Week 01- Introduction

This was the first class of this module. Therefore It was used as an introduction and explanation of what we will be doing throughout this term.

We were first given our brief for our project we will be completing throughout the year. Our brief is to design a digital product for a user/s of our choice with a focus on the healthcare sector. This is a very wide-range brief which allows us to have a lot of creative freedom. In our independent study throughout the next couple of weeks we will be performing a lot of research to understand our user base and their requirements.

This week’s lecture content started off with a refresher on what exactly is UX. UX was described as where, people, problems and process meet. We were then asked to give our own definition of UX Design to our understanding. My definition was…

‘Design that focuses on what people want/need. It’s goal is for any user to have an easy and stress free experience with their product.’

Our personal definitions then had to be combined with the person’s sitting next to us. Our combined definition was…

‘Understanding people’s needs and problems, then efficiently solving them with a user-centric design.’

The definition we were then given was;

“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s
interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
To explain exactly what good UX design could look like we were shown images of 2 banking apps. First was UlsterBank, a traditional, long-standing bank that designed an app to go along with its physical branches.
Project N 4
As it can be seen this app really only allows users to check your balance. transfer money and create standing orders. This only covers the the basic requirements users need.
This was the contrasted with the fully online bank Monzo.
We're working on a new look for the Monzo app - Making Monzo - Monzo Community
Monzo allows users to do the same things the UlsterBank app can, however, in this app you can manage all your cards, freeze your card and see your pin number if you’ve forgotten it.
Allowing users to make all these decisions and manage their own accounts to this level on their phone, disregards the need for physical banks and marks a change in traditional saving and money management. Monzo currently works alongside traditional banks but is working on becoming completely separate and a full bank within itself. I think this was a brilliant idea as traditional banks can be quite restrictive and having all of this information in one place and so readily available for its users is a very logical step in digital products.
Next we discussed the ‘Laws of UX’ this is a book that will help with our research and design process throughout our projects. There is also a website of the same name, which I will use while I wait to purchase the book.

We were shown Jakob’s Law. Jakob Nielsen is part of the huge company NielsenNorman Group, who are the world leaders in UX research. Jakob’s Law is, “Users spend most of their time on other sites, and they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”

This made a lot of sense to me as I had an many experiences myself with websites not working how I expected them too and there is some frustrations along with that. If you take into account how some people viewing these sites have lower digital literacy, this could lead to a very stressful and frustrating user experience. I also think this brings a new challenge to me as a designer to find a way of showing the user a fun or unique experience with my website while still holding up basic navigation standards.

We were then shown a video from a movie about the nasa engineer team on earth trying to come up with a way to fix something on the rocket in a way the astronauts would be able to understand, with equipment available on the ship. I think this is a great metaphor for UX design and what it means.

The engineers have to understand their users (astronauts), using equipment they know the astronauts have (user research) and deliver the solution (final product) in a way they will understand.

This re-emphasises the importance of problem solving in a user-centric way and collaboration with other designers. Teams are a way to gather more perspectives and thought about a subject or problem which can lead to better brainstorming and idea generation. Gaining more ideas and perspectives for problem solving also allows teams to get the work done at a quicker speed.
We were then shown some design models such as:
  • The Double Diamond
  • Human Centred Design Methodology
  • Design thinking

I will look further into these models as a task throughout the week.

Our first lecture ended with some recommended resources for this module such as the books: The Laws of UX, The Design of Everyday Things, Change by Design and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. I have read chapters of the last book by Susan Weinschenk and have thoroughly enjoyed it so far and found it very informative so I am looking forward to using it more for this module. We were also told to look toward the NielsenNorman Group website as it hosts a lot of good information for us, as designers.


Design Models Research

Double Diamond

Firstly I looked into the Double Diamond method by Design Council.  I used this website to help understand this.

The Double Diamond design model was created in 2003 by Richard Eisermann, who at the time was the Director of Design and Innovation. Eisermann wanted to address the lack of visibility of design models and the fact none had been standardised.

At this current time the Double Diamond is used and referenced world-wide.

When it was being created the first steps were to categorise and document design methods used across the whole organisation. Richard believed that Design Council needed a consistent way of telling a process story. His ambition was to create something that would be applicable in any field. The double diamond shape had already been present in the design community and was used by IDEO in the 90s. Many other designers throughout the years had used and proposed models with divergence and convergence cycles so the shape would be familiar to many.

Chris Vanstore and Anna White set up reviews with the staff of Design Council. This was done so they could map out the processes for each team, compare and contrast them, to find similarities. They also looked outside of just the staff in Design Council.

From this they were able to simplify the design process and they based this on four distinct phases:

Discover- Questioning challenge, research and identify user needs

Define- Make sense of findings, understand user needs. Create a design brief clearly defining the challenge based on these insights.

Develop- Concentrate on developing, testing and refining multiple possible solutions

Deliver- Selecting single solution that works and prepare for launch

The Double Diamonds original design remains the same today.

What is the framework for innovation? Design Council's evolved Double Diamond | Design Council

The model consists of two diamond shapes beginning at the initial challenge on the left then moving through to defining  the problem in the centre and finishing with the solution to the right. The diamond shapes represent how divergent and convergent thinking fit within each stage.

The simplicity of this model allows it to be incredibly versatile and can be used to address the initial assessment of a project and can help determine the approach needed. It can also be used as a means to check in with your group and see where the project is.

Human Centred Design Methodology by IDEO

Human Centred Design is a methodology created by IDEO.  It can be defined as 3 separate stages:

Inspiration- This stage involves the opening up to different creative solutions  and learning on the fly. All ideas and creative ideas and possibilities will be grounded in the desires of who you are designing for.

Ideation- This stage involves coming up with lots of ideas and refining them in terms of what is possible and good for your users. Improve on the good ideas and start prototyping to give your client something to give feedback on. Iterate on what you’ve done with the help of feedback and keep going

Implementation- when your product is complete is it at this stage that you start trying to get it out into the world/

I went through the IDEO Design Kit website and I found some very useful resources. This website is split into the sections; mindset, methods and case studies. I started with the mindset sections and a short interview with Emi Kolawole a resident editor for Stanford University stood out to me as she was talking about empathy.

Emi Kolawole Design Kit

From what I’ve learned from completing this course so far, I feel that empathy is a huge part of not only the initial design process but throughout its entire process. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to hear what more I could learn about it.

Kolawole states that along with the standard definition of empathy- to walk in another’s shoes- “empathy gives you the chance to be completely other than who you usually are”. I think this statement is very apt to UX design as what is most important is that the design produced works for the end user even if it isn’t what the designer would like or think is personally best.  Therefore allowing yourself to really take on the opinions and personas of the user you are designing for allows you to better ground yourself in what is most important for the design.

Kolawole goes on to say, “it is hard to come up with new ideas while just existing in your own life, you have to get to know new people and immerse yourself into something different.” I think keeping this open-minded mindset would be very beneficial during the early stages of any design. It is something I will remind myself to do and reflect on what is important as I go though this next project’s development.

 

 

 

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