Sketching and Storyboarding
From CS160 User Interfaces Sp09
Lecture on Feb 2, 2009
Readings
- The Psychology of Everyday Things. The Design of Everyday Things. Chap 1. Norman.
- Exploring Storyboarding. Visual Storytelling and Storyboards. & Drawing the Human Form Chapters 1 and 13. Tumminello.
Shoeb Omar - Jan 29, 2009 12:48:03 am
I thought that the POET chapter was extremely interesting and although it was fairly evident that the piece was written some time ago (I've never seen so much angst over how phones work), I think the concepts that the author was talking of are fairly relevant today. I think it is extremely important that controls have natural mappings and have appropriate feedback. There are far far too many things that we all own that we simply do not know how to use. For example, there's about thirty settings on the toaster oven I own that simply make no sense. I've memorized a system of "how to make it work" which I employ over and over again. It uses two buttons and works. Could I perhaps have better cooked food if I knew how to work the thing? Perhaps. But one must not question only the intuitiveness of how easy it is to control a certain device, one needs to wonder how many options does a certain device need anyway? Should a toaster oven really have that many settings?
On that note though, I do think there has been a move towards more intuitive devices that have good feedback. A good example is the iPhone where pinching zooms in to the screen. I don't know why but that gesture simply makes sense for that task and isn't hard to figure out. Furthermore, when using the keyboard, there's good feedback--when you click on a letter it becomes bigger to show that you clicked on that letter and let you know what you just did. This kind of progress breeds competition in a good way--for instance, the Blackberry storm tried to have even better feedback with its clickable screen that depresses when you touch it.
In regards to the second piece we had to read, I thought it was intriguing that we never get tired of the three act story even though we watch it over and over again in our lives in pretty much every movie we watch. There are always minor variations but the general crux of every story is the same yet we never tire of it. Furthermore, I thought the section about drawing the human form was interesting but not too descriptive. Although it contained the 8 heads idea and simple mechanisms to try and help people draw the human form, it didn't really speak to me. It addressed things I should look out for like perspective and context, but it did not really help me figure out how to draw humans better. I felt like if I could draw it would help me think of things but if I can't draw in the first place I'm not going to be helped much. Did others feel the same?
Carol Chen - Jan 30, 2009 03:38:34 pm
I'm glad we're reading from the Psychology of Everyday Things, as I believe it to be a seminal (and enjoyable) book in the field of design. In particular, I knew about the affordances of objects, but had only thought about them in terms of designing to take advantage of them, rather than considering how they may "trap" a designer with unwanted use. It is impossible to imagine every type of misuse of a material, but this is worth thinking about in order to prevent the most egregious ones.
When reading the discussion on natural mapping and car controls, the phenomenon of Y-axis inversion came to mind. Aircraft and flight simulators invert the Y axis, so that when they tilt the control up, the aircraft they are controlling tilts down. Most games have an option for either inverting or not inverting the Y axis, but I recently overheard a conversation between a 13-year old boy and a 28-year old man about the generational difference: kids these days are not in the habit of inverting. For them, not inverting makes more sense, is more intuitive. For people in my generation or older, at least partially because of the history of older aircraft and flight simulators, inverting is more habitual. In my opinion, however, moving a control upward, I would expect my aircraft to also move upward, and vice versa. To me, this is a more natural mapping. As for the comparison between car control design and telephone design, it seems to me that one large factor determining how easy it is to design something well is simply the space you have to work with. The telephone is by necessity a smaller, more portable object, and the car is much larger. While the car has many more functions as well, as long as designers roughly follow the 1 control to 1 function rule, the functions are more likely to be utilized successfully.
With regards to the piece on storyboarding, I had a couple of thoughts. One: the paper mentioned satisfying readers or consumers of movies with a resolved ending. People like tot see things come to a satisfying conclusion, to know what happens in the end. Children's stories prototypically end with "happily ever after". It occurs to me that this is why I am not much a fan of short stories, as they often leave the reader hanging, or leave the reader to draw their own conclusions. Two: the three-part story apparently works well, but it's strange to me that such a predictable pattern works so well, and that the middle part (act 2) has to be so dramatic. My guess is that given enough variation in the specifics of the storyline, the familiar underlying structure of the story provides enough comfort and structure to consumers. I enjoyed the brief introduction to the mechanics of storyboarding, which is useful to know given its utility in conveying ideas and visualizing stories in many fields, including interface and interaction design.
Saung Li - Jan 31, 2009 05:51:32 pm
I found the first reading interesting in that it points out the common design problem of having to make controls more and more difficult to add in more features to a system. Adding more features means that you should add more controls to make the system still easy to use, but that clutters the interface. If you don't add more controls, then its harder to tell what control does what, and how to change the control to do something else. What is the limit to the number of features to controls a device, say, a toaster, can have to make it still easy to use?
After I read this article, I realized just how many devices I do not really know how to use. I know that my home's fax machine has many many features that I never cared about to use, mostly because I do not want to read through the fat instruction manual to learn them. I would often be frustrated when setting up a new device, such as a new modern telephone, and have to read through parts of the guide to set up basic things, and ignore the rest. Devices that normal households use should be made simple so as to reduce frustration. It is a waste of the designer's effort to make way too many features that are too hard to use because people just don't use them.
Mentioned in the second article, "showing" is better than "telling" since the former paints a vivid picture in the viewer's mind. The 3 part story structure is a great way to keep people interested in the story. The most important component I would say is the adverse conflict characters face, since that is what makes the story dramatic and most interesting. The story should reach a climax and then a resolution. Do you prefer happy or sad endings? Which would draw in the audience's attention more?
In response to the first comment, I also felt that the part describing how to sketch human figures kind of vague. Some parts they gave instructions as to how to sketch something but didn't give an example image so I didn't know how they worked. Many example sketches should be provided when teaching about sketching.
Timofey Titov - Jan 31, 2009 09:19:52 pm
It is ironic that everyday things which have been in use a long time still suffer from bad design. This could have arisen from the compromises that one has to make in the production. The core of the problem must be that interface is not viewed as important as, for example functionality or performance. Most if not all hiccups described in POET could have been avoided with task-centered design and user testing.
2Shoeb: Zooming in on the iphone is a form of natural mapping. The physical analogy is flattening out fabric in order to expand it.
Storyboards are low-level design prototypes just like paper sketches. They follow a similar iterative "development cycle". A visual masterpiece can be complex, but unlike big systems, you can't apply modularity to them, because the end experience changes. You cannot separately take perfectly drawn objects and slap them on the paper. You can however to a certain degree devise a complex system just by combining components.
Stephanie Shih - Jan 30, 2009 08:16:49 pm
To Shoeb - I think because I draw a bit, the second reading was quite interesting to me, especially in how it presented the impacts that how one drew a character - through perspective, fluidity of lines to indicate action, etc - could have and brought back their earlier show not tell. The reading did seem to be aimed much more at visual artists though, where as if a storyboard were to be used in out class project's game production, it would be much more useful to go with stick figures and written descriptions. But yeah, it wasn't something that really could teach how to draw unless you already had a basic idea of drawing techniques, unfortunately.
