Design Quotes

1
Design Quotes

• "The two most important tools an architect has
  are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge
  hammer on the construction site."
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Hemingway rewrote the ending to A Farewell to
  Arms 39 times. When asked about how he achieved
  his great works, he said, "I write 99 pages of
  crap for every one page of masterpiece." He has
  also been quoted as saying "the first draft of
  anything is shit."
• "The physicist's greatest tool is his
  wastebasket."
• Albert Einstein
• "Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize
  what you have and cut it to ribbons Good
  writing means good revising."
• Strunk and White, Elements of Style

2
User Centered Design

• January 15, 2004

3
Design

• Good design is good because of its
• fitness to a particular user
• fitness to a particular task
• In general, you are not your user!
• Our class will stress user centered design.

4
Design

• Why is it important?

5
Design

• Why is it important?
• Design exists whether you think about it or not.
• When you dont think about design, bad design
  will be the result.

6
The Design Process

• When I was a computer science/philosophy student
  at CMU, I took a design project course to learn
  about all of this interface design stuff I'd
  heard about. The first day of class I arrived at
  the studio room, and found a man at a drawing
  table, sketching out different variations of the
  Walkman he was designing. I got close enough to
  see the large sketchpad and saw 30 or 40
  different variations that he had considered and
  put down on paper. I introduced myself, pleaded
  ignorance about design, and asked him why he
  needed to make so many sketches. He thought for a
  second, and then said, "I don't know what a good
  idea looks like until I've seen the bad ones.
• By Scott Berkun

7
Design

• To choose the best solution, you must have more
  than one solution to choose from.

8
The Historic Waterfall Model

• System feasibility
• Analysis
• Specifying functionality
• Design
• Implementation
• Coding and unit testing
• Integration and testing
• Operation and maintenance

9
User Centered Design Cycle

• Composed of a series of steps like most design
  methodologies.
• Developed to
• give the design team maximum exposure to the
  users
• feature specific measurement of usability.
• Development is essentially iterative and
  self-correcting, and this model supports those
  aspects of design.

10
Design Cycle
Needs Analysis
User Task Analysis
Functional Analysis
Requirements Analysis
Set Usability Goals
Design
Prototype
Evaluate
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User Centered Design Cycle

• Needs analysis
• User and task analysis
• Functional analysis
• Technical requirements
• Set usability goals
• Design
• Prototype
• Evaluate

12
Design Cycle Needs Analysis

• Thumbnail sketch
• Why is a new system/product needed?
• Describe in one sentence or phrase
• Basic user (audience) description
• Benefit
• Basic systems characteristics/capabilities

13
Design Cycle User and Task Analysis

• Identifies
• Characteristics of the potential user
  population(s), eg. demographics, domain
  knowledge.
• Goals that the user wants to accomplish.
• Tasks that the users perform.
• May identify
• Mental models.
• Familiar metaphors.

14
Design Cycle Functional Analysis

• Who does what?
• Which system functions will accommodate which
  tasks ?
• What part of the task is the human going to do?
• What part of the task is the computer/device
  going to do?
• Will there be manual tasks? Perhaps not
  everything should be automated

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Design Cycle Technical Requirements Analysis

• Formal technical specs
• Flowchart
• Schematic

16
Design Cycle Set Usability Goals

• Metrics
• Determine the quantifiable measures of how good
  is "good enough" e.g. task completion time, error
  rates, user preferences
• Set these goals up front
• Keep refining the system until you meet these
  goals

17
Design Cycle Design

• Where the planning pays off
• Appearance
• Functionality
• Perceived affordance

18
Design Cycle Prototype the Interaction

• Try it out
• Build the prototype

19
Design Cycle Evaluate

• Get feedback on the prototype
• User-based, testing
• Expert-based
• Quantitative and qualitative measures

20
Homework

• For next class, look around your home and find an
  object that exemplifies good design and an object
  that exemplifies poor design.
• Type up a one half page or report on each object.
  Critique the design from the perspective of the
  user. If appropriate use the terms introduced in
  class. If the design is poor, suggest
  improvements.
• You may save it as a Word, RTF or ASCII text
  file. Bring the file to our next class.

21
In Class Assignment

• Look at http//www.baddesigns.com/examples.html
• Select one bad design you would like to present
  to the class or come up with your own example.
• Write up your bad design (30 minutes) in a text
  document. Include
• Your name
• Your experience with the Internet
• Your experience with Robotics
• Your major (if you have one)
• The bad design.
• The URL of the bad design.
• Why do you think this is poorly designed? Can you
  describe the problem using any of the terms
  discussed in class (perceived affordance, mental
  model, metaphor)
• Can you suggest or improve on the suggested
  remedy for the poor design?