Panel 1 Report: Interaction Design and Usability Testing

Interaction Design — One Bus Away

This week, we were lectured by Mr. Alan Borning (one of the creators of One Bus Away) about the One Bus Away project. The goal of the OBA application was to provide people real time information about busses and transit, e.g., arrival time, time to destination and locating bus stops. The techniques that Mr. Borning and his colleagues implemented, included creating scenarios, paper prototyping, surveys, lab tests and beta tests. What stood out to me was the number of times new prototypes and changes to the applications interface had to be made before it was actually published. Even so, the OBA project has been greatly modified and expanded since the original release to best suit the users.

Usability Testing — Nordstorm Direct

Soon after, we were addressed by Mrs. Laura Barboza, the Senior User Experience Researcher at Nordstrom Direct. She spoke about usability testing and how her colleagues and herself ran multiple tests to improve the design of Nordstorm’s Early Access Sale. She implemented various strategies to obtain feedback from customers about what they liked or disliked. According to this data, Mrs. Barboza and her team successfully made changes to the Nordstrom’s website so that users would be more interested in the Early Access sale. What really appealed to me was the fact that there were numerous trials of different versions of only a small part of the website.

Reflection

This lecture opened my eyes to the truth of design. One key point that I took away from Mr. Borning’s and Mrs. Barboza’s presentations was that no matter whether it is Usability Testing or Interaction Design, multiple versions, prototypes and changes need to be made before any product can hit the market shelves or be ready for public distribution. After the presentation, I can confidently say that my usability testing and interaction design studio sprint can be significantly improved by testing a bigger sample group and making multiple versions with upgrades and using beta testing respectively.