Sketching, Storyboarding, and Critique

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Lecture on Sept 8, 2010

[ Slides]

Contents

Readings


Additional material (not required):


Frank Chew - 9/2/2010 16:58:30

The Psychology of Everyday Things: The phone instructions in Fig 1.12 certainly are very confusing. It seems like a good idea to try out a system before purchasing it, especially if there are multiple parties competing for the sale. There could eventually be laws against operating driving panel controls while driving, especially since operating a cell phone is now illegal.

Visual Storytelling: Storyboards have for a long time been the medium for designing a film. Whether this works for products is a matter of whether what is being produced is an advertisement, in which case storyboards are useful. In this case the advertisement could be to sell a project to upper management. The idea that screenshots can be illustrated in advance is interesting indeed.

How to Run a Design Critique. Scott Berkun: This is a very informative overview of how to run a design critique program in your organization. Scott manages to grasp the patterns of software projects. For the design questinos, an additional question to ask is when there is a standard to use based upon existing products, whether to mimick what the user is used to vs using the policy of avoiding plagarism and innovating instead, where the user might not be as familiar with the UI.


Alex Aberle - 9/4/2010 15:24:12

1. I think the author makes a very good point about complexity vs. usability. Moore's law has given us rapidly increasing computing capacity, while at the same time giving mobile devices the speed to do tasks they never could before. The problem is that usability has not caught up. No amount of cycles will help complete a task the user doesn't know how to complete, and mobile developers are still learning lessons about how/where people use their phones/mobile devices.

2. I'm glad that one doesn't need a lot of natural sketching skill to be effective. I definitely don't have those kinds of skills. I also liked the idea of augmenting a real image with an obviously-sketched interface. I think it could give a user a good "feel" for what they are physically working with without the UI appearing to be too polished or complete (which could keep a user from submitting honest criticism).

3. I liked that this article came from a software/web design standpoint, rather than product design like some of the other articles. I do question having the designer lead the meeting, though. Whose ego is strong enough to bear the kind of criticism you need to invite from your coworkers, without getting defensive? Not mine, I don't think, unless your coworkers are all very mature and understand the critique process (doubtful!). Maybe you just learn to deal with it over time.


Calvin Wang - 9/4/2010 20:27:18

A common misconception, as pointed out in the reading, is that more features is better. You see this in marketing campaigns every day: product X comes with 100 powerful new features; product Y has just released a new version and most of the time it will add new features, and so on. On the other hand, Apple's success has shown us that it is much better to focus on a set of most essential features and make them easy to use. To quote Einstein, designers should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Visual storytelling is such an expressive tool that I think we should consider using it in place of traditional text-based ads. A picture is worth a thousand words. By corollary, a storybook of pictures can outline the user experience much more effectively than words can in the same amount of space. Not to mention that pictures are much better at catching people's attention, which is a desirable property for ads.

I think PNP sandwiches are a great idea. By its nature, criticism can be inevitably interpreted as an attack at the designer's creation. Framing the criticism in a sugar coat is necessary, but a PNP sandwich can do better: it sets the mood of the listener to make it much easier to positively receive the criticism. After all, designers want a good "user experience" while getting criticized, right? It's human nature.


Benjamin Carpenter - 9/5/2010 12:09:02

In "The Psychology of Everyday Things," the author points out some design flaws that prefer aesthetics over usability. An example is given where a man walks through airlock doors and is able to pass through the first set of doors, but gets stuck on the second, because he doesn't realize he is pressing on the wrong side of the door (the hinged side). This is an example of bad design because the layers of doors are difficult to use. The author then gives an example of a seat adjustment interface for a Mercedes Benz car. The interface looks just the like the cross-section a miniature car seat, and is very intuitive, making it easy to see how it will adjust your seat. The design looks nice as well. I think this a good example where usability and simplicity for the user can be maximized without sacrificing aesthetics.


Theron Ji - 9/6/2010 0:17:39

I thought the design article was interesting in that it seemed to present opposite points: on one hand, there are all these heuristics that can be employed to make a "good" user design, yet on the other hand, the last section bluntly states it's never right the first time, and will always take a few iterations of mistakes and fixes before it becomes good. What I would have liked to hear more of is why people get it wrong the first time - was it just wrong assumptions made, or more subtle issues? For the storytelling article, I liked the idea of a simple sketch overlaying the original image. However, I felt the finite state diagrams that they drew are more confusing than helpful, as the drawing doesn't tell which state is which, and how they're connected. I thought the advice in the design critique article is very solid, especially the 6 general rules of order. I've seen them applied many times in all sorts of meetings, and they're very intuitive and should be naturally applied to all meetings.


Steven Kisely - 9/6/2010 12:32:41

If producers were more careful and spent more time designing their products we would all have less stress. In the Pyschology of everyday things the writer makes superb points of how items are often counter intuitive making simple items complicated. If companies spent more time doing design critiques items would be more user friendly. In “How to Run a Design Critique” I found the point about “where and how” an item will be used to be enlightening. Will the item be used outside? In a group? In the home? Understanding how people will use it in their daily lives in a storyboard fashion gives a great understanding of the product. This combined with making the flow of the program simple and easy to understand will drastically improve the product.


