In this reading, Bill Moggridge informs us about different research methods. He also mentions his design principle : think first about the ‘people’ part of the design. Who are the users? What do they want? I remember I watched Bill’s interview clip at the class. He said,”this is what I am really thinking : What are you thinking?”. He always considered in user’s perspective as an interactive designer. That was impressive to me. We need to discover user’s latent needs and desires by research and we should observe and go into actual situation in order to make a better design for ‘people’.

The author presents 51 ways of method to learn people. Every method looks useful to me especially flow analysis and affinity diagram. I often draw a affinity diagram whenever I need to do a brainstorming. Then, I would use ‘fly on the wall’ or ‘shadowing’ to observe what people actually do in their everyday life. Also I should ask to people then create prototype of the design and evaluate it by ‘try’ methods such as ‘scenarios / empathy tools’.

Location: We went to a plaza in DUMBO.

Summary: We took a walk to the 65 cent vending machine in the DUMBO and originally had plan to observe people interacting with the vending machine but not many people did so we observed the people in the plaza. Overall we saw an interesting bunch of people in the area.

Persona:

Age: 60ish
Location:Brooklyn
Interest: Painting and Gardening
What would they do in the area: To paint and eat
Project: Noise canceling headphones

Age:20ish
Location: Manhattan
Interest: Volunteering
What would they do in the area: To eat and talk with his friends
Project: Sound proofing glass

Age: 50ish
Location: Brooklyn
Interest: Fashion and crafting
What would they do in the area: Go partying and drinking
Project: Heels that can go on cobber stone streets

Age: 16
Location: Queens
Interest: Tweeting and Blogging
What would they do in the area: Tweeting about her everyday life
Project: Free Wifi ( which they have)

My location was the 5th floor lounge located on the Namn/Atrium building. Also known as the anime/gaming underground club.

this is my hangout spot were people and friends that have the same interest as you could talk, play, laugh, and have fun.

I saw many things like people playing games, cards, drawing, talking, laughing, dancing, using their laptops, on cellphones and more.

overall, i’m friends with many of them and it’s the place for gamers, geeks and nerds like me to be or wait until your next class starts.

Regarding the persona’s, each one is basically some or a mash up of personalities traits from the lounge. Everyone in there my self included like the same thing but also have other interest so it was easy to make the personas.

Persona 1: age 19 male, lives in Brooklyn. likes games, anime, tech. what they would like is bigger space environment wise to move around.

2: age 18 female, Queens, likes to draw/ wants to become an artist. what they would like from the place is more tables and a little bit less disturbance.

3: age 20 male, Bronx, likes technology. wants more outlets and better Wifi

4: age 21 male, Brooklyn, likes food and music. wants less noise.

1. What was the location?

– Entrance of Brooklyn bridge walkway / bike path

2. Summarize what I saw and talked.

-People cross the road, watch information sign, ride bikes. Walk, talk, watch their smart phones. I asked to a lady, her name is Celia Caro, She said “It would be great if there’s pedestrian’s underpass or overpass to manage traffic around here.”

3. 4 personas.

Age: 45

Female. Lives Brooklyn. Long white hair. Thin. Short.

Interests : Childcare, cooking, saving money.

Problem : worried when her little daughter across the road. too many traffic.

Idea : Overpass for pedestrians.

Age : 26

Male. Lives Japan. Tourist. Tall. Black hair.

Interests : Internet, sightseeing, travel, food.

Problem : Lack of information.

Idea : More signs for tourists.

Age : 62

Female. Lives Manhattan, Short, brown hair.

Interests : Health, politics, pets.

Problem : hard to walk long way.

Idea : More benches and roofs.

Age : 19

Male. Lives Brooklyn. Tall. Black hair.

Interests : Extreme sports, Internet, video game.

Problem : Want water, snacks.

Idea : More snack bar and drinking fountains.

4.Photos.

Obstacles on the way

information signs

traffic signs

Note: Alexis is writing his own post

We spread out between the 5th and 6th floors (Alexis was on the 3rd floor)

We saw a lot of people playing games (loudly), and a lot of people who were just on their phones or laptops, some listening to music, some typing. The person Remy talked to was having trouble getting their iPad on the City Tech network. Ahmad was on the 5th floor and what he saw mostly was people playing video games on the available tv screens that they brought from home and socializing very loudly/.The person Ahmad talked to was a girl by the name of Kalilah Baker, she says she frequents the 5th floor to hang out with her friends. One thing she would like to  change about it is the lack of space.

Persona 1: 26 years old, interested in food and cafeteria. They need a wife, kitchen, good food, tables, and space.

Persona 2: 23 years old, interested in sleeping, waiting for class, and work. They need comfortable furniture, silence, and a place to rest.

