Heuristic evaluations
Group 6: http://ryanaljondihci.weebly.com/heuristics/group-6-heuristic-evaluations1
Group 7: http://ryanaljondihci.weebly.com/heuristics/group-6-heuristic-evaluations
Group 7: http://ryanaljondihci.weebly.com/heuristics/group-6-heuristic-evaluations
Individual Homework #3: Ethnography
I enrolled in Human Computer Interactions because the class has a heavy emphasis on design. In fact, design has become a growing interest of mine over the past year, so I decided to take that interest beyond just the classroom format. Scout is Northeastern’s biggest design club, and I decided that I might join their club. Once a week, Scout hosts a meet-up known as “Club Scout”, where members get together in a room and work on whatever they want, bouncing ideas off of and receiving critique from each other. I attended this event for the first time with a few of my friends, and did not know any of the other regulars there. This was a great opportunity for me to observe everyone for a few hours before singling a few out to be interviewed.
To be sure, Club Scout is not just a collection of friends who are just hanging out in a classroom. The first thing I noticed were students poring over each others work, be it a logo design or a resume or even one another’s homework. Some of my friends pulled up their own resumes and sought critique from the upperclassmen in the room, while others worked on their personal websites. My favorite project was a classmate of mine who embarked on a journey to replace every face on the album cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” with my own. The more experienced of Scout even came to me to ask me if I wanted their advice with anything, at which point I just pointed at my rental laptop which took a full half hour to turn on.
The only student group I had been involved with up to this point was ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), a group whose e-board I was a part of. ACM’s membership was largely made of computer and information scientists, and as a result, those were the sorts of people I was surrounded with at each meeting. There is another group named Hacks, which is Club Scout’s equivalent in the computer science realm, where students gather in a room with the pretense of working on whatever miscellaneous project they please. ACM and Hacks were the two metrics which I compared Club Scout against, and even if they served similar functions, I found them quite different. Club Scout has students from any major (I suppose design is a very accessible skill), though several students had majors focusing on interactive media or a similar field. An interesting trait I noticed is that the students were always working on something new. I expected that of the former computer science clubs, but I suppose coders are very easily distractible in groups (this is just a hypothesis, not to be taken as a fact).
The artifacts that Club-Scout-goers used to accomplished their activities were as follows: a door to open, a seat to sit in, (usually) laptops to design on, a mouse to precisely design with, a notebook and writing utensil to draw with, and very hot chips and salsa to entertain them whilst they created.
I picked a few subjects at almost-random to interview after observing them for the two hours that this event lasted (all that actually happened from my vantage point was them clicking around on a laptop screen that I could not see and occasionally wandering over to my table for chips). I decided to give this interview a bit of structure, first starting with questions about their thoughts on Scout and design in general, then asking them simple questions that do not have a right answer (though in my opinion, there is a right answer for each of them), and then asking them about their greatest ambition or greatest fear. Oddly enough, it was a set of questions that prompted people I have never met to tell me very personal things.
The first subject was at my table. This was her first time at Scout, but allegedly she was always interested in design. Interestingly enough, I did not see her actually make anything in the past two hours, as she did not have her laptop or a notebook. The only artifacts she made use of were the chair, the table, and the chips. She preferred Chipotle over Qdoba, pulp in her orange juice, Tom Brady over Peyton Manning, and her toilet paper goes under the roll when she puts a new roll in the dispenser (to everyone’s dismay). Her career ambitions amounted to making her own ad agency with a focus on video games, perhaps, she hypothesized, this was a result of watching the series Mad Men.
The second subject’s interview got the most personal. This subject was the Design Director at Scout, which involved overseeing all the teams, managing client relationships, disaster control, and anything else that kept Scout afloat. He had a huge passion for design and this was reflected in the work he did while at the meeting. He prefers Chipotle to Qdoba, pulp in his orange juice, did not care enough about football to have a preferred quarterback, and has his toilet paper go over the roll (to everyone’s relief). Subject two’s ambitions seemed limitless: a global design studio that would do work for social causes and non-profits with the general goal of, “making a difference”. I asked him his thoughts on relationships, and he said that his sense of ambition coupled with his desire to not stay in one place for two long has crippled his ability to form a long lasting relationship, and then went even deeper into his lack of a love life from there.
