Panel Report 1

1. Interaction Design

Interaction design is based on what people really need and what will really help people in their daily life. One thing I learned from OBA is we have to think for others, for people who are in need and those who are always ignored by us accidentally. Therefore, out designs are also based on those needs, from that point we could always come up with many fantastic ideas. One bus away is a great example to demonstrate how to design for public’s demand. In another word, as a HCDE engineering, we should care about every little detail in our life and think how to make it better for public.

2. Usability Testing

Usability testing is a important part in HCDE . Since we design for people’s convenient, we have to know how do they feel about our design and are they willing to continue to use it. Therefore usability testing is the best way to test if a design is well designed and if it will actually help people instead of confusing them. From the example of project for Nordstrom, one aspect of the project that stood out to me is that as the project designer, Larua will design a task that people will accomplish the task in a very nature way, therefore, it will reflect the best and direct result from the participant. Usually as a test designer, we should focus on how can we get comprehensive repot though one simple test. After we get the result, we could make a summary about how this design work, where are the shortcomings of this design and then we could make some changes to make the design better.

3. What I will improve

One thing I will modify in my usability testing based on what I learned from Nordstrom project is I will focus more on the task designing. Try to design tasks that could reflect many aspects. I also have to care about the participant we chose. We have to make sure the participant that we choose is appropriate for certain tasks. For example, in my usability testing, I asked a old man as my participant and he was unable to finish the task “changing the temperature of the refrigerator” since he is too old to bend down to change the temperature.