Richard Leon Laroue - 9/6/2010 14:41:50

POET- I can definitely understand where this author is coming from. I too have had unnecessary trouble figuring out whether a door should be pushed in or pulled out. This happened to me most recently at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in NYC where glass doors were made to look nice instead of being intuitive. My refrigerator door is also very unintuitive. There is no handle and both ends of the door look exactly the same, even though the door can only open one way. This is clearly poor design and should be corrected.

Visual Story Telling- I know how useful these story-like illustrations of an application design can be. I used this technique this summer for my own application. The people I presented my application to were easily able to see the different 'states' the application can be in and I was able to explain how each feature worked.

How To Run A Design Critique- Eliciting constructive criticism from co-workers can be difficult, especially in a setting where hierarchies exist. Making all members of a critique group feel comfortable sharing their ideas, I believe, is the most important takeaway from this article.


Richard Leon Laroue - 9/6/2010 14:44:29

POET- I can definitely understand where this author is coming from. I too have had unnecessary trouble figuring out whether a door should be pushed in or pulled out. This happened to me most recently at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in NYC where glass doors were made to look nice instead of being intuitive. My refrigerator door is also very unintuitive. There is no handle and both ends of the door look exactly the same, even though the door can only open one way. This is clearly poor design and should be corrected.

Visual Story Telling- I know how useful these story-like illustrations of an application design can be. I used this technique this summer for my own application. The people I presented my application to were easily able to see the different 'states' the application can be in and I was able to explain how each feature worked.

How To Run A Design Critique- Eliciting constructive criticism from co-workers can be difficult, especially in a setting where hierarchies exist. Making all members of a critique group feel comfortable sharing their ideas, I believe, is the most important takeaway from this article.


Courtney Wang - 9/6/2010 15:53:52

In The Psychology of Everyday Things, the most interesting story to me was about the slide projector and the single button. It really says something about how great technology, regardless of how innovative it may be, needs to be easily understood and used to have any impact at all. The engineer who designed the single button slide mover created a great mechanism that just wasn't user friendly, and as a result, it actually served more as a hindrance. The idea that "elegant design can lead to failed usability" is one that I will take note of. We're often told as computer science students to look for the most elegant solution to a problem, but in designing user interfaces it turns out we need to balance user needs with our own creativity.

The article on visual representations was really useful in its message of "amplification through simplification". It gave me a starting point to begin the sketches of my project proposal. One thing that I wish the article had talked more about is how to decide where and how transitions should occur. A question that I have is what other symbols, like the arrow example from the article, could be used to convey the nature of movement or transition of objects in storyboarding?

I think the most important thing to take away from How to Run a Design Critique is how the flow of a design critique depends on where you are in the design cycle. It's important to change the discussions in critique meetings from high level stuff at the beginning to specific issues later on. Without changing the meetings to start creating definite answers to issues, no progress will ever be made on the design itself.


Chao liu - 9/6/2010 15:53:59

The psychology of everyday things This article gives a good start point to think about how to have a good design, and the principles are easy to follow: natural. Natural means the product should be easy for users to understand and don’t need “learn” how to use. The control buttons need to be located in the convenient place for use to access. And the function should be intuitive. For more convenience, after doing the right action, the product should give correct response. In a word, a good design is that make user don’t feel he/she is taught to use the product, but just “naturally” know how to use.

Buxton_stories This article focus on how to have a design that can be easily understand, as it mention, some low-cost technique such as storyboard, role-playing, and drawing is very useful and it give the real situation that the project may meet. As the designers simulate the real situation, they will figure out some problems that they hadn’t thought about. And put themselves in the users’ position also help the designers to have a better understand when the users use the application.

How to run a design critique 1. Focus on the most pressing issue currently 2. be friendly to the people who are not invited in the meeting and ask for their feedback 3. Special person need special treat make your teammates understand your idea 4. It’s important to clarify assumptions before offering a criticism or challenging an assumption. 5. Prepare well for the meeting.

To sum up, those articles give a lot of tips to have a good design, no matter from how to think about it and how to actually run a design critique. What I learned most was that when think about the design, think from user’s point of view, when start to working on the design, listen more of others’ opinions both from other designers. Design is no longer a “one person job”, it needs more team work and skills beyond how to write a good program.


Brian Maissy - 9/6/2010 16:16:00

The reading from POET was really illuminating in that it brought attention to some very basic design principles which we often look over because they are so implicit in how we think: designing to fit a conceptual model, visibility of affordances, and clear feedback.

"Visual Storytelling" gave me an idea. Would it be useful to use powerpoint or similar to create an interactive hybrid between a storyboard and an animation? It would consist of multiple slides which represent states of the interface, and the user would transition between the states by clicking on specific areas of the interface, and the presentation would switch to the correct state accordingly. In this way, the transitions are clear, in addition to the states. This would take a little longer than a paper mockup, but would offer a relatively high functioning prototype pretty easily.

In "How to Run a Design Critique", I found useful Berkun's rules of order. They effectively explain how effective critique is different from what I would probably do if someone asked for my opinion on something.