The final interview subject stated he was at Club Scout because, “design is burning in my heart”. His greatest fear overall was to work at a job that he hates, and his greatest fear that day was that everyone around him would judge him for his backpack smelling of apples.
These interviews taught me, aside from the various dichotomies that exist in burrito preferences and how people hang their toilet paper, how passionate design students were. Each of my subjects loved design enough that they would let it dictate what the rest of their lives looked like. Interaction-wise, there were a lot of complex UI’s at play. The design applications that they used were certainly above my pay grade, and it would have taken more than a few meetings to figure them out. Asides from complex programs, the students often just relied on a chair to sit in, a peer to bounce ideas off of (via vocal conversation across the table), and the endless scope of their imagination.
I enrolled in Human Computer Interactions because the class has a heavy emphasis on design. In fact, design has become a growing interest of mine over the past year, so I decided to take that interest beyond just the classroom format. Scout is Northeastern’s biggest design club, and I decided that I might join their club. Once a week, Scout hosts a meet-up known as “Club Scout”, where members get together in a room and work on whatever they want, bouncing ideas off of and receiving critique from each other. I attended this event for the first time with a few of my friends, and did not know any of the other regulars there. This was a great opportunity for me to observe everyone for a few hours before singling a few out to be interviewed.
To be sure, Club Scout is not just a collection of friends who are just hanging out in a classroom. The first thing I noticed were students poring over each others work, be it a logo design or a resume or even one another’s homework. Some of my friends pulled up their own resumes and sought critique from the upperclassmen in the room, while others worked on their personal websites. My favorite project was a classmate of mine who embarked on a journey to replace every face on the album cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” with my own. The more experienced of Scout even came to me to ask me if I wanted their advice with anything, at which point I just pointed at my rental laptop which took a full half hour to turn on.
The only student group I had been involved with up to this point was ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), a group whose e-board I was a part of. ACM’s membership was largely made of computer and information scientists, and as a result, those were the sorts of people I was surrounded with at each meeting. There is another group named Hacks, which is Club Scout’s equivalent in the computer science realm, where students gather in a room with the pretense of working on whatever miscellaneous project they please. ACM and Hacks were the two metrics which I compared Club Scout against, and even if they served similar functions, I found them quite different. Club Scout has students from any major (I suppose design is a very accessible skill), though several students had majors focusing on interactive media or a similar field. An interesting trait I noticed is that the students were always working on something new. I expected that of the former computer science clubs, but I suppose coders are very easily distractible in groups (this is just a hypothesis, not to be taken as a fact).
The artifacts that Club-Scout-goers used to accomplished their activities were as follows: a door to open, a seat to sit in, (usually) laptops to design on, a mouse to precisely design with, a notebook and writing utensil to draw with, and very hot chips and salsa to entertain them whilst they created.
I picked a few subjects at almost-random to interview after observing them for the two hours that this event lasted (all that actually happened from my vantage point was them clicking around on a laptop screen that I could not see and occasionally wandering over to my table for chips). I decided to give this interview a bit of structure, first starting with questions about their thoughts on Scout and design in general, then asking them simple questions that do not have a right answer (though in my opinion, there is a right answer for each of them), and then asking them about their greatest ambition or greatest fear. Oddly enough, it was a set of questions that prompted people I have never met to tell me very personal things.
The first subject was at my table. This was her first time at Scout, but allegedly she was always interested in design. Interestingly enough, I did not see her actually make anything in the past two hours, as she did not have her laptop or a notebook. The only artifacts she made use of were the chair, the table, and the chips. She preferred Chipotle over Qdoba, pulp in her orange juice, Tom Brady over Peyton Manning, and her toilet paper goes under the roll when she puts a new roll in the dispenser (to everyone’s dismay). Her career ambitions amounted to making her own ad agency with a focus on video games, perhaps, she hypothesized, this was a result of watching the series Mad Men.
