I have decided to try using Google’s services as little as possible. The reasons are many and subject to a later post.
The first steps:
- Set Safari as default web browser
- Install Safari OmniBar
- Set Duck Duck Go as default search engine
The biggest challenges:
- Just one: Try using iCloud for mail and calendar access
I apologize in advance for deviating from the purpose of this blog. Having spent so much time focusing on the thesis project, coupled with long days at UID, I thought it would be interesting to stop for a minute and reflect on what happened in 2011. It’s no secret that I love lists, so let’s make one.
During 2011, I…
- … got back on the running trail
- … did a 10 week internship at an amazing product and interaction design company
- … got back into reading books
- … stumbled on life and lost myself quite severely for a while
- … moved four times in five months
- … realized just how much friends and family are worth
- … spent a couple of weeks by the sea, reading and working
- … woke up to find someone amazing
- … fell in love
- … finished the thesis project with only the final bits of the report to write
- … signed up for BAMM 50 in 2012
What I hope 2012 will bring:
- A finished MA thesis
- A finished, presented and exhibited BA design project
- More focused and qualitative design work
- Fewer hours in the studio
- More time spent with friends and family
- Much more time spent with her
- More demanding workouts and a more focused workout routine
- An employment
- The ability to finish BAMM 50 with my head held high
- The spare time to read all the books that are stacking up
Thank you all so much for reading this blog – I hope you will continue to follow my ramblings in the coming year.
I agree. Strongly.
If you are a designer working with other designers, you are responsible to expand your vocabulary and offer critical feedback that is concise and actionable.
Via 52 Weeks of UX
The best designers, whether of the industrial variety, such as Rams, or any other type, including those who apply their skills to data visualization, strive for a marriage of form and function, beauty and usability, which refuses to see these forces in necessary conflict. Thanks to designers like Rams who care, we might someday live in a world where bad design is the exception rather than the norm.
Not the most thorough read on Rams’ work, but a good finishing paragraph.
Matt Gemmell, on the topic of simplicity:
You’re free to delete an email, and to filter the sender straight to the trash. You’re free to unsubscribe from a blog. You’re free to mute, unfollow or block someone on Twitter. You’re free to not talk to someone who’s consistently, unproductively negative.
Simplifying life by reducing noise. This may seem so easy to do, but I constantly forget it.
I wrote some posts earlier this year that somewhat touches on the same topic. In hindsight, the result of the thesis involves much of this philosophy; designing an application to the users goals, needs and contextual demands at the same time as it filters out the unnecessary noise as much as possible.
Time will tell how many workflows it will actually fit.
This:
The difference between people who just craft pretty pixels and images and the people who think about the drives, beliefs, feelings and needs of their users is what makes up amazing designers and products. Once you can understand this difference you’ll understand what a great designer does and why there is so few of them.
via ZURBlog.
Last week I presented the final prototypes and design suggestions to my supervisors. I simply demo:ed the app, pointing out the key features and how the design had been set.
The flow through the app is quite simple: from mail to task to timeline.
Step 1 is to identify what needs to be done after receiving an email. This means finding an action to perform, and quickly frame it by giving it a name. This has in the app been reduced to a simple two tap action, since it automatically suggests project based on the sender and recepients as well as fill in the blank form with the email subject title and text body.
This is something Bellotti et.al. pointed out in 2003:
”Our research shows that it is possible to significantly and positively affect email users’ experience by embedding task management resources directly in the inbox, where they are most needed, as well as breaking down the barriers between the various components of contemporary email applications.” Taking Email to Task: The Design and Evaluation of a Task Management Centered Email Tool, p. 351-352
The tasks can then be used in a manner similar to many of the most popular task management applications, however with somewhat fewer control. Only the basics are provided, often through filtering.
On the timeline, the user can view the current and upcoming projects in a graphical view. It is also possible to visualize key tasks and dates on a projects main timeline, but also add subprojects that needs to be completed for the project to move on. Throughout the application it’s always possible to quickly add a new task by using a shortcut. Information in the clipboard can be used to simplify the creation of a new task.
As for now, the flow works as intended according to the usability tests and discussions. In the coming weeks, I’ll get back to writing the report.
Some screenshots from the Timeline view.
I’m having trouble exporting the images from proto.io, there seems to be a bug in their Firefox plugin. Even when I succeed, the images are in poor quality and I have no control over that.
The usability tests were conducted by letting the users attempt to complete a series of tasks, or rather, use cases. The purpose was to evaluate how easy – or difficult – the information architecture and flow throughout the app was to grasp.
By default, the app starts in the email inbox. From there, the use cases in question were:
- Create a task based on the current email
- Review the task list (aka. ”find the task list”)
- Create a new task
- Mark the task ”Call electrician for meeting” as completed
- View the plans (timeline) for the project ”Vikström”
- View its subprojects
- Add a new subproject
- View its connected tasks for week 39
- Switch to list view
- Create a new task
This was tested by four users who were encouraged to ”think aloud” while walking through the use cases. I gave the instructions listed above but gave no further assistance.
User characteristics and background can be summarized as below.
- User 1 works with project management in the construction business, and is very familiar with using an iPad.
- User 2 is somewhat familiar with the construction business context but haven’t used an iPad much besides checking email and surfing the web.
- User 3 works in (and is very familiar with) the construction business context but isn’t used to using an iPad besides checking email and surfing the web.
- User 4 has very little knowledge of project management in the construction business but is very familiar with common iPad interaction patterns.
To conclude, everyone performed the tasks without much problems – the app works really well within the scope of the thesis project. User 2 and 3 experienced some frustration, likely due to not having much previous experience using an iPad besides web surfing. Other remarks that has since been reviewed and completed:
- Months and weeks need to be communicated more clearly in the Timeline view
- The task management view should to a greater extent imitate existing task management applications for increased familiarity
- A new layout, in landscape mode, could be added for easier week reviews.
I’m about the board the plane to Stockholm for the final user tests. Looking back at where this project started, I can clearly see similarities when comparing the first sketches to the prototype I’ll be testing. However, naturally, it has evolved quite a bit.
During the exploration, I’ve tested ideated and tested basic interaction ideas using pen and paper, lo-fi digital mockups (made in Balsamiq) and interactive prototypes. The small ideas are the ones who survived in the end, the early ideas are still present in the overall interaction patterns.
However, I’ve found myself so many times questioning a tiny, tiny aspect of the app. I’ve been asking myself, function by function, if this and that is really necessary. Things that the end user will, hopefully, never stop to reflect upon, but that at some level could possibly just provide that sense of usability and recognition. This is the stuff that is invisible, but that I can’t justify not caring about.
Then I stumbled upon this video from Steve Jobs’ memorial, where Jonathan Ive delivers an amazingly sharp speech. And then, this part really jumped out at me:
”Yeah, we got there, we got there in the end and it was good. You can see his smile can’t you? The celebration of making something great for everybody. Enjoying the defeat of cynicism. The rejection of reason. The rejection of being told 100 times, ‘You can’t do that.’
So his I think, was a victory for beauty, for purity. And as he would say, ‘For giving a damn.’”
So, I can see the horizon. It’s drawing closer and closer with each passing day, and hopefully – as Jony Ive puts it – I’ll get there in the end.
