Self-reflection before seminar 2

It is interesting how much different methods of prototyping can actually help with the process. When reading about things such as using interative collaboration, parallell design, and brainstorming, it often feels like it's going to be what I call "productivity porn": getting lost in finding ways to be more productive instead of actually doing the work. Nevertheless, at the exercise when we used these different methods, we did get a lot done, and now have several designs going. I would however say that the "word association" method was completely useless to us, but maybe it's good it you have no ideas what to do whatsoever.


I was also surprised at the bits of math here and there, Interaction Design being such a "human" field. Fitt's law, for example, gives you a mathematical formula for how long pressing a button is going to take, while the "double-diamond" speaks more broadly about how a design process should look (and indeed, when prototyping, we experienced this "spreading" and then "collecting" very well).

Having "spread out", we need tools to evaluate our different ideas and know which ones are worth pursuing. This is a complex task, but at the same time important, because of the increasing cost of correcting a problem. For software products and smaller user interactions, the method of user evaluation and think-aloud was the one that stuck most with me, because it is very hard to evaluate an interface if you're an expert and know exactly how the system works. It's hard for you to know how a user will see it. Having recordings of user sessions can also then be used to convince developers of what they need to fix, but one has to make sure to prioritize his problems with the application, so that that developers don't only fix what's easiest for them (which might not always be the things that matter the most).

My question for the seminar is whether we should user-test with the users in different mental states (e.g. drunk, or tired) even if a majority of users aren't is those states.