Week 2: Many Different Points of View

This week we got to dig deeper into the psychology and rules of user experience design, which was fascinating to me. What fascinated me most, however, was the outcome of an assignment we had to do. We each had to find one bad and one good example of UX design, and I chose Amazon as my positive example. In my mind, I have been so thrilled by their simple check-out and service that in my mind, Amazon seems to define top-tier user-focused design. However, one of the other students used Amazon as their negative example. I was surprised at first, but understood as I read. She was focusing on using Amazon specifically to watch Amazon Videos, and described how the patterns are not set up to make that process intuitive. I have had the same issue on Amazon, in fact, but primarily use it for shopping, so that user problem just never concerned me that much.

This just shows how important it is at the very beginning AND throughout the entire product development process to utilize user testing to measure the success of your product. Not just one user, not just one test, but many times for different users with different goals. For a designer, it may seem like the primary goal of the site is set up perfectly to please the user. However, someone who is not thinking along the same lines as the designer in purpose may discover holes and faults that were otherwise invisible. Even if the usability is excellent in one area, great user experience design should extent to all processes of the product.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 5: Seeing Without Fully Understanding

This week was a focus on the design principles, and I was struck by how much of this is intuitive to the user. When we look at a bad website, we don't think, "That hierarchy is amazingly designed. The golden ratio is clearly what was used to create this logo." We don't understand, but our senses intuitively are drawn to those things that follow our design principles and reject those things that do not. In effect, the user has already assigned an evaluation to your product before using it. While using it may be enough to overcome a bad initial evaluation, it also may not be able to. I just find it fascinating how instinctual this study is, and how by perfecting what we do to improve the design, the more we tap in to that subconscious that is first deciding if we trust this website or product. When I have designed in the past, some has been based on actual rules, but some has just been me trying to judge what looks good versus what does not. By learning these principl...
Read more

Week 7: User Experience Versus Market Research

This week was a great week for applying design principles to a UX project that we will be doing a lot in the future: user personas. I had done many of these target member profiles in advertising, so I felt like it was going to be simple. While I did really enjoy the assignment, I also saw that there is a significant difference between this step in user experience and in advertising. At least, it seems that in user experience design, you are more aware of aspects of design than in advertising. While we built user personas in the past that were meant to look aesthetically pleasing, I found myself concentrating much more on the smallest details of the design. What type system am I using? Is every typeface consistent in its use? Am I effectively using a grid system to design my persona? While I had written many in advertising, it seems like the user persona in UX is as much of an artwork as the final design. Every step of this process should follow the overall desire for pleasing aesthetic...
Read more