Jeremy Sasson - 9/7/2010 14:22:18

I found the POET reading very interesting because it mentioned a lot of things that are quite obvious, but never really thought about. One concept that I found particularly interesting was the concept of mapping. If the controls have an obvious correlation to the actions they cause, they will be much easier to use. It is a simple, yet powerful concept.

The Visual Storytelling reading was helpful in terms of planning my project proposal. I agree with their notion that the transitions are just as important as the states that exist. The tracing example was also helpful for my project proposal.

The Design Critique document will prove useful as we move into the group portion of this course. It also will be a valuable resource once I enter the working world and will be having meetings like these on a weekly basis. Some of these things are also applicable to the way I run board meetings in my fraternity.


Don Arboleda - 9/7/2010 17:16:38

My first reaction upon starting to read POET was to grow increasingly confused (and somewhat frustrated). I couldn't help but wonder what kind of people can't figure out such simple things such as doors and refrigerators. I've seen my fair share of doors that couldn't be opened but have laughed them off as mere quirks. I felt as though Norman was blaming imperfect design (and it's quite easy to come across that, isn't it?) for his ineptitude at such common tasks. I can understand that it's not always the "operator"'s fault, but where do we draw the line? Just about everything requires effort to learn and it becomes especially harder to subconsciously map buttons to functions on electronic devices. Fortunately, the examples he gives are of things so clearly badly-designed.

Buxton's reading reminded me of the importance of storyboarding. Normally, when I think of such, I'm immediately reminded of cartoons and movies. It seems I need constant reminder to remember that story boards are an important step in the process of making, well, damn near anything, really, especially if what is being created needs images. Looks like I'll need to have better storyboards by the time I start working on my design project.

The design critique process described by Berkun seems so involved, but it can serve as a guide to critiquing in general, even if the focus is on design. I'd forgotten (or perhaps never knew) that the creator's intention for a work must serve as a basis for any meaningful critique, and the many things I've seen elsewhere have shown others have forgotten as well. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep everything said here in mind when it comes to critiquing my designs and others'.


Aaron Loessberg-Zahl - 9/7/2010 17:47:02

POET: I have read this book in the past, and still find it pertinent today. I feel that the part of this section that will be most suited to our work with mobile apps is mapping. If our app has several functions, it should be apparent how to execute each of them, without resorting to strange buttons or unintuitive organizations.

Visual Storytelling: This chapter was also helpful, mostly in reassuring me that my meager drawing skills would be adequate to do some real design work. However, I particularly liked the state-transition diagram framework, and I will definitely be using it in my further app designs. I feel that--especially for smartphone apps--it accurately captures the possible workflows one can take when using it. I think it will also be useful in identifying where new routes should be added, if in testing the users would like to take a different approach.

How to Run a Design Critique: I find this article very useful, mostly for fulfilling its title and explaining how a design critique meeting should work. Particularly, the sections on how to lead and set ground rules for the session will be extremely helpful. From past experiences, I have found that it is very difficult to get a design critique going without a clear idea of what needs to get done.


Sean Tai - 9/7/2010 18:00:46

Psychology of Everyday Things: Creating a “natural mapping” in designs, where an element’s form fits what its function is, is a critical and yet difficult task. In the cases of wristwatches or car controls, which were mentioned in the article, it is difficult to have buttons and dials be designed in a way that makes them easy to understand and use. The building up over time of mostly-uniform conceptual models for these types of devices (knob used to control car speakers’ volume, for example) is partly responsible for making it easier to use these complex devices’ designs.

Visual Storytelling: It is interesting how Buxton points out the difficulty of depicting actions in sketches. It is also interesting to see the included example of an airline instruction card, as those do a clear good of explaining actions. Finally, the comment that these simple sketches are the right fidelity, not just low-fidelity, for their purpose was an insightful one.

How to Run a Design Critique: It was interesting to see “user scenarios” brought up as a possible design question to consider during the critique, as keeping the user and their tasks in mind seems important when designing a system. Also, the points about how to keep the critique respectful and constructive were telling of how important group dynamics are in creative exchanges of these sorts. The idea of having physical representations of designs on the walls is one seen in lecture that seems logical, as well.


Jonathan Look - 9/7/2010 18:55:29

I thought Norman's POET provided a great discussion on both visibility and mapping for the design of everyday objects. I would have to say that I place greater importance on the mappings of a device myself. Often times I have fiddled around with new devices, hitting whatever menu or button I could, and after finally finding what I want, I can do what I need. Nonetheless, I'd have to say sometimes, reading the manual helps, and unfortunately, for complex devices, there may not be a way to get around certain designs without a little reading.

Consider small mobile applications where the user can only see so much information at a time on a small display. Conveying enough information to the user with visible features and functionality is limited, unlike the car example, where designers have all that dashboard space to place a various array of buttons dials and switches.

One comment reminded of the recent iPhone 4 issues:

"The problem is that if the product is truly revolutionary, it is unlikely that anyone will quite know how to design it right the first time."


Sui Kun Guan - 9/7/2010 19:11:57

1. A good design should be used very easily by any new users. In order to achieve this, the design should have visible clues to help the users to use it easily. I think one way to do it is try to use similar setting of the application that users already familiar.

