Emotional Design

Week 5: 9/13/2018 Emotional Design:

Emotional Design, in Human-Computer Interaction, is a type of design that is capable of invoking emotion within the user through it’s design. It’s goal is well defined by The Interaction Design Foundation’s website that states “Emotional design strives to create products that elicit appropriate emotions, in order to create a positive experience for the user.” This section needs to describe the term and its meanings through citations and references from library sources or textbooks under study.
So for example, a user interface can be designed with a very colorful and happy design to invoke happiness and relax the user, or can be designed with sad images and wording to invoke sadness and compassion.

Reflection on the Topic

As somebody who has very little eye for color or art, (and one experience with a virtual agent that was terrible), the part of the book that discussed how colors and anthropomorphism was particularly interesting to me as it’s something I’ve never thought about before and preferred it left out personally. with the idea of anthropomorphism, we go back to how people originally learned to use computers (by comparing them to stuff we could easily understand). Trying to build an interface that could be interacted with like another person would be closest to perfect design that we could get, as other people are what we always interact with. Even just a little personally helps, take an error code for example; no-one is going to be thrilled to see an error, and for many people a windows blue screen of death is extremely scary. an article on oreilly talks about some errors and particularly about the BSOD and how scary and sudden it was. (Huriff) Microsoft has since changed this by adding a frowny face and friendly-sounding text that the PC crashed. As an example, which looks less scary to you?

I’m a PC tech, so it makes little difference to me. But the calls I get are a different story. Customers either calmly tell make that “Hey, my computer did a frowny face” OR I get a heavy, shaky sounding “Whoa my computer did something really scary and threw a bunch of words and I don’t know what to do!” It’s a small design change that I’m very thankful for.

My Thought

“We can create a more friendly and accepting environment for using computers by adding human-like qualities to them in a process called anthropomorphism. It gives the user yet another point to connect with and help ease the learning step. Even just providing a little humor can make something much easier to digest. or a fronwy face instead of crap ton of technical jargon makes an error less scary (L.E. Spencer, 2018).

Reference List

⦁ Siang, Teo. “Bad Design vs. Good Design: 5 Examples We can Learn From” Interaction Design Foundation, Interaction Design Foundation, 8 Aug 2018, http://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/bad-design-vs-good-design-5-examples-we-can-learn-frombad-design-vs-good-design-5-examples-we-can-learn-from-130706
⦁ Huriff, Scott. “The mechanics of interface design” O’REILLY, Oreilly Media, 10 May 2016, http://www.oreilly.com/learning/mechanics-interface-design

Mental Models

What I found to be the most interesting thing this week was a concept that I’m quite familiar with, mental models. A mental model is basically an individuals understanding of something based on information that person has gathered. The reason I’m so familiar with it is because I do IT and tech support, and one important skill is to be able to step into a customers mental model of how their computer and network function, so that I can set up that computer to reflect their model so that they can effectively use the computer.

Reflection on the Topic

What I learned is the importance of having a well-developed mental model of the technical workings of something (in my case, how a PC and Network works) and how a customer thinks it works.

What the userzoom blog said is very true “Ultimately, the gap between developers and the users needs to be brought closer. Developers need to understand a culture’s various mental models and core values in order to truly build a user-friendly experience.” (What are mental models) While he’s talking about an app developer here, it applies everywhere. In my IT example, the situation could be a VPN; oftentimes to teach a customer how to use it, I don’t even call it a VPN but a bridge, that way I can work around the customers mental models and use it to build that user-friendly experience, and also it helps the customer build a correct mental model for a VPN so they can understand and easily use it.

images

Like in the picture, you become the designer, a translator, and you translate all the jargon into something simple to use and understand.

My Thought

“To be a designer, you almost have to be an engineer that understands how people work. That way you have the mindset to understand something technical, yet you can be okay with sacrificing a little technical efficiency to make something simple for anyone else.” ( L. Spencer, 2018).

Reference List:
“What are mental models and why are they important in UX design?” userzoom, userzoom, 7 June 2018, http://www.userzoom.com/blog/what-are-mental-models-and-why-are-they-important-in-ux-design/

Basic concepts of HCI

Human-Computer Interaction, at its core, is the study of the interaction between a person and a device he uses. Specifically, it’s a study of the device and how it’s used in order to determin how to better design it to increase it usability. So for example; one might study how a phone is used and find that most people find the keys too small, and suggest an improvement to the design of the keyboard that makes it easier to interact with it.

Reflection on the Topic

The main thing I learned this week was that I had a tendancy to look at many of the items suggested or brought up in discussion and think “Well, it would be more cost-effective to design a program to help learn how to use something, or maybe simply drop support and rebuild from scratch”, but, I need to more of the mindset of redesigning the item, and not in one of finding the most cost-effective solution. This is not a bussiness class after all, it’s HCI. The article over at http://www.getsmarter.com puts it in much better words than I, and I quote “Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI, is a field of study concerned with designing computers and machines in ways that best serve the users (humans).” (WHAT IS HUMAN).

On top of all that, imagine if, during the design of the pencil, someone had suggested to work into the design a shape that better fits in the fingers BEFORE the actual manufacturing began. The cost would really not be that different because a company does not have to RE-build a factory. Suddenly we can have the cake and eat it too, thanks to HCI.

 

My Thoughts

“It’s not as much about finding the most cost-effective solution, It’s more of getting yourself in the mindset of considering all aspects of a design and implement it before it become too costly to change it.” ( L. Spencer, 2018).

 

Reference List:
“WHAT IS HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION (HCI)?” getsmarter, getsmarter, http://www.getsmarter.com/career-advice/industry-advice/what-human-computer-interaction-hci.

Introduction

Hey Guys, I’m Leif. I’m just a guy passing through school chasing an IT degree, focused in software engineering. I’m from all over the place; moved back and forth between Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Wisconsin, Ohio and Georgia. I really don’t want to travel anymore than I already have, but I would like to go somewhere that has a very different day/night cycle, just for the experience of it. My hobbies have been working with computers and hardware for as long as I can remember; tinkering with PC’s, servers, smaller electronics (think game consoles and various handhelds) in both hardware and software. I’ve also been tinkering with audio systems and Cellular antennas more recently. My favorite technology changes about as fast as technology itself changes, but right now it is probably the upcoming 5G cellular networking standard, and the issues that communicating with frequencies at 20+Ghz will both create and resolve.