Final Project: Phase 8

Phase 8: High Fidelity Prototype

After the changes with improvements as mentioned above, the high-fidelity prototype takes the form of a nearly full-fledged HTML website, with the ability to rotate the dimension of hand phone display, and drag and drop function for customization of hand phone.

We have also branded ourselves as “Brigadier”, a subsidiary of DELL, from previously known as “MyTruePhone”. We have incorporated military theme into the aesthetic look and feel of the entire website, to appeal to our target audience.

The website link is as followed: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~shenweiw/brigadier/index.html

User Research Smoke & Mirrors

When it comes to the development of a good design, the experience and instincts from a good user experience designer can prove more useful than many in depth scientific researches. Can you imagine designing a website just purely based on science? Is one completely sure that the collected data is 100% accurate? It is also very possible for the misinterpretation of these data to could cause a bad design.

The article gives an excellent example, the eye-tracker, of the use of science to assist design. Yes I agree that sometimes, all you need is the experience and suggestions of a quality user experience designer. But other times, you need science and research to use as physical proof and backing for the suggested design. The mere few words coming from the user experience designer’s mouth is insufficient, especially when one is dealing is very traditional supervisors or bosses. I also agree that reliable scientific researches can sometimes be a waste of time and resources. Most findings from these researches and studies can be easily spotted by a user experience designer. But if one conducts the research properly and correctly analyzes the results, science would definitely not become a threat to design (it is harmless!).

Design is a very subjective matter. There is no absolute right or wrong. And the amount of research and studies done might not necessarily guarantee one a good design. In fact, some researches have actually proven to be useless and only used to confuse their respective end users. However, there are also many techniques that are extremely helpful to the user experience designer. For example, card sorting, focus groups, usability testing, and user persona development. These can provide invaluable insights and useful tools for a design team.

After reading this article, I can tell that the author feels very strongly for design and has discussed many interesting issues. I feel that even if one took all the right steps, such as conducting the appropriate researches, etc, in building a good design, some targeted end users might still criticize or find your design not to their liking. Design is subjective and so are the end users. Feedbacks from these end users are very important as they assist the designer in fixing certain problems in the design. Hence, I feel that design is an endless process, it goes on forever, fixing and solving problems/ design errors one by one. A good design tries to satisfy everyone in its target group; however, this might be an impossible mission.

Thoughts on NM4210

I must say NM4210 is by far the most difficult yet most interesting module I have taken in NUS. In this module, the research techniques, such as laddering, four pleasure analysis, cultural probe, ethnographic studies, etc, used are very different from the usual surveys and questionnaires.

The emphasis on user studies and user understanding is stronger in the initial stages of product design as compared to the physical product or service itself. It is not about designing and developing the product and finding the potential customers. Rather it is about defining and understanding the needs of specific customers and designing the product to cater to their needs. One might not understand or see the difference between these two processes. But after completing the final project, I have clearly understood the difference between the user-centric and product-centric approach. The user-centric approach allows the designer to place himself in the shoes of the user. In this way the designer would be able to better understand the pro and cons of his product in an unbiased fashion.

Designing or developing a new product is definitely not an easy task. You cannot just simply come up with an idea or concept and except others to feel the same way as you. And even after performing all the user research techniques and almost fully understanding our target group, prototyping, user testing and heuristic evaluations are still required. These procedures are important as they provide valuable feedback to the designer, telling him/her whether his/her product is good or bad. Without such feedback, the product could be mass produced and sold on the market, and having the potential of nobody purchasing or liking the product. Hence, the prototyping phase and user testing is very important, the designer would be able to constantly modify and fine tune his product to better suit the target group. This would ensure a higher success rate when the product is released in the market.

After completing the final project and thinking back, I realized that a Good product does not have to be very technologically advanced or extremely complicated. A simple genuine product which provides excellent user experience could prove to be much more successful. Good user experience can come from the visual/social pleasure obtained from the product, or the easy usability of the product, or the excellent after-service, or just the interaction between the product and the user. The list goes on. It is about the user and how he/her feels about the product. If the product is curved and shaped to fit the exact requirements and expectations of the user, the product would definitely provide the user with good user experience.

As a whole, the module has shown how difficult designing can be. However, if one follows the step-by-step process with the mindset of providing good user experience, one could achieve remarkable results. I would not say this module has enabled my group to create one of the best products in the world, but it has definitely taught us the importance and relevance of the process of designing a product.