Persona 3: 16 years old, interested in music. They need power outlets, better wifi signal, seats, and good acoustics.

Persona 4: 19 years old, interested in Anime, gaming, being loud and obnoxious. They need more space.

Our group consists of Alexis, Ahmad, and Remy.

Picture: 

The location we picked was the 2nd floor cafeteria in the vorhees building.

The things we saw were people eating, talking, doing HW, studying, surfing the web, and one person was sleeping.

The person we talked was Sebastian. The things he would change the area surrounding the stairs, have the dirty tables cleaned more often, more power outlets, and better internet.

In our group was myself and Michael Perez.

Four personas we came across was the tech user, business user, casual user, and power user. they all live in NYC. Their interests range from apps, making money, women, and teaching. They would use the space as a working environment and break area, as well as a eating establishment. They would use the project for various reasons but all have in common they need a clean and quiet area to maximize productivity.

Location

300 Jay Street, Namm Building CUNY City Tech, Ground Floor, by the elevators, Brooklyn, NY, 11021

Summary of Observation

We arrived on location and immediately saw a group starting to gather around the elevators. Nobody was talking to one another, even as other students arrived. Everyone appeared to be preoccupied with their phones or music devices. Nobody had a smile on their face, and it seems a permanent, dissatisfied frown was plastered onto their mugs. When the elevator arrived, it was a mad-dash. There was a sense of urgency, and the elevator quickly filled. Nobody wanted to wait for the next one, as it could be as many as 15 minutes away.

Ian, in our group, talked to two women who had gotten off the elevator and talking to each other. While they had no suggestions for fixing the elevator, they were more than content complaining about the elevator and its issues, including but not limited to: making them late, making other students and classmates late, and making professors late.

Personas

Age: 17
Location: Brooklyn
Interest: Getting class on time/ passing the class
Space: Transport to class

Age: 26
Location: Queens
Interest: Getting class on time/ passing the class
Space: Transport to class

Age: 35
Location: Long Island
Interest: Getting class on time/ passing the class
Space: Transport to class

Age: 54
Location: Manhattan
Interest: Getting class on time/ passing the class
Space: Transport to class
Project: Arrive on time by elevator

Photos

TBA

The excerpt of Bill Moggridge’s “People” lists a couple of methods for figuring out how to extract information from folk from the purpose of interaction design. In the Learn section it details a couple of methods for doing such and I choose to write about the method titled Flow Analysis. From my understanding flow analysis is something I should be familiar with as I have a back ground with programming so I’m used to seeing things such as flowcharts and hierarchy charts to help me write programs and such. What these things come in handy with as I alluded too is writing programs or designing websites. A flowchart maps out how a program logically progresses step by step which really comes in handy since it helps you write a better code or even figure out how to start writing. I do believe flowcharts is related to flow analysis since it represents the flow information or activity through all phases of a system or process. So essentially I would use a flow chart for flow analysis purposes when writing a program.

The Bill Moggridge “People” Analysis Traditional research methods to gauge relevance for an design. They pointed out the idea of what people say they want vs. what they actually do. There were four methodology used to acquire relevance for designs.  The first is to analyze the information you’ve collected, this stage is called Learn.  The second is to observe people to discover what they do-not what they say they do, this stage is called look.  The third is to enlist peoples participation to elicit information relevant to the project, this stage is called ask.  The forth is to create simulations and prototypes to help emphysize with people and to evaluate proposed designs, this stage is called try.  the example of the consumer compliant board board personifies this idea.  for my future project i would like to form an interactive art exhibit where the needs of the individuals becomes the main purpose goal of the art work.  for my project i would attach actually all four methodologies to produce my desired outcome.

The method that I chose from the article by Bill Moggridge, is “look”. In my opinion all projects at one point or another go through a look stage in its development. Most ideas are created to solve an issue that we have. I would use the look method to identify how the issue is currently being handled and what I can do to incorporate these solutions into my project. By using the look method I an get unfiltered/unbiased information about the subject I am researching at the moment. With the nature of this information we can get a design that has not been mucked up by the personal feelings of people, which goes against the ideas of design. We aren’t trying to design something for a few people, the majority of the time the design your aiming for is meant for a broad audience.

One place were the look method can work be used to move along the design of a project is in a video games beta test. At first you would not say that that can be considered a look method, but when a developer inserts himself into the game along with the rest of the beta testers he can observes the actions and record what is going on, or the issues that the testers are running across. Using this method many bugs, can be identified immediately rather than have to wait for a bug report for one of the testers. Its also help get a general feel for the reception of the game if you have someone there able to listen in on the conversations other testers are having about the game. Then using that information they can go back and adjust according to the info they collected.