Posts tagged as ‘User Research’
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
Last Tuesday I attended a short presentation at the Delft University of Technology, where Kay Hofmeester (former UX manager for Microsoft Surface) told us a bit about how the Surface team tried to handle the new challenges posed by designing user interfaces under the new touch interface paradigm. I took the liberty to record it to share it with whoever is interested (Kay if you’re out there reading this, I hope you don’t mind 
).
It was a very interesting lecture with some nice and concrete examples of how wrong it is to try to directly translate old user interfaces for new input devices such as touch screens.
The Spanish speaking pointer and the Italian speaking finger
In the lecture, Kay explains very nicely and in depth some of the main practical differences between interacting with a classical GUI and with a touch interface, but I’m gonna give it a go with my own metaphor.
Think of the following scenario. You’ve been speaking Spanish all your life. You know the ins and outs of your language. One day you move to Italy and all of a sudden you find yourself surrounded by Italians. Sure! your Spanish might help you get by to a certain level due to the language similarities, and you (more…)
TAGS: Microsoft Surface, Prototyping, TU Delft, User Experience, User Interfaces, User Research, Videos
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
I’m finally back home after attending the EuroCHRIE 2009 conference in Helsinki for a few days, and I have to say that it was quite an interesting experience for me, since it was not really in my professional field as a designer, but it did have to do with what I’ve been working on for the past few months first as part of my MSc. graduation project and now as an interaction designer/researcher for SusaGroup.
The conference dealt with experiences in the hospitality and tourism industry and I was actually there presenting a working paper which came from a small exploratory study I conducted at the early stages of my graduation project with the aim to identify what type of emotions people felt the most in a hotel environment and towards what exactly. (more…)
TAGS: Design for Emotions, Evaluating emotions, Innovation, Lectures, Papers, Research, Services, TU Delft, User Experience, User Research
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Relevant Keywords:
Evaluating emotions, environments, services, consumer experience, online application, prototyping
Design Goal:
During my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project a concept was developed that was deemed very interesting and promising for the potential assessment of emotions experienced towards a physical environment. This concept was later developed even further in collaboration with SusaGroup in order to bring it into the market as a fully functional instrument that can aid in emotional design research.
Methods Used:
- Early prototyping to perform user testing of working principle.
- Software development.
- Usability testing.
(more…)
TAGS: Cartoons, Design for Emotions, Evaluating emotions, Portfolio David, Prototyping, Services, User Experience, User Interfaces, User Research
Friday, September 4th, 2009
Relevant Keywords:
MSc. Graduation project, evaluating emotions, services, consumer experience, hotels, mobile application, prototyping
Design Goal:
Various methods are available for measuring emotional responses elicited by products (design) or human-product interaction. Up to this point however, no instrument was available that could be used to assess emotional service experiences. The aim of the project was to extend the possibilities of assessing emotions to the realm of experiential service design. As a case study for the project, the focus was laid on the `hotel experience’, that is, the experience of a guest while staying at a hotel.
Project duration:
5 months (full time)
Methods Used:
- Thorough literature research to become acquainted with the project domain.
- Online survey to identify the most common types of emotions experienced by hotel guests and the stimuli associated with these experiences.
- Creative session organized with a panel of users and designers to generate ideas.
- Early prototyping to perform user testing of concepts.
- Creation of wire-frames and navigation flow-charts to define the software’s architecture.
- Hi-Fi prototyping of final concept.
- Usability testing.
(more…)
TAGS: Cartoons, Delft, Evaluating emotions, Graduation Project, Innovation, Papers, Portfolio David, Prototyping, Research, Services, TU Delft, User Experience, User Interfaces, User Research, Videos
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Relevant Keywords:
Reading, books, future scenario, conceptual design, context research
Design Goal:
As part of a design exercise at the TU Delft we were asked to research the domain of books and libraries and to propose a concept design of how these would be like in a future scenario. The focus was laid on the concept and interactions rather than on technical details of the products.
Project duration and team:
75 hours, 3 interaction designers (David Güiza Caicedo, Job Greefhorst, Amine Rhord)
Methods Used:
- Vision in Product Design (ViP) was used as a design framework throughout the whole project
- Cultural probes
- Creative session
- Presentation videos
(more…)
TAGS: Context Mapping, Creative Sessions, Innovation, Portfolio David, Product Analysis, Research, TU Delft, User Experience, User Interfaces, User Research, Videos, Vision in Product Design
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Relevant Keywords:
Telecommunications, office environment, user research, usability testing, icon validity testing, redesign, office telephone
Design Goal:
The goal of this project was to evaluate the usability of the Alcatel-Lucent IP Touch 4018 office phone and to propose a re-design of the phone according to the findings of the performed tests. The team consisted of 6 Design for Interaction master students of the TU Delft working directly for Alcatel-Lucent, a global telecommunications corporation.
Project duration and team:
225 hours, 6 interaction designers (David Güiza Caicedo, Tine Lavrysen, Amine Rhord, Meike Mak, Steven Fokkinga, Marjolein Hartog)
Methods Used:
- Product analysis in terms of aesthetics and functionality
- Online user survey & interviews with experienced users to understand how they perceived the current phone.
- Usability tests of the current phone with novice and experienced users.
- Online icon validity test performed with an international sample of people.
- Interaction prototyping to assess the new interaction model proposed with the redesigned phone.
(more…)
TAGS: Innovation, Portfolio David, Product Analysis, Prototyping, TU Delft, User Interfaces, User Research, Videos