The POET reading was brilliant, though, and definitely makes one think. Especially when we consider all the features that get dumped onto things today - phones are no longer just phones, but also PDAs, MP3 players, etc. all in one - there is a point where it gets to be too much. Or, like the projector example, where it got simplified to the point that it wasn't usable without reading an instruction manual. Where is the balance between usability and aesthetics, between more features for convenience and too much? The POET reading made me consider what every day tools I have trouble using, like most digital cameras, or even some features of a typical cell phone. This latest generation of technology is concerned with slimming things down and lightening things up, but at what point does one stop before one starts trading ease of learning for it? It's something to think about. (And I know instruction manuals tend not to be read, but perhaps, is there a way to make instruction manuals more easy to go through, and thus make them more likely to be read? That too, I think, would also help solve problems.))
Jeffrey Patzer - Jan 31, 2009 10:29:28 pm
The first article was quite interesting. When I began reading it in I thought that perhaps the author was over-exaggerating a personal problem that he had trouble with. To be honest, when I first read that the author had trouble with doors that maybe he just sucked. However, the problems that he described were to problems that I myself had. The idea of not knowing to push or pull the door based on design is definitely something I've had trouble negotiating before, however I have never become entrapped between two sets of doors as was described in the article. Still, I thought to myself that if these were problems that so many people were having, whether it be the phones or doors, but that people did not realize the small issue, then how many designs out there had we just become used to? More importantly, if we are so used to these designs then how are we to recognize their failings? This means that whether or not the phone is too complicated to figure out or the door tells me push when it should be pull, recognizing these small issues as something fixable is extremely difficult. The takeaway message from this article, I believe, is to try and open one's eyes to the inadequacies of current functioning designs or all the everyday things that we use.
The second article was quite descriptive on what type of uses storyboards serve. It provided a good basic knowledge for the person who had never done too much story-boarding. In addition, it provided a good structure for how to organize a story. The outline of how a story should be structured is extremely important. Although for this class we are doing games, a game doesn't work unless it has a story driving it. Consequently, understanding how to create a story that is attractive is very useful knowledge. The second article did a great job a providing that outline and understanding how the main character needs conflict to drive his growth and change throughout the story.
Kevin Huey - Feb 01, 2009 01:34:50 am
The plethora of examples from POET are great for showing us good and back design usages. The interesting part to me was how button placement, usage, and amount can drastically affect the general popularity of a product. Take the telephone with the one random 'R' button for instance. It only contains one more button than the "normal" configuration, but it ended up becoming an overcomplicated button. All the "usual" features that were easily accessible in previous models now required the use of this 'R' button, but no one really knew how to use it. The user's manual tried to explain the steps, but there were just too many other things required. To add to the headache, the 'R' button was used for MOST of the special functions, so things got even more complicated than initially ascertained. On the other hand, the car with 50-100 buttons is simpler and easier to learn, if only because each button is well-placed AND has only one function each. It just shows that trying to slim things down and make things look "cooler" may end up creating problems with usage.
I took the showing vs. telling aspect of storyboarding to be similar to active vs. passive voice in essay writing. Telling a story gets the point across, just as using the passive voice does a serviceable in conveying your message. But there are more powerful ways to show your details, and as showing is more effective than telling, active voice gives a much more profound message than passive voice. So we should do as best as we can to show the story rather than tell it so that we can invoke a better feeling within the observer.
Adam Kauk - Feb 01, 2009 12:00:29 pm
The user interface for the readings this week was less than desirable. The Psychology of Everyday Things reading had all of the pages sideways. This forces us all to print out the reading, which we might not want to do if we want to save paper and ink or we might be unable to do at certain times (if we are at a library with no printer available).
The POET reading really solidified in my mind what is the cause of most bad user interfaces: trying to make a machine or system be able to do too many things. The more things something can do, the more complex it will be. So perhaps a good design technique when you are updating a product is to think about what features can be cut because hardly anybody uses them. Or perhaps divide the product so that one version has the features and a different version doesn't.
Rohan Dhaimade - Feb 01, 2009 01:24:39 pm
The first article is a pretty thought provoking idea. The design of everyday things is really interesting. The author seems to have a personal grudge against phones though. I kind of understand since I've also had to use a crappy office phone system. I've always kind of noticed that I don't use most of the features of most of my gadgets. My cell phone has a ton of features that I don't use at all, I know that I only use two settings (out of a possible 10-12) on my digital camera. I know my camera uses a turn wheel to determine which camera mode the camera is on. It uses pictures such as a little camera (photo mode), flower (landscape), face (portrait), and video camera (video) to determine the mode you are on. One point that didn't come up is the addition of new features that were unknown. Like I know my Microwave has a bunch of settings on it that aren't too complicated but I don't know what they explicitly do that makes them better. What does the popcorn button do on my microwave, set it at a time for microwaving things? I tried it once and it didn't even make my popcorn properly. The settings themselves are a bit complicated and pointless, why have a special button just for popcorn or baked potatoes?
The basic structure of a story isn't very complicated. Beginning, middle, and end. The concept isn't really used to create stories but more of a natural structure for stories to happen. Even complex movies such as Memento where the entire movie is played backward chronologically is set up such that it follows the basic model of a story, though the conflict is a reverse. You want to know who he killed and not if the person is going to be killed or not. I think you could fit the model into any story really. Most the information in the book I already knew and most people know without thinking about. The screenplay information though was an interesting tidbit.
The drawing thing was somewhat useful, though it probably won't help me much. It gave good tips on the flow of characters and how to give general shape to them but it doesn't help with specifics. I'm bad at drawing and even with the guidelines of creating the designs, I don't think I could ever draw a hand properly no matter how much I look at it. Shadowing, depth, and other important parts of drawing aren't covered whatsoever, which makes it very difficult to properly draw humans.
Chris Thompson - Feb 01, 2009 04:05:52 pm
First, a bit of a rebuttal. A previous comment mentioned that the user interface of the POET reading was bad -- yes, the image itself was scanned sideways, but that's the data, or the content itself, not its actual interface. On real paper it's not a problem, since we can physically rotate it. And, depending on the interface of what you used to view the PDF, it also might not be a problem. I use an offshoot program (not Adobe's reader, since I find it horrible bloatware), and when I opened up that file I immediately noticed that it was sideways. I blinked for a few seconds, then my eyes immediately located a button with a picture of a paper being rotated. I clicked it, and then everything was rotated upright just as it would've been with real paper. I'd never consciously noticed that button before, but I'd never needed it before, and I think that's a very good instance of user interface design if something is so obvious as soon as it's needed but unobtrusive otherwise. (For reference, if anyone wants to check, I use Foxit Reader.)
I thought the POET reading was quite an eye-opener. It talked about things that were very obvious but that, for some reason, don't get thought about much. I did the actual reading earlier this weekend and since then noticed a multitude of things that had now-obvious poor design. For instance, I tried to use my friend's new on-the-faucet water filter. I looked at it, and couldn't tell how to check if the water coming out was filtered or not. I asked him, and he said, "Just rotate the thing on its side." So I rotated the water unit to the other side, but that didn't seem to do the trick. I rotated it back; no better. Then he came over there and said, "No, you have to rotate the thing on its side," and rotated a knob that was designed so sleekly I didn't even realize it was there. Once it was rotated, there were little icons indicating that the water filtration was in effect, but that's no help to somebody trying to figure out how to turn it on in the first place. Then I started filling my cup, and on top of the unit was a flashing green light. Somebody else told me to stop doing that, as the flashing green light meant that the filter wasn't ready yet. Apparently, I was supposed to wait until the light stopped flashing before the filter was actually ready. How is somebody supposed to know that by looking, especially when the light that was flashing was green, the color of affirmation?
