Week 6: Design Direction

In this weeks Lecture we mainly focused on working on our Project 1.

We discussed such elements as identifying the problem for our prototype, gathering research, creating a solution for the problem presented towards us (to help first year students better adjust to uni life).

I choose to create an User Interface in the form of an iPhone and Andriod application, as I felt this could be easily accessed anywhere at anytime. My UI will help University students by giving study tips and to better prepare them for exams.

We also looked at how to properly report our results, this is achieved by setting out our report is the correct way. Below is the points with my Report 1.

• Abstract  (however this section can be included but is not necessary)
• Introduction 
• I started off my research by gathering data with the use of surveys and interviews. I mainly interviewed first year students as I felt as though first year students would be those who would experience difficulty and confusion when starting university for the first time.I began by designing surveys with questions that I felt would be vital to my research, but also making sure that the questions were easy enough for my interviewees to fully understand so they were able to answer comfortably and with ease. What I discovered was that students going into their first year of university, struggled with studying for either their mid semester or end of year exams, this was especially true with students who took a gap year and were finding difficult jumping back into academic work. 
• Background Research/Iterative Review
• According to my research, I discovered that first year students and a number of second year students found studying for exams stressful, and most first year students were unsure how to properly study for university exams (as opposed to high school exams). I also discovered that a lot of the students who I surveyed, did not have a study plan and were in need of study tips, while other students were more interested in finding revision questions in terms of their exams.With the discovering of this information, I asked myself how could I come up with an interface that would best assist my target group (first year students) to better prepare themselves for their exams, and overall make their experience at university stress free. 
• Investigation - Methods & Methodology
• In order to better assist first year students with preparing for exams, I propose to develop and interface in terms of an App for both iPhone and Android that will help students with revision questions for their exam unit, and also will include study tips and how to best study for exams. I have decided to us an App as everyone who I had surveyed, either owns an iPhone or an Android phone (such as Samsung), also being a phone App gives the advantaged of it being portable and more easily accessible. I began by researching other phone applications that have a similar purpose, and based my final design on being different from the application that I had found. 
• Results & Discussion
• According to my research (Appendix: 1), I found that the students that I have surveyed found it difficult to adjust to university in terms of study and exams. This could be that after finishing high school, students are more inclined to do better at university due to the fact that they are now studying a course that will benefit them in graduating and being able to work in that field that they are interested in. 
• Conclusion
• In conclusion, with my research I have found that first year university students struggle with study for exams and studying in general. I feel as though a phone App will be the best solution to this problem as students can have 24-hour access to revision question and quizzes to their particular degree. Also with the added benefit of giving study tips and advice, will best assist students with preparing for exams. Being a phone App will make the UI portable and easily accessible. The UI will have a clean appearance and will be easy to access and use. To take my UI to next level, I feel like some sort of social interaction between other students who are studying the same degree will benefit, as they can interact and discuss areas that some other students may need help with. Although this would need to be proven with more research by asking students if they feel this is an essential need. 
• References & Appendix

Hopefully I have address all the section correctly and are able to get my tutor to review my Project to ensure I have achieved the proper results.

References:

Laura Tucker (2014). Most Helpful Apps for Students. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.topuniversities.com/blog/most-helpful-apps-students. [Last Accessed]. February 24, 2015.

Sarah Ang (2013). 25 Apps you Need to Survive College. [ONLINE] Available at: http://mashable.com/2013/08/08/apps-for-college/. [Last Accessed]. February 24, 2015. 

Week 5: Low Fidelity Prototype

In this weeks lecture and tutorial, we talked about Prototype & Evaluation, which will better assist us with our Project.

Ragu discussed the process of paper prototype development & evaluation and the steps that are required in this process, which are:

1. Development Process: Groundwork when developing a prototype, and list all the goals that you want to achieve from your proposed solution. Wireframes & scenarios are a good idea to achieve this.
2. Evaluation Process: Testing and evaluating your prototype to help determine any factors that need to be improved or changed.

Ragu also explained that there are 5 principals of usability:

1. Effectiveness
2. Efficiency
3. Satisfaction
4. Learnability
5. Memorability 

This process if vital for my Project.

Some points to take into consideration when evaluating our prototype, these include Inspection Methods which is not required to include users, and is usually conducted by individuals with an expertise in Usability. Some Inspection Methods include:

• Cognitive walk-thorugh
• which is the method a number of evaluators ask a series of questions from the point of view of the user. Its main purpose is to understand the 'system's learnability for new users' (Ragu).
• Heuristic evaluation
• evaluation that is mainly carried out by experts (Ragu).

Week 4: Users

In this weeks lecture we looked at the Users when design a product, and we also looked at how to look for data.

As mentioned in the lecture, we must first understand our users, this is accomplished in 3 steps (Ragu)

1. Finding out about the users
2. Analysing information
3. Create resources for design

Analysing data can involve many different steps, such as summarising interviews of the target user, revising tables and graphs.

However, as mentioned by out tutor Ragu, not all users will give you same need, and as a designer we must distinguish each users need and connect the dots to figure out the core need for the product.

The next step is to determine who the audience is for your designs; this is done once the data is analysed.  

Other questions to ask yourself as a designer are if there are any problems that need to be addressed, and which user needs will be addressed. However, Ragu mentioned that you can't address them all and it's best to create a hierarchy to determine the most important points to address.

We also looked at Personas, which will need to be included in our Project 1. A persona is a made up person who represents an individual of your target users.

