Five experience designers can improve habits

I have participated in UXDAY2012 activities, that is, designing Shanghai2012, and the process of activity is to go to Zhongshan Park to observe the old people in parks, as well as visits to old people's homes and so on, through activities to find can be designed to help the elderly build a better life experience place. The activity is really wonderful, and I also found in the whole process 5 experience designers can improve the habit, then I will summarize the methods and experience, share to everyone, I hope you can get help.

The result of user situational observation is feelings or conclusions, not facts.

participate The first step is to visit Zhongshan Park and the old people's home to observe the behavior of the elderly, and so we will collect information on the blackboard. On the blackboard, I saw information such as "negativity and pessimism",want to socialize,loneliness, "passion for attention", but it seemed to me that the information was not enough to be the high-quality information needed to build a situation.

The first step in experiential design is to create a situation that is as real as possible in such a context as to create as real a problem as possible (problem), so that a real situation needs real material to be built. When you say, "Old people are interested in being paid attention," you are based on what comes to this conclusion--we need a story that really happens.

I have similar findings about "keen attention", and I am more of a "story": The leading old man will fold their newspaper into chunks of paper, put them in their pockets, and tell them to the young people who are watching them. This is a "story", not an "inference".

The situation should be based on the "story" rather than on an arbitrary "inference", there are enough such a true story, can make our situation more plump, so that the problem or opportunity to find, will become affixed and the needs of users.

If possible, express these little stories in a sketched form (or photo), put them on the wall, decorate a situational room and design in the room.

This is a case in which the service design Melbourne saw all the "stories" posted around a model and furnished a situational room.

Replace the sensory sense of the user with your own sensory senses

In the nursing home, as a group of people with superior life, we naturally have a preconceived judgement of the whole environment, and in brainstorming, many people find that "a lack of well-being", "damp and dark helplessness", "lack of social help" and so on.

Many sensory perceptions of the environment are subjective and not based on a true Story (insights)

Maybe some old people think so too, but as users and situational researchers, we can not use their sensory experience to replace the user's sensory feelings, here, we also need a variety of stories to support these sensory evaluation.

The sensory perception of the situation comes from feedback about each interaction. So what we need to think about is the interaction between the old and the environment, for example: The armrest of the aisle, the handrail of the washroom, the switch of the lamp, the bed, the wheelchair, the armrest of the door, the seat and so on, these are the interactive contacts (touchpoint), and the whole experience of all the contacts constitutes the evaluation of the whole situation.

And we as designers, for the first time to come to this environment, the overall context of the evaluation only from the visual, smell, and compared with the past experience, and not personally understand those old people every day in contact with the interactive contacts, then our sensory judgments are inaccurate.

Insensitive to current solutions

The best way to find out about user problems is to study existing solutions, because in the vast majority of cases, as long as the solution that is still in use, there must be a problem solved or solved, study them, nature can dig out the real problems.

And I have observed that many of us are more likely to communicate directly with older people and ask them what their problems are, how they feel, and are not sensitive to existing solutions. This is not to say that direct communication is unimportant, but that understanding of existing solutions helps to understand the real needs of the user, and it is interesting that most of the user will be accustomed to forgetting the common tools around him to solve the problem.

Because of the limited time, I observed some existing solutions to the old man's side, for example, fitness equipment, I see because in the outdoors, the fitness device rust, there is an old man to exercise, but also need someone to help her grasp some of the high handle, note that these are observation results, to do is to faithfully record, Instead of making judgments, other solutions include alarms, daily medicine boxes, televisions and remote control machines, screen doors, etc.

These are some of the solutions I've taken, and there are real problems behind each existing solution that are being addressed to varying degrees.

If time is ample, we should conduct a complete analysis of all the solutions that are used around the elderly, and the results should contain the problems that each solution should solve, what difficulties (improvements) are being used, and whether there is a link between the solutions (innovation points).

Once the solution map is complete, you will have a complete understanding of the target audience and, of course, the best way to understand the solution is to experience it personally.

I haven't figured out why.

I see the most serious problem is the obsession with the solution. In my opinion, creativity means discovering and defining a user's real problem, not even solving it--discovering and defining the problem is at the heart of all design, and when you find the problem, the best thing to do is to solve it with an existing thing rather than recreate it.

This obsession has not yet figured out why this is the way it is now, and is beginning to wonder why not. When we talk about homes for the elderly, before we even think about the "dark, helpless, social barrier" of why we are now, we immediately begin to think about how to make this place "happy, vibrant, sunny and full of joy."

The core of the matter is that it is not certain that it is a problem to begin to try to solve the problem, so it seems to me that it assumes a huge assumption of risk. Before you go into the discussion of the solution, you should be clear about two questions: Is this a problem? Is this a problem that we should solve first? If these two questions are not answered well, unless the luck is great, the final result is to solve a problem that is not a problem at all, or solve the problem that should not be solved now.

Unwilling to do small

Many people are passionate about subversive design rather than making small improvements that equate creativity. My understanding of this problem is that when you don't define typical users, scenarios, and specific problems they encounter in a scenario, instead of a broad assertion in place of the design direction, the design becomes huge.

If your design challenge is how to make old people happy, your design is likely to become rambling, and if your design challenge is how to get older Wang, who organizes old age activities in Zhongshan Park, to better publicize their community and make more people participate, your design may become practical and concrete.

It may be said that then the things you design will become narrow, this is limited innovation, it is not, when you go into the old people's situation, to comb out more based on the real story of the design challenges, such as: How to let the old people's homes to remember his favorite TV program; How to get him to exercise his fingers How to encourage the community participants in Zhongshan Park to support more community activities and so on, this series of small design challenges are resolved, nature is the whole experience of ascension, nature is a big thing.

The mental model (mentality) needed for design is defined as "achievable" (rationality) in experiential design, while it is not unreasonable to define the link of discovery as "creativity" (creativity). Creativity should be embodied in the process of discovering specific problems and translating them into specific design challenges, and the design process should be to the point, the most taboo, no commercial and technical support of the design does not produce any value.

Say more than painting

In expressing the solution, I seem to be back in the H company's demand discussion site, either everyone is talking, or just listen to one person, others dare not say, no one uses any visual tools to lead the discussion, and then I drew several sketches of the solution to get the endless discussion back on track.

That's why we pay more attention to visual guidance--if we can build the framework of the design process in a visual way, use the whiteboard as much as possible, consistently write the things that have been agreed on the whiteboard, and use the color of the stickers to organize and validate the information in a timely manner. To design and display the same design challenges in groups, avoiding the design being kidnapped by people who are eloquent and have strong aura.

The bottom right corner of the picture is our final storyboard, adding some sketches to make communication more efficient, and the other two graphs show the process visualization that we do when we do workshop, using sketches, whiteboards, and putting the process products on the wall at any time.

Written in the last

I can understand that this kind of activity does not need too many rules and regulations of the design method to limit, this is just some of my thinking and experience to share, does not mean that everyone is not qualified designers.

In addition, thanks to Techyizu for organizing such a good event, I used to take part in the design Jam at Oxford, which has a link where everyone needs to provide a role when registering: such as designer, developer, or strategist, To ensure that each design team has sufficient balance for reference. But this global activity did not have the user research link at that time, but it is this activity that the thorough user carries on the research really let me learn a lot of things, thank everybody's effort, also hope to see similar activity in Beijing in the near future.

Last

If you find that this article is actually six habits instead of five habits, then you really do not have the top five habits except the above, the designer should improve the sixth habit: not counting. In any case, at least you look carefully, you should thank you.