RMA

Name: Max

Age: 24

Occupation: student in NUS

Profile:

Max is a university student who is media- and tech-savvy. He professes to be "extremely attached" to his tech gadgets like laptop, digital camera, MP3 player and Xbox 360 game console, and claims he would "probably die" without them. With all his interest in technology, it is no wonder then that his area of interest in school is computer science, with a focus on interface (hence he can get rather anal about things with badly-designed interface).

Max is the eldest of 4 children and stays in the east side of Singapore. Hence he spends a lot of his time travelling to and from school via public transport, spending about a total of 3 hours a day commuting on the bus. He would rather do this than stay in hall because he believes he should spend time with his family every day. To him, people in his life are important. So apart from making the effort to stay home when he can to spend time with his family, he goes out with his close friends to do stuff together like play soccer or just go and "hang out".

As a hardworking and driven student who is gunning for 1st class honours, Max feels the constant need to be productive. He believes that good time management is essential, and that everything should be prioritised and organised so that there is maximum efficiency, then he can get as much free time as possible after focusing completely on his schoolwork. He is someone who definitely believes in working hard and playing hard.

Max is also a lover of music, and listens to many different genres. Often he can be seen "plugged in" to his MP3 player, especially when he does his regular jogs at east coast park on weekends. He is an avid gamer, and spends any free time he has playing sports games on his Xbox 360, claiming that it's his source of catharsis and relaxation. According to him, it's also because he gets an extra "kick" out of it because of the thrill of the games. Most of the time, he has enough discipline to know when to stop.

Some of his friends have been amazed at Max's ability to eat "anything". He isn't fussy about his food, and his favourite saying regarding this is "I don't care what it looks like. As long as eat already don't die then good enough" (i.e. He doesn't care what it looks like. As long as it's edible and doesn't kill him, he'll eat it). Some of this nonchalance is also evident when it comes to gadgets that Max gets. Things like size and colour of gadgets are secondary considerations to Max when he makes choices regarding his tech toys (unless they're in colours like shocking pink). To him, the functionality and features of any gadget, as well as the ergonomics of it are what matters (Max totally hates things that are badly designed ergonomically) , because he doesn't buy stuff because they look good or make him look good - he buys stuff to use it. Most of the time Max wouldn't splurge on a tech gadget unless he thought it was really worth it - so they have to have a certain appeal to him.

4-pleasure analysis:

physio

- Likes listening to music

- Keeps fit by running regularly

psycho

- plays sports games on his Xbox 360 to unwind and get a "kick"

- Likes to fiddle around with tech gadgets

socio

- Likes to make the effort to spend time with his family

- Likes to do activities like playing soccer with his friends.

- isn't image concious

ideo

- hardworking and driven

- efficient

- ambitious

- flexible and not fussy

- practical

- believes in the need for good design

- isn't a spendthrift


Product Benefit Specification (Aka a handphone for Max should have...)

1. many different functions

2. doesn't have to look fantastic

3. needs to be ergonomic

4. needs to have good interface

5. should not be too expensive


Reccommended product:

Nokia N73 Music Edition

Features:

• has up to 2GB of memory
• plays MP3s
• can sync with PC to manage music
• takes videos and photos
• can share photos, photos and video can be edited either in phone or on computer
• big screen with easily navigable user interface (according to nokia)
  

Visceral, Behavioural, Reflective - a Reflection

your friendly UX designer was asked this week to go hunting around for examples of visceral (initial impact / appearance), behavioural (functionality), and reflective (message it gives about owner's taste). it has not been an easy search i can assure you (considering how each of them overlaps, and how the companies try to sell them with all 3 design emotions in mind)... but i've tried to find something (and hopefully its a good comparison)... and awaaaaaay we go!

Subject of comparison: LAPTOPS (i.e. laptop BRANDS and the images they portray)

Brands being compared: Apple, IBM (or is it Lenovo?) and.... Sony? (ok the last example was pretty difficult to find).

so now that we have the participants, let's play a little guessing game...

The Apple Macbook

"AHHHHH! MACBOOK BLACK!!!! I WANT!!!!"

I've had friends who've been DYING (and i do mean DYING) to get their hands on a Macbook, the black one especially. One particular one had this reaction when she saw a black Mac at the co-op "AHHHHH!!! i WANT!!!" which in my opinion is rather representative of most people who want a Mac (a rather insightful friend pointed out designers don't count. they use Macs for functionality, not cos it looks "cool"- you gotta be pretty "cool" to begin with if you wanna be a designer, so they don't need that extra boost).

So... based on the dominant reaction of all those people lusting after Macbooks (the black one especially), i'd say that the dominant design characteristic would be VISCERAL (though reflective could come in a close second because of the "cool" factor").

IBM / Lenovo



A quote from a friend about IBM / Lenovo laptops: "Reliable, no-nonsense and hardy. but its damn ugly lah!!!!"


