What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?
Interaction design is a highly complex field that pulls from many studies to design products to apply an understanding of human behavior to designing products and systems. This new industry is still working to establish and differentiate itself from the other disciplines that it is closely related to. Also, the industry has been revolutionized in the past years by growing technologies and is struggling to have a firm place in the process of development.
What is interaction design, how its evolving? What fields does it draw knowledge from?
Interaction design is applying knowledge in human behavior to designing products, services, or systems for humans. In recent years, interaction design has shifted its application to many different users flows in regards to designing technology. It is a study that overlaps with many other fields such as psychology, design, engineering, and anthropology.
I had a history teacher in high school who claimed that America has the most beautiful economic system because there is not a clearly defined one. Despite many Americans labeling our system as purely capitalistic, we also incorporate socialist practices to ensure safety and education for every American. The only reason there is a discussion around limiting the free market is that the hungry algorithms designed by large social media companies are threatening the safety and education of Americans. What these corporations are selling is information on an individual’s behaviors, often without the explicit consent of its users. Oftentimes, consent is given through the terms and conditions of the apps, and companies claim that users have the choice of whether or not to use their apps. In present times it is impossible to interact with others normally, function in school, and perform in the work environment without the use of these companies. Because we cannot function without these technologies, presenting consent to their terms as an ultimatum should be considered to be coercion and therefore illegal. This being said, social media companies are simply functioning as they are designed for, which is to create the most profit. The responsibility for public safety needs to be entrusted to the United States government, and these growing issues need legislation that can pose a framework that social media companies can flounder to gain profits within. That way all systems are functioning within their intended function rather than constantly swaying in public opinion. This solution can look very different depending on the ideas of many legislators and the millions of voices that, ironically, echo through social 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 for Apple’s website are to help users compare features and select the best model for their needs. Apple’s website features icons that are universal to shopping navigation and descriptions for the features that are not common amongst the average user.
What are the functional specifications of your preferred social media’s home page? If you are not on social media what are the specs for google? (Chapter 4: Functional Specifications, Content Requirements an Prioritizing Requirements)
CPU — 0.2 ( the required processing power)
CPU — 1.4 ( graphical requirement)
RAM — 1.2 ( required amount of RAM)
OS — Android 2.2 and above (required android operating system version) iOS 5 and above (required iPhone/iPad operating system)
What are four architectural approaches to information design and organization? Find one example of each. (Chapter 5: Information Architecture)
What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (Chapter 6)
The Huffington Post focuses on presenting content and has simplified navigation tools.
Google’s main function is to navigate between other websites and is therefore mostly reliant on navigation features with small parts of content.
Wikipedia is meant to navigate from content to content and is therefore content-centered
Etsy’s main purpose is to find information about a product so most of the page is centered around navigation and some featured content
How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (Chapter 7: Follow the eye )
Landor.com Feeds small bits of information in a visually stimulating way through the way they instill functions that slow down the scrolling process and section content that fills the screen. This helps control the reader’s eyes and forces them to take in the main ideas that Landor wants the reader to get.
What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? (pp. 48-54)
Ethnographic tools can give insight into the demographic of the users that the banking website is going to be geared towards and to establish common goals within the ethnographic groups. Also, surface-level factors such as language, colors, and symbols all depend on the social influences of key ethnographic groups.
At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)
A design can never be truly finished. There will always be modifications that can be made to accommodate the ever-changing needs of the users. However, typically a design is accepted as complete when it fulfills the objectives to the best of the designer’s knowledge. When the design fulfills the objectives and is widely understood and accepted, the design is at its most successful. The purpose of design is to meet both the needs of the creators and the users.
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)
I have grown up constantly experiencing all of the games and gaming systems that fall under the Nintendo brand family. I think some of the features about Nintendo that makes it one of my favorite brands is the diversity in styles of quality gameplay that can all be played on the same device (for example sandboxes like Animal Crossing, open-world adventures like Legend of Zelda, and combat like Super Smash Brothers). Also, I respect Nintendo’s new direction with trying to mature their gaming library to accommodate their audience that has grown up with the brand. They have also been consistently innovative with the gaming systems and have created new gaming experiences with most of the major new releases so it does not become stagnant.
After analyzing the numerous issues that presented our protagonist during his morning, my team decided to address the question “What could be made to help make paying for gas easier?” To begin creating a proper strategy for developing a product to best address this question, we defined our business goal which is to develop a product that both encourages new users to implement into their daily lives and creates a channel of communication from the gas companies to our company to the user. To go on to address our goals for our users, we first developed three user profiles to represent the diverse backgrounds of possible users that our product will be targeting-since almost anyone past the age of 16 operates a gas vehicle in today’s market. Another aspect that we considered beyond basic demographics and financial capacity is technical proficiency, which will be necessary to use the app that we are looking to develop. Looking at the diverse backgrounds revealed that most users would have a similar goal when using our product-which would be to get gas easily and for cheap. We would have to adapt our product to be comprehensive to people of all technology proficiencies in order to reach the most ideal market and make it a free-to-use product that is still lucrative to our business.
From there, our team began to narrow our scope for what features we want our product to have. Right now we understand that these features are subject to change as we grow more and more specific, but we determined that we would want three basic functions to begin which are to feature user accounts, an online payment function, and information regarding pricing for gas prices. As we continue to work through a possible Structure for the app, we are understanding that most of the features that we will need will be to make these three main categories of features function-such as shopping carts, databases for user information, account customization, and more which will be defined in greater detail as we further building our skeleton of the app. As our conversations indicate right now, we are hoping to create a system that automatically scans a license plate and charges the user whatever amount their gas is. This way the user will be able to simply pull up to the pump and begin fueling without the need to use a card. We are addressing the possible security issues right now, and are leaning towards registering a permission setting so the user can confirm each payment through the app. One of the greatest obstacles that our team is facing when planning for features is how to best address the need to make an app user-friendly for someone who is not technically proficient. Some ideas proposed suggest perhaps creating a feature outside of the app where the user could register their vehicle for automatic payments inside our participating gas stations. Other ideas proposed involve automatic billing and other paper systems. So far our team has been doing very well at collaborating as we all work to noodle through this new process for thinking, and I am very excited to see where this project goes!
