NMD 442 Sophia C-C

  Click here for article This article discusses some of the most irksome 'dark patterns' often found in UX.  I selected this article mainly because of the Star Wars reference in the beginning, but I also liked the points it brought up.  At the beginning of the semester I spent 3 hours dealing with Adobe customer service because it looked like they were automatically continuing my Creative Cloud subscription(at more than 100 dollars more than I initially agreed to).  Upon investigation, I had agreed to these terms in the fine print of the student discount promotion.  When I tried to cancel my account, there was no way to do so on the website.  I had to spend more time dealing with customer service, who didn't let me cancel, but did give me the discount again.  This cycle of payment is not sustainable, the only way I managed it this year was that I had gotten a different debit card between automatic payments.  In a utopian view, I do not have...

Click here for the article The article focuses on FaceBook's personalization and the idea of 'dead end UX'  The author has turned their FaceBook feed into effectively a news reader by unfollowing all of their friends.  Now they are unable to undo this action, making Facebook unusable.  The follow/unfollow feature of FaceBook is something my family and I have made great use of in the past year, with some unforseen consequences that are similar to those encountered by the author.  Last election season, my mother unfollowed her mother because the daily unintentionally racist posting was becoming too much.  A couple months later my great uncle died and my grandmother posted about about his death, which my mom obviously did not see.  I had to call my mom to tell her so that she in turn could call my grandmother to give her condolences.  If I hadn't done that, my mother would not have known about her uncle's death and would have ended up hurting my gr...

Click here to view article The way the process was broken up made it easy to understand and glean useful information from, which was appreciated.  There wasn't really any new  information, it mostly just cemented things we had discussed in 102 and in class discussions in this class.  Discussion Questions: Is it possible to design effectively without true empathy? Rather, is there a way to imitate empathy? What tests could we devise to use with this SnowPlow Uber idea? What would an effective prototype look like for the Snow Plow Uber?

Click here to see the page I made for class While making my about.me page, I was impressed by how smoothly the user was guided through the process.  While there were a couple things I did not like(you were unable to see some content, and it wasn't easily apparent how a bio was formed or the page made more usable in general), the overall experience and product was simple and effective.   Questions: Is there a reason for the color choice?  Why isn't there an integral navigation system? What tests did were used for this and how were they implemented? I originally started the process on my phone, didn't finish, and ended up completing it on my laptop.  Something I noticed throughout was that it looked as if it had been designed for mobile use.  Was it? Is there anything you would do differently in designing this?

An ongoing glossary of UX terms that will be updated as we learn more. 5: five second test a form of usability test where the user is shown a web page for 5 seconds and then asked questions to determine the clarity of the website. A: B: C: D: E: F: G: Guerrilla User Testing According to  Martin Belam, "Guerrilla usability test is “the art of pouncing on lone people in cafes and public spaces, quickly filming them whilst they use a website for a couple of minutes.” H: I: Iterative design the process of repeatedly redesigning a product based on user feedback. J: K: L: M: N: Needfinding A process of determining what a user actually needs a product to do.  This information can be found using questionnaires (explicitly determined) or through usability testing (implicitly determined). O: P: Prototype A mock up of a product that evolves closer to the actual product over time(low fideli...

The article this post is responding to is no longer able to be found, so the hyper-link has been removed to avoid confusion. The article raises some interesting points if you look past the all too common concerns about internet addiction, namely is there a responsibility to avoid falling into 'Dark UX'?  The idea of dark UX is that people who know certain design tricks such as making specific buttons larger, or changing an animation to make scrolling smoother (i.e. UX designers) can use these tricks to make using an app more mindless and... well addictive is really the only word that comes to mind.  The final parts of the article discuss the role of the UX designer: should there be a sort of expectation to do no harm?  Or should it just be accepted that as they are contractors, they will do what the client asks? I think that a pseudo Hippocratic oath for UX designers is a nice idea, but not entirely practical.  The job of a UX designer is to make an experi...

click here for article First off, the idea of guerrilla usability testing is extremely funny to me:  a method of  testing a website or app that involves "pouncing on lone people in cafes and public spaces, quickly filming them whilst they use a website for a couple of minutes.”  The mental image is ludicrous enough to actually seem feasible.   As for her actual prototyping and redesign process, there were again some interesting takeaways for me.  The job stories that allow you to better analyze what people want to do with an app was a practice I had not thought of, and the idea of 'pain points' seems like a useful tool that I will be able to utilize in my job.  The discovery of the pain points provides specific goals to troubleshoot, as opposed to wandering blindly, which I appreciate.   Discussion questions Would guerrilla usability testing be feasible for the snow plowing app? why/why not? What tasks would it make sense t...

  Click here for articl e I appreciated how the article laid out a process of app creation in very simple layman terms, it helped me feel more confident in how to approach our snow plow Uber project.  Based on the article, we've already taken some of the initial steps, i.e. the 'elevator pitch' of "It's like Uber but for plowing."  I enjoyed the examples the author gave of her sketches and how she showed their transition into a fully formed prototype.  I think I like the style tile model better than the mood board just because it seems more fleshed out and easier to apply to a product.   Discussion Questions: What would the snow plowing project have as a design inception sheet?  What sort of moodboard/style tile would it have? How could you make sure the visual language used in the product resonates with the largest number of users?  Are there certain aspects that are interpreted the same regardless of who looks at them?  O...