US journalist Thomas Friedman argues that, due to the fact that two people thousands of miles apart can have access to the same information almost instantly the world is being “flattened”. In other words, the barriers between people and different cultures are becoming more and more blurred and the answer to next week’s physics homework is just one Google search away. This seemingly unlimited supply of data has created a generation of students that are more empowered t. A 2009 survey shows that 93% of American teens use the internet and roughly half of them also produce their own content. This need to generate new content also increases the need to learn more technological skills, such as coding, learning how to use Adobe Photoshop or a digital camera. The new generation of students, rather than being passive consumers, are engaged with their environment and eager to learn new skills and are often autodidacts.

As a result, online platforms have been established that deliver educational material to the students. One example of a platform which started off as one user generating content is the “Khan Academy”. Its founder, Salman Khan, initially made Youtube videos to tutor his niece. He made the videos public, but never thought that he would capture the attention of anybody outside of his family and acquaintances. However, he started getting e-mails from complete strangers about how useful his lessons were. He then started “Khan Academy” in 2006, a non-profit online teaching  which attracts up to six million unique students every month that collectively solve around two million problems each day. Interestingly enough, Khan’s project is also beginning to revolutionize how teachers use their time with the students in the classroom. The concept is called the “flipped classroom”, which means that teaching time is exchanged with homework time. Students are getting their lesson taught through “Khan Academy” and they spend their time at school applying the lessons they have learned to solve, for example, math problems under the teacher’s supervision. This method enables students to work at their own pace because they can pause or repeat the videos on the platform as often as they want to and they can’t move to the next chapter unless they correctly solve ten exercises in a row, thus reducing the chances of them having gaps in their learning. Khan’s system also makes it easier for teachers to track their student’s progress. The system offers them information such as how long it took the student to go through the lesson, how long it took them to solve an exercise and if they are stuck at some point. Because the other students are working independently, the teacher can focus their attention on individual students who are struggling for the moment. In my opinion, this method leads to a more personal learning experience and, as a result, makes learning a much more enjoyable and productive process.

While Khan Academy is leading the revolution in primary and secondary education, at university level Coursera, an online platform delivering lectures from world renowned universities,  is the game changer.  In a 2012 TED talk, co-founder Daphne Koller said that Coursera was born from the desire to make high quality education available to everybody around the world. As with any university, there are lectures, assignments, exams and quizzes. The novelty about Coursera is that, apart from multiple choice exams, all the other assignments are being evaluated by the students themselves, which give results as accurate as if a teaching assistant would be doing the evaluation. Furthermore, the people on the platform don’t just sit isolate in front of a computer. A blossoming community of self learners has formed around either mutual interest, cultural similarity or proximity. They interact with each other via the provided forum or, where possible, they form real world study groups that meet up on a regular basis. When a student finishes one of the courses they can get a diploma which is proof of the skills they’ve gained and, in some cases, the diploma can be used as a means to get a better job or to earn extra university credit.

From the examples above I can only conclude that we are witnessing the beginning of a revolution in what education means and how information is passed down from teacher to student. The current model of the educational system has remained roughly unchanged since the second industrial revolution. In the present day however, technology, has made it possible to share information in a fast and cheap way anywhere around the world. My belief is that this is the main driving force behind the change we are witnessing. The only problem is that, because the system hasn’t changed in a long time, it’s difficult to get people to adapt to the changes. Although the project I’ve described above are a success, many students still prefer the traditional lecture-based approach to learning and most employers are still sceptical about degrees obtained online. But it is my firm belief that, as time passes, these changes will become more and more accepted and we will witness the birth of a more creative and open society.

Refferences:

Podcast

Electronic Journal Article

Book

Chloe Interviewing a member of the McManus Museum’s staff

Once again, we had a field day in the McManus galleries. This time, we’ve presented our concepts to the staff working there who would be the “expert” users of our concepts. An expert user is a person who knows the environment or the system of an artefact like the back of their hand and will be able to give valuable insights on the developed concepts.

