Ames' syllabi

What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? 

It can provide insight to see if the website is easy to use and the common issues among the users when using the website. Also how the users navigate through the website and what they commonly gravitate towards on the site. 

At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose?

The design is finished when it satisfied the clients needs or when a deadline is approaching. A design is also finished when it is put into production to be created and mass produced. The purpose is to create something for people to use. A finished design is able to be manufactured and then it becomes useful in everyday life depending on what the item is. 

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

A product family I would use regularly would be Apple products but more specifically the Ipod generations. The way a brand presents itself can really affect if someone buys it or not. I got it just because it worked well and of course for the name. Everyone has an Apple product which means I should have one to if everyone else has it. There must be something so great about this product that everyone has it. I have become more dependent on it for entertainment rather than just music. Since I can get access to so many apps now I use those rather than just regular ITunes. I still use ITunes but only when I do not have an internet connection. My experience so far has been good. Since Apple has a good reputation with its products I expect something great and reliable. 

Madisyn Kovach

Reading Thoughts on Interaction Design: Chapters 3, 4 & 5

• What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? (pp. 48-54)
• Ethnographic tools used by Interaction Designers attempt to understand what people do and why they do it. Most ethnographic tools are generally poor methods of determining if someone would buy a certain product, identifying how much someone would pay for a certain product, and understanding what color, texture, material, size, or shape to make a certain product. While tools like surveys or interviews can certainly ask questions relating to these details, people have a difficult time in estimating or remembering details related to this type of preference. Instead, ethnography helps designers identify problems.  So, if I was looking on PNC’s Bank website, I would be looking for the design of the site. I would also be questioning if I can use this easily or if I struggle while I am using it. In my opinion, when looking through PNC’s website, I feel like it is a great website. For example, the layout is understanding, nothing is out of place, there are colors that make my eyes pop, and there are different size of text used.  
• At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)
• It is known that a designer will create a mass of ideas, test them, and gather good feedback, all the while honing in on a particular solution. I feel like a design is never completely finished how you expected it would be.  You have to remember to please your audience. So, things might have to change in the future to keep the incoming crowd happy with the product. There are several things that can make the product a success. One thing can be the satisfaction of the customers that are using the product.  The second thing is people purchasing the product. The final thing is the reviews online. Getting good reviews can cause other customers to purchase your product.  A good designer, however, balances convergent thinking with a healthy level of divergent thinking.  The purpose of the design is to please the user and the person who created the device.   
• Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding affect your use, relationship and experience with the product? (pp. 78-84)
• A product family that I use regularly is Apple.  I currently own a MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Headphones.  I also have owned several of their iPods including the nano, touch, and shuffle.  I started using Apple when I was about seven years of age when I got my first iPod.  I continued using the iPods when I was younger because I thought it was easy to just transfer my songs through iTunes.  When thinking I was younger I started with the flip phone and in about 8th or 9th grade, my dad told me I could choose a smartphone.  Having several Apple products before, I knew an iPhone would be the best decision. I can tell you I have not had any other smart phone other than the iPhones.  Anytime I had a problem with my phone, I would always look on Apple’s website because I knew there was a step by step process to walk you through the situation. When going to trade my iPhones, the customer service in the Apple Store was amazing.  They would always answer my questions, as well as, walking me through how to set up my phone. They also have helped me transfer everything from my old phone to my new phone. I feel like I have stayed with Apple because I never really had issues with their products or staff before.  Also, everything on their devices are user friendly.      

• What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?
  • Worrying about:
    • Fragmented user journeys & clever but lazy users
      • Trying to get everything on the website/app but making things as easy as possible.  You do not want them to get confused using the website or app but you still want to get all of the information onto that page.  
    • New interaction paradigms
      • EX: tapping on social media apps like snapchat
  • Making sure the page is visually attractive
    • You want to make sure you are pleasing the users eye.
  •  How much information you want on your page
    • You want to make sure you are putting an equal amount of text and photos on a website.  Chances are if the website is all text, your viewer will probably not look at it.
  • The simplicity on the page
    • Making sure you can function it as easy as possible. 
  • Making the device looked finish
    • When it fits the user at a specific time
• What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?
  • Interaction Designers- find themselves in the unique position of being at the center of several worlds, all of which are presently colliding within the global marketplace. These worlds include industrial design, engineering, psychology, art, and business strategy. All of these elements must be present and well integrated in order to create a successful Interaction Design, and the Interaction Designer often seeks out the role of project manager—in charge of ensuring that all of these fields are adequately represented in the development of a product.
  • Good design is as little design as possible
  • Users should not have to think about the design. It should feel natural. 
  • Interaction Design- is the design of interactive products and services in which a designer’s focus goes beyond the item in development to include the way users will interact with it. Thus, close scrutiny of users’ needs, limitations and contexts, etc. empowers designers to customize output to suit precise demands.
  • Different Fields:
    • Interaction
    • Graphic
    • Photography
    • Multimedia
    • Interior 
    • Advertising
    • Film
  • Design shapes behavior
  • There should be a meaningful relationship between the person and the thing.