2. Draw out the design often, and this drawing practice can improve a designer's drawing skill. And the most useful reason of drawing is it can help the designer to improve the design visually. By drawing changes of the design, the designer may come up new ideas from the early drawing.

3. A critique meeting is necessary to improve the design better. In a critique meeting, setting a goal and everyone discuss around the same goal is most important. And the six general rules must be followed. I think the most useful rule is "listen before speaking" because getting and understanding others' whole idea may help you have a new and better thinking.


Tiago Bandeira - 9/7/2010 19:20:00

“The Psychology of Everyday Things” was surprisingly very interesting. It’s amazing that something as simple as a door actually requires significant thought pertaining to the design if the designer wishes to include aesthetics with function. It’s interesting how good designers need to take into account different stages of the products lifecycle. It’s not simply about selling as many units as possible; it’s about creating a product that the user can intuitively use without getting lost in an instruction manual. Many times these goals are ironically conflicting since the user wants an aesthetic product when they purchase it but a functional product when they use it.

When creating a paper mockup of a UI it’s important for it to be done on paper so it can be easily changed and criticism can easily be given. Furthermore, it shouldn’t look like you spent a lot of time doing it. This is the case as long as you aren’t showing it to someone on the business side that doesn’t understand the concept of a mockup. It’s interesting that in this specific case you should make it look nice because they often confuse the quality of the sketches/mockup with the quality of the idea.

Design critiques and Brainstorming meetings have a lot in common yet some significant differences. In both kinds of meetings the leader is more of a facilitator for group discussion than in standard meetings. For both kinds of meetings it’s important to get everyone talking and to use the walls to visually store the ideas through either whiteboards or printouts. A Design critique however is less about coming up with new ideas and more about refining and determining the best way to implement the current ones.


Andy Lin - 9/7/2010 21:00:29

One point I would like to take out from the first two reading is the important of visibility. Imagine that one went to a store like IKEA and bought furniture that needs to build by himself. If the instructions are all words without any picture, then the furniture would be really hard to built. Anther point that attract my attention from the third reading is that the problem that is discussed during design critique should not be to absolute. This refers back to last week's reading that if a problem is to absolute, then it is not worth to discuss, and I believe this is very important when we think about our design.


Arthur Huang - 9/7/2010 21:35:04

Chapter 1 of Donald A. Norman's "The Psychology of Everyday Things" outlines many inherent flaws in the design of some everyday tools, and brings up a good point in that when technology fails, we tend to blame "human error" as the ultimate source of the problem, when in fact it really was either bad design or some sort of mechanical failure that caused it. This chapter also made me realize how overwhelmingly and unnecessarily complex some of the everyday things we use are, from the doors and telephones mentioned here to remote controls, hotel shower faucets, and windows that have puzzled me in the past. Norman highlights the importance of subtle "hints" that can help the user learn a device faster and easier, including visibility, mapping and feedback. Lastly, he switches sides and takes the designer's point of view, mentioning that the designer is under pressure from the manufacturer, the store, and the customer, and in the midst of trying to satisfy everyone, the designer may lose sight of an easy and convenient design that can be learned and used with ease by the regular user. Related link about solving the problem of unbelievably complex tv remotes: http://i.gizmodo.com/5162715/cheap-user-interface-hack-finally-solves-tv-remotes-stupidity


Vincent Rodriguez - 9/7/2010 21:56:55

Reading 1: The fact that good design has a huge impact on the reception of a new product is fascinating. It's made me look at all the everyday objects around my apartment with a new eye to try and see how their design has affected my use of them.

Reading 2: The concept of storyboards, I feel, is a very important part of the design process. It's a bit hard to impart on someone who has no idea what your product is going to do what your product is for without any sort of visual aid.

Reading 3: Critiquing a project is really important because at times, it can be too easy for someone who has had a huge investment in the project to think that s/he has done no wrong. It's a good way to improve the project, provided that everyone is being constructive.


Chris Song - 9/7/2010 22:13:30

While reading POET, I just realized that something interesting in modern automobile electronics. The complexity of controls in modern automobiles in relation to their cost is a upside-down U shaped curve. For instance, a cheap car doesn't have a laser-guided cruise control system, massage seats, keyless ignition, self-parking, etc. They may not even have power windows. Even when they have some of the features, it's usually very simple and easy to use. Now, expensive cars have complicated electronics with lots of functions. Lexus LS, for example, comes with an owner's manual with over 1000 pages! To complete the upside-down U curve, I examine so-called supercars. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, etc. None of these supercar manufacturers offer any of the features mentioned above. This must be because they realized that in order to enhance the driving pleasure, they must first enhance the usability.


Evan Rosky - 9/7/2010 22:31:43

POET brings up interesting points. The discussion about common items like doors was something I never really thought about before. Some of the information doesn't relate well to screens (which can present dynamic information), but some of the underlying concepts (like minimizing complexity without creating ambiguity) transfer well.

I feel that as HCI progresses into higher-order IO (beyond just mouse/keyboard/screen), traditional product design principles will become more relevant -- for both designing IO devices and interpretation of user gestures/behavior -- as we're starting to see with touch and multitouch screens.