As for the storyboarding reading, I think that the three sections a plot is divided into are so general that they could be applied to almost any situation with the right amount of interpretation. It seemed like the reading didn't actually convey much of import about the process of storyboarding -- it just showed a few examples of it and repeatedly restated that the act of storyboarding is important. And the section on drawing was very unhelpful. It essentially said go to the library and check out some books then practice for a few hours a day. Surely we're not expected to do that before the upcoming lecture?
Alan Young - Feb 01, 2009 04:30:53 pm
Tuminello's "Storyboarding" was interesting to me because it clearly and concisely generalized the major phases of a story. In reflecting upon the movies, books, magazines, and other forms of media I have perused which had a story, I realized that the 7 basic elements of a "hero's journey" was applicable to any of the stories I have read. I think another point of the article was that it that a good job of prompting me to think about all the sources of visual story telling that goes on around me. Just about everything from video games to TV ads require careful planning starting at written formats like scripts and using the storyboarding concept. Also, I'm not an experienced artist and found the tips on drawing the human figure and gestures to be very enlightening, especially the tip that the average human is 8 heads high, and we can approximate each quarter of the human figure to be 2 heads high.
The "Psychology of Everyday Things" was a very enjoyable piece to read because it summed up many of the feelings I have had about everyday things and the design issues that I have had issues with. I think that even though many people are frustrated, they lose sight of the option to redesign as a solution to the problem. I think the fact that the object is an everyday thing makes it seem less worthy of attention to redesign. On the other hand, a very complex system such as a controls of a jet plane may involve more time and money than may be in the best interest of people to redesign. I think that in general, people are hesitant in redesigning something that works because they may feel it is not worth their time or energy. Thinking along the same lines, I see that a reason why the iPhone may be so popular is because it paid attention to the design and so even though it has many features and functions, it doesn't intimidate the average user/consumer. The concept most stressed by the article was visibility and I think that the iPhone does a good job of providing easy visibility access to features via its touchscreen. The clear visibility and mapping of icons to features on the iPhone's screen makes it a hi-tech device that minimizes the technology paradox where people have to experience a steep learning curve to use the technology.
Ling Chen - Feb 01, 2009 06:12:33 pm
I enjoyed reading the POET article. It really gets me thinking about all the little things around me. I never realized before how much we take some of the good designs for granted. I guess we hardly realize them because they are such good designs and fit so naturally into our everyday life. We do also put up a great deal with bad designs. Some of the problems the author described were things I also ran into at times, but never put much thought into them. I mean who want to remember all the multiple digit codes for a phone? And all those buttons on a so called multipurpose digital watch. How many machines we have that just have so many hidden functions we could care less about finding out? It really goes to show how important it is to do user testing when coming up with good designs.
I always loved a good story, so the second article was somewhat interesting too. I liked how a few simple frames of pictures can tell a story. I also like drawing, but drawing human has always been my weakness. It's so hard! I am not sure if the instruction was much of a help since I have kind of heard them before. It was still fun to read about though. I guess I will just have to remember them and put them into practice somehow. If there's anything I would like to take away from this second article, it would be: Show me, don't tell me! Pictures are worth a thousand words after all.
Denise Ngai - Feb 01, 2009 06:19:11 pm
Re: Adam Kauk --- you can rotate the pdfs in the reader; that's what i did. no printing necessary!
As for the readings, I personally enjoyed reading the Psychology of Everyday Things. I had never thought of the difficulties people have with everyday objects as a result of bad design. I typically blamed people's inabilities to figure out how things work on their own lack of understanding or laziness with regards to reading the manual. Hotel doors, such as those mentioned in the reading, however, do not come with a manual for the everyday consumer. We are expected to enter and exit those doors with no difficulty; however, as proven by the author's friend, the doors were very confusing as a result of attempting to make a clean, beautiful, and elegant design.
It seems that people do not pay much attention to the utility of an object as much as to the aesthetics of it. These two -- utility and aesthetics -- should in fact be considered together, hand in hand. Products should be easy to use and serve their purpose, but they should also be physically appealing to the consumer. Psychologically, we are attracted to pretty things. People tend to spend more money on products that are better looking than on those that do not look so appealing, even though they may actually prove more useful.
Good examples, I suppose, of products that take into consideration utility and aesthetics fairly well, would be the Macbook and the Iphone. Personally, I think the main appeal of these products is their clean, sleek aesthetic. However, they have also not received much complaint regarding their design in terms of utility. Therefore, it is easy to assume that these products are doing fairly well in both factors.
POET has made me greatly consider the design of the products I use on a daily basis and made me realize that it is not entirely the consumer's fault for his/her inability to operate a product but rather the design of the product should also be considered.
Timothy Yung - Feb 01, 2009 06:41:38 pm
The POET reading was very interesting because, having built user interfaces before, I can definitely see how there is a constant battle between new features and making sure they are easy to use yet not over-complicating the interface.
The POET reading raised an interesting point about how human errors are not the cause of accidents and that humans always behave rationally. Although I agree mostly, I have to question whether intoxicated or tired humans also behave rationally.
In any case, the POET reading's analysis of the telephone was very accurate because I myself did not actually understand how holding calls and forming multi-way conferences worked until I used those features on the iPhone. Apple was able to create the natural mapping by placing the functions next to other ordinary functions such as mute and speaker. First, this made those features seem like "any other feature" as opposed to some overly complicated feature that required instructions. Secondly, the feedback displayed on the iPhone when these features are what allowed me to understand how the features were used. Now I understand it for most phones.
The storyboard reading was interesting to me because before reading this article, I actually already made such sketches for designing web applications. This reading has confirmed that what I'm doing is the right thing to do.
Derek Liu - Feb 01, 2009 07:19:15 pm
The POET article mainly brought to my attention how many times I have failed using doors. It also opened made me reflect on how many electronic appliances I have had trouble with in the past as well as how many different assembly and operating instructions I have wrestled with in the past. The article also provided insight on over simplification creating more complicated problems. The slide projector, I thought was an interesting example of this; the designer wanted to create the simplest implementation possible but instead resulted in creating something more confusing. If he had just made two buttons, one for forward and one for backward there would have been no problems. The over complication of instructions obviously also creates problems (as in the telephone hold call example). This article has highlighted to me the importance of making things visible and well mapped in utilities and computer programs.
The storyboarding article was particularly useful for me mostly because I am taking an animation class. Since in my class we have not really gone over many of the aspects of formal storyboarding I felt this article helped me understand more about how I would create some of my future animations whether it is 2D or 3D animating.
Chao Michael Zhang - Feb 01, 2009 09:28:36 pm
I found the storyboard reading very interesting, since it points out so many obvious things in films we watch that we never take the time to think about. Likewise, the rules of thumb on human proportions is also very interesting to learn. I think these readings are good in that once we learn them, we can never look at things like cartoons or human figure drawings the same way again, since we know more about the background of what kind of thought goes into producing them.
