Tuesday 22 July 2008

Experience Design

EXPERIENCE DESIGN with Mr.Shashank Mehta
by Chandni Garg, Richa Sharma, and Samir D.Bellare



  • Area Selected: STAFF ATTENDANCE AREA




fig.1-View of entrance of the office area






fig.2-Computer with RFID System





fig.3-Narrow Passage to enter the campus




The staff comes across with a monotonous routine everyday. So, there is ample scope of enrichment in their experience, especially in the morning (when they enter), and in the evening(when they leave).



  • Objective:
    To enrich the experience of the staff, and give them a feeling of uniqueness, in their everyday monotonous routine. The opportunity area we have chosen is the staff-attendance machine interface, where they come to mark their attendance in the mornings and check out in the evenings.
It is a very important area as it marks two important periods of the day for any professional, that is the start and the end of their work life.



  • Process :

EXPERIENCE


We tried to brainstorm on this particular word. We asked ourselves questions like


'What is Experience?!' ;
'What are the various aspects associated with Experience?' ;


'What reminds me of a good experience?', etc.


We took out all the words we could associate with 'Experience', and then categorized them under various headers.


fig.4- Brainstorming Exercise

After this study we came up with five categories and represented them using the above diagram. The headers under which the points are defined are:



  • Entertainment – The visual, auditory and mainly emotional aspects of media closely associated with the society.

  • Feeling – The conscious or unconscious emotions one’s mind generates as a response to every stimulus.

  • Environment – How one relates to nature and caring about its various aspects, as the repercussions affects oneself.

  • Connections – Man being a social animal, has some connections and relations with every other entity.

  • Memories – Experience is closely related with memories as one lives in close accordance to one’s past, which is stored in one’s brain as memories.




fig.5-Final Representation



  • Design Solution:

So, we came up with this system, wherein the staff, when they mark their attendance every morning, will be greeted by their name and also complimented. This will indeed be a very unique experience for everyone in the staff. It is a vey peculiar experience when anybody is greeted by their name. (for e.g. If you call up some service helpline, and they address you as "Hello Mr.Mehta, how can I help you?" , you get the feeing of a personal touch). And when there is an extra compliment added, such as "Good Morning Susanth; that's a nice shirt you're wearing today!", the experience will be all the more enhanced.


We have recorded the experiences of two subjects who used the system while marking their attendance in the morning. We can see how they were surprised by the new system.



One may say that this system will become boring once the novelty is lost.
But there will be a database with greetings and the compliments which will be updated, so that the staff doesn't have a feeling of deja vu.
Hence, the experience of the staff will be enhanced by our system as the monotony of the staff member will be broken.

Here, Mrs. S. Shashikala gives us her feedback about the system, after using it.




-Thank You-

Thursday 21 February 2008

Touch Screen? Or Touch-me-Not?!

Touchscreen systems are much-hyped nowadays. PDAs that worked with the stylus, the recent advent of MotoRokrE6 in India, and I'll be a fool to miss out the Apple iPhone. You know what's lined up for you next?! Perhaps you do. For the ones who dont...
Microsoft Surface & Multi-Touch OS (by NID students Adithya Ananth & Divesh Jaiswal) along with their NaturalUI.

Hmmmm....after you've visited the sites, I'm sure you must be going 'Wow!'

Indeed its an innovation in user-interfaces. But something makes me think that it has great potential to mess up things. Not accepting the inevitable change (especially when its gotta do with a more natural user interface) is stupid, but obviously I have concerns:
  1. Can the human finger be as precise as the tip of the mouse cursor?
  2. How big or small can the interface be?
  3. What about the ergonomics?
  4. What will be the learning curve? Can the computer-user accept the change?
  5. The UI looks welcoming to the non-tech-savvy people? Is it really?



Dan Saffer | UX Week 2008 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

I'd be editing this particular blog when more such issues come to my mind. I'd like you to comment about what you think could be the issues. And those in favour of the touch-screen are obviously welcome to prove my points wrong.