James Yu - 9/7/2010 23:11:32

1) The main thing that stood out about the first reading was the focus on how to represent functions to users through visibility and mapping. Overall the reading did good job of using examples of designs to illustrate different points. The main important and useful point I got was that even though today's complex technology means things will be harder to use, good design can minimize the complexity.

2) This reading gave a crash course in basic sketching. Tracing and the "graffiti" idea were approaches I haven't tried before. Although I have heard of story boarding, the combination with state transition diagrams was something new and useful. The use of arrows to convey transitions was also a useful hint, although I wish there were more examples related to mobile applications.

3) I have never heard of design critiques before, so this was an interesting article. I felt many of the points were similar to the brainstorm reading (for example having a leader, using spacial memory, limiting the number of people), although the author made clear this was different from brainstorming. Overall, I got the idea that design critiques are useful for getting direction and that it will probably be useful for our class project.


Karl He - 9/7/2010 23:25:52

Each of the three readings seems to focus on the way users perceive. In terms of product design, it is essential that users can intuitively figure out how it works. In terms of storyboarding, someone else should be able to tell what you're trying to convey without you needing to explain it. Meetings are all about ensuring what makes sense in your head also makes sense to others.


Kyle Gorlick - 9/8/2010 0:44:31

In response to 'How to run a design critique', the 'Who is in the room' section: This seems like a tricky and important issue for the design critique. I agree that any more than 6 people is probably too many, but how do you know who will understand the issues and critique the best? Who will work best with who; will two people in the room take over discussion, leaving others out? Should a facilitator require responses from everyone or can that just be a waste of time sometimes?


Yue Chang Hu - 9/8/2010 1:15:50

"The Psychology of Everyday Things" provides a good arguments that every design's controls or buttons must be carefully crafted according to the User's needs. In addition, it also suggested that a good design will never confuses the User on how to use the device and mostly have one action per control or button. "Visual Storytelling" is quite interesting because it gives some good advices and examples of how to create a good story telling sketch. My favorite example is the outlining of people in figure 9.8 because its so eye catchy."How to Run a Design Critique", suggested various useful advices on how to form a good discussion about improving and evaluating a design for interface designer.


James Butkovic - 9/8/2010 2:05:54

1) As technologies evolve and complexities and functions are added to a product, it becomes difficult to design interfaces for. Designing good interfaces is all about visibility, which indicates the mappings between intended actions and actual operations. Too much visibility is intimidating and causes anxiety. If a user has to use trial and error to figure out how to use your product, this indicates poor design

2) To a UI team, it's important to have someone that can produce good sketches. You shouldn't spend too long on sketches. Traditional sketching needs to be supplemented with elements that convey time, dynamics, and behavior. One technique is to use more than one sketch to tell a story. Another is a state transition diagram.

3) During and design critique, there's a constant battle between encouraging new ideas, and focusing on improving the current design. A design critique should involve a team of 3-7 people. One goal of these meetings is to tell a story about how users flow through a design. Is there a way standardized way to document this in textual writing?


Seng Heng - 9/8/2010 2:23:20

Reading the POET chapter illuminated quite nicely why the iPod gained market dominance over the technically superior/fully featured mp3 players of the early 2000s. It was less so a triumph of form over function, moreso intuitive and simple designs replacing a feature creep mess. The examples also illustrated how flawed design leads to reduced functionality - Vista's flawed DEP/sudo UI design created an unholy annoyance that led to many users simply disabling it, stripping the user Vista experience of it's Microsoft-vaunted security upgrades and making it pointless.


Tsung Han Tsai - 9/8/2010 3:55:08

The readings showed new ways of designing a project through storyboards, or rather improved ways of ways that people normally would design it. It shows a way to keep the storyboard interesting to the people who its being presented to. The other reading also says to keep an open mind and take feedback into consideration, which is what anyone who wants a project to be designed to fit what the target users want needs to do.


Avery Gee - 9/8/2010 9:30:23

I think that the design critique mentions a lot of good strategies that would minimize a lot of the common design flaws discussed in the first article about the psychology of everyday things. Specifically, having the user walk through the application would help show whether their cognitive mappings of the application match the intended mappings from the designer. It would also help to have the critic read through all the text to see if there are any directions/vocabulary that is unclear. It seems likely that the designers (having intimate knowledge of the product) will use language that they understand, but the critic will not. This is known problem highlighted in the telephone example.

What was also interesting is that they provided guidelines for the participant in the design critique. I think it is smart that they want the critic to first understand what the intent of the designers was before making comments and avoiding making vague unhelpful comments. I also thought it was useful to have several different points of view when running a design critique since everyone with a different expertise will bring something new and helpful to the table.

It is interesting that not only do you need a flow design of the screen of your app, you need a sequence of drawings depicting how the phone will be used by a person as they navigate your app and their world at the same time. It makes sense that you would need a whole sequence of sketches for the latter because people like to multitask. I also like their idea of hanging the sketches on the wall and numbering them so that it is easy to talk about them. Then you can just discuss the transitions between states and decide if all the states are even necessary or if there should be more states.


Christine Lu - 9/8/2010 9:44:47

I thought that "How to run a design critique" was extremely comprehensive and would probably help groups stay focused and guide us in the right direction for the first group brainstorm meeting. However, I wish it would focus on actions after the brainstorm as well. For example, say we have thought of a great idea - what would our next meeting be for? What should be one of the first steps in making this idea become reality? What are some ways to easily integrate all the different aspects of the project, and the people working on those parts?


