Monday, February 10, 2014

4 - Michelle Harris

The average user isn't always correct.  In class we discussed how designers are supposed to develop their product around a certain persona, however, there is a problem with this because not all users have the same needs and wants as this one persona.  This means that the "average" user is not always right.  Hoekman discusses how a solution to most design problems is to focus on activity-centered design.  He says that designers should design to support a situation, not a specific user.  A designer shouldn't design for a certain type of user using an application, they should design for a user in a certain type of situation.  A designer should also create a SET of persona descriptions, not just one.

In the context of project #2, Hoekman's situation-centered approach to research refers to the designers designing based on the situation and not just the user and their needs.  This means that in project #2, the designers asked their users to perform certain tasks to see how they will respond to them so that they can create a better digital panel based off of the situation that their user had with it.  For my project, I could have focused my research more on the situation as a whole for my user instead of just seeing how she responded to my questions and recording which buttons she pressed.  I could have taken notes on the whole situation and the overall picture.  I also could have done multiple usability tests on a number of users because just testing one user does not provide accurate results on the interaction with the user and the digital panel.

No comments:

Post a Comment