I agree a lot with Jon Kolko’s ideas during this chapter. One idea is that Interaction Design is the “design of behavior, can contribute to, shift and shape, and even help to control the normative frames that describe cultural change.” I believe that, as designers, we need to continue to develop and modify culture around us, and hopefully for the better. Usability definitely plays a role in shaping culture. When designers create successful new technology, society believes that everything should operate in the same fashion. For example, take the story about Professor Ames’ daughter thinking that a magazine should operate like a tablet/phone. She is perfect example as to what society has evolved into, and that it takes time for users to adapt to different operations. Another idea that Kolko brings up is invisible manifestation. As this is intriguing, and may help recent graduated students entering the job market by not having a potential job ruined by parting pictures/videos, it can definitely be dangerous. This anonymity can foster hate, violence, and other societal taboos. But, on the plus side, it may give people the freedom to be themselves. Technology advances rapidly, and the delay between when it is finished and the availability in the marketplace can be a hinderance. One issue I find with society, due to technology advancements, is that there is a lack of communication. I would rather talk to someone on the phone or in face, but there are many people who can text someone all day, but put in a social environment cannot talk to others. Technology has made it a lot easier for physical communication to phase out. I really liked the point in the Discursive Design about designing a product it’s goal is for organic communication. As my opinions of technology is that it is helpful and useful, I hate it as much as I love it. One idea that I did not normally think about is that technology can be empowering, which Kolko even stated that it is not a common view. I admire Kolko for stating that Interactive Designers need to “advocate for humanity at all levels.” As I am happy blaming technology for societal problems of lack of communication, it is not entirely technology’s fault. Society let it happen, because it is easier. As much as designers need to try and incorporate social interactions in designs, society needs to be open to communicating with personal interactions again.
Chapters 3,4, and 5
- Ethnographic tools would need to relate back to the company culture and habits. There should be quick links to the most common used pages of the site/ services. The website should also show a safe and reliable theme. If it is a bank, they want to be seen as safe and trust worthy by their users.
- There can always be improvements to designs, so designs are never fully don’t. A successful design is one that incorporates all of the components in the user-product interaction (user, product, and context of use). The purpose is to give the user a pleasant experience.
- The product family I use regularly is facial soap. I either use 2 brands, Neutrogena or CeraVe. Both of these brands brand themselves as natural, chemical free, and healthy for your skin, especially for sensitive skin. As I have sensitive skin, it does not make me break out and makes my skin feel great. I may only be limited to these two brands, but I do not actively look for something else because I have had nothing but great experiences with these products.
Thoughts of Interaction Design: Chapters 1 & 2
1) Interaction design is made up of 5 stages: 1. Strategy: purpose, what we are trying to do 2. Scope: defines everything that is apart of the project 3. Structure: paths users take to get to different places 4. Skeleton: where everything goes and lives 5. Surface: the visual design of the product, how everything looks
An issue in the industry is being able to think about a process, and it is the same as doing the process. This also can play into the fact that what one person thinks on how a process should be completed; it may not be the same as another person. Another issue is that technology is changing rapidly, and designers need to be at the top of this change. And with all this new technology, it is crucial to have designers still incorporate the original design fundamentals.
2) Interaction design is when designer’s focus on creating appealing and intriguing product that connects to the user. It is evolving because the designers now have to think about how their product will link and feed information to a larger network. The future of technology in general is always being connecting and having the ability to have an infinite amount of information at your fingertips. This affects interaction design by making it the designers’ responsibility to see that this is not only possible, but also easy to do, aesthetically pleasing, and an overall great experience.
Homework
- Give information about products and options to purchase their products. Apple shows that they are an ecosystem with their website. There is troubleshooting through the website. A lot of problems are simple solutions that can be answered through the site. Apple let’s its users conduct “user testing” by leaving reviews of their products.
- Content Inventory
- Hierarchical- Apple, Matrix- clothing website, Organic- Wikipedia, Sequential- check out on Amazon
- Huffington Post- 95% content, 5% navigation, Google- 100% navigation, Wikipedia- 100%, Etsy- 75% navigation, 25% content
- Having a contrasting color with white writing makes the text pop.
Review 4
A website that can be in competition with my group’s website is the restaurant, Meat and Potatoes, website.
The Meat and Potatoes website layout is very simple. They have the same logo on top of all their pages, with the same footer on these pages. The color scheme is predominantly black, with accents of gold and off-white. The texture of the website is clean, but grainy. The background is pure black, but the header and off-white section is a little grainy and textured. Navigation on this website is pretty unique. The home page has a picture of a cow, and different cuts from the cow are the different links to pages. On the different pages, there is the same header on all the rest of the pages. This links the navigation from the different pages and makes navigation use easy for the consumer.