Our interviews went quite smoothly and we did get a lot of useful feedback although, as the staff admitted, their point of view was skewed by the fact that they know the museum so well. We’ve had positive feedback for our concept and we’ve uncovered that it has potential for additional functionality, that would benefit the staff as well as the visitors. Particularly, they would use our system to track visitor’s paths through the museum in order to gather data on the popularity of certain exhibits or to keep tabs on groups of visiting school children. This is also proof of an adivice that Graham Pullin gave us in one of his talks. Sometimes it is better to design for a particular case (groups of people) and then additional functionality will surface naturally.

On the technical side, we did encounter a few difficulties. Because the room in which the interviews were held was so small, there was a lot of ambient noise and thus rendered our audio recording useless. We did record what people were saying through a tablet, but we had to have a voiceover in the final video.

Andrew’s talks and feedback helped me change my view on prototyping. To me, a prototype represented an inexpensive artefact that would show that a final product would be feasible. Furthermore, it would include all the functionality of the finished item. I wasn’t completely wrong in believing this, but it was only a part of the prototype’s role. In the industry, prototypes are used at all stages of the design process and at various degrees of refinement. But, more importantly, a prototype can give the design team different views upon the same project. For example, one prototype can show the look and feel of the product, while another can demonstrate its functionality.

From Graham’s talks I took away the fact that I need to pay attention to “the tone of voice” and to the way we will present our final concept. We haven’t accounted for the fact that our concept being based on “Hansel and Gretel” might be seen as being a cry for help and safety, because the children used the trail to get back home. Therefore, we needed to add a playful element to our concept.

To develop our concept, we’ve decided on making three prototypes: a paper prototype to get a birds eye view of the project, an experience prototype to show that our concept is viable and a video prototype for demonstrative purposes, in order to show the actual user interface. Below you can see examples from the prototypes.

Prototype I – a bird’s eye view of the concept

Experience prototyping with post-it notes

Link to video prototype: https://vimeo.com/64489719

Would you like me to tell you about the Jacobites?

After this exercise we’ve paired up again with people that had the same interests as us. I’ve ended up with Chloe, because she had a similar interest as me. By combining our insight cards and observations, we both realised that one of the issues with visiting a museum in a group is keeping up with your group at the expense of missing out on certain exhibits that might be of more interest to you.

While talking about potential concepts, we thought about the Brothers Grimm fairytale “Hansel and Gretel”. When they were taken into the woods, the children left a trail of pebbles behind in order to find their way back. So why couldn’t groups of people do the same in order to find each other? Because we’re in the year 2023, we’ve considered the floor to be a massive screen. As people would walk on it, they would leave a footprint trail behind. For a more detailed explanation of our concept, here are the storyboards and wireframes:

Storyboard

Wireframes

“Future”, I think, is the key word for this semester. We’re imagining it’s the year 2023 and every surface in the McManus Gallery in Dundee can be considered a screen. This is a very interesting premise to start with because we aren’t limited by our current technical skills and we have full creative freedom for the final prototype.

The first step in tackling this brief is doing user research to find out as much as we can about how our target user groups (groups and couples) interact in the museum in the present day. For “Knittern” our research was done online and in the comfort of our own studios. This time we had to go in the field and observe people in a natural “habitat”. For me the first day of research was a bit like going on safari. We were split into teams of two to make the first day a little less intimidating. We had to be careful not to interfere with the people we were following so we could get an accurate feel of their experience in the museum.

Be very quiet, I’m watching humans !

People watching is something I like to do often, so I thought that this type of user research would be a no brainer for me. However, I have discovered that it’s a different animal all together. Although I like observing people, I’ve never written down my observations. On the first day I was overwhelmed by the different kinds of people that were coming and going and I struggled to record absolutely everything. At the end of the day I was mentally exhausted, but I had a 4 full pages of notes plus photographs.

As I mentioned before, we were working in teams. I was working with Victor and  we’ve decided to go to the museum one more time before we got around to synthesize our research. The second time proved to be much more productive because we were building upon observations we already had and we knew what we were looking for. Later, at the studio, we put all our research up on the wall and made post-it clusters with the most relevant topics. We then took out what we thought were the three most relevant topics and made insight cards for each of them. Cards are displayed below.

Front/back labels card

Front/back storytelling

Front/back groups&couples

Firstly, I think that the team I was on with Lauren and Victor was the most productive I have ever worked with. We’ve managed to define our targets early on and weren’t intimidated by the rise of certain technical difficulties. We didn’t have     the same level of skills, but each of us managed to contribute to the successful outcome of the project and, ultimately, we’ve managed to learn from each other and improve ourselves as individual designers.