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

    Interaction design is made up of various parts.  Not only does it involve the designer, but it also involves the consumer as well.  Interaction designers work to build relationships between products, services, people, and systems by encouraging dialogue through the use of functions, technology, and other forms as they develop over time.  The act of interaction design includes studying the consumer in order to better understand and change the way that they think, do, and view things.  Interaction designers may work under the practice of visual interface design, information architecture, or even usability engineering.  The purpose of interaction design is to help change the way people view and use design.  In order to accomplish this, the designers must be able to understand how people relate to the world, each other, and also the changes that are happening in technology and businesses.

    There are many challenges when it comes to interaction design.  One of the biggest challenges is uncovering the wants and needs of the consumer.  Since every person is different, it’s hard for designers to know exactly what their consumers might want at any given moment. In order to accomplish this task, the designer must be able to pinpoint the needs and wants of their consumer. This includes doing research, among other things, in order to figure out what these needs and wants are.  The designer must also must be able to carry out the task of refining their designs in order to meet the demands of the consumer.  Another issue, which designers may face, is in the area of navigation and usability. Since digital interfaces are often very complex, a lot of people have a hard time understanding how they work and where to go when using them.  That being said, interaction designers must meet the challenge of making these interfaces easier to understand and work with.  This involves taking what’s not physical, or the digital interface, and designing it in such a way as to make it attainable for the common man, without it actually being a physical product.    

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

According to the book, “Thoughts on Interaction Design”, interaction design can be defined as “the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, system, or service.”  It involves changing the behavior of others and redefining the way that they view things.  That being said, interaction design is always changing and evolving over time. As the wants, needs, and desires of the consumers change, the evolution of interaction design begins to blossom as well.  With technology and social media on the rise, it makes sense that the growth of interaction design would continue along with it. Although the interaction design industry has its own separate field, it encompasses various ideas which it has gained from other fields of study.  For example, interaction designers have gained a lot of their knowledge about memory, perception, and cognition from the field of cognitive psychology.   They also rely heavily on the field of art as a way to learn how to capture the emotions and visual appeal of their consumers.

What are the goals of Apple’s website? How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook?

Apple has truly utilized a strategy for a good user experience through their website. It is easy to navigate their site, whether you are just there for information, to buy a product, or need assistance. They were able to do so through a consistency in their brand identity. Brand identity isn’t just the visuals, it can include the concept or emotional associations with the brand. We don’t design for ourselves. Websites are typically designed to make the company money or save it money (Garrett, 2003). The way to plan for others is to segment users in different ways and be aware of technology awareness within that group. Usability is one of the most important things to consider when planning for a user experience. 

What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page?

Branding and technical requirements apply to the site as a whole and are often discussed in collaboration between both the developer and the designer with the concept of the final website in mind. It is important to determine how frequently to update. Get the base site down and plan more features for later releases. A functional specification focuses on the people interacting with the system. Therefore, Facebook specifications include connecting people from all over the world and allowing them to share thoughts and life events through a variety of media. Also, through Facebook, you can send payments, sell and buy from an online marketplace, and use it to watch entertaining videos or play games. 

What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each.

Web architecture addresses the more abstract issues of the strategy. There are four different architectural approaches: hierarchical, matrix, organic, sequential, but picking an approach depends on the user’s needs. For an example of a hierarchal structure, rmu.edu is a great example. These sites are almost like a family tree where they get smaller and smaller as it progresses. On the RMU website, the navigation bar is the first type of approach. As you dig deeper and deeper within the site, information and links get even more specific. Zappos.com is an example of a matrix information structure. After searching for a product, you can then refine that search by style, color, brand, price, and size. An example of a sequential information structure is a book. While reading a book, you receive and comprehend the information in a sequential or linear order. Superbad.com is a website with an organic information structure. Depending on where you click on each page, each user will have a different navigation pattern. 

What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy?

The concerns on this plane are with the individual pages and their components. This deals with interface design, navigation design, and information design. The user shouldn’t have to think about how they are gonna do what they’re gonna do. Make an interface similar to one’s users are familiar with. Content should provide context and reduce mental effort. There are six common types of navigation systems: global, local, supplementary, contextual, courtesy, and remote. On the Huffington Post index page, about 70% of the grid was filled with content, 10% was navigation, and the other 10% was white space. After looking up something on Google, the first page of results yields about 60% content, 5% navigation, and 35% of the page was white space. Wikipedia is a very content-heavy site, with about 85% content, 10% navigation, and 5% white space. While looking at a specific category of products on Etsy, I found that about 60% was content, 20% navigation, and 20% white space.

How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important?

