Week 1. Monday 1st October 2007CMT 4210: This was basically an introduction to the course ,we talked about the components for assessment, perspective on Interaction Design, what/who we are designing for, Novel and emerging technologies, technological trajectories, how we design;knowing and understanding the user,Interaction in Context, Practical Constraints on Interaction Design, Legislation and Standards.

Week 1. Tuesday 2^nd October 2007

PDE 4210: This is an Interaction design practice class, usually held in the workshop, studio or in the field. The MSc Interaction Design class team mates introduced themselves and what they studied in their first degree.

Dr Andy Bardill (Director of Programmes) then recommended the following essential learning materials; P. Jordan (2000) Designing Pleasurable Products,
Norman, D.A. (1998) The Design of Every day things,
Norman, D. (2004) Emotional Designs, Preece. J, Rogers. Y, Sharp. H, 2002 Interaction Design: Beyond Human Computer Interaction
Butler. J, Holden. K, Lidwell. W, 2003 Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design

Finally, we were given assignment for next week Tuesday the 9^th of October, the Assignment reads;

1. Find five unique definitions for Interaction Design, Print on A4 sheets (landscape) for presentation.

2.What do we mean by the term EMPATHY in the context of User Interaction?

 

 

Week 2. 8^th Oct ’07

CMT 4210: We started this week’s session by reviewing last week’s assignment;

Exploring the New Usability,

What does it mean?

How does it differ from the old usability?

What are the implications for the theory and for the practice in Interaction Design?

The class team mates agreed that some of the issues facing the old usability, includes; Technology push, Old versus New, Theories in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design and usability practice, New Interactions- new areas of human activities, and new metaphors and Concepts

New Usability focuses on the complexity of integrating more functions, beauty and eliminates any operational difficulties that the user may encounter in using particular product.

Old Usability is about the basic design concepts and practice, without much attention to aesthetics, how users can operate these products with ease, or who the products are targeted at.
The new usability differ from the old usability because the new is smaller, more complex, more functions, different concepts through initial development plan to evaluations and testing, as well as applying user centered designs principles.

Week 2. 9^th Oct ‘07

PDE 4210: This week, we started by shortly introducing those that did not attend the first class, then we started discussing last weeks assignment. Individually we looked and criticized all the team mates’ definitions of Interaction Design; we kind of concluded that some of the definitions are quite meaningful and relevant to our context.

We then moved on to this week’s topic which is Experience Prototyping

Empathy tools, low fidelity design development and micro project.

Prototypes can be used to generate hypothesis about users needs

Prototypes allows you to produce a marketable model

Prototypes allows us to be Empathic

Experience prototypes help us to build designs (product development)

Prototypes allows us to evaluate designs

This week’s interactive design practice was based on designing a low-fidelity under water ROV (remote operated vehicle). For this exercise, the class was divided into two groups, each group was expected to come up with its own idea on how such machinery can be designed and operated bearing in mind the constraints and the available resources we had. This was a paper prototype, so we cut up boxes, made hand held remote control, then we tried it out and made a list of all the errors we have encountered on this lo-fi design,

Week3

CMT 4210: 15^th Oct. ‘07
Ubiquitous Computing. Today, two of my class team mates had a presentation on the above topic (Ubicomp), and references were made to Yvonne Rogers Moving on from Weisers vision of calm computing: Engaging Ubicomp experience. Yvonne Rogers is a professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Computing Department at the Open University. She is also a visiting professor of Informatics and Information Science at Indiana University.

PDE 4210: 16^th Oct ‘07
Experiencing Prototyping; Paper, card and screen, then micro project.

Using the provided materials and specifications, we were required to design a low fidelity photo locket interface with the following features:

-Download photos (application running on PC)

-View photos

-Share photos with another photo locket

-Additionally devise and implement a dream feature

All the class members tried their skills in designing and creativity, given the specification we had, of 30mm width and breadth, team mates and myself figured out how to engineer the functions and features without affecting the size, and still be affordable and have simplicity of use.