The second subject’s interview got the most personal. This subject was the Design Director at Scout, which involved overseeing all the teams, managing client relationships, disaster control, and anything else that kept Scout afloat. He had a huge passion for design and this was reflected in the work he did while at the meeting. He prefers Chipotle to Qdoba, pulp in his orange juice, did not care enough about football to have a preferred quarterback, and has his toilet paper go over the roll (to everyone’s relief). Subject two’s ambitions seemed limitless: a global design studio that would do work for social causes and non-profits with the general goal of, “making a difference”. I asked him his thoughts on relationships, and he said that his sense of ambition coupled with his desire to not stay in one place for two long has crippled his ability to form a long lasting relationship, and then went even deeper into his lack of a love life from there.
The final interview subject stated he was at Club Scout because, “design is burning in my heart”. His greatest fear overall was to work at a job that he hates, and his greatest fear that day was that everyone around him would judge him for his backpack smelling of apples.
These interviews taught me, aside from the various dichotomies that exist in burrito preferences and how people hang their toilet paper, how passionate design students were. Each of my subjects loved design enough that they would let it dictate what the rest of their lives looked like. Interaction-wise, there were a lot of complex UI’s at play. The design applications that they used were certainly above my pay grade, and it would have taken more than a few meetings to figure them out. Asides from complex programs, the students often just relied on a chair to sit in, a peer to bounce ideas off of (via vocal conversation across the table), and the endless scope of their imagination.
Individual Homework #2
Twitter: A good design interface
One thing in particular that I like about the twitter web interface is the top navigation bar. Twitter has several functions that it could’ve attempted to squish into the one bar, but it stuck with 3 buttons on the left (home, notifications, and messages), and 3 elements on the right (search, a profile dropdown, and a “tweet” button). This serves the purpose of simple navigation well. This is partially due to the simplicity/visibility of the layout, as well as the simplicity of the icons. For example, “notifications” is represented by a bell, and “messages” is represented by an envelope. (These may count as recognizable metaphors).
Genius.com: A good design interface
Genius.com is a lyrics/general annotation website. The lyrics are on the left, and when you click on an annotated section, its annotation shows up on the right side of the screen. This happens no matter what you’re looking at (be it a song or a piece of literature), so it counts towards consistency and visibility.
My friend's oven: A bad design interface
My friend’s oven is somewhat difficult to use for an oven. To pick a temperature, you have to use the knob, which makes hitting a specific temperature a drawn out process. Speaking of long and drawn out, to pick an hour and minute on the time, one must keep hitting up on the arrow and incrementing by one. I would replace this with a number pad to control the time and temperature.
MyNEU: A bad design interface
Another example of a bad UI (I’m sure this one isn’t a unique choice) is MyNEU. My specific complaint is about the self service tab. All the functions that a student regularly uses are on this tab, and it’s not the defaut tab. It also results in a messy system. So, I detract points from visibility. I would separate this into a few sub tabs, as well as make “self service” the default tab.
Individual Homework #1
Idea 1: A Chrome extension or standalone program that has a small Spotify window docked to the side. This will allow you to control Spotify from the current window without having to switch tabs or windows. Features include: volume control, play/pause/seeking, and a search function. There are two things to keep in mind here: the first being that this probably already exists. The second is that most of the features will be easy to bake into the design, except for the search bar, which could end up being very unsightly and take up too much space.
Idea 2: Something with the function of helping lazy college students figure out what they're cooking that night, so they don't waste money or attempt to live on cookies. It'll be fairly simple interaction, consisting of a "generate" button. The results screen should neatly describe the meal and the necessary ingredients. OR
Idea 3: A food truck locator. It takes in a location and gives a graphical map with food trucks' locations given as icons. The icons will be different colors depending on which truck is there, and there will be a legend below the map which tells which color stands for which food truck.
Idea 2: Something with the function of helping lazy college students figure out what they're cooking that night, so they don't waste money or attempt to live on cookies. It'll be fairly simple interaction, consisting of a "generate" button. The results screen should neatly describe the meal and the necessary ingredients. OR
Idea 3: A food truck locator. It takes in a location and gives a graphical map with food trucks' locations given as icons. The icons will be different colors depending on which truck is there, and there will be a legend below the map which tells which color stands for which food truck.