Samantha Paras - 9/8/2010 10:03:21

- A design critique is a lot different from a brainstorm. A brainstorm is about crazy, wild ideas while a design critique is very specific to already existing ideas. However I can see why having a design critique is very important for discussing usability and design issues.

- I think it's interesting that drawing skills are not required and are almost discouraged. Buxton mentions that he gives lower scores to students whose sketches are TOO good because they're working too hard on it. I learned that sketches are just about getting your ideas down, not perfecting it.

- Norman writes that when people struggle with systems, it's not necessarily their fault -- it's the design. I always considered this human error and lack of user education, but now I realize that if something was designed better than a user wouldn't struggle with it so much. When I design something I should think of this instead of assuming it's the user's fault.


Richard Nguyen - 9/8/2010 10:50:59

I agree completely with what Norman discusses in the reading. Too many items, designed for everyday people, are not designed with everyday people in mind. A prime example nowadays is computer software. Basic programs like webbrowsers and text editors have increasingly sophisticated features and very little of the apps users really know how to take advantage of all the features.

The one part I liked the most about this reading was the amplification through simplification. This is counterintuitive, it would seems like you would get more information across if there was more of it but taking the facial expression example, I realize that sometimes it's hard to tell what a person is thinking from their facial expression but it's easy to tell what's going on in a simple smiley.

I think the design critique ties in perfectly with the brainstorming reading from last week. We learned how to get a large bunch of ideas but didn't know how to refine them in a useful way. I liked the idea of keeping the critique group to a size of 3-7 because having too many people ends up cluttering the conversation and impedes the progress of the meeting.


Danica Shei - 9/8/2010 11:09:47

The article "How to run a design critique" was particularly interesting to me because it emphasized analyzing the user/customer/business goals BEFORE the engineering constraints. I have always thought it would be more practical to understand engineering/technology constraints before continuing with than idea but now I can see how limiting it may be, and may destroy many ideas that might have been feasible. I also thought it was interesting how the Buxton article highlighted many weaknesses of sketches and its tendency to skip the transitions, which is highly important to understanding how a user may interact with technology.


Robert Connick - 9/8/2010 11:32:52

While I thought that the reading from _The Psychology of Everyday Things_ was relatively straightforward (the things seemed obvious once he said them), the part that resonated with me was the quote "[Designers] can come up with a plausible-sounding example for almost anything. Although it almost sounds like it follows task-centered design principles, it doesn't really because the designer has forgotten about the users completely! Also, although the excerpt dealt mainly with poor designs that made it onto the market, the lessons still hold for avoiding pitfalls earlier in the process.

The other two readings were explicitly about an earlier part of the process, and what I found interesting were the different attitudes towards sketching that they had. Obviously only one was explicitly about sketching, but keeping in mind "Who is in the room" does relate to the pros and cons of sketches and storyboards versus videos or PowerPoint presentations.


Anthony Puccinelli - 9/8/2010 11:36:47

The preface to "The Psychology of Everyday Things" had a pretty novel idea, that some very ordinary things (like refrigerators) can cause frustration through bad design as opposed to ignorant users. Indeed, it's funny that you can see many videos on youtube of toddlers successfully interacting with an iPad (an advanced computing device) but not too many videos of a toddler successfully opening a door (a piece of wood on hinges).

The second article, "Visual Storytelling", was full of practical tips for the... shall we say "aesthetically challenged" among us when it comes to sketching/drawing things. It makes sense that when you're trying to design and prototype something, your focus should be on getting a clear idea on the page in a short amount of time (spend too little time on a drawing and it can be unclear what you intended to convey, spend too long and you're wasting time that could be spent on actually implementing the idea). I like to think I found that balance with my project proposal drawings. Also, the crack about Canada late in the article was hilarious.

The guide on how to run a design critique was also an interesting read. Since this is such a huge part of the process (critiquing and changing a design as you go), I'm kind of glad that I'm not in love with the design I submitted for my project proposal (I really like the idea, but maybe not the way my sketches implied it would be implemented). Because of this, it will be easy for me to stay flexible and fluid with the design as it changes (granted it's an idea that's given the green light in the first place). I especially liked the article's point on giving specific feedback like "If the goal is to appeal to Cal fans, we probably shouldn't have a huge red S as our launcher icon" as opposed to "Our icon is fail".


Melissa Lim - 9/8/2010 11:43:41

In "How to Run a Design Critique", I agree that it is important to cater presentation of design ideas to the audience you are talking to. Once, I did not realize a particular audience always expected to have information presented in PowerPoint instead of just having an informal discussion. I ended up having to save my topic for the next meeting after I had prepared a presentation. It's definitely important to have an agenda with goals for the meeting, prototypes to work with, and action items to take after the meeting is over.


Albert Tseng - 9/8/2010 12:12:49

I found the Psychology of Everyday Things to be a very interesting read; I began noticing the design aspects of the things in my life after reading it. There are indeed many things we interact with that are poorly designed, either because of poor feedback, poor mapping, or the other principles the author talked about.