Week4

CMT 4210: 22^nd Oct.’07

Tangible (bits) User Interface The class started with two of my colleagues presenting tangible interfaces to the class for further discussion.

Tangible Interaction is an interaction with digital objects through physical, tangible objects.

Key ideas – Physical objects coupled to underlying digital information

- Physical representation embodies mechanisms for interactive control.

Why Tangible?

The goal is to expand the representation of tangible interaction principles used for interacting with computers

PDE 4210: 23^rd Oct ‘07

Information Ergonomics; Exploring Physicality keyboard Interrupter and a micro project

Week5

CMT 4210: 29^th Oct.’07

Reflective Designs This week’s session was attended by Dr Paola Amaldi and discussions were held about a paper of interest to the course. The paper by Bill Gaver and et al: “Electronic Furniture for the Curious Home: Assessing Ludic Designs in the Field” International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, 22(1), pp 123–156.

The paper raises a number of interesting issues to do with playful technologies and techniques for designing and evaluating them – issues we have touched on already, but have yet to explore in more detail.

PDE 4210: 30^th Oct ‘07
PIC Microcontrollers Interfacing. We did not take on this topic; it was moved to the tenth week.

However, we worked as a team to decide on our approach to the field work in a fortnight at ZSL (zoological society of London) Gorillas’ Enclosures, and self study.

We proposed the use of IDEO method cards for Rapid Ethnographic approach which aims to provide us with a reasonable understanding of the activities of the keepers, the Gorillas and their enclosures. Given that we will only have a very limited time in the field, we thought it will be wise to constrain our research scope by working as a team, and pair writing. Our plan also includes interviewing key members of staff, interactive observation techniques and various physical observers.

(Notes – Sketches – Fieldwork – Reflection – Design and development – Evaluation )

The itinerary is as follows:

1. Arrive at zoo for 9:00 am

 

2. Become a gorilla (Gonzo Design) by being locked into the enclosure

 

3. Speak with “head of Mammals”

 

4. ‘Guided Tour’ (if available)/’be you customer’

 

5. Speak with Keeper

 

6. There will also be a gorilla researcher available (may be time limited) so I think we should talk during phase 1

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Team Meeting

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Phase 2

 

7. Rapid Ethnography/behavioural mapping

 

8. Questions

 

In pairs as we discussed, do for 1 hour then meet for 20mins, 3 x iterations building knowledge as we progress roughly timed from 12:00 till 4:00

 

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Team Meeting to plan phase 3

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Week6

CMT 4210:5th Nov 07
Reflective Designs Continued We (Madushani and Oriaku) started this class by presenting a paper on Reflective Designs by Phoebe Sengers et al to the class, touching on topics like; Defining Reflective Design, Foundations of reflective designs, Principles of Reflective Designs, and Reflective Design Strategies – What is reflection and why reflect?

PDE 4210: 6th Nov. ‘07

IDC (Interaction Design Centre), Research Group in Computing Science seminar. Technical demonstration of Augmented Reality Interactive table and Phidgets. Attend a media lab induction -Final Cut-Pro workshop

This seminar was held at Ravensfield building by the Hendon campus of Middlesex University. Fairly attended, Dr Bob Fields (programme leader) the seminar was focused on the RFID (radio frequency identification technology) sensors like tag sensor, pressure sensor, slider control, accelerometer and MERL Diamond touch interactive table used to support small group collaboration, interactive, multi-user, multi-touch sensitive, and users are distinguished electrostatically

Week7

CMT 4210: 12th Nov ‘07

Today is usually a session held with Bob, but because we are already booked for a field research, with Andy at ZSL, this session was then shifted to another week.

PDE 4210: 13thNov ‘07

We individually reflected and documented our observations, pending the full blown reflection with the whole team were we can all reconcile our findings, and also synchronize the videos and audio recordings for further design and development.