Task 2 - Design MEIT501

Design, prototype and evaluate...

Key considerations:
Design task

• User centric design
• Conceptual development
• Interface and interaction features

Meta considerations.

• Social change (demand / aesthetic / culture).
• Technological determined.
• Production process.

Shape of things.

• Affordance (JJ Gibson) - see them how you act apon them (not how they look)
• Evolution - things change - how things are used.
• Legacy - "we are committed to it, even though it was designed to satisfy constraints that no longer apply" (Donald Norman, Design of Everyday things, 1990).
• Expectations / perceived affordances - standardisation of design.
• Use in context - everyday constraints - (Physical constraints limit alternative places, semantic, cultural, logical).

Mindful of:

• Lacking logic - do you need a manual? Is there any logic?
• Irrational use - e.g. people pulling burnt toast out of the toaster with a fork (it's still live!)
• Introduce difficulty - e.g. purposefully make windows difficult to open .

Human-computer interaction

Matching system to user's capabilities & constraints

• Cognitive / physical overload
• Cognitive / physical mismatch
• User's experience and knowledge
• Assumes users are goal directed

Interdisciplinary

• Psychology

Common approaches to interface design

• Design patters - shopping baskets, crumbs etc
• Recall vs. recognition - Metaphorical /representative
• Progressive disclose - highlight or grey out items to force navigation
• Trades off (i.e. ease)

New paradigms for design

• Ubiquitous computing - Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, Calm Technology. Calm technology creating an ambient awareness of your environment.
• Context aware - rapport with building and machine.
• Social element - World of Warcraft - chatroulette.com (randomly turns on webcams) - skype -
• Gesture (gestural things like the wii remote) -

From Post 92 to Post Digital

I and a mix of other staff and students attended Lawrie Phipps' (from JISC) excellent seminar today, here at the University of Plymouth.

To quote Lawrie's abstract:

'...explore the journey that universities have made from the early days of technology in learning, through to what appear to be ubiquitous VLEs and on to post digital universities, where technology is both invisible and essential... [to]...argue that, as part of this journey, institutions must re-evaluate the meanings of knowing and understanding and adapt their work to accommodate the new demands placed on individuals and organisations by the digital era.'

Included in the presentation was the following video, which rather humorously depicts a sort of medieval approach to modern day tech support for 'a book'. The parallels of this to new and emerging technologies make this video rather poignant and Lawrie's reasons were to emphasise that technology should be intuitive. If you need a manual the technology is not really that that good. Amusingly 'a manual' is mentioned in this video:



Lawrie also asked the attendees to role play in groups of 6 (Vice Chancellor, Head/Dean of School, 2 x Academics, a Learning Technologist and a student). Each group was given a scenario, ours was related to improving academic support for students, and to report back to the Senior Management Team (SMT). Although we were suppose to pretend to be someone else, I still ended up as a Learning Technologist (LT)...

If you're reading this Lawrie, sorry, I know you wanted roles changed... However, from my own perspective it was very interesting to see 'how' pivotal the LT is when it comes to linking in the needs of the user with the technology. I will add that some expectations were even above and beyond job role! We did however come to some sort of solution (we only had ~15mins) and that was to use web cams (video meetings etc), perhaps a forum (for questions and answers) for students not having access to this technology. Students could also be placed in charge of monitoring the forum content to ensure smooth running. This would further reduce the amount of support required of academics, hopefully improve support, but equally enrich the student experience. The main outcome from all the groups was that of empowering the students or the over riding student voice, at the end of the day, this is what it is all about.

EduApps

Thought I would mention that I also keep another blog for my Learning Technologist job. One of the things I have be revisiting recently is the EduApps (AssessApps as it is more readily known as). Its basically a 60 open source and freeware software suite all accessible from a 2 Gb USB stick, just carry it around and run the software on whatever PC you have available. I think these sort of initiatives are a rather cool way of making software available to all. Equally, as its free it may appeal to a range of audiences.