Design and Stuff

Going into this class I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Originally I thought it was a small, honors, discussion based class. The first time I walked in the class I was shocked to see a huge class. Quickly I learned that the size of the class and the number of professors was not a detriment, but an asset to the class. This class was certainly not without it's share of problems, but overall I grew from the class. It allowed me to collaborate with classmates through group projects that taught me design principles, the creative process, and how design can play a role in my life going forward.

"Design" is an interesting space. It's not architecture, it's not engineering, it's not graphic designing, it's not videography, it's not sociology, it's not marketing, but at the same time it's all of these things. Design is a mindset, and the process is a way to go about solving problems. Whether it's fixing the layout of a college lunch destination or creating an app, design is a way of thinking that critically attempts to identify problems, then ask, "how might we solve ________". This simple principle, the principle that was ingrained over and over again in our brain through this class, is something I will carry with me the rest of my life. 

Knowledge about how to conduct a productive creative process is a skill. We learned the steps to design something. From observing to prototyping, I learned details and tricks about each process. The most helpful detail was the sticky notes. People are afraid to say ideas because they think they might be stupid. This simply erased this fear which spurred creativity and innovation. The most helpful thing was the group work. Hands-on learning is a tough way to learn, but it's also the most effective. You learn how to deal with people and how to handle yourself within the creative process, you learn how different people have different strengths and weakness, and finally, you learn how to work as a team to solve a problem no matter what. 

The parts of this class that were not executed as well were the organization and assignment details. I often didn't know when things were due. Quizzes were terrible as sometimes I did not know I had a quiz to take. As a result, I missed quizzes and now I have a B when I feel like I've been working really hard and doing well. This class needs more solid structure and assignment details.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3021377/pharrell-get-busy

Spotify, the music streaming software, is quickly gaining popularity. It is becoming a major player in the music industry. Access to unlimited music for free (with some ads) is making people jump on the Spotify bandwagon. It has a great business plan and offers a great service, but does it have good design? Let's look at the evidence.

Is this design good? Well, knowing all that I've learned throughout this semester, I can ask a few questions to try and figure it out.

Is Spotify very usable (does every end goal that the user has come easy and naturally)

I personally do not think that Spotify is usable. Conducting eye tracking as well as usability surveys would be necessary to prove this from a objective standpoint, but from all my experiences with it I have noticed that there is simply too much in the design. People simply don't use parts of the features such as inbox and messaging or discover. Playlists aren't very easy to share with people. Connecting with people hardly happens either, and I think this is because of usability.

Is Spotify aesthetically pleasing? (does it look good, does it draw the eye)

This is subjective of course, but I think the design is terrible. It doesn't grab my attention, nor does it impress me. I look at it and think that it's drab, boring, and almost tacky even. 

Is Spotify innovative?

This week in class we finished our designs and worked on producing final project materials. This included coming up with our final name, brainstorming ideas for a video, making a rough draft of the poster, and finishing up last touches for the app design.

The process for a final name was a difficult one. Most of the group wanted to go with Cram-A-Lot. We used this for most of the process, but decided maybe we should ask some other people. We brainstormed names for a while and came up with a list of five. From there, we polled friends about what was their favorite. The strong result was "StudySesh", which most of the group didn't love. However, we eventually decided to keep it because so many people we pulled liked it.

Coming up with ideas for a video was a process of us deciding what we wanted as a whole. What themes and moods did we want to convey? Did we want to be professonal or cheesy? Serious or fun? We ended up going with light but professional. We think the professional aspect could distance us from other groups. 

This week in class we continued to focus on prototyping. We did this primarily within our group but we also expanded to getting feedback from  another group. My favorite part of class this week was when came up with words that describe what would make our project "good" design. This was helpful because it allowed us to really clarify how we would categorize success. It's easy to say "simple" or "functional", but what do these really mean? We need to narrow down these broad words until we find the word that closest describes it. 

This week in class, we focused on prototyping our solution. We started this process by each prototyping the apps various screens on sticky notes. Then, we posted all our sticky notes on the wall. We talked about what each of us liked about ours and our reasoning behind our decision.

After that, we moved into a discussion about what were all the features that we wanted based on what we had just prototyped. From there, we used those features and came up with more designs. 

On the second day, talked about these new designs and began to narrow down our selection. We questioned the usability of each design detail and decided minute decisions. For example, where should the timer go on the second screen? Should the timer be for the whole session or until the next break? All these questioning lead to a pretty successful prototype, but there will be more prototypes to come!

This is an article about Usability. Currently, we're working on prototyping our studying app.I learned from this article the five categories of usability (learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfaction). This is important because we know all the things that we need to cover.

I also learned some methods for how to improve usability. You need to get some potential users to try to use your product and ask them to do specific things. The article asserts that It's important to watch them try to do it instead of asking them how they would do it because a oftentimes there is incongruency between what people say and do.

This week in class, we continued to focus on brainstorming solutions to our "how might we..." questions. We worked in our own groups and used sticky notes to put ideas on the wall. Overall, this went very well. There was a lot of creativity and good ideas. We were focused and came up with solutions that were related to the problem.

My favorite part about this process was how quickly we could categorize ideas and set up clear categories. On Tuesday we came up with any ideas related to our problem (How can we motivate students). After half an hour, we had a wide array of ideas. The next step was organizing these ideas into logical categories. We could quickly do that and we decided that the best ideas were under the "time management app" category.

From there we created a new sheet that solely focused on apps. We brainstormed again and came up with general ideas. Then we re-grouped, once again. By the end of Thursday, we had four facets of an app that we want to create in order to solve our problem.

On Tuesday, we prepared by reading an article about project management. During class, we discussed project management then created a project management plan for the rest of the semester. We also discussed corporate innovation and then were introduced to our semester paper. 

My takeaways were that the article was entirely too long. 100 pages was too much information to gain anything meaningful out of it especially when most of those 100 pages were details rather than big picture ideas. It should have been spread out multiple weeks if we were really going to gain something from it. Because of this, the quiz was too hard and our project plan was not very good. I'm excited about the semester paper however. I think it's a good idea and I will finally get a place to rant about my favorite company Tesla.

On Thursday, we brainstormed solutions to our how might we questions. We did this with another group.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/fake-banksy_n_4142294.html

This article is about the street artist named Banksy who conducted a social experiment this past week. He gave real paintings to an old man to sell at a pop up vendor in New York. The man tried to sell the artwork for $40, and he could only sell three of them even though the actual artwork is estimated to be worth over $1 million dollars. Then, a few days later, he gave a vendor fake Banksy works and they advertised them as fake Banksy's and they sold out at $95 dollars. 

The message from this experiment is that social factors influence price of things heavily. People do not buy something simply because they like it, they buy something because their friends like it. They buy something because their age group as a whole likes it. They buy something because society tells them to. They value something because mass culture tells them to value it.