Sean Ahrens - Feb 01, 2009 08:41:59 pm
I have heard that "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic in the field of product design, and I'm glad I got a chance to read at the very least this chapter. I strongly agree with Norman's critical view on "user-error". I have been taught, in the context of business communication, that "miscommunication is the speaker's fault" -- and I think this axiom applies very well to Norman's view of products. The appropriate translation would be that "mis-use is the designer's fault". And I think to a strong degree, this is a very valid statement. I will probably buy "The Design of Everyday Things" to read in my own time.
I found the storyboarding article to be much less about how a storyboard should be constructed, and more on how we should draw -- which disappointed me a little. I definitely can use guidance on drawing, but I was hoping to learn a little bit more about what are appropriate storyboarding techniques, etc. I felt like the article probably didn't give us too much useful information to apply to UI design -- but I guess I learned some useful stuff if I'm to go into film! :P
Jason Lo - Feb 01, 2009 03:15:06 pm
I think the first article exaggerates the problem too much. It is easy to find one or two examples of very bad user interface designs in commonly used objects. However he takes the telephone to a rather extreme by pointing out features that I personally have rarely if ever had to use. I think there are several good things to take from the POET article is the idea of natural mappings that correspond to actions, and the idea of an equal number of settings to the number of actions that can be performed. However, I think that having to look in a manual for not often used features is helpful. Some features are very rarely needed, but once needed they cannot be without. Putting them as their own button confuses regular users, for example, programs often have a preferences menu and advanced preferences menu, so as not to overwhelm users with the number of options available by separating the commonly needed ones from the not often needed ones. This requires surveys of user expectations and usage patterns.
I thought the storyboarding part was interesting, but targeted more towards watching a movie. The usage of storyboards in games seems more to create a cinematic feel and control what the user will see and the impact it brings. It is still helpful in creating user interfaces to see where things will be and what changes when certain actions are done, a series of sketches without much of the ideas of climax and satisfying conclusions is ususally enough.
Dwijgarg - Feb 01, 2009 10:13:58 pm
POET: The most interesting part about this reading was that although developers keep adding features to their products to make things easier for their users, they are in fact making things harder. The adding of more features to a product makes the user interface more complicated. For instance, one example that comes to mind is Photoshop. Adobe adds a lot of features to its products with every new release. However, in some aspects, it makes the user interface that is used with Photoshop much harder to understand and learn. One way to avoid this problem is to either improve the user interface when a product is updated, or improve upon already available features instead of adding more unnecessary ones.
Storyboard: Although a very interesting read, this article was not very in tune with my interests. It tells a lot about cartoons and storyboarding in the movies and cartoons that we watch. However, it does not particularly pertain to me or my interests.
Colin Downs-Razouk - Feb 01, 2009 10:20:23 pm
I enjoyed reading the POET article, but I'm not sure I learned a lot from it. First of all, it seemed outdated. I don't really have many problems with my phone, and the problems I do have my phone are completely unrelated to the problems that were described in the article. I also didn't really sympathize with the door dilemma. Doors are pretty straightforward, they even generally have signs about which way they go. I understand that these were just examples to put things in perspective, but the examples didn't really make it clear to me what the real problem was, or how I should avoid it when designing my own products. Second of all, some of the examples were simply examples of idiocy. I have no idea who would design a refrigerator and then lie about how the controls worked in the instructions. Also the example at the end of the article, the question about how you would design a TV/Radio/CD Player/Casette Player/Alarm Clock/Telephone seemed like it was just designed to waste his students' time. I don't mean to be harsh. It was an interesting article, from a historical standpoint.
I also enjoyed the storyboarding article. I am actually taking an animation class so this article served double duty, so I was happy to read it. I really like to draw, and the tips for drawing the human form will hopefully prove to be quite helpful. I thought the discussion of the difference between telling a story and showing a story was interesting. I tend to like to tell a story, only describing appearances when its important, but I can understand why someone would want to really show what they are talking about when they are describing a new product or something.
Anatol Tsang - Feb 01, 2009 10:54:39 pm
Incidentally, today I was unable to work a copy machine due to a combination of user error and bad user interface design.
I think that Norman has a really good point in critiquing user interface design as a source of problems in human interaction with daily, everyday things. His point is especially clear when he mentions all the different kinds of everyday things that are out there, and how it would take us a long time if it even takes us a minute to figure out how everything works. Norman also points out the inverse relationship between good user interface and complexity of the object in question. However, I think that only the most necessary functions should be simplified, and the more complex functions of an object can be hidden behind well-written menus or functions. For example, I was easily able to figure out how to take pictures, view them, and delete them with my new digital camera. I also was able to play around with it and figure out how to use basic editing tools with it, thanks to helpful menus. I think design of help menus, searches in help menus, and instruction manual design can be very important.
I wasn't as interested in the storyboarding article. Although I believe that the information given in the article can be useful, it seems that user interface designers should not be as concerned with these aspects of art. Then again, this is a person who is not good at art typing, so this may be an extremely biased statement. On the other hand, I wish the article focused more on how to get the story across. How to attract the user's attention with the three-part heroic story was interesting, but it seemed a little too simple. Perhaps there are various other themes that can capture attention in a video game. And yes, storyboarding may be an effective way to map out a user interface design.
Sean Hansen - Feb 01, 2009 11:10:08 pm
Really, the first chapter of POET is a formal declaration of what you do every day: when you use everyday things, you don't consider things that are designed well at all, but things that are difficult or ambiguous raise frustration and the mental note "that's dumb." Bad design follows naturally from this bias; you may be able to avoid others' errors, but there will always be many more errors you can make, and good design decisions are hard to recall. So, I'd be interested in what else POET has to say about doing things right.
As for the storyboarding article, I really think it could use a bit more meat. There are some interesting details, like the summary of the hero's journey plot, but I didn't get a whole lot out of the reading.
Yin-Zen "Johnny" Hwang - Feb 01, 2009 10:15:39 pm
damn. didn't know about the rotate button. so i flipped my laptop on its side to read. that reading was easy to read though. the most important idea in there is that of mapping and affordability. the best mappings are close to 1:1 and really intuitive, while affordability is a good way for making intuitive controls that don't require labeling.
for storyboarding, at first i was reading right to left because i thought it was a manga. whoops. i really like the idea of 2 columns, one for video and one for audio. however, the rest of the reading is just all about how to draw stuff specifically, which isn't too useful for this class.
Ian Hildreth - Feb 01, 2009 11:28:14 pm
I thought the Poet article was interesting to read, it made me think back to many of the consumer electronic items that I have used over the years that have caused frustration and angst because of their confusing design and their lack of visualization. Although its evident that this writing is outdated, its techniques and principles are very important to user design today. This article makes very clear the need for feedback, presenting the process of design and production as a loop - where the product needs to be used and tested, its feedback taken seriously, and design flaws worked through in future releases to truly make a product user friendly in today's world. I also thought the article makes a good point in the difficulties in doing this; how the designers and engineers must also work with the finance department and come to compromises to ensure a products success. Its sad to think that it takes 5 or 6 tries to get an idea right, yet the life of a product in industry has maybe one or two opportunities to hit home with the consumer, or else it fails. I also enjoyed the storyboard article; though I don't draw often, its techniques are useful and provide a good foundation to help communicate ideas through art, no matter what level of skill your abilities are at. I also thought it did a good job summarizing the hero's journey.