Secondly, Knittern gave me a taste of what it’s like to work in “the real world”, even though it was done in an academic context. It was the first project in which I felt that I was a true interaction designer (albeit in the making). I’ve learned to be patient and give the concept time to develop and not cling on to a certain idea in the early stages of brainstorming. It was the longest project we had so far and, in the beginning, I thought I would lose interest halfway through. But new challenges kept rising as the project progressed that kept me interested.

All in all, the first term of second year opened my eyes as to what it really is to be a designer and helped me order my thoughts in what it looks like the beginning of a personal design process.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word “interaction” as a mutual or reciprocal action or influence. In other words, we needed to figure out a way to plot a physical action onto paper. For us, the best solution was to start drawing something similar to mind maps and try to imagine how a potential user might navigate the website. This step was surprisingly straightforward, considering that neither of us had done this or wireframing before. At this stage, we decided what content will be featured in the navigation tabs, what the home page will look like and the relationships between the tables in the database. Note that we chose not to feature the app on the homepage, as we thought that it would deter elderly users from joining the community.

However, we’ve encountered a problem where we least expected: the branding. In my experience up until now with branding, the image of the final product just came effortlessly and natural to me and I had no problems in getting a final product out on paper. I thought it would be the same case for Knittern, considering that we already had a strong wireframe to work with, but it proved to be a challange in that sense. Looking back, I think it might be because I was so hung up on Patchwork Quilt’s image and didn’t give Knittern much thought.

Our first try at branding was using the images and colour scheme we already used for the user presentation boards. The fonts went well together, the colours were bold, but not distracting and it also had a descreet texture in the background. When we put applied it to the wireframe, the end result just looked weird. The logo seemed to just float on the header and the colours didn’t look as good on the tabs as they did in the image. We’ve also tried using a kitten as a mascot, but everything just seemed to clash. It looked more like a print magazine rather than a website.

Playing around with fonts for the logotype

The Knittern Kitten

After a frustrating day of trying to modify everything we could think of to make it work, we decided to let the idea sink and each team member went their own ways to seek out inspiration individually. This was the best decision we could have made at that point because the day after we came in with fresh ideas and the design process went much more smoothly. As each of us had done their research separately, we gathered colour scheme inspiration from areas outside of knitting, like paintings and photographs. During this stage, I believe that Pinterest was a very useful tool.

Now that we had a cohesive brand image and an idea of what the user interaction would be like, it was time to get our hands dirty and start prototyping. Personally, it was my first time using MySQL and PHP together and it was a bit of a learning curve. I did manage to contribute to writing the code for the search and home pages.

Final branding

Apart from prototyping it technically, we also had to prototype a real community. Because we did our user research thoroughly in the early stages of the project, this task turned out to be fun. Our examples were based on real-world people, but we also had to imagine a short story behind them and a personality. I found it enjoyable to explore the wide demographic interested in knitting and using my imagination to “craft” personalities for potential users from the Russia, Sweeden and even Australia.

User profile example

Our project is slowly, but surely coming together and we are excited to see it in its final form. The completed project will be featured in the portfolio section of this blog.

Sentimental versus practical

Three very different concepts were developed around the subject of knitting/textile design:

Stitchless – a social network for professional textile designers. The idea stemmed from the fact that most existing social networks for knitters revolved around amateurs and that there was no place for professionals to network.

Stitchless – concept board

Patchwork quilt – where storytelling and objects meet. We were inspired by Cowbird and the fact that most knitters also keep a blog where they tell the story of the objects they’ve made.

Patchwork Quilt – concept board

Knittern – a social network that would revolve around a pattern generating app. Users are able to share their patterns, edit other people’s patterns and create and share objects using those patterns.

Knittern – concept board

All three concepts were quite strong, but, in the end, we were stuck between Patchwork Quilt and Knittern. The fault with the first was generating the content, while the other was more technically challenging. Personally, at that stage, I was very attached to Patchwork Quilt, probably because I became more interested in storytelling and objects with meaning behind them. I started following Cowbird and was impressed by how personal the interaction between users was and how much thought went into the generated user content(compared with Facebook, for example) . Another factor that made me more attached to storytelling was hearing Nikki Ferguson talk about her “Heirloom” project and how she managed to make an object passed down from generation to generation that much more special.

