Lab 1
|
CSE510
Lab 1
|
Find and describe an example of poorly designed human-machine interaction.
Check out some of the results.
From your direct observation of someone else having difficulty using a machine, computer application, or any designed artifact or situation, prepare a short description (including both text and diagrams as needed), sketching the situation and explaining the difficulty. Additionally, think about and note the various perspectives of those who may have created the situation (ie. Why would someone choose to design it this way?).
User-centered: Start by thinking about problems that you've had (easy). Challenge yourself by trying to notice the problems that others have (harder). How do you watch? How do you uncover their intentions?
Critical search: Having read some of Design of Everyday Things, by D. Norman, try to pick up some of his spirit in the search for problems in design -- poorly designed everyday things may be the hardest to notice.
Multiple descriptions: A very important design skill is the ability to be fluent in the language(s) of design -- various representations for describing, analyzing, and synthesizing experience and interaction. Try to invent some new representations or discover combinations that work well.
Multiple perspectives: Any design is the result of compromises -- there is seldom a right answer. Think about the historical, economic, aesthetic, political, physical, and personal factors that played (or may have played) a part in influencing your target design.
Look for something that others might not think of -- the more diverse the examples we share in class, the better. We'd definitely like to see a fair number of non-computer ones!
Try out a variety of representations for your diagram (photo, sketch, flowchart, cartoon, outline, story, table). Use a combination if time and space permit.
A polished essay is not expected. We want a quick way to capture and communicate design problems and possible solutions. This should be a sketch, not a work of art.
We'll have a mini-poster session toward the end of class on April 11 to discuss the summaries - so please prepare your assignments in a form suitable for posting on the wall, 2 pages or less if possible. (The assignment itself is due earlier, to keep it from bunching up with Lab 2 that week.) For students who would like to contribute their assignments to the class web page, please also send Janet a set of files to include in the web, or a URL. (Files are preferable to a URL, since URL's tend to disappear after a while.)
The 590H and 510 web pages (from previous CSE HCI classes) have examples of variations of this assignment. However, you don't need to spend a lot of time polishing a web page for this assignment - some of the pages from previous quarters are more polished than I'm expecting this time!