Adit Dalvi - Feb 01, 2009 11:45:05 pm
The POET reading brings to light a lot of the problems with modern day appliances and their general design. People just don’t know how to use the millions of features on them because either they are too lazy to read the instructions and learn them, or they just lack the technological know-how to work the machine. It’s hard for a designer to come up with new ideas for features because people always expect something creative while maintaining simplicity of use. If the product isn’t simple, people are displeased. If the product doesn’t have a lot of features, then people won’t buy it because the package has too much blank space under the “features” section. I thought the example of the telephone was over-used and could have been substituted with other examples. However, the main ideas of simplicity and visibility were very important and well brought out using good examples and without making the reading boring.
I didn’t find the storyboard reading of much use at all, but that might be mostly because I don’t have much experience in drawing. I thought the chapter on the elements of a story was boring because we’ve all seen movies and read books that have the same elements. The chapter on drawing the human body was a good read to get a sense of what to keep in mind when drawing, but it didn’t really teach you “how” to draw. This is predominantly why I didn’t find the reading of much use.
Cuong Ngo - Feb 02, 2009 12:27:11 am
I couldn't agree more with Norman on the importance of visibility in design. On one hand, Norman emphasized that "it is lack of visibility that makes so many computer-controlled devices so difficult to operate." On the other hand, too much visibility is not good either because it makes "the gadget-ridden, feature-laden modern audio set or video cassette recorder (VCR) so intimidating." An example from the chapter is the Italian washer-dryer combo. Even though the users are professional, they can't operate the machines comfortably. The husband, an engineering psychologist, doesn't want to go near it. The wife memorizes only one setting and ignores the rest. This uncomfortability is due to the multi-symbol controls on the machines. The designers should have spent some time studying users' responses to the interface.
Reading Tumminello's article helped me understand storyboarding in a more systematic way. Interestingly, I didn't know that storyboarding is widely used in many industries such as industrial and advertising design, and game development. It's also worth to mention the important role of stetching in storyboarding. Since "storyboards are a series of sketches that are used as a planning tool to visually show how the action of a story unfolds," good sketching produces good storytelling.
Mark Dhillon - Feb 02, 2009 12:25:22 am
I found the "Principle of Feedback" portion of the first reading particularly interesting. The author does a great job of explaining the different forms of feedback (like tactile and sidetone), and I can't help but think that this issue is very relevant because of the advent of touch screens on many personal electronics. One the one hand, apple gave up tactile feedback almost completely in their design. And just recently the blackberry phone came out with a sort of "mock" feedback in order to distinguish themselves from the competition. Which is better? I suppose the lack of tactile feedback on the screen gives apple an advantage on cost (less moving parts, and that they can make a single slab of glass for the screen), but on the other hand the user has to look at every single keystroke that he or she makes when pushing buttons. Perhaps later revisions of these devices will decide which method is better.
I enjoyed the storyboarding article because of a previous screenwriting class that I took. I don't think that it pertains much to GWAPs in general, but it was interesting to see the breakdown of the story's hero and how directly the narrative relates to the storyboards.
Nalditya Kusuma - Feb 02, 2009 12:21:35 am
The POET reading was pretty helpful--the author points out that what's called "human error" when something bad happens sometimes is not really the operator's error. Sometimes it is the flaws in the User Interface that causes it, either because it's too complicated to understand or it was designed without users' feedbacks. Lots of everyday life examples are given to show readers the difference it could make by making a bad/good interfaces. Couple points that Norman wants readers to get out of the reading: (1) good conceptual models to predict outcome , (2) visibility of features and how to adjust it, (3) easy mapping , (4) get lots of users' feedbacks.
I don't really get what the Storyboard articles have to do with the class though... Well, I DO understand that it is trying to say "pictures are important in designing somethin" but since MOST contents of the reading is about describing a story (has beginning,middle,end parts, hero journey, conflicts, etc etc) I just fail to see the connection with designing a software interface. To me, it's more of a reading for an English/Art class.
Meiying Li - Feb 01, 2009 10:55:26 pm
POET is really interesting. I have never thought that those mistakes I made and those equiptments I found hard to use was a mistake by the designer, not me as the user. But just like what the author says, saying is easier than doing. If we want more functions within a single device, we will need more controllers to make it clear and easy for the user to use. But if we put more controllers on the device, the user also faces a problem of taking time to look for the correct controller to use. How do we balance this?
I totally disagree with The Hero's Journey in Storyboarding. As an editor for a chinese fiction site for more than three years, I am strongly against the idea of keeping your creation within any frame. I have seen many successful examples of stories breaking the frame mentioned in this book. These stories, not neccessarily have a theme that is set at the very beginning of the story, usually attrack their readers by continuously introducing new themes and even new setups throughout the story. The conflict at the beginning of the story (like a kidnapping or a murder as mentioned in the book) can be completely irrelevant to the end of the story. Before readers see the solution to the unsolved problem that hooked them at the beginning, they usually find themselves hooked by a lot more new unsolved problems and the first one has become unimportant. A good story like this can actually take the readers' breath and make readers really unwilling to put down the book for a second. There are always creative writers trying out new forms of story. They might not be successful; but if they are, they are extremely impressive.
Chapter 13 of Storyboarding really worries me: will we have to learn how to draw human figures? I am really bad at drawing...
Chang Su - Feb 02, 2009 12:44:23 am
The Psychology of Everyday Things, despite its author's incessant whinings about the telephone, points out two important aspects of user interfact design: visibility and feedback. These matter not only in the design of physical devices, but also virtual ones. Looking around it is not difficult to find examples of design excellence. The classic Microsoft Office suite of programs, for instance, has the set of most important commands: "New", "Open", and "Save" as the first three buttons on the toolbar -- visibility. And when the "Save" button is clicked, a small unobstrusive icon flashes in the lower left corner informing the user that the file has indeed been written to disk -- feedback at its best.
The Psychology of Everyday Things also pointed out another very important guideline of interface design: the adherence to intuition. Take for instance the button, the ubiquitous component across all graphical operating systems, be it Windows or Mac or Linux. It mimics the look and behavior of a real-world button, making it so natural for its users to understand. If there is an award for the best design element in computer interface, the button would definitely win my vote.
Exploring Storyboarding is an informative read. It relates the use of storyboarding and techniques in drawing the human body more as facts than anything else, so I really have not much comments on it.
Chunwei Lai - Feb 02, 2009 01:53:51 am
The fault of "human error" falls into three categories: users, interfaces, and both. Some interfaces leads and actually promote user errors. It may be due to overly complicated interface, a lack of information, or other issues that can cause the user to make an error. Features of a program may also be underused simply because the interface does not make it available to the user in an easy fashion. Certain aspects of the "storyboard" reading seems like they would be something to have in the user manual rather than something as a developer's tool (except to communicate with the customer to determine needs). The use of flowchart is similar to use of storyboard but since interfaces are ideally self-explanatory they lose their appeal in certain situations.
