WEEK 8 The Messaging Kettle

Reading
The Messaging Kettle
Margot Brerenton

The messaging kettle is an example of new and novel ways of emotive communication that are made possible through interactive technology, and assist elderly people in maintaining social connections and active healthy lifestyles. The design focuses more on fostering social engagement rather than just monitoring of an older persons welfare.

The method of augmenting and enhancing an existing routine is similar to this semester’s project, and many design issues raised are applicable;

• The design approach stresses the importance of using “habituated” objects that an elderly user is already familiar with, rather than introducing a completely new technology into their lives. 

• Social communication can be intertwined with habitual use of objects, and tasks and gestures associated with the ritual. A context aware approach to interactive product design is a good way for designers to create new experiences without complicating them.

• The use of prototypes in the case study were successful in gaining valuable feedback from intended users, and exploring preferred interaction modalities.

• The salient point raised in the reading is the attention paid to design interactions around existing habits and routines, using a product the elderly users are already familiar with.

• Testing using prototypes revealed how the test users wanted an assortment of ways to customise their experience, drawing attention to how interaction designers need to create experiences with some fluidity that can be tailored to the individual user to some degree.This is a good example of design in use, and prototype testing as a technique for refing and developing design ideas. 

•  Older users may be more receptive to new technology if its embeded in a familiar object or experience.

-Darcy Storr

WEEK 7 Designing Experiences

Conceptual Framework for Interaction Design

Successful Experience Design

Four different ‘pleasure types’ to consider when designing experiences: physio pleasure, socio-pleasure, psycho-pleasure and ideo-pleasure.

Physio-pleasure - Pleasure derived from the senses from touch, smell, sensual pleasure etc. 

 
Socio-pleasure - Pleasure gained from social interaction with others. The aspect of an experience focused on socialisation, and social identity etc


Psycho-pleasure - Cognitive or emotional pleasure. The aspect of a designed experience relating to the satisfaction derived from successfully completing a task, and how intuitive or usable a product is.


Ideo-pleasure - Something that is consistent with a users values, meaningful to them.
This is the most abstract pleasure. In terms of products, it is the values that a product or experience embodies.

Tiger, L. (2000) The Pursuit of Pleasure.Transaction Publishers

Understanding what the user finds pleasing, their values and ideals allows the designer to focus aspects of the design to cater to them and create more pleasureable experiences.

Using the interaction design framework, the pleasure types vocabulary, and having a through understanding of the design constraints through research aids the designer in creating an engaging experience for the user.

Designing Engaging Experiences 

5 Key elements for engaging experiences

Identity Authenticity is required for identity, this is related to ideo-pleasure. How the values a product or experience embodies reflect the user identity.

Adaptivity The fluidity of an experience. How it can adapt to meet a particular users requirements and be experience at different levels of skill and enjoyment, and how the experience can be changed over time to increase engagement.

Narrative The structure of an experience and the way it is navigated by the user. The combined actions and reactions that form the experience and occur over time.

Immersion Narrative flow and sensory engagment affect how immersive the experience is.

Flow The sense of smooth movement between each successive action that form the experience.The level of product usability and intuitiveness affect the flow of an experience.

Shedroff, N. (2001) Experience Design. Waite Group Press

User experience is concerned with the overall quality of the process which includes the role of emotions and their impact on interaction - nowadays people want more than functionality and efficiency, they also want interaction that is pleasurable.

-Patrick Jordan, Designing Pleasureable Products (2003)

-Darcy Storr

WEEK 6 Design Interactions: People and Prototypes

Reading
Designing Interactions. Chapter 10: People and Prototypes
Bill Mogridge

"When we are designing connected systems of products,services, and spaces, which are used in real time, the brain of any designer who tries to absorb all of the constraints is likely to explode."

The reading stresses the importance of comprehensively understanding all the tasks associated with an experience in order to better design interactive products and experiences.

The importance of understanding the user experience

Understanding relevant constraints; the latent needs and wants of the users, their preconceptions, mental models and expectations is best achieved through observational research of a user experience and the acting out or simulating the experience by the design researcher. Designers have the ability to harness tacit knowledge rather than being limited to working with explicit knowledge. The constraints of a design problem can be absorbed by the subconscious mind of the designer so find solutions.

Often, the designers tacit knowledge and understanding of the problem can help them conceptualize design ideas, make creative leaps, and find first solutions.

Experience prototyping for design development

Prototyping an experience is focused on the conceptual experience of the user, it is used to explore, evaluate and communicate design ideas during the development process, and to gain a more informed development of the user experience and the tangible components which create it.

Experience prototyping lets a client, design colleague, or a user understand the subjective value of a design idea by directly experiencing it, and prototyping with the intended user group also helps the designers avoid the trap of designing for themselves.

Human factors trials with experience prototypes allow quick evaluations of a wide range of design concepts, and the combination of user testing and rapid prototyping is a key to successful experience design.

"An effective experience prototype requires a level of resolution and functionality such that it can be “let loose” into an everyday context and more fully integrated into people’s lives."

Applicable to this semester project;

• Successful interaction design is dependent on understanding the perceptions, circumstances, habits, needs, and desires of the ultimate users.

• The practice of designing interactions is enabled by prototyping early and often by trying out ideas as quickly and frequently as possible, and by taking them to the users for responses and evaluations.

• Using Arduino to prototype, we are able to quickly develop and test subtle iterations of product behaviours and user experiences.

• Constraints will be identified through looking at the full context of the design problem, not just the people involved.

• Prototype early and often, making each iterative step a little more realistic but minimizing the time and effort invested each time, relying instead on the learning that feeds your subconscious each time you try.

• When designing a new version of something that is already there, the designer  can research what has been done before, learn the lessons from previous attempts, discover guiding principles, and extract knowledge from the precedents.

"We can generalize the interaction design process with these ten elements:  constraints, synthesis, framing, ideation, envisioning, uncertainty, selection, visualization, prototyping, and evaluation."

 

-Darcy Storr