Panel Report — Applications 1

One Bus Away is an application designed to share real-time public transit information with riders across a variety of interfaces. It has increasingly become a bustling app, and as Alan Borning mentioned, its interaction design process is very complex. It required large amounts of research and licensing processes, which distressed the creators. This is because linking the timings displayed on the screen to the servers demanded lots of work. It was extremely interesting to see how the creators of the user interface finalised their design. They had to analyse large numbers of user reviews and used this customer feedback to meet its user’s needs and expectations.

The usability testing project at Nordstorm was also fascinating, as Laura Barboza explained how the three different sets of first person experiments led Nordstorm to develop their “Anniversary Sale” website. She gave us an insight into the usability tests for their project, which required interacting and observing potential customers using their website. One aspect of the project that stood out to me was the extensive range of sets of tests conducted to gather as much relevant data possible from as many perspectives.

This session forced me to reflect on my own sprints and areas in which I could improve them. For the interaction design sprint, I did not test my POP app outside the classroom. As a result, I did not have any data to support and test my app, which would allow me to update my POP app’s user interface. As for the usability testing sprint, our group did not conduct tasks that tested all the possibilities of the functionality of the microwave. Although I may never work on either of these projects again, I gained valuable knowledge which will assist me while working on my next project.