There are some important factors to look over (but are not limited to) when writing a Persona, these can include:

• Biographical Background
• Physiology Background
• Social Dimension
• Psychological Dimension
• Ideology Dimension 

(Nielsen, 2014)

I had attempted to create a Persona for my Project , I did the best I could to my understanding of a Persona:

Octavia aged 21 lives in Canberra and is a second year university student studying Marketing and works as a waitress.

Being a second year student at university and working part-time as a waitress at a busy restaurant, Octavia tries her best to manage her time to balance studying, working and spending time with her friends.

She is very ambitious and wants to graduate her degree with high grades in order to obtain a successful job in marketing. She works hard with her studies and also with her job as a waitress, which is quite demanding as she works at a busy restaurant in Kingston.

She enjoys spending time with her friends, either by going out to the clubs on a Saturday night, or just by spending time at home hanging out with her friends. Octavia’s family lives in Sydney and she tries to visit as often as she can, coming from a traditional Greek background family is very important to her.

In her spare time Octavia enjoys doing martial arts, as a form of stress relief from university, and to her maintain her health and fitness. She also enjoys playing the drums, as she is very much into music, and enjoys riding her motorcycle.

Octavia isn’t into material things, and would rather spend her money on travelling overseas. Being the youngest of two older brothers, she is very tough and is very capable of taking care of herself.

Octavia doesn’t particularly enjoy studying for exams, as she feels as though she gets distracted easily and she doesn’t have a real study plan that she commits to.

PHYSIOLOGY DIMENSION

She has a physically demanding job, being a waitress she is on her feet for her whole shift. She balances this with martial arts to keep her in shape and to relieve stress.

SOCIAL DIMENSION

Octavia loves spending time with her friends, as she doesn’t have family that live in Canberra, she feels as though her friends are her family.

Octavia is very family orientated, coming from a traditional Greek background she puts her family very high in her life and would do anything for them.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSION

Being at university puts a lot of stress on Octavia, especially during exam times, she finds it hard to study as she can get distracted very easily and doesn’t have a set study plan.

Working as a waitress puts a lot of strain on her too, as working in the hospitality industry means long hours, being on her feet the whole shift, and having to deal with customers who are quite stuck up, especially in the area that she works in.

Doing martial arts help her with her keeping in shape and stress relief, as she is very hot headed and gets agitate quite easily.

Octavia enjoys playing the drums, as she finds it to be and escape from her stress and worries. She is very good at playing the drums and plays anytime chance she can get.

She also enjoys taking her motorbike out for a spin, as she feels free and calm.

IDEOLOGY DIMENSION

Octavia is a very sensible and well-rounded young lady, and she knows what she wants to achieve in life.

She isn’t very girly, having two older brothers has made her tough and a bit of a tomboy. However she does enjoy taking care of her health, skin and fitness.

Coming from a Greek background, she is very religious and her family has a big influence on her.

Her long-term aspirations are to graduate university and obtain a successful job in marketing. 

Hopefully I will be able to obtain feedback from Ragu to ensure that I have written and structured a persona correctly.

Reference:

Nielsen, L. (2014). Personas. Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/personas.html

Week 3: Need Analysis

In this weeks lecture and tutorial, we looked at why designers need analysis. As our tutor Ragu explained, its needed to understand as much as possible about the target users work, and with this understanding, it then becomes easer to identify what is needed. So therefore, it helps to identify a "need gap" that is still to be addressed (Ragu).

So to my understanding, a user analysis is part of a continuing process that develops interfaces which will help determine the requirements necessary to carry out and identify these needs.

Requirements 

Which is basically what the product should do in terms of its goals and how it should perform.

Needs vs Wants

These is the ability to properly identify what target user needs within their product. A customer will always explain what they want in a product, as a designer, our job is to ignore their wants and identify and focus on the actual needs, this is what I gathered from the information given to us by Ragu.

Data Gathering 

With data gathering, Ragu explained that its best to use qualitative methods such as:

• Contextual Enquiry 
• Interviews
• Focus Groups (Ragu)

Preparation

This process (to my understanding) is to fully understand ideas that you want to investigate.

I'm still not fully understanding this section, however as the semester continues, I hope gain more insight to the topic.

Approach

This process is to observe your users and their environment, there is a difference between just looking and observing.

Other methods in which we looked at for data gathering include:

Contextual Enquiry

With this process, there are multiple ways to perform this, such as video and audio recording with your users, also encourage your users to speak their minds and talk out loud will assist greatly when gathering data.

Interviews

To achieve a positive and proactive interview, one must make the interviewees as comfortable as possible. Also, the interviewer must be as specific as possible, but also to keep the conversation open for other discussion (Ragu). Record the interviews is a good idea, also asking the interviewees if there is anything that has not been mention, or anything that they would like to add, will assist tremendously when gathering data.

Focus Groups

There is no magic number when it comes to focus groups, however as explained by Ragu, you would want to keep these number between 3 to 10 people. 

By using a mix of target user (this could be background, religion, gender, etc), will help grasp a better understanding of the product and will help gain more knowledge.

Analysis

This process involves putting all your data which you have collected, and properly figure out the best solution to the problem. This is best done in numerical, textual and AV databases (Ragu). 

We continued to work on our Project, I have surveyed a number of students, however, I still require more data and a better understanding on how to properly achieve and compile this information. 

Hopefully once I go over my notes in which I have written, I will have a better understanding.