The visual storytelling was also an interesting read that provides a different perspective to the way designs are created. I found the way that storyboarding techniques are incorporated into the design process to be fascinating.

The design critiques article discusses the essential elements and rules of a design critique session. I think the most important factor in such sessions would be constructive feedback from other members -- such feedback is critical in improving all aspects of the design, so rules that encourage open feedback need to be in place.


Simran Chaudhry - 9/8/2010 12:14:39

Main point of POET reading: design impacts how people interact with things. well-designed objects are easy to interpret and understand (visibility, affordances, constraints, mappings, feedback). Main point of visual storytelling: conventional sketching has an important place in interaction design. Main point of “how to run a design critique”: teams need a way to understand and explore the direction of design. Set goals for the meetings. Set a leader/facilitator that encourages people to speakup. Question -- the difference between a conceptual model and a mental model?


Sung Ma - 9/8/2010 12:23:26

From the reading, I gained few of the most important concepts. I really agree with the statement that “The human mind is exquisitely tailored to make sense of the world.” This statement naturally leads to the principle of design: visibility. As the example of Basic Book, even with the basic functions are difficult to use if the are not visible to the users. The Apple’s iPhone for example, do not have a fat user guide like other electronics, but a simple 8-10 page guideline that simply explains basic use. Most of the other functionalities are easily learned by the users. Also, another crucial fact that I learned from the reading is the importance of sketching. Usually, when I design something for a project, I don’t sketch, but try to write down everything in text which generally results in a chaos. Having a sketch with a storyline gives a great example of the product and how it should function.


Alan Choi - 9/8/2010 12:29:24

How to Run a Design Critique was the only reading that I could get to because the other ones required authentication that I do not have...?

For that article, it struck me how much sense it made for the there to be a cognitive walkthrough, and I didn't realize such events were used. Previously, I had thought that testing and usability couldn't really occur until a prototype was finished.

I also found it interesting that the head designer should lead the meeting. I personally feel that someone in that position would be too biased to be able to lead the meeting effectively. It would take quite an experience and open person to be able to do it and effectively take the criticism. In general I thought there would be people trained with the product enough to do these focus group type meetings without bias.


Adam Vogt - 9/8/2010 12:29:48

The thing that stood out to me the most about the "How to run a design critique." article was the discussion about the materials and rooms. When thinking about doing a design critique I don't think I would have even considered the location beyond a room with table and chairs. It's interesting that a good critique is as dependent on the environment as it can be on the people or the design.

The most interesting portion of the "Visual Storytelling" article was the discussion about transitions. In the article they say "The user's experience is shaped as much (if not more) by the transitions as it is by the states." I never really thought about that before. I always believed that transitions were something that should just stay out of the way. That they could be bad and hurt a user experience and were better if they were just not noticed. I never really thought about transitions as being something that could be used to communicate information that tied together the parts it connects.

An interesting portion of "The Psychology of Everyday Things" was the discussion about the 3.5 inch floppy disk and the felt-tipped pen. I never realized that so much design consideration went into something like that. It's amazing that when something is designed well and works like it is supposed to you never really think about it. It's when something is designed really poorly and gives you trouble that you notice all the little details that were overlooked.


Derrick Tao - 9/8/2010 12:41:49

While the visual appearance of a product is important to the user, the functionality and the ease of use should still take precedence. This is often times overlooked in the design process or the board assumptions that users will "figure it out" is even made. This results in poorly designs which brings up the importance of how to design properly. One technique is to draw up a sketch of how the product should look and how it will be used. This will help with the user's interaction and helps designers think outside of just functionality but ease of use. Finally, the design reviews are also very important when designing a product. Good ways to hold design reviews include a way to critique it with 5-6 other co-workers.


Sara LaVigna - 9/8/2010 12:47:24

POET The fundamental principles for designed for people are to make things visible and to provide a good conceptual model. We already come into contact with upwards of 20,000 readily recognizable objects, each with their own set of accordances (this you can or are expected to do with them). We need immediate and visible feedback to determine if the way we are interacting with things yields the right result and a mistake in the design can lead to superstitions and frustration and mistrust in the system. Natural mapping based on physical and cultural standards lead to easier and quicker understanding.

Visual Storytelling Conventional sketching and tracing are important in the interactive design process, and practice is really important in improving drawing skills. State transition diagrams can be used to make a map of the displays in the interface by showing their relationships to each other. For presenting your idea, the storyboard is space multiplexed and you can see everything simultaneously while Powerpoint is time multiplexed and needs to be show sequentially. It's important to always consider the human interaction with the product and the cultural, physical, social, and personal problems that will arise.

  1. 23 – How to run a design critique 
    Design critiques are a very important phase after brainstorming but still before production meetings where you get into the nitty gritty engineering details. A good design critique meeting has a clear focus/goal and doesn't try and touch on too many things at once. The people present at the meeting should be the people crucial to the design of the product and who give useful and meaningful positive and negative feedback. Critiques can be run by the designer of the project or someone else who will facilitate conversation, not always push their own ideas, and contribute with points referent to the design instead of absolutes or opinions.