Ok. After asking around for a few people's opinions, this is my conclusion about the impression (and "reputation) of IBM / Lenovo laptops: No-nonsense, reliable, can take all sorts of hits and maintain intact (i have a friend who's laptop has taken major abuse and still works pretty fine). Functionality wise, it comes with all sorts of stuff that you get with every other laptop, but is built to take more hits (and more importantly, survive them). So... i guess that would make it a BEHAVIOURAL-type design (i can't say much for visceral or reflective elements...)


Sony Vaio

the PC vs Mac vs Vaio advertisement (the "non-pc pc"? er... right. a PC by another shape or colour is still a PC):

So anyway... At first when i took a look at this ad (and the sony Vaio in general) i wondered to myself... is this more reflective? or visceral? I mean, i could easily file this under REFLECTIVE and end off my post, but i want to elaborate a little on the difficulty in this area (the other 2 were pretty much no-brainers). Reflective design is supposed to say something about the owner of the product, no? and the only way to get that across is to build brand image and perception. If that's the case, i can very easily just take one of those HP laptops as an example (especially with their "The computer is personal again" ads (which are rather well done i should think).

Then i realised unlike Visceral and Behavioural design, REFLECTIVE design is not only personal, but also a matter of how that perception is built (like through advertising). And I think Sony's above-shown ad would be an example of trying to push for the idea that it classifies as REFLECTIVE design in the sense that it makes you "cooler" than a dude who owns a mac (which would DEFINITELY say something about you).

NM4210: Badly-designed Learning Report

If there's something i can think of that's badly designed, its definitely got to be the doors to those classrooms along the AS1 walkway.... and if you wonder why....

Most (or a rather large majority) of door handles are designed to be pushed down in order to open the door. The door handles for classrooms at the AS1 walkway however have to be pulled upwards in order to open them, effectively meaning that by pushing them downwards (like you would for normal doors), you're locking yourself out instead of opening the door.

This makes it a bad design in the sense that its non-conventional. I admit it's unusual (perhaps 'cool' even to some), but when you're late, rushing to a classroom and trying to open the door, the last thing you need is a door handle which doesn't follow the standard conventions.

I'm pretty sure most people who have had lessons in the AS1 classrooms have either personally experienced or at least witnessed a harrased student trying to rush into class, only to be unable to open the non-conventional door, which would probably lead to a lot of frustration for them because it makes them even later than they already are.

After a few unsuccessful attempts (and some help from students in the classroom), they would finally be able to open the door.... and probably learn that the door handle is supposed to move up instead of down. Since the door has no "brand", it would hard to actually figure out a user's impression of the brand (except maybe if you consider comments like "why on earth did anyone design doors like this?" to be a negative impression of the architecture firm that designed the doors).

So what do i personally think of this product (if you could consider it a product)? I think that while it seems like a unique idea, it is a bad design in the sense that it works totally opposite to conventional designs for similar items. People have conceptual (mental) models about how things should work (which generally are conventions followed by the majority), and if a design goes against these conventions and conceptual models, it will be difficult for people to understand and use these products.

As for the user reaction, i would think that it is normal and understandable. Given the circumstances where the evidences of this atypical and bad design occurs, they have every reason to feel frustrated. When someone is in a hurry or under stress, they rarely think about the exceptions to the rules (such as the way this particular door handle works), often resorting to those conceptual models they know and which have become habitual, so naturally they would try opening the door by pushing the handle downwards (and get frustrated when it achieves the opposite result of locking them out of the room).

oh WOW! DOTA!

i don't really post here much anymore (not since i ended NM3216), but as i've always said "There's some things you can never really run away from."

so anyway... had dinner with mum's side of the extended family, on the table with all the cousins who have a minimum age of 18 (going on 19). Funny how at one point the conversation swung in the direction of DOTA and WOW (like i said... there's just some things you can't run away from).

I found it funny how this particular cousin of mine has now become somewhat of a DOTA fanatic (when about this time last year i recall him saying he could never understand why all his friends were persistently playing that game).

Well one year on, and things certainly have changed haven't they? on an even more interesting note, there seems to be a little inter-family DOTA competition going on (where Dota-playing siblings team up against their similarly teamed-up cousins), and where they seem to be playing for bragging rights (like my cousin said, "We have t PWN them so that at the next family gathering we can rub it in their faces!").

The other topic of interest was WOW (World of Warcraft) - mainly because i brought up the recent Season 10 episode of South Park called "Make Love, not Warcraft". Its interesting to see how immersive the game is, and how people are aware the level of immersion can reach. My cousin said that when the original WOW came out, he "lost all his friends" except when it was tuesday night (only because the server is down for maintenence). Now that most of them hit level 60 or so, he's got his friends back (or at least till the expansion comes out some time this year). The most interesting bit of all i thought, was when he said that "there's no way he's going to start on WOW, because i know once i start i won't stop." Such is the level of immersion (the guys at Blizzard Entertainment are geniuses i tell you).