The surface plane is all about visual design. The grid system is often used for consistency. Color and typography are most effective in communicating a brand’s identity. Landor specifically did a good job in this area. The bright, vibrant yellow will surely draw attention to it. The black and white accents are also bold and modern, giving off an overall powerful vibe. There is not much included in the navigation bar, which directs the user to select a language or click on the hidden drop-down menu. This seems to be a theme throughout the site with large text and minimal designs and stuff to look at in the background. As you scroll further down the homepage, the bright animations draw your eyes to the articles linked beside them. 

Reference:
Garrett, J. J. (2003). The Elements of user experience: user-centered design for the web (3rd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: New Riders.

• What are the goals of Apple’s website? How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (Chapter 3)

The goals of Apple’s website were to be user friendly with a lot of support for the user experience. They want to make the customer feel as if they can feel and touch their products without actually seeing them and they want to make it as easy as possible for the user to learn how to use and buy their products.

• What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (Chapter 4: Functional Specifications, Content Requirements an Prioritizing Requirements)

There are many functional specifications on a Facebook wall. This is also another word for scope. Facebook wants you to be able to post pictures or anything. They make it so you can view other peoples posts and make it have tons of functionality. Some of this functionality is as simple as being able to like someone else’s posts.

• What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each. (Chapter 5: Information Architecture)

Top down approach is when it starts from broad categories and gets more specific. An example of this is Insta print. There are broad categories to choose from and then you get more specific as you click through the different categories.

A bottom-up approach is when products are grouped based on their functionality. An example of this is Reebok hockey sticks. There are product lines where the hockey sticks are categorized into based on the quality and functionality of the hockey stick.

A hierarchial structure is when there is a main product and other products that stem from that one. An example of this is Nikon. Nikon has a top of the line camera but also has lower models that stem down from that one.

A matrix structure allows the user to filter by different categories. An example of this is Zillow. You can filter based on location, price, and property type.

• What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (Chapter 6)

I would say that the percentage of navigation and content is equal for all of these websites. Google is mainly based on searching and navigation but they have tons of content within the search results. If anything the amount of navigation may even be greater for these sites.

• How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (Chapter 7: Follow the eye 

They focus on what is important by funneling in the users to make sure they experience everything important. They have interactive buttons that you need to press in order to move throughout the site and there are moving images to attract ones attention to read something.

Madisyn Kovach

Designing for New Media

What are the goals of Apple’s website? How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (Chapter 3)

The goals of Apple’s website are to make the company money and to save the company money. When looking at Apple’s website, there is a step-by-step process listed on their website to help users that just purchased their first MacBook.   Apple wants the users to have a quick and simple service when having an issue.  Apple has also set up their website based on demographic. If you think about it, people from the ages of 10-70 could be purchasing their first MacBook.  So, the website is user friendly to all ages.  Also, the Apple site wants the user to have good impressions.  Apple wants to make sure their site is helping the users with questions, so they are saving their own time and money.  If the user has a good service, they will probably buy another one of their products.    

What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (Chapter 4: Functional Specifications, Content Requirements a Prioritizing Requirements)

Functional specifications provide the developer and the designer with a vision or concept of the final website. A functional specification does not define the inner workings of the proposed system.  Instead, it focuses on the people interacting with the system.  When looking on Facebook, the functional specifications include tagging friends in posts, posting your thoughts or pictures, and scrolling to see what other people have posted.   

What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each. (Chapter 5: Information Architecture)

There are four architectural approaches to information structure. These four architectural approaches include hierarchical structure, matrix structure, organic structure, and sequential structure. The most obvious example of a hierarchical system in computers is a file system, in which directories have files and subdirectories beneath them.  When looking at a matrix structure, a good example would be on Amazon. When looking up a product, you can look on the left side of the computer and see different boxes that you could check off.  For example, you could say I just want prime items to be shown. You would hit the box that says prime and then Amazon items that are only prime will pop up.  For organic structure, a good example would be when you are on an educational website. You can find a several page document but if you were to leave the page, it would be hard for you to get back to the same exact spot on the page.  The final architectural approach is a sequential structure.  A good example for a sequential structure is when you are checking out on a website.  It takes you through a step by step process. These are examples of the four architectural approach to information structure.    

What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (Chapter 6)

When looking at the Huffington Post, I say there is about 90% navigation with 10% content.  When looking on the website, there are several options that you could use to navigate your way through the site.  While searching Google, I found that about 65% is content and 35% is content. Searching for the presents of Wikipedia’s navigation and content, I found that they have 15% navigation and 85% content.  While searching Etsy, I found that almost 80% is navigation and 20% is content.    

How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (Chapter 7: Follow the eye)

When looking at landor.com, I found several things that could guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important.  You could tell just by searching that they were trying to interest you in research, design, and consulting methods that the branding industry still uses.  They also used several navigation keys that brought you to a lot of the content. In my opinion, this website also used a strong color palate.  When having a black screen with white font, and then you hover over a word and it changes to yellow it will catch the readers’ attention on something different. Also, this website uses a very strong grid.  The readers will not get confused or lost when looking at images and reading what it put down.