#user-centered

This investigation is a recent research topic in the field of Digital Design and Information & Multimedia Technology. The study is aimed to develop further a user interface design that suits the needs of elderly users. 

User-Centered Design method will be implemented in the methodology overview to achieve the desired outcomes. A new user interface design is expected to fulfil the needs of the elderly users within some identified age range. 

What do you do when your audience starts to feel so different? That we want to reach out to so many different kinds of people. And where do you start? One kid might be absolutely comfortable sending selfies of their life onto the big connected world, the one may not be allowed to use a phone.

The main purpose of this interview was to gather valuable information from the target audience, in this case, children. The list of questions was specifically designed to extract possible insights on four distinct topics: math, gestures, aesthetics style and game mechanics. Participants were picked from a range of 1st to 3rd grades in order to observe and compare how their tastes and preferences differ according to their education level.

List of Questions:

What’s your favorite TV cartoon?

What is your favorite iPad game? What makes it the best?

If you had the superpower to do whatever you want with a point of a finger, what would that be?

Do you like math? Why (not)?

When you think of math what first comes to your mind?

If math were an animal, what would it be?

Quick math challenge: 2 + 4 + 6 = _ + 6

Did you find that easy or hard to solve? (Give feedback and

[BL] User-Centered Web Design

With Prezi’s new identity the major change to the user interface is the departure of the good old Zebra tool. While this cute widget that we loved very dearly served our user’s needs for years, we had to come up with a more familiar, scalable, and integrated interaction concept. It wasn’t an easy goodbye, but let us introduce you to Prezi’s new transformation tool.

The Changing Nature of Higher Education

At the Crossland Group, we believe that the world of higher education is in the midst of transformational change. Historically, changes to the educational process, pedagogy, and the implementation of “new” theories in education have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This is particularly true in the United States, and most particularly true in higher education. We believe that that trend has been altered, and that change in the world of higher education will be more radical and faster than expected. In fact, it has already begun.

The changes that we see from our perspective are driven by a combination of external andinternal factors.

Externally, the costs of private and public higher education in the US have risen well above the broader GDP, and have stayed above this level for a very long time. Accompanying this cost escalation is significant increase in loans for higher education, with outstanding student debt at the highest level ever. Moreover, with youth unemployment worldwide above 25 percent, and wage increases minimal, even for those who are employed, the “value” of higher education is being questioned. Add to all of this, disruptive technology change in the form of launching of MOOCs (massive open online courses) by universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Wellesley, and Northwestern, and you have a recipe for significant change. There is urgency to the pace of change which is being underscored by dwindling US demographics in the “college-ready” set, and exploding emerging market demand for education by those who lack access. In a nutshell, costs and prices are rising while technology is making higher education scalable globally in a way the world has not experienced previously.

Internally, institutions of higher education are wrestling with out-of-control costs as the result of the race to attract students; endowments that have suffered through the financial crisis; intensely aware prospective and current student bodies; crushing health care and retirement costs for faculty and staff; and declining research funding from government sources such as the NSF, NEA, and NIH. In addition, demands for “cross-trained” graduates (computer science and biology; theatre and animation; public policy and economics) run counter to the traditional education offered in specific departments, which underpins the organizational and academic hierarchies of the institutions.

Teaching one-on-one, or in a class with the educator at the front of the room is being augmented and replaced by long-distance learning, lifelong learning, collaborative hands on projects, and interdisciplinary majors. The result is that institutions that have never thought about strategy and change are now trying to define value propositions; understand their stakeholders; and figure out how to survive before the dust settles. At the Crossland Group, we see this among our clients. As a business, we have operated at the intersection of the public–private sectors for fifteen years. We are seeing that expand into the public–private–academic ecosystem as we speak.

The Future of Higher Education infographic

Should Academia Get User-Centered?

The disciplines and creative output which accompany user-centered design have exploded onto the academic and business landscape over the past decade or so. While user-centered design is much older than that, its reach and impact in corporate America has gotten to the tipping point. Organizations as influential as Apple, Disney, Pepsi, and AT&T have C-suite executives who oversee “user experience.” This concept is at the core of understanding and creating unique customer experiences which keep consumers coming back for more. This concept is not lost on the leaders of those institutions of higher learning who understand that strategy and value propositions must ultimately be related to the customers who use and pay for products and services—including experiences in higher education.

In order to be effective, the application of the principles of user-centered design must be adapted to the unique attributes of institutions of higher education. Within that broader context, individual colleges and universities have specific needs, as do individual companies or NGOs.

In working with our higher education clients, we have learned that the “customer” is an ecosystem, not just the individual student. While including the student is critical to becoming truly customer-experience driven, the student experience alone is not sufficient to define either a strategy or a “user-experience” model.

Why the ecosystem? Academia is unique. The institution’s product or service is to create an educated individual, as well as someone who knows how to learn throughout life. Students come “incomplete.” They may not know what they ultimately want to learn, and they certainly don’t always know what they should learn. Some are older and focused. Others are young and inexperienced. Faculty and parents (or family or other funders, such as ROTC, Bosse, scholarships) have unique roles to play in both the selection of an institution of higher education and the execution of what turns a student into a graduate.

Students may want an experience that no faculty can or should deliver! While some students will experience most of their higher education remotely; some will commute to a campus; and some will live on a campus. You get the point . . . this is way more complicated than how you bank or how you experience your insurance agency or how you travel from point A to point B.

This is why we believe that the principles of deep ethnographic research, creating personae, and prototyping, elements that are ingrained in user-centered design, are critical to creative thinking and execution in higher education. We ask our clients to start with the elements of strategic planning, and use customer experience as a way to further that thinking.

Specifically, faculty, parents, funding sources, and the board of trustees are part of the customer experience for institutions of higher education—not just students. This provides a unique set of challenges to making the institutions “user-friendly” and “client-centric.”

In fact, we suspect that institutions of higher learning that define their strategy clearly; align their ecosystem to that strategy; implement content and processes that are consistent with the strategy; and learn to be both user-friendly and have a good customer experience to “walk the walk,” not just “talk the talk,” will be successful as competition for students, curricula, and faculty gets tougher and tougher.

Another appropriate title: The most embarrassing post about design-centered innovation, ever. Seriously though, the heart of the matter was the "user's preference".