Finally got my own domain. New adress is: www.knotbyknut.com
Designing Interactive Experiences – Workshop II
Published February 20, 2007 AHO , Designing Interactive Experiences 1 CommentThe topic for todays discussion in the course “Designing Interactive Experiences” was the first two chapter (Chap. 1: Reduce, Chap. 2: Organize) of John Maeda’s book “The Laws of Simplicity.”
Based on the discussion following the reading session, we formed groups that were to look at user work flows in different services and sketch the outline of improvement or new services that related to this.
I teamed up with Johan on this small workshop that lasted only for a few hours. Our goal was to take a closer look at how digital notes are being managed today and make a suggestion on how we would like the interactive experience of such a software to be. Both of us has had previous experiences with programs such as Devonthink and Notebook, but we have never been fully satisfied with any of them. Don’t get us wrong here, they are both great pieces of software, but somehow we keep criticizing the fact that the two mentioned above and other similar softwares always tries to make us change our behavior to match the way the program(mers) think we should organize our stuff.
We ended in formulating three features/core functions we wanted such a software should have:
1) No startup barriers
Such a software should have no barriers to start writing something. Our best example on this is the software (mac) Textedit that can be stripped down to nothing but a blank textbox.
2) Notes vs Documents
It should distinguish between notes and documents, some stuff you write down temporarily, like an Url or a book tittle, other stuff you write on for a longer period of time, even over several days. The software we sketch up would distinguish between those two through wether or not you add title info to your text. Typing both title and text body means it’s a
document, typing only a text body means its a short note much like a post-it. There are both pros and cons for this kind of dualdocument, biggest pro: no need to choose between different document types before starting typing, biggest con: Might not be obvious enough for all users.
3) Recover / retrieve / search
The software should allow you to easily retrieve and search for previous things you have written. We had different scenarios for feature that could be implemented here:
1) Add tags to the documents allowing the user to narrow down the search through relevant topics/tags
2) Allow the user to browse through a normal web-browser
3) Allow the user to make document trees and clouds for different projects
4) Allow the user to have some documents in arms reach like one would have on your real life desktop (why should you have to clean up your files inside the program at the end of the day if you are going to continue writing on them the next day?).
The illustration below is meant to show how a user could have some folders, notes and document on the desktop while writing inside the program. Once minimized the document goes up to the corner of the screen as an icon instead of being an open document/note, making it easy for the user to retrieve/continue typing in it later on. We discussed the possibilities of letting the software autosave into a session folder those documents as they are likely not to have been saved elsewhere on the computer.
We also briefly discussed the possibility to adding a browser to the software, that would implement the first three features mentioned above. The idea was to let all the factors above help the user narrow down the number of documents, i.e.:
I know the document is
- Written in 2007
- Tagged with “AHO” and “In-depth course”
- Containing the words “interaction” “Software” “Notebook”
Found this Infographic made by New York Times through a blog entry at Information Aesthetics.
(Click on image for full scale view)
Links to: Information Aesthetics, New York Times Infographics.
The concept base itself upon people having a need for planning and discussing purchases that has a (larger) impact on their daily life, both socially and economically. There is a huge difference in planning the purchase of a sofa compared to purchasing a candle holder or a picture frame. What are the needs of tools for an individual or a couple furnishing their first apartment? How do those people discuss and negotiate their personal preferences, financial situation and time used to plan a trip to Ikea?
Our idea is to make it possible to tag, store and manage items you are considering to buy in an IKEA store in such a way that it is possible to discuss, compare different and variations of the same item (color, textiles, dimension, price range etc.). What information is useful? What information do you bring to Ikea and what information do you bring home with you from Ikea? How do you initiate and process the information in such a system?
This one week project was done in cooperation with Markus, David and Øyvind.
Research
As a start we had a small informal interview with another student at AHO Sigrun Vik, that has worked at Ikea’s kitchen department here in Oslo. She brought up several interesting observations around how the customers act, react, orientate and perceive Ikea. A list of some of the findings is listed below:
- A lot of people do not understand the Ikea coding system (blue tags are products in external storage, red tags are found in the storage inside the store)
- Not everyone understand they have to write down the product numbers they are interested in buying/picking up, causing a lot of confusion when trying to discuss it with an employee or when trying to find it in the storage department
- The 3D-kitchen planner tool is very popular among the customers
- The Ikea building(s) in itself is hard to navigate due to poor visual language
- Ikea has an employee standing in the entrance greeting people and is placed there to help people find way around the building. Yet, most people that get help are simply going to the next counter and ask for help again.
- The customers often have trouble describing/explaining the items they are discussing with employees (often have to take the employee with them to the displayed piece to show it)
Concept
The concept we presented on fridays presentation was a simple mobile interface that allowed the user to interact with the price-tags and posters found at Ikea.
The intention was to allow the customer to pick up and store the products he/she was interested in on his mobile-phone. The info displayed on the phone interface presented the product itself (visually), the basic information (dimension, location, price etc) and also allowed the user to write down short messages (like an SMS).