Moonway Lin - Feb 02, 2009 02:11:18 am
The POET article was published in 1988, so it's not that old (21 years). In response to the complaints regarding the phone design, it's fortunate that we now have "smart phones" like the iphone, Blackberry etc. The companies that produced these smart devices really took great efforts to ensure good UI design that's as convenient for the end user as possible.
I had learned about storyboards when I took an intro to drama class in junior high. Connecting this article to UI design, I think it's important for good user interfaces to convey as much information via images and "visuals" rather than text. Users don't tend to like to wade through long paragraphs of text to learn how to use something. Instead, they'd rather learn how to interact with the interface by looking at a diagram, or reading keywords and short, simple instructions.
David Jiang - Feb 02, 2009 02:31:43 am
The POET article was quite intriguing. Reading it really brought my attention to the many things around me (with both good and bad designs). The new washing machine that my parents got, for example, has about 20 settings. Without reading much, I just told them to use the automatic default settings. But having reading this article, it makes me wonder how much cleaner our clothes could be, or how much more efficient the machine can run, or even how much detergent we can save from knowing how to customize our own settings base on what, and the amount of clothes we're washing.
It also made me appreciate all the well-designed items that we all take for granted. For example, digitals cameras are really self explanatory with pictures and good descriptions for each setting. Some cameras even include a tutorial setting teaching one when to use certain settings.
The storyboard reading was not as intriguing. As many of my peers have said, the article was too general ideas and flows of characters, but does not deal with specific ideas on the storyboarding process.
William Cho - Feb 02, 2009 02:58:32 am
Both readings were interesting, especially the one about storyboarding. It reminds me of how much thought and work goes into brainstorming and coordinating and planning out the scenes, the story, the characters, the presentation, the audio, etc.
The first reading, "The Psychology Of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, also had an interesting premise; that poor design is to blame, not us humans, for not being able to do simple things with simple, everyday objects in our everyday lives. He has great ideas and suggestions for better design and less headaches, like intuitive mapping of controls and their actions, and the idea of using feedback, illustrated in the telephone example with the tactile feedback, the auditory feedback (sidetone), and such. However, I don't think that all products should be 'dumbed down' just to satisfy people who don't want to read the manual. The designer should consider both the power user who will use every feature and the people who just want the basic features. Although perhaps that was what Norman was already saying...
Kevin Nakahara - Feb 02, 2009 03:48:02 am
I thought the POET article was definitely interesting to read, but at the same time seemed to be sort of paradoxical. It extols to merits of design simplicity and logical design flow, yet at the same time is rather verbose and overcomplicated in describing how to make things simple. Yet, I appreciate the roadmap it laid out (making things visible, conceptual model, etc), and it gives me a few things to keep in the back of my head.
The storyboarding article was also a fun read. I appreciate how it established a linkage between visual representation and storyline, and offered methods by which to bring the two sides together. The section on formatting the story itself was interesting in its parallels to methods of software engineering, such as those where classes, methods, etc are all planned before any code is written. By substituting the act of coding in place of establishing the story, a number of parallels can be made by linking coding and design.
Szu-Chun Mao - Feb 02, 2009 04:05:54 am
The Psychopathology of Everyday Things raises many important design issues in the modern world today. POET takes simple and universal everyday things as examples in order to show us the essential design principles that are missing. Those design flaws are common and are often overlooked. Therefore, we need to ensure a good conceptual model by constructing well-designed visible structure from affordances, constraints and mappings. After reading this article, I will definitely pay closer attention to everyday things’ design because a good user interface design should be build upon simple elements. Then use these simple elements and expand them into higher compatibility function for a more advanced user.
The storyboarding article is very helpful. I used to think storyboarding is a waste-of-time step that movie makers or designers have to go through because you don’t need those sketches in the final presentation. I thought it’s better to do it on computer as sketches and as the project progress, we modifies and improves the digital sketches until they become the final products. The discuss during our lecture make clear why paper sketches are good first prototype to have and this article “shows” us how to do it.
David Burban - Feb 02, 2009 04:26:05 am
The common storyboard flowchart from "Visual Storytelling and Storyboards" reminds me of an image I found on the internet one day.
Two of the most popular franchises are practically interchangeable by changing names of people, places, and weapons. The storyline is essentially the same.
Concerning the design of everyday things, the author brought up some good points. Sometimes having a smaller amount of buttons is worse than having a bunch of buttons for each function. For instance, BMW's iDrive system was almost universally met with scorn upon introduction. It was buggy, and made simple things, such as changing the radio difficult. To change the radio, you would have to move the eight way knob in one of the eight ways, followed by twisting the knob. Ironically, this process made it more difficult to do the basics, and distracted the driver from his or her main job - driving the vehicle.
As stated in the article, the design took a couple of irritations to actually work out. So now it is more or less usable, but still requires an instruction manual that matches a novel in size.
Matthew Can - Feb 02, 2009 04:33:10 am
The POET reading was quite an eye-opener to me. It raised a number of design and usability problems with everyday items that I have tolerated for years without consciously thinking that a design fix would eliminate the problem. I used to accept those problems as naturally unavoidable faults that the product had. Only after this reading did I realize that there is nothing natural about the usability problems with everyday products, that the problems can be fixed with the design of intuitive interfaces, and that there is no reason consumers be forced to use badly designed products. As a quick example, the alarm clock I have been using for years has the alarm button right next to the one that changes the time. Countless times have I accidentally changed the time on the clock while trying to set the time on the alarm. I cannot imagine what the designers were thinking or if they even bothered to test the device in a real, legitimate setting. In addition to user testing, designers should consider the user's conceptualization of the system, as the reading stated. The user's mental image dictates how they think the system works and how to interact with it. The designer should try to understand this by placing himself in the user's place. From that viewpoint the designer can create a product with a conceptual model that is simple and intuitive.
The reading on storyboarding gave a nice introduction to the art of storyboarding and the way in which the medium helps present ideas in a narrative. I enjoyed the short section on how to show something rather than merely tell it. It demonstrates the expressive power of storyboarding as a way to communicate ideas. The reading provided a nice overview of storyboarding and how to draw people, but I felt that it was too general to be of much use. I suppose it's a decent elementary reading for those who know nothing about how to draw people or who are unfamiliar with basic plot elements. Nonetheless, there is much more to be said about those topics.
Prahalika Reddy - Feb 02, 2009 04:40:03 am
The reading "The Psychology of Everyday Things" was very interesting; it made me think about everyday objects and their design differently than I normally do. However, I disagree with some of the things the author points out. Towards the end of the reading, the author praises a certain pen that he's used. He says that the subtle ridges on one side of the pen indicate which side to hold the pen on to get the best writing results. He also mentions that if a user doesn't hold the pen that particular way, the pen still functions, though not as perfectly. This was one of the few things in the chapter that the author actually approved of and praised for its design. On the other hand, in a picture earlier in the chapter, he shows some glass doors with horizontal handles, that are placed, not in the exact center, but more slightly towards the sides that open. The author claimed this was a horrible design because it wasn't obvious to the users which side of the doors actually opened. In my opinion, the pen's ridges and the door's handles are of the same subtlety and I don't quite understand how one product can be genius, while the other is simply abysmal. In fact, I think the doors are easier to use, because after one failed attempt, one would know which sides of the doors opened. On the other hand, one could use that pen for years before realizing that placing the pen's ridges in the upward direction gives the best writing.