My group and I did use Meat and Potatoes for some inspiration. We wanted to use the home page navigation with our logo to direct our consumers to the different pages. Our website will stand out due to a couple different ways. Our colors are more vibrant (blue, green, and red) than the black. Another issue with Meat and Potatoes website is that the print is very small and difficult to read. My group and I wanted to make sure that we had a font that is bigger than more clear to read.
Review 3
In my third review, I am reviewing No. 9 and Six Penn Kitchen websites. They both have a nice balance with their website. They have the main content centered and a black background. No. 9 takes another step and blocked off their text with a contrasting colored div and black text. This adds some emphasis to the text, and makes the website look cleaner. Six Penn Kitchen only has the pictures outlined with a small point boarder, and leaves the text on the plain black background. It makes it difficult to read because the text is such a difference from the background.
No. 9 has a small issue with unity throughout the pages of the website. They have some of the pages with just a picture as the header of the page. On the other pages, they have a picture as the header of the page, but with a blue colored div in the top left. Either one of these layouts look good, they should pick one and format the rest of the pages as that. They do continue to have the same layout, fonts, navigation panel, and footer throughout the whole website. This makes it pretty uniform, other than the headers. The navigation panel has a way for the user to go home, and to all the other pages of the site. They bold and italics some text to emphasize the point. They also have the navigation pane text in a light and bright blue. This may be too bright and can hurt some people’s eyes.
Six Penn keeps unity throughout all of the pages of the website. They keep the same color scheme, which uses contrasting colors to emphasize certain text. They have a varying layout within the text, but it is all still centered within a certain range. The navigation panel and footer are the same on all the pages. Six Penn’s navigation panel also has a way for the user to go home, and all the other pages of the site as well.
I believe that No. 9 is more effective at drawing my attention. The rotating pictures on their home page are definitely intriguing, and Six Penn does not have this feature. No. 9 website looks more clean cut and professional than Six Penn. I think the different colored divs blocking out the text really gives the website a little more depth.
Review 2
For my second review, I am reviewing the single site, NeoBred. I love the use of colors through out this website. The background was black and most of the text was white. Only headers and words needing emphasis were one of four colors (pink, yellow, hot pink, and cyan) that were used. With the black and white, the four other colors pop really well and achieving the emphasis that was desired. Also having the black background and that only one section is displayed at a time, the reader may think that it is actually a multiple page website. The text is a neat and precise font, which gives me a clean texture feeling.
In order to move from section to section, the reader has to scroll up and down. There is also numbers that you click on to go to the next page of information in each section. On the right, there is a menu section that will cause you to be able to move from each section as well. The headings are located on the left, and only a few lines of the text on the right. Below the headings are numbers that you click to move forward to the second lines of text in each section. There also is a count that tells you which section you are on out of the total number of sections.
I believe this site is designed well. I picked this site from onepagelove.com because the color popped and got my attention. As I looked throughout the rest of the site, I saw that NeoBrand used the colors really well. It was very easy to navigate from section to section. Also I really liked the fact that there are only a few lines of text for each section, because it makes it easier for the reader to follow. Overall, I think this is an aesthetically and functionally pleasing website.
Review 1
For my website review, I decided to review one of my favorite store’s website, Tilly’s. Tilly’s is a clothing store that is headquartered in Irvine, California. The website displays their clothing lines, and is a place where customers can purchase the products. The website has a very clean look. It has a plain white background, with a black and gray banner, and pictures of the clothing centered. There is a search bar, centered and high up on the home page. This is extremely useful if you already know what you are looking for. Below the search bar is a header with page tags that when hovered over, a drop down menu pops up. There are many options here to click to move to other pages. Under the Women tag, they have nine categories, which are featured, clothing, swim, intimates, shoes, accessories, beauty, deals, and outlets. Each page loads relatively fast. There are no ads placed on this website, which makes sense because Tilly’s does not want you to leave their page. They also have a responsive and functioning shopping cart. Not only does it show what you saved, but also shows what other people bought with the items that are in your shopping cart. Once the customer picks what they want to buy and precede to checkout, their checkout is safe and secure with McAfee services. GeoTrust, which is the world’s second largest digital certificate provider, also verifies Tilly’s. From being a frequent shopper at Tilly’s, I have not experienced a negative time on their website. They have done a great job with keeping up with traffic, updating new lines, and getting their old lines on sale.