Once an item was picked up, the user could either keep it (save) or leave it. If keeping it, one would get the option of saving it in a category, i.e. “Todays session” or “my new kitchen.”
We mapped out two possible uses of such a service:
1) The customer could use it to navigate and keep track of items he/she needed to pick up at the storage before paying for it
2) It would allow the user to “take home” items for further discussions with his family, friends.
We also discussed the possibilities to add textile samples and colors on furniture so that it could be of direct use when discussing furnishing of the users home. (The scenarios are fully described and illustrated in the pdf-presentation: see url at the bottom of this post)
Beneath you will see some interface sketches for the idea described above:
1) Introduction Screen (left) and the initial menu (right). We chose to let the user get a saving option right away so he could set his “default” saving directory for the session easing up the workload when saving items later on
2) Once the user has picked up an item he gets the option of leaving it or saving it. He can at any time browse down to see all the info attached to that item before saving it (bottom left). If he chooses to save the item, the menu from the start shows up with his predetermined session/directory (as chosen at the start) making the saving a simple 2 click confirmation.
2) When an item has been saved, it is displayed on the mobile phone display. Using the left and right arrow allows the user to browse through all the saved items in that session/directory. Using the down key displays the additional information attached to the item (bottom images). Pressing the menu button will allow the user to skip to another session.
Downloads
Presentation: Presentation_IkeaNotes.pdf (9.3 MB)
On fridays introduction to this task, Timo emphasized that the task should relate to: “activities where you have the chance on affecting the experience/surroundings”
My immediate questions regarding the task were:
- What environments has information that you want to process through mobile technology?
- In those environments, are there information one uses more time/efforts in processing “manually?”
Mondays Idea pitch
Monday afternoon the course had a discussion regarding different approaches to the touchable Services task. Based on this pitch a team made up of Markus, David, Øyvind and myself (Knut-Jørgen) was formed. We all flocked around the “Real Life Copy Paste” – idea.
The idea, as it was introduced by David, based itself upon handling some real life information as it was desktop information on your computer. In its simplest ways, the Copy-Paste function or a grabber function to real life items.
My Q to this approach:
- What things would be interesting to copy-paste?
- What things are necessary or useful to copy-paste?
- Is the info copied expected to have a long or a short life-span?
- What cycle is the information following? (When do you copy, when do you paste?)
Øyvind pitched in two other ideas during the session above. The first one was a recommendation system for a video store: What if you were able to read an RFID tag on each individual video/DVD that fed back information on your mobile device from websites such as IMDB.com? *
The second one was a “Real Life Del.icio.us tagging” for your favorite items. A sort of wish-list for things you have not bought yet.
My Q to this approach:
- What are the rituals around renting videos?
- Do people take themselves time to look at more than the cover before renting a movie?
- What would people want to tag? Everything? One item? Five items?
- Where does these tags end up?
- What value has the metadata after the collecting process?
The latter of Øyvinds ideas has several similarities with Bruce Sterlings Spime theory and also several similarities to the thoughts behind Ulla-Maaria Mutanens ThingLink project. I see two possible approaches to this idea. First one is based upon everything being tagged/equipped with a microchip. Second one would be the more realistic approach, having a concept store or a narrow product segment that have use of being tagged with a individual identity tag (either it being a product group being tagged or an individual item in that group)
My Q to this field:
- What environments gains from items or information being tagged/transmitted/moved?
The task as it was handed out to us on friday
Background
Near Field Communication (NFC) will soon make it possible to connect the physical world to digital services. At the moment the mobile industry is thinking only about payment and ticketing, but there is a wide range of applications and services that could take advantage of this technology for other purposes.
Task
This task is about contextual research and conceptual design of services using the mobile phone as an interface to the physical world. We will work on ideas for services that combine digital information with the physical world.
The simplicity of NFC emerges from the fact that it works only at a short range, and this ties it to particular places or objects. What applications and services need to be usefully tied to specific places and objects? What kind of interaction are good for interacting between objects and our personal devices? How might existing signage, advertising and urban interfaces be complemented with local interaction?
Process
Choose a particular place or activity to observe, and base your ideas and concepts around that. You could for example choose a cafe,and work on ideas around the choosing, buying and consumption of food. Or choose a library and work around the finding and borrowing of books. It will be very helpful to spend time doing user research, in particular observation of everyday activity.
Deliverables
Find appropriate ways to explain your concept, particularly the user-experience. Use scenarios, videos, or some kind of experience prototypes to do this. Simple documentation of your user-research (photos, videos, diaries, etc.) should be produced. See www.nearfiled.org for write-ups of last years projects.
Equipment
We have Nokia RFID phones and as many RFID tags as you need to test out ideas and scenarios. We also have a collection of indoor, outdoor, card-based and people-based tags for you to use.
Well to be completly honest this isn’t my first post, its more a continuing of my previous blog (v1.0) that i started last term at AHO. The blog you are reading right now will exist on this adress untill i get creative enough to come up with a suitable name for my domain.
More updates, some style to this blog and hopefully an export of my old posts will come soon.
