Lessons Learnt in NM4210

NM4210 is a great course for learning about just how ambiguous user experience design is. I appreciated the professor's view that there is no set approach to user experience design. This course gave me the motivation to learn more about this topic and to keep my mind open about different methods in conducting user experience research. 

Here are just some the things I learned in this course:

Identifying your user

I learnt that when you design a product, you should design it for a particular user (as opposed to designing it for everyone). This way, at the very least, the people who fit your target user description, will enjoy your product. If you try to design for everybody, there is a chance no body will like your product. Also, if you design a product that is VERY successful with a particular group, then other people will start to adapt to your product even though it was not necessarily designed for them at first. I.e. PC users convert to MAC even though MAC was not designed to suit PC users.

The brand over the product

The experience you create through your brand is more important than the product itself. For example, people trust Honda. Some people will buy a more expensive, smaller engine, more mundane looking car, just because it is made by Honda.

Create your own niche

Even though a product, a service, or a particular idea already exists on the market, it doesn't mean innovation stops there. There is always a niche market that someone has not identified. For example, cellular phones were not uncommon when Research in Motion (RIM) developed their first Blackberry. However, RIM found a largely untapped market of phones for work and business communication. If you look at RIM's earlier line of Blackberry(s), they were not as good looking as say the Motorola Razor. However, the Blackberry has outlived those trendy phones and continues to gain more user subscriptions.

Final Project

My final project was completed with 3 other classmates (Peter La, Babak Assadi, Zach Jama). Our project was based the need for teenagers to obtain financial knowledge. The product we came up with was a online game-based interactive game called Money Sense.

The design process we went through included:

Phase 1. Needs Analysis

In this phase, we determined a need that was in the scope of being tackled within a 2-3 month project. We thought about the different types of businesses in finance and found banks to be suitable for tackling this need. We roughly defined the customers as teenagers and/or young adults who would most benefit from an increase in financial knowledge.

Phase 2. User Research

Upon talking to students in NUS, we determined that financial knowledge should be taught from a young age to have a significant impact once they are older. With this in mind, we chose our target audience to be in the range of 12 to 21 years old. We defined them to be people who do not have a good financial background but have an interest to learn.

Phase 3. Proposed Product

The proposed product is an online game which allows users to become interested about financial management. The product would be offered by a bank. The incentive for parents to sign up their kids for this is discounts of banking fees. Ideally, the game would be fun, and the users would recommend it to their friends.

Phase 4. Low Fidelity Solution

For the low fidelity solution, we created a game on paper. The user would read short paragraphs describing a story-like scenario. At the end of a paragraph, the user would be confronted with a decision (i.e. save your money or spend it). The game progresses based on the users inputs. The feedback we got for this low fidelity solution was that it was too intensive for the user, and that it needs to be more fun than informative.

Phase 5. High Fidelity Solution

The low fidelity solution we created of the game was a modified version of Jeopardy. The questions are separated in different categories, and each question had a bet associated with it. The game was created in MS Access, while the welcome page is built on html. The feedback we got was that the game on MS Access created a discontinuity in the user experience. I.e. there was a break/pause between the website and accessing the game. Also, there were some comments abut the colour scheme and use of graphics.

Phase 6. Evaluation

Based on user testing and user evaluation, we were able to roughly gauge how well our product performed. We moved the game from MS Access to an actual web game as a result of the feedback. In addition, we added some features that the users requested. Having made these changes, we saw improvements in the evaluation of our product.

Reflections on "User Research Smoke & Mirrors" article

This article is a series of blog posts by Christopher Fahey, who works for Behaviour (user experience design firm), on his opinion of scientific user research.

In short, I think Christopher is trying to make these points:

1. User experience design is not a science but an art. 

I agree with this view. You cannot create good user experience by following a set of formulas or methods. Design by nature requires creativity, and that is sometimes not reproducible. 

2. Research and heuristic results are easily misinterpreted and mostly unnecessarily for the design process (other than for organization politics)

I believe research and heuristic methods are quite necessary and non-trivial in the design process. However, the results should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, as they are highly subjective. I disagree with the author's view that a "good" designer will instinctively "know things" without the research. I do agree that it is easier to convince management to make a decision based on research results. I do not think anything is wrong about this, as it keeps everybody honest. I.e. Someone should not get paid to make recommendations based on no research and no evidence.

3. Good design process does not make great products. Good designers make great products.

I do not think this comment is properly backed up by fact (other than the example on IDEO - which in my opinion has a great design process AND a great team of designers). I think great designers do follow some form of design process, although they may not stick to it like it is law. That is what makes designing a mix of science and art. 

Overall, I think this article points out some valid arguments as it relates to user experience design. The whole idea is there is no set method to perform user research and definitely no set way to interpret the data. Thus, design is really based on the designer's experience, education, and/or talent.