However, the author does make some good points. For instance, some of the telephone systems he mentions sound quite ridiculous to use. Also, the refrigerator cooling system was very unintuitive, and pretty much not functional in the way it would seem.
The second reading "Exploring Storyboarding" was also very interesting. It was different to see storyboarding put to so many uses. I've also never seen such a process involved into creating the storyboard. I didn't realize that even in writing there are different ways to "tell" your story and to "show" it.
The chapter on drawing the human form is also quite different. All the techniques about how to draw various parts of the human body were surprising. Even after reading the chapter on storyboarding, I don't think I quite understood the importance of proportioning things properly, as I understood after reading this chapter.
Phiroath Chan - Feb 02, 2009 05:05:43 am
What i got out of the first reading "The Psychology of Everyday Life" were 2 important principles of design for Understandability and Usability. The first principle deals with providing a good conceptual model. I agree with the authors description of how a good conceptual model should allow the user to be able to predict what his/her actions will do. If the model can somehow portray to the user the correct way of using the object without the use of verbal instructions then the model is to me a success. The second principle incorporates making things visible. I think visibility, affordance, mapping, and feedback all add to make a successful system or object. A problem that was brought up with visibility was that if their are more features than there are buttons then the object loses points on visibility because now one must come up with a way of combining multiple buttons and that almost guarantees confusion. A designer who understands the affordance of knobs, plates, balls and such will greatly increases the chance of success of his product. A flaw a designer can run into that deals with feedback is when there are more features than there is feedback. How am I suppose to understand what each button or switch does if the product or appliance fails to communicate that information to me?
Raymond Young - Feb 02, 2009 03:54:43 am
In POET, even though many of the points Norman makes are very silly (i.e. the "R" on the phone that he never figured out what it meant?... uh, how about Redial?...I suppose it may have been a new feature then.), there are some important design considerations he discusses when developing a new product. Although the general ideas about what to consider in a design he presented were very useful, I don't think it's possible, necessary, or useful to determine the psychology of everyday things as concretely as he often did in this chapter, e.g. when he talked about the specific purposes of certain design structures like slots and knobs. Conceptual models, in the other hand of my opinion, are much easier to convey than to create a directory of structures and their purpose. Conceptual models are a huge part of making things intuitive for the user; but I don't believe that the design of everyday objects -- objects which provide pretty simple operations -- need to be completely apparent before the user even attempts to use it. However, it is good to make it easy for the user to build the conceptual model within a short time (relative to how long the intended use the product is) of experimentation in which the user "plays" with the object, and develops the mapping that Norman speaks of. The ease of conceptual model could be achieved by assigning different results that caused by very distinct actions. In this way, the user forgets that the interface is there and muscle memory lets him/her start to bypass the *thought* of performing actions, and allows him/her to simply will the results "without having to think about it". This is when actions become "second nature"; I think that the faster one can achieve the quality of second nature for their users, the more intuitive their design is.
Another thing that Norman goes into detail about which I'm not sure is very relevant is when he goes off the need for a "hold" button. The "hold" button is useful, and so are many other buttons, but sometimes he makes it seem as though everything a product is capable of doing should be completely obvious. In the case of the telephone, too many buttons that serve only one function can cause trouble. I've stood in lines at fast food joints and watch the cashier try to find a button for a few seconds, and then ask somebody else how, to add a bean burrito to my order. Now this cashier could have been new, but I think that a simple interface is just as important as making functions obvious; too much visibility and the user gets overloaded with visual input. Also, a lot of the things Norman talks about requires a little bit of training. For instance, secretaries should receive training when they are first hired on how to use the telephones. Also, he never addresses the idea of logic. A "pre-programmed pick-up group" is probably something along the lines of a group of telephones that are programmed beforehand to be able to pick up the same line. Or the idea of solving the puzzle of getting stuck between two sets of doors. It's a boolean operation!: The hinges are on one side of the door, so naturally one tries pushing the other side of the door if their first choice doesn't work.
But, I really liked the overall ideas presented: conceptual model, mappings, and things that make the use of something more intuitive.
In response to Tumminello's article, I never really realized how big a part story boarding plays in the visual design of a finished visual story. It is a low-fidelity implementation of the screenplay (which is like pseudocode). It gives a perspective to the script, and links it from the realm of imagination to a shot which has framing, movement, and composition which make the ideas work in a theatre. The hero's journey is also a reference one can use for game design which has characters with objectives.
Victor Lum - Feb 02, 2009 05:44:19 am
Like Norman, I too have struggled with many simple everyday things, like doors and watches. I always thought I was just an idiot for not being able to use things that everyone else seemed to use so easily. After reading the POET article, I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who doesn't know how to operate the everyday things in my life. And it isn't even entirely my fault; it's also the designer's fault for not making the controls intuitive enough for me figure out just by looking and assuming things are where I think they are. In regards to the storyboarding article, I never really knew how important sketching people was to storyboarding. I always figured stick figures were good enough, because they're just trying to show what a scene will look like. But it seems like what the person is doing is often a crucial part of what makes the scene work, from small facial features to big gestures.
Alexei Baboulevitch - Feb 02, 2009 05:34:37 am
Storyboarding: Storytelling is so prevalent in our culture that it's hard to think about the underlying mechanics objectively. Dissections like this bring to light the "tricks" used to create compelling narratives, to which we are often oblivious. "The Hero's Journey" is interesting for the same reason. Discovering these underlying truths is very satisfying because we suddenly become aware of a pattern that was invisible just a moment ago. I suppose this is why TVTropes is so addictive.
POET: Very interesting reading - I'll definitely be checking out Dr. Norman's other books. The fridge example was interesting because it glanced the issue of abstraction. Even if the system model isn't the same as the conceptual model, proper abstraction can make the (often overly complicated) conceptual model transparent. (Of course, this wasn't the case with the fridge - the abstraction pointed to a system model that didn't correspond to the fridge's actual operation.)
Mapping multiple controls to single buttons may be "bad design", but sometimes it might be unavoidable. My watch's buttons have many functions, but generally correspond to "set" (slightly recessed to avoid accidental presses), "mode", "start/stop", and "reset". It's not intuitive, but I'm not sure it's possible to simplify any further.
The issue of mapping and perception is interesting in relation to action video games. Very often, the underlying rules of a game are not explicitly described, and the players have to figure them out as they go. Can I jump over this fence? Crawl through this ditch? These rules are often very unintuitive: an invisible wall or small fence can impede progress, a small fall can kill the player immediately, a slightly sloped wall can prevent the player from going up. This is especially frustrating in games where one item - a door, for instance - can have more than one function, such as "usable" and "decoration". Whereas bad design in Dr. Norman's case led to distrust and confusion, here it leads to loss of immersion.
