I never thought usability methods would be so interesting and would raise our confidence. Unless a NID alumni Ripul , founder of kern communication which deals majorly with clients abroad, was in campus to teach us usability methods. Our day started with understanding affordances of shapes. Affordance is property of object which tells us how to behave i.e. starting from very basic shapes like circle which gives us feel of rotation. One need not explain how to open cap of bottle. So rotation is visual affordance of circle.
The same subject led us to learn 'Gestalt laws' of visual perception. Ripul made us think really hard and to go away from lazy way of exploration 'google search'. He made us give real life examples making as well as breaking the law.
Day 3 started with widgets. Ripul calls any software interface element widget. Apart from basic affordances, we discussed logic and scenario of functionality of all possible widgets. We reached to the basics of UI design. Meanwhile was wondering what the hell I did for 2 years. We got very rich insights of how things work e.g. why we need left justification, why right justification is not good. When to use combo-box n when a drop down.
The same day, Ripul gave us interesting exercise of designing interactions for given scenario. Brief for my group was: 'Mr sharma works in small town in UP for Hindalco factory. Mr Sharma wants to go home in Indore to see his ill dad. He uses SBI ATM card to withdraw money.He uses mobile phone but he is not tech savey. Mr sharma wants to book a railway ticket as early as possible. Design interface for SBI ATM , Where Mr Sharma can book ticket train ticket.'
Interaction modelity we could use was only simple ATM interace with 4-4 buttons on side and numeric keypad. We were not given liberty use touch screen though it currently exist.
We had to present it in form of skit. So we tried to make it humorous.
While going through process we encountered with number of problems and found solution keeping priority of 'feasibility' in mind. But I found answer to many of questions i was trying to figuring out from last one year. May be it is output of collective consiousness.
We as people from software background people give equal importance to exception, but forget the regular user in process e.g. the system above could be designed for cases like : handicapped , senior citizens or illiterates. But we would have lost the regular ATM literate user in process. It was interesting insight as designer.
Process of building persona was introduced using same scenario. Goals and tasks played interestingly exchangeable roles in persona making.
We had been introduced to 11 different ways of navigation, which are used in highly efficient manner in day to day’s life. I was given task to discuss about linear workflow.We also were introduced to very time taking but important process of Card sorting. We had to redesign the navigational structure of BBMP web portal.
Card sorting
Day 4 started with most difficult and equally interesting part 'System Design'. Taking brief of our semisters project of Microsoft, we were divided in 4 groups and n given task to design system in e-Governance, Rural economy, Education, Solutions for small businesses.
All of our long brain-storming session started happening within few hours. The process took us to think about usage patterns, build scenario, design solutions, talk numbers and come up with profitable solution in few hours.Words like VC's, initial investments , running cost profit margin were floating around.
system design
Day 5 was very important, understanding 'usability testing' which I feel is little overrated in industry - The two open source software’s used were : Tincam and VNC to carry usability testing, where we can watch desktop and expression of user remotely. We conducted small usability test with junior for doing few simple tasks in photoshop. It showed us different ways that user uses product.
But at end of the day, it’s not usability lab or methods, Its designer and his perspective of looking at things gives you good usability.
Being in design institute, one learns things in different patches. I found this course bringing most of our learning’s together. All the credit goes to Ripul !
2.Mobile app for high end mobile
