Claire KV's ITP Blog: User Experience Design

Assignment 3

For next week’s class, design a physical object that allows a user to count. The target audience is someone who wants to keep a numeric record of something and have a physical reminder of their progress to display for themselves and others on their desk or workspace. The object should allow the user to easily record single increments of change (either counting forward toward a target or backwards from it).

I decided to make a desktop timer that has a very simple design and aesthetic. The shape is nice to hold in your hand like a billiards ball and its bright yellow color livens up even the most dreary workspace.

There is a simple interface and controls that allow you to count up or down and display values on a small screen. You can also customize the viewer to include images that directly correspond with your counting up/down or inversely. For example, when counting down to the days of a vacation, a user can see and image of a palm tree take shape as the event draws nearer. You can set counting limits on the device too, say for example you are trying to limit your coffee consumption, when your count gets to your maximum allowance an alarm goes off.

Assignment 2

For this assignment, Amanda Gelb and I examined the user experience of two online news sites: the Guardian and the BBC. We chose a specific task to base our comparison. The task: look up stories on Syria. In the task, we Googled one of the news outlets and then went to the first page that came up. We then looked for the top news on Syria and then background on the subject. We recorded the time it took us to be satisfied in our respective searches (moment of saturation) and our thoughts on the experience.

Claire

The Guardian (3:19) (guardian.com)

The bar at the top of The Guardian’s splash page has links to news by topic and “hot topic” regions. ***Syria was one of the options!

Once I pressed Syria, I was led to top stories, most recent news, and related sections. The most recent story was from today. Overall, The experience was fairly straightforward, but I thought the Guardian looked like an unpolished blog.

BBC (5:00) (BBC.uk.co/worldnews)

There was no link to Syria on the splash page, but there are links to regions…(embarrassing, but I had to rethink where the world Syria is).

I pressed on the Middle East and the first story that came up was about Syria and was posted only minutes earlier. There were several links to related stories and videos and background information on the region and current conflict.

Thoughts

I think that the results of my search were more comprehensive on the BBC’s site. The information was presented in a clear and concise manner and contained links to a wealth of informational resources on the subject. The flow of information seemed more linear (recent, related, historical, video, useful links) and the typography and color scheme (bold red and black) gave an authoritative appeal to the information. One interesting feature that the BBC’s site has, is a link to Syria’s news outlets and more resources in general.

BBC

Amanda

Guardian vs. BBC

BBC takes a little more combing through and bombards users with more information as you scroll further and further down. Most stories are given the same size image with smaller thumbnails on the right of "Features". Their layout is not as appealing as The Guardian which uses color, a more appealing grid layout and more white space in-between stories.

Both have a current news section. The Guardian calls it "Breaking News" and BBC "LATEST" these are flashing linkable stories that are most current. They both contain headlines that are regular point size font and on the top of the page directly under the tabs menu.

The splash page of the Guardian is more enticing but BBCs main layout is far superior with its visual hierarchies. Guardian overwhelms a bit. Lots of small point font and boxes. My eyes don't know where to go.

VS.

BBC WORLD NEWS (3:18 minutes)

Entered Syria into search tab. Was given different categories and the amount of stories that covered them as well as "elsewhere on the web" (which is interesting cause they're cool with you going away from their website so long as they are the person that helped you find something interesting. Impressive. I also liked that they gave me an option to not know anything about the conflict/situation there and suggested some 2 minute videos that gave me a great overview. Also great Subject Titles. I got a clear sense of what I was looking for.

THE GUARDIAN:

Pulled up a list of headings that are linked. They took me to a page with articles. It was unclear how my linked article led me to that page with multiple articles on it and not just to the one article I selected.

From there they too (like the BBC) had videos and such but the thumbnails (the captions and images were too small for me).

CONCLUSION:

Maybe I'm a snob but I like a visual hierarchy and larger images. The Guardian was not sexy. Initially, I was showed 0 images or stylized Headlines. Then I was shown a few different stories but oddly, The Guardian's trending stories were given larger images and headlines than the topic I, the user, wanted to learn about. BBC was a delight. I enjoyed their informative quick video synopsis and from there was drawn down the path of exploration to further articles. I think I'm a visual news person.

Conversation

We discussed our experiences. Amanda had initially thought that the Guardian site was better organized (clearly defined grid system and not a lot of text). I thought that the BBC was a cleaner looking site with a more sophisticated color scheme and typography.

Amanda searched for the term “Syria”, whereas I let my eyes wander for related information. Overall, we agreed that the BBC was a better user experience and we felt that the information was easier to access and read.

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Assignment 1

Feb 6th, 2014

Write about A) an appealing and B) an unappealing/frustrating object, application, site that I interact with. What makes this experience so? If it falls under the unappealing category, what could be done to improve upon it?

A) My electric kettle.

It might seem trite, but I have often thought about how much of a pleasure it is to use my electric kettle. I have fantasized about saving it in a house fire and I interact with it everyday (sometimes, two or three times). The use of the kettle is quite simple, I choose a setting (depending on the type of tea I want to drink) and I walk away to do another task. If its in the morning, I will go put on socks or brush my hair. By the time I am done a simple task (usually 1-2 minutes), the kettle starts beeping and my water is ready. Like Pavlov's dogs, I am now physiologically conditioned by the sound.

B) I was going to write about my hairdryer and how much of a pain it is to use, but after searching for 1 minute in the web, I have found that the solution I would have proposed, has already gone to market....

In fact, the idea is as old as the hair dryer...

So, on to another frustrating user-experience....The NYU job resource website (Wasserman)!!!

In late August, I decided to start looking for work and searched NYU's website for job finding resources. I searched for "NYU job search" and found the actual site for students very hard to find. Wasserman's site is packed with information and very hard to navigate. The careerNet icon is small and crowded by text and images in the centre of the main page. I found this experience so frustrating that I gave up after my first try.