Final Project: Phase 7

Phase 7: Medium Fidelity Prototype

Here the PowerPoint slides are visually improved and made interactive so as to provide our user testers with a better feel of the overall website.

Home Page

Customizable Page

Product Page

Payment Page

Basically, this is a better refinement of the low fidelity prototype. And based on the findings, further improvements were made. They are listed below:

• A direct link to purchase a phone would be provided on the Main Page.

• Purchasing phone would be done without the need to login.

• Trade in links would be provided on the product page.

• Better and clearer labels would be given to the pre-customized phones

• The payment process could be cut down to only 3 steps. (2 steps for members after logging in)

• Members would be allowed to customize certain parts of our website. (able to place shortcuts)

• A site map would be implemented to guide users.

• Minimalist approach adopted. (more images and fewer text)

• Restructuring of certain pages.

Finally, we proceed on to the development of our High fidelity website prototype.

Final Project: Phase 6

Phase 6: Low Fidelity Prototype

The next phase was to convert the paper prototype to a low fidelity prototype. In this case, a power point version of the website was created and printed out. Basically a need and clear version of the paper prototype.

Again, this low fi prototype was put to user walkthroughs and heuristic testing. Due to the interactive nature of this prototype, user walkthrough testings were conducted more swiftly and efficiently. The same four tasks were given to the users and observations were recorded. Also, heuristic testing was done on this lo-fi prototype based on the same 10 heuristics.

Other than the low fi website prototype, we made some sketches of the phones we intend to sell to our target market. Here is one such example.


Next, we moving on to the development of the Medium Fidelity prototype.

Final Project: Phase 5

Phase 5: Paper Prototype, My True Phone

We have done many researches and conducted many studies on our target group. Our product was also given a brand name, "My True Phone". Now it is time to design the paper prototype of our website. We started off analyzing several hand phone website to filter off all the negative and confusing parts of these websites, while trying to adopt only their good structure and layout.

Several pieces of paper were used to sketch out the initial layout of the website.

After several drawing and discussion we came to a general agreement on the main layout of the website. At the end, seven piece of paper were used to sketch the brief layout of our website. Of course, the structure of our website was largely based on the analysis of the previous Card Sorting Method.

Next, this paper prototype was put to test. 12 users from the target group were given a set of 4 tasks to perform on the computer

1. Purchase a mobile phone

2. Customize and purchase a mobile phone

3. Sign up for a user account

4. Trade in existing mobile phone

These participants were asked to think aloud, direct observation and recording down usability problems were also performed by the facilitators (who are our group members).

Apart from usability testing, heuristic evaluation was also conducted. Each of our group members tested the prototype indecently based on 10 heuristics, namely Visibility of system status, Match between system and real world, User control and freedom, Consistency and standards, Error prevention, Recognition rather than recall, Flexibility and efficiency of use, Aesthetic and minimalist design, Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors, Help and documentation.

After both testing by participants and out group members, many key findings such as low flexibility/efficiency, highly cluttered website, little or no documentation (help, site map), etc were found. As result, we worked on these key findings and made the relevant improvements to our structure and design of our prototype website.

Final Project: Phase 4

Phase 4: Design

With better understanding of our target group, it was not yet enough. So we filtered and worked on the user profiling a little bit more. To buff up our understanding on our target group, we conducted surveys, ethnographic research, cultural probing and online research.

This led to the further classification of our target military group into the pre-enlistees, the Full-time National Servicemen (NSFs), the signed-on Army personnel (Regulars), and the recently operationally ready personnel (NSmen). And based on our studies, we made several important findings for each of the group. One common finding was that these military personnel were not able to find their ideal hand phone due to the fact the latest advanced phone models all come with in-built cameras. And with the many restrictions and security issues, camera phones are not allowed to be brought into army camps.

Hence, it has become quite clear that our product would greatly satisfy the needs of our target group, solving all their problems.

Before designing our Web2.0 application, information organization plays a huge role in enabling people to obtain maximum information with minimal effort. One technique we used to organize information was the Card Sorting Method. 18 of our target users performed the card sorting process individually. These individuals were told that they were required to perform a simple task to help us design our website and no form of preparation was needed.

The results were gathered and analyzed. The suggested groupings can be seen in the final report.