Reflections

What is one word to encapsulate how I feel/ think, now that this module is over? WOW.

WOW because i managed to survive. I wouldn't say that this module is the easiest I have ever gone through and it certainly gives me a whole new perspective on the area of design.

I still recall the very first lesson - Mr Reddy told us that design is a whole huge area that people often overlook as just something creative, or art. The normal attribution to the word "design" is often visual design, like the design of an advertisement or interior design, or fashion design. But everything is essentially a design. I would think that design is a thought-process which either helps or kills us. It can allow us to enjoy what we're engaging in, or seriously feel like thrashing it and wish we never saw it. (haha so extreme)

And I suppose that's essentially what the whole design experience is about. It's not so much about an object, but more of the user using the object and the likes and don't-likes about it. It moves from just designing something like a cup, to designing how the user can use the cup instead.

I like that we learnt a few methods to do user research. I personally felt the laddering method was insightful, and at the same time enjoyable to engage in. Perhaps it is because it brings the researcher to a more personal/ informal level with the user to try to probe them into revealing what they really feel. Of course, researchers would have to be so thick-skinned as to continue probing. In my own experience, my friend was really getting a little exasperated when I kept probing him about his lecture theatre experience. Often, the answers would end up as "I don't know!"

Looking back, I still find that one of the solutions that Paul, Mike and I came up with for the lecture theatre experience improvements is quite feasible! (Of course, not taking so much of cost into the picture as yet.) It is the solution which tries to tackle students being unable to find seats until they go into the lecture theatre and look around for seats. We proposed that there be a weight sensor on each chair which will correspond with an LED screen outside the LTs - if the chair detects a weight above a certain indicator, the corresponding chair will light up on the LED screen. As such, students will know which seats are taken and which are still available. Of course this targets latecomers but inherently latecoming is already an age old problem that is tough to fight, so might as well design something to work around the problem :)

One thing very different about NM 4210 is that it brings us away from just the designing (since we can already do that in NM 2208) but more so on the idea conceptualising, focusing on the users needs and wants, the clients needs and wants and how to match both expectations. It was such an eye-opener to the many different ways of analysing users - personas, the 4 kinds of pleasures, circumplex of emotions and heuristic testings, to name a few.

My horizon is greatly broadened.

So this marks the end of NM 4210 but I never know if this will mark the end of user experience design for me. Albeit being a commercial tool, it's been a great lesson for me as a student. I may not be the best student around, but we all try to be :)