However, during our final brainstorm, we’ve decided to take Knittern forward. It was hard for me to admit that it was the best decision because I had a very clear image in my head of Patchwork Quilt’s branding, users and interactions between them. But after a debate with my team mates, we had come to the conclusion that it would be easier for us to get over the technical obstacles, rather than generate user content ourselves.

After analyzing the problem rationally, I realised that I fell into the trap of clinging on to a concept and taking it too far in its early stages. From this experience I have learned that when you initially brainstorm a topic you need to be careful not to get into more detail than is needed, in order to avoid getting too attached to one idea.

Usually I don’t draft a post and just write as I feel fit for the moment. For this post however, the amount of research was so vast that I had to make a mind map of quotes and different designers which I’ve edited down to create the final blog post.

2. Organize the topic

Since the subject we were given was very broad, I’ve decided to focus on the areas that interested me the most and corresponded to my mental image of what an interaction designer does. I think it is important to set the priorities and subtract relevant information before starting to write.

3. Choose a writing style

Although this blogpost felt closer to an academic essay than the previous ones I have decided to keep my semi-formal style. I want the reader to see myself as a serious enough writer in order to take my opinions into consideration, but at the same time I didn’t want to distance him in order to maybe start a debate on the topic.

4. Keep your eyes and ears open

When I’ve started research on the topic I inevitably consulted the all-knowing oracle Google. Soon enough, I realized I wasn’t asking it the right questions and the answers it gave me back seemed irrelevant. I’ve then decided to turn to Facebook or Twitter to see what people were discussing on the topic and that created a domino effect leading me from one blog to another.

5. Squeeze in “browsing time”

There is a general belief that the Internet suddenly gets twice as interesting when you’ve got actual work to do. I admit, it’s very easy to procrastinate, but why not procrastinate with a purpose? I did not browse 24/7, but while taking breaks from my other assessments I’ve tried to look up interesting designers and try to figure out what I want my final blogpost to look like and create my own definition about interaction design.

Users interacting online

Deviantart's mascot, Fella

Social networks are the easiest way for peaople to interact with each other, no matter the distance between them and with interaction comes discussion, ideas and collaboration. Deviantart was created in 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matt Stephens and Angelo Sotira to help creatives around the world share their work. The categories on the website range from traditional to digital media, from crafts to computer programming and everything in between. Users can follow each other, collaborate, critique work or form clubs around a common interest. Even today thousands of users join the community every day, only adding to its diversity.

Visualizing data

The amount of data in the world is rapidly increasing and it is quite easy to get drowned in the deluge of information. An emerging discipline in the world of design is visualizing data. Moritz Stefaner calls himself an “information visualizer” and is interested in managing data and presenting it in an aesthetically pleasing form. One of his most beautiful and useful projects is the Max Planck Research Network. The program presents itself with an intuitive interface that allows the user to track the relationships and number of works published around the world by all the branches of the Max Planck Institute. It provides an easy method for researchers to keep up to date with scientific progress.

Making human-computer interaction more efficient

Image by Wesley Fryer @flickr

In the busy world we live in today, the last thing a person would want is to spend hours with an instruction manual to figure out how a gadget or application works. A success story in this field is Pulse, an iPad news reader app developed by Ashkay Kothari and Ankit Gupta in five weeks while studying at Stanford University. They didn’t reinvent the wheel, but they’ve made it better. The main issue they’ve addressed was the fact that most users were confused by the terms RSS and Atom feed, so they have decided to take them completely out of the equation. The secret to their success was a lot of field work, mainly asking people on the street what they wanted out of a news reader application. Although the news feed is limited to only twenty, its user-friendly interface made it has earned its place in the Apple App Store Hall of Fame as one of the most popular 50 apps of all time.

To conclude, I would like to quote David Kelley, founder of IDEO. In his 2011 speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Designers should „paint a positive image of the future”. In my opinion, a positive image of the future is one in which technology is intuitive to use and the relationship between data is clearly defined. As digital interaction designers we should use the Internet as a playground to communicate, find inspiration and build technology that even our great-grandmothers would find user-friendly.