Anjana Dasu - Feb 02, 2009 06:52:41 am
The POET reading clearly underscored the design tradeoff between (additional) features and immediate usability. It reminded me of something I heard in class (can't remember if it was said by one of the professors early on or if it was in the Deep Dive video)-- eventually innovators have to stop adding new features to their products and release them. Iterating through the design cycle and updating a product based on user feedback can be beneficial in determining both what features of the existing set are necessary (as well as the usability/accessibility of those features) and what additional features could be necessary. I think that from this standpoint software might have an edge over certain everyday things. Products like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are routinely updated every few years, while refrigerators, on the other hand, are slow to change (after the advent of the side-by-side fridge/freezer, there have been no major updates in our lifetime). I think that a solution to the problems of everyday things is to go through versions and analysis. Take the Ideo innovators-- they redesigned the shopping cart (everyday object) in 1999 (if I remember correctly), but even if their design was great, it's not what is available in the supermarket today. If that particular product had been made available for user testing maybe it would be different today, 10 years later.
The storyboarding reading was fun. It's interesting to look at user interfaces from this perspective-- not just games but also how a user's interaction might be with a product. I wonder, though, to what extent storyboarding is used in developing games in the industry. I am sure it is used in action video games, but I wonder if it was used in the GWAPs that we saw in class or for that matter a game like Wii tennis.
Aaron Hong - Feb 02, 2009 04:00:12 am
I agree with Donald Norman on how the design of a certain product facilitates mistakes. There are certainly frustrations with using everyday products, but I found it funny that he had a section on "The Paradox of Technology." Norman notes "added complexities arise to increase our difficulty and frustration" and "the paradox of technology should never be used as an excuse for poor design." If there is anywhere to rant about the poor design of my LG Chocolate due to the implementation of the touch buttons (technology) on the front of the phone, it would be here. There are so many miscalls, mispresses, and other mis-actions that has caused me mis-ery. However, I should refrain and just acknowledge that this paradox exists and it is interesting that we see it everywhere.
For the second reading, I thought it was interesting how it was basically an art lesson (especially the one on human proportions). The material was not to unfamiliar from my high school and college days. However, I do find it useful for any beginner because drawing skills are essential to good communication.
Salman Rahman - Feb 02, 2009 08:16:41 am
I really enjoyed both readings for today. Beginning with the Psychology of Everyday things, I always knew that that there are things that we use everyday that we don't really know how to use. For example, the microwave is much more complex than I know how to take advantage of. There are a myriad of settings and options, yet I always just use the "Cook Time" option and type in how long I want it to cook for. I don't think I even use the defroster option since I'm not exactly sure how. But I had never considered that fact when I'm sitting in the designer's seat! When designing, I always think that whatever features I am implementing, the user will take full advantage of and will be intuitive for him or her. I thought that Carol Chen's analogy of natural mapping with a flight simulator was very insightful. I too am very used to inverting and it feels very natural. However, if I really think about it, it naturally makes more sense that if you push up that you go up.
As for the second article, I also found it to be very interesting. Especially the fact that the three part story-line is so ubiquitous and successful. In response to Kevin Huey's comment, I also made the connection between "showing vs. telling" and "active vs. passive voice" in writing. It seems that telling waters down the power and imagery of your storyboarding just as the passive voice waters down the power of your writing.
Siddharth Shah - Feb 02, 2009 08:52:22 am
I really enjoyed the POET chapter. Norman says that there are about 20,000 everyday objects, but it would be interesting to note exactly how many everyday objects we have. I'd also like to see what percentage are poorly designed or can be easily improved. I especially liked the example of the two different door handles, one to signal pushing and one to signal pulling.
About the second article, I have always been a big believer in the power of pictures. The use of pictures in storyboarding is a natural application of them and one that I support entirely. I think it's great that we will be doing some storyboarding. Also, my 8th grade English teacher's "thing" was always, "Show, don't tell." Good to see he wasn't completely crazy :)
Shendy Kurnia - Feb 02, 2009 09:54:56 am
I enjoyed reading the first reading. It kind of opens my eyes that everyday things can frustrate people. I seldom have such experience myself. However, I think this reading contradicts the reading from previous lecture in a way. Previous reading suggests 'requirements' to brainstorm that is to design things. One of the points is to be free, to come up with lot of ideas and not to worry whether it is a good idea or not. POET reading, though, sounds kind of offensive to the designers of the objects mentioned in the reading. It somewhat scares me in designing; I will be extra careful not to design things badly. It can be seen from different angles. In one way, I think it will limit people who read this book in creativity. On the other hand, it makes designers aware that sometimes things lack of essential over not-so-essential aspects; for example, on the door example in the reading, the designer wants to have a beautiful doors, but he/she puts aside the easiness and obviousness of using the door itself.
Sum Sum Wong - Feb 02, 2009 09:45:22 am
For me, POET is the most interesting reading of this class till now and I really enjoy reading it. The author discussed the bad influences brought by bad user interface designs in a funny, imaginable and memerable way so that the image he described can stick in readers head for a long time. The most memerable part in the reading is the "visibility" of a design. Most important features or features that users always expect should be put in a very visible position and can be accessed in a simple way so that it would not cause any trouble when users attempt to use it. Lack of visibility might lead to incorrect use by the users which would result in error, or even breaking of the machine(because the machine is not designed to be used like that). The terrible result caused by improper use makes visibility to become the first priority when designing a new product. The same idea can apply on computer games and softwares also. Improper use although might not cause in breaking of the computer, but at least it will increase the opportunity of having a system error or lead to bugs that might terminate the program unexpectedly.
Eric Hernandez - Feb 02, 2009 09:58:21 am
POET is just one of those books that everyone can relate to. Whether it be his refrigerator or awkward phone system, the author sees so many user interface design flaws in the world; even ones as simple as doors. Sadly, even I have similar problems with doors. Why put a handle on the side of a door that must be pushed, not pulled? Intuition should be the first consideration in any simple device. Like the example Norman gave about pilot flying planes, there are indeed some systems which should not rely solely on being intuitive, but most systems, whether on a computer or otherwise, have no excuse to have such complex interfaces.
As interesting as it was the Storyboarding reading does not seem to be quite as relevant as the POET reading, though still useful. Storyboarding techniques, as described in the reading, could be very useful for showing the steps needed to perform an action in the design stage of a user interface. The "show me, don't tell me" aspect of storyboarding however is where the difficulty begins. It is a good slogan to 'try' to stick by, but does not seem like a reasonable goal in design. For example, a storyboard could be generated from use cases, but those use cases themselves are 'telling' the designers what is needed.
Joseph Tsay - Feb 02, 2009 10:17:27 am
I enjoyed the POET article, and felt that it brought up some valid, though outdated, points. I really agreed with the idea that perhaps features that are very rarely or never used should be hidden as to not obstruct usage of more commonly used features. I also found the storyboard reading interesting, and felt that the techniques it describes, though general, could definitely be utilized both in writing scripts for skits or short films, or in game design.
Alexander Cho - Feb 02, 2009 10:33:49 am
The POET article was a real eye-opener and quite amusing to relate with his struggling dealing with bad Interfaces (being trapped by doors, a one button controller). I never realized how many everyday objects we deal with every day, and how specific design choices allow usability. It really emphasizes the importance of testing with users and getting feedback because like the article said, many of the designers had good intentions to satisfy users but just never took the time to test them out. The Storyboarding article was quite interesting too. I never realized that this technique could be used to designing user interfaces, I would think they would be only for movies, but I see how they are applicable when sketching and designing. I also agree that "Showing" is much more interesting, engaging, and informative than "Telling".
