- What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? (pp. 48-54)
Ethnographic tools allows the designer to collect information about their designs. Ethnographic studies allow the designers to get an idea of how people look through their website. This study can tell you how long or little someone spends on a page. This can help the designer add more or less information to get people to stay on their page longer. It is good for designers to have this tool, because designers never want to see the flaws in their work and this allows them to see the problem areas and address them appropriately.
For an online banking website, by using this study it allows the bank to see flaws in the design that the designer might not have noticed. Some designers may look at a feature as something no one would use, like mobile depositing, and decide to hide it within a sub-menu and when the study is conducted it is observed that the feature is more popular then it is thought to be. This allows the designer to go back and change the layout and put it somewhere that more people would be able to access it easier.
- At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)
Everyone has a different opinion on something being finished. In my opinion a design is finished when the designer has met his/her objective. If the objective was to build a website that taught viewers how to edit film, if you can look at the website and learn how to edit film by going through the website. Also, if you can look at the website and not see anything that needs improvement then the design is finished.
All things that are designed should make people think of the design as useful and persuade users to believe in what you are trying to convey. If the designer built a website to convey the seriousness of animal suffrage in shelters the viewer to take a stand against animal shelters and to get people to start adopting shelter dogs to end animal suffrage. Making the viewer seem as if they are important to the cause is crucial to having a successful design.
Things to take into account when designing something is form and function. Form and function do not have to go together, where previously they went hand-in-hand with design. Designers can convey form with emotional and social qualities.
- Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding effected your use, relations and experience with the product? (pp. 78-84)
The one product my family uses on a regular basis is our cars. They get us from point a to point b and everywhere in between as safely as possible. My dad drives a 1994 Chevy Suburban and my mom used to drive a 1997 Chevy Lumina, which both my sisters and I have learned to drive on and now is the vehicle that my little sister drives. I didn’t realize that in a way, the way the cars have always been in my life have shaped my opinion on the brand. My moms car had been in many car accidents, my older sister got in an accident in it, I got in two accidents in it and my little sister was involved in two accidents in it. It had kept everyone of our passengers and us safe. My dad’s truck had been taken care of making it last over twenty years. Deep down, my trust with Chevy and the experience my family has had with it in the past had shaped me to becoming a loyal customer to Chevy. When something is branded in such a positive way it makes your impression of it so much greater. I think if my family had negative experiences with that brand of car and others did too, then I might not have been so likely to buy that brand.