Daniel Yoo - 9/8/2010 12:52:06

It was very interesting how the design of any materials have an impact on the users’ psychological and mental state. How people look at different perspective would have huge impacts on UI design and designer must have to consider the user’s point of view. It is always best to get a feedback from a customers and good to discuss with product design group members.



Adib Kashem - 9/8/2010 12:57:10

The key point I got out of the first reading is that its very important for products to be intuitive, in that, they should speak to us about how to operate it. The functionality should be obvious. A good example of such a good design is the iPad, in my opinion. In the iPad demo video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q1RithxrzY) the vice president of design at Apple, Jony Ive, explains how the iPad is very easy to use and it practically doesn't require any skills to operate. I think it is a big selling point and Apple has brought us a long way in terms of psychological considerations in design. For years, my parents haven't operated computers because they were too afraid of the complexity of it. However, with devices and interface like the iPad, complexity and operation is no longer an issue.

I find it very easy to express my ideas about an application by creating sketches showing it at each state. This way we can actually feel what it does under different circumstances and like the author mentions, pictures can indeed be very powerful when used wisely to describe.

During a design critique, it is extremely important to put ourselves into the shoes of the user. A lot of us tend to have higher/lower expertise levels than our users. As such, we may easily misjudge their tastes and abilities and come up with solutions that don't really help them a lot. Also, it is helpful to behave as though we are using the product in the design stage and see if we can find any faults with out design. Diverse perspectives are generally important too. Above all, although very difficult, we have to set aside our own tastes and preferences and prioritize those of the targeted user if we are to come up with an effective solution.



Robin Liu - 9/8/2010 12:58:39

I wasn't able to open the first two documents. The site asked for the username and password - I'm not sure what they're supposed to be. I managed to find Buxton's article.

Buxton's article was enjoyable to read, on par with his usual work. The discussion of the different media through which a design can be expressed was fairly eye opening. A traditional sketch might not only be an inaccurate or inefficient portrayal of the design, but it may also lead limit the design, as the possible dimensions of HCI are flattened into a 2-dimensional image. In particular, it is difficult to express the passage of time through traditional sketches.

The article on how to run a design session reaffirmed my experiences as an intern. Initially, I'd always wonder why design sessions lasted so long, with so little being said. The article confirms what I had previously learned - that design sessions can be eventful but unproductive if there is no area of focus that is being addressed on a specific level. They require a careful balance of branching into new ideas and digging deeper into existing ones.


Bernard Wong - 9/8/2010 13:20:18

Brainstorming is usually a tough task, and people usually draw from their instinct or designs that are already being used. The core of brainstorming is to have a lot of input from users, and compile those inputs into something creative.


Bichen Wang - 9/8/2010 14:58:44

Although I find PoET very interesting and extremely accurate, to what extent IS it actually human error? At what point is it "oh this guy just messed up," and at what point is it more "oh this guy had bad input"? Say there was this microwave that had very limited buttons. It had a button for up, down, and start. At what point is it "human error" if someone put something into the microwave for 1 hour instead of 1 minute? What if the microwave had hundreds of buttons? There was a button for defrost and many other buttons to customize how it should defrost. At what point is it just "too much" for a microwave? These days, many ideas change rapidly, and it is hard to define what the "norm" is. Should the developer be accountable for all these changes? Visual Storytelling is incredibly detailed and filled with examples of how pictures can often mean more than words. Shown best by the last example with the airline card, effective pictures can easily replace words, and they show it more accurately and quickly. The pictures are not super-detailed or masterpieces. However, they convey so much in so little that I'd like to ask how much time they took in designing something so crucial yet so unnoticeable in an aircraft. How to run a design critique is thorough. This seems like something that should be permanently tabbed just to look at whenever working on projects. The instant a new update is released and feedback is flowing, this site should sit there in the background keeping the designers ready for critique until the designers know all these points by heart. It seems like someone went through the trouble of compiling all the things that makes a critique session work.


Karthik Jagadeesh - 9/8/2010 16:02:30

The Psychology of Everyday Things - The reading mentioned that some interfaces are too complex for the user so they are turned off and others are too simple, how do you find the right equilibrium? Visual StoryTelling - How do you know when to use a storyboard type of description for the application and when to just make a video to explain to the user? How to Run a Design Critique - I feel like giving effective critiques is a very good skill, because people easily take offense to the smallest remarks so its important to position them well.


Terrance Ng - 9/8/2010 16:27:50

I thought that it was interesting to note that in designing an interface, we must keep things visible. That is, the function of a certain aspect of the design must be immediately obvious and natural to the user, as noted in 'The Psychology of Everyday Things'. It was interesting to read that the telephone was more difficult to use than the automobile, which is a much more complicated device.


Jeremy Sasson - 9/13/2010 1:47:18

I thought the method of brainstorming and development that IDEO used was very effective, and I was surprised with how quick their turnover rate was from brainstorm to product. I'm curious as to why I haven't seen that shopping cart in aisles across the country by now, seeing as how that episode aired about a decade ago.

As for the reading, it was interesting to see all the different factors that come into play during the creative process. It is not a rigid step-by-step process, but rather an organic one. I really do enjoy the notion that creativity is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. While the idea could strike at any moment, making it happen takes a great deal of hard work.

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