with their surroundings. By doing this, you will be able to see what people struggle with when using the banking website and what they succeed at.

• At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)

A design is never truly finished, there is always room for improvement. However, a design is a success when the user can make sense of it without any struggle. The ultimate purpose of a design is to be easy for the user to work with. Users being able to understand the design and not have any issues with it is its main purpose.

• Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding affected your use, relationship and experience with the product? (pp. 78-84)

When I think of a product family that I use regularly, Apple is the first thing to come to my head. Apple branding has affected my use of their products by conditioning me to be able to navigate any of them seamlessly because they are set up very similarly. My relationship with the brand goes way back considering I owned an iPod at a young age. Since then, I have moved onto an iPhone and a MacBook Pro. I have grown up using the Apple brand so it would be jarring to switch to any other for my next phone or laptop. My overall experience with the Apple brand has been positive. My phone and laptop both do what they need to do so there are no complaints from me.

Interaction Designers must be able to communicate with various different fields in order to help those fields interact with one another. However, in order to be able to do this effectively, the Interaction Designers must understand each of these fields and know how they relate with one another. The Interaction Designer is tasked with bringing together these different fields such as design, engineering, psychology, art, and many more. The challenges they face are the ones that arise in understanding these fields and then discovering a way to bring them together.

Interaction Design is evolving through the use and ever-improving world of computers. Computers give Interaction Designers a new way to design and improve their work. The Interaction Designers then can draw knowledge from the various different fields that they interact with and help and work for.

What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?

Interaction design is made up of a series of steps and processes in the hopes of understanding the audience and how the eventual product you design will affect them.  . One of the challenges the industry faces is the time it takes to commit to this whole process. Explaining to a boss why you need multiple weeks to write stories and scenarios might be a hard sell, especially to someone who isn’t well versed in the field. Another challenge is the difficulty of relating to your audience and understanding their experiences, situations, perceptions, cultural norms, etc.

What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?

Interaction design consists of not only a process to design a product, but that process is interwoven into how the user of the product will use and interact with it on a daily basis. As interaction design absorbs techniques and ideas from other fields, it continues to evolve in its process of understanding the user and how they interact with life. As time progresses, certain types of products and design systems are becoming more refined thanks to interaction designers, allowing for more efficient systems and ways of interaction.  

Due to the nature of interaction design and its need for knowledge of its user, interaction design can draw knowledge from marketing, graphic design, industrial design, even UI and UX designers. Interaction design takes the steps these fields use and upgrades them, taking them to the next level to be more intricate, detailed, and suited for conceptual ways of thinking. Often these fields focus too much on the visual aspect of design, whereas interaction design focuses strictly on the conceptual navigation of users.

Interaction design is made of several fields, drawing from graphic design, UI/UX design, web design, and even psychology. Unlike the design-related fields, Interaction Design is less about appearance and more about function. It handles the challenge of experts not properly understanding how someone inexperienced with the material may interact with it. It requires an understanding of the process used by those who are intended to use it. An experienced interaction designer must attempt to view their functions through the eyes of someone new to the content instead of themself because someone experienced will not experience the same troubles a new person would. Though this can be done through self-testing and a plain understanding of others, one evolved method of interaction design testing is creating prototypes and having others test them. It’s growing ever more important to understand how an audience interacts with a product, and it’s especially important to understand how different types of people act too, as everyone has a separate experience. Interaction design, then, is an invaluable asset to any design or product to add easy functionality to everything. Skipping this process may lead to extremely faulty designs, making it essential to modern design.

Interaction design is the methodical form of design concerning user experience with a certain creation. Whether that’s a physical or digital item, the personalized needs of the user are addressed in varying forms. The greatest challenges seem to be the complexities throughout the process of designing a proper user interface with the user in mind. There are many variables that dabble in a multitude of studies and mediums, and it is understood that each artist of interaction design is essentially working through a thick shadow of vagueness and points that haven’t been articulated properly.

Interaction design is particularly growing in the direction of post-modern media that functions through types of computers. It draws from the fields of graphic design, psychology, anthropology, marketing, data analytics, ethnography, engineering, and now, website development, as well as other forms of computer software and hardware design and engineering. Its evolution seems to have grown into something increasingly technological, as well as increasingly oriented around products rather than devices or items on their own. There is a significant focus toward marketing language present in the text that illustrates this plainly to me.