Week 1
Coding can be really intimidating when you start off with it, but once you get a hang of it, you get some sort of obsessive joy out of getting outputs by typing in different commands or tags depending on what language you are coding in. I learnt this back in 11th and 12th when I took IT as a subject and we learnt HTML and CSS. One could say that doing that was a reason I do not feel highly intimidated by coding anymore. In fact, I was quite keen to see how programming works as I have quite a few friends doing engineering and this is their everyday job. We started with Cygwin, and maybe its because we had some Command Prompt in school, but working on it feels very familiar to me. I guess there is no complaining here, if you’re comfortable with it! Here and there, there are issues in the class due to some commands not running on Windows but running on MAC but usually those get sorted.
Given that my major isn’t HCD, and that this is probably the first “proper” HCD course that I have taken, some things came across as a bit baffling to me on day 1, especially when we were learning the history of computing and codes. But on day 2, I found myself settling in with the class, as I could start connecting things that were mentioned in class with the things I had already learnt in IADP. Being a person keen on doing product design in the future, I was quite fascinated by the different kinds of products and their evolution that we saw. For example, we initially had Sketchpad in 1963, then the Cross Pad XP in 1998 and now present times, we have come as far as to have a graphic tablet or Wacom.
The Wizard of Oz method was something I was unfamiliar to. Thus, later when I got home, I read up a bit about it, and it does sound intriguing to me. I’d like trying it out using a prototype of our concept on a user, once we’re done finalizing a few things about it. Something similar I have done in my Industrial design courses, involves making different mockups/prototypes of the final idea, and making users use them in different ways. This also involves giving users multiple mockups, so they can pick the best one for themselves based on different factors such as form, functionality, material use, etc. Although when it comes to A1, what I presume is, we make only one prototype and get a user to use it and then take into consideration their feedback and how they use this before starting to work on the improvising of this.
We even mentioned developers in class. It was a topic just touched upon and not really discussed. What I wonder is, based off the Wizard of Oz method, lets say I work on a prototype and get a user to test it. Based off the feedback and usability, I decide to make necessary changes to my product. Now if my product was a software or a program, then would I be a developer, given the fact that I let users test the beta version of it, or even the final version, and keep making developments to it based off the feedback and information recorded from users who use this?
For one of my previous courses, I had done some research on conversational agents such as Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, etc. For this course, I have been looking into some chatbots and their working so that options of textual conversation and voice control can be looked into equally before deciding on an option for our A1 assignment.
The deadlines seem quite stringent for all assignments and it feels like quite a challenge to manage those along with work from other courses. Nevertheless, I am keen on working on a decent product/interface for our N5 reception area/IT department. I find myself getting a bit intimidated when it comes to combining technology with products because of the accuracy it needs. One cannot just randomly name a technology and a random product and combine it to get something out of the blue. To know how a product/interface works, how technology is easing the process that currently exists, how this product/interface is making a change and if the output is the one expected from it, and to make changes based off user feedback is important. For the same purpose, I’m doing some research here and there to understand concepts that we discuss in class (like Machine Learning, Internet of Things, etc.) better. I’m hoping that programming helps me get to know the insides of the working of certain products at least, so I do not have to be clueless about making changes to something or to understand the functioning of something.
Moreover, the major reason I took this course (along with a few others in the future), is so that I can combine this with product ideas in my future projects instead of keeping my scope limited to working on projects with minimal technological knowledge needed. Plus, I’d like to have the advantage of not having to outsource the technological knowledge from another skilled professional, as I could try getting it done by myself.
