Project Summary

This is it, we have arrived at the end of the course. It is now time to look back on what we have accomplished the last couple of weeks. It all started with five individuals, all getting together with a goal to make a good product, but we were not quite certain where we would start, nor where we would finish.

At our first group meeting, it quite quickly became obvious that the entire group wanted to make an app of some sort. However, we were not quite sure which group of visitors we wanted to target. So we sat down and brainstormed - we scribbled down every single group of visitors we could think of, and what sort of an application would be suitable for that group. We came to a conclusion that tourists were a target group that had a lot of potential, and a group we figured we could make something useful for. Hence, we decided to make an application targeting tourists.

Next up was deciding what functions the app should have. We figured that the absolutely best way to get an understanding of this would be to conduct actual interviews with tourists at a museum. As a group we wrote down a bunch of open-ended questions which were designed to get as much information as possible out of the interviewees without putting words in their mouths.

During the previous reading seminar we had learnt a lot about how to make observations of target groups. We decided (apart from conducting interviews) that using the method “Fly on the wall” we would manage to get a lot of information from tourists, without having to interfere with their visits.

From the interviews and observations we got an understanding of what the tourists felt was lacking in the Swedish museum scene. For instance, the tourists felt that it was difficult gathering information on how to get to the museum. They also felt that the exhibits lacked information - that the small amount of information on each exhibit just wasn’t enough and it was not available in other languages than Swedish and English. This forced them to take tour guides if they wanted to know more about the exhibitions.

It was also at this point we decided that we were going to design our product having a user-centered design in mind. In hindsight, we realise that we should have made several more user tests in order to completely establish what the users’ needs were, and how we could accomplish that with a result as good as possible. User-centered design, meaning that the focus of the entire design process should be the user and the user’s needs, is something we half-heartedly followed, but would have liked to accomplish even more. Many decisions that were made during the design process were made by ourselves, which indicates that we had some sort of mix between both user-centered design and genius design.

At this point we felt that we had gathered somewhat insufficient information, partly due to the fact that five interviews does not really make us see the whole picture. We decided to do some further research online. It became very obvious, however, that the information we had gathered held true all over the world, which convinced us that we were on the right track.

The next step was to create personas and scenarios. This would work as a tool in order to fully understand our future users and what situations could arise that required our app. We created two different personas, as well as two different scenarios for each persona. This entire part of the design process was very rewarding because it helped us concretize the project. It was also at this time we created pain points, which is a method of determining where to put the focus by prioritizing different problems. What needs were there, and how could we fulfil them for our users? As a group this is where we finally got a clear picture of what the final product should be able to do - it made us share the same vision of the product.

We now knew what product we were creating and the functions it needed, but we had to come up with a design. Once again we put our heads together and brainstormed. During that week’s exercise we created two different designs - one which was extreme and crazy, enabling us to think outside the box, and one which was a bit more conventional. After the exercise we created yet another design. We took the best from each individual design and put together a “Final design: draft 1”. This was something close to what we wanted, but we understood that it would have to go through several iterations in order to become as good as possible. We also created a prototype which was somewhat interactive. For the time being we were quite happy with the product, so we took it to the next exercise and got some feedback from another group.

The feedback we received was very useful to us, because we now knew what could be improved. For example we got the feedback that it could be made a bit more intuitive by changing the order of our menu, that we could change the layout of some things and so on. All this was something that we took with us to the next group meeting where we improved our product having the feedback in mind.

At this point we also had a reading seminar where we read about different “laws” that could be applied to our product. After the reading seminar we also implemented user tests to see what actual users felt about our product. To read more about this step of our process, see our last blog post.

And here we are - the final presentation is tomorrow, and we have yet one iteration of our prototype to show the exercise group. We are, as a group, very content with what we are going to present. We feel that it has been very useful to learn about all the steps that are involved in a design process, and understand that this is something that can be applied outside the university. But we are aware that there is a whole lot more to learn, and we are eager to get out there to learn and design more things.

Think-aloud summary

To test our application with users who haven't used the application before, we created a couple of test scenarios so that they could try it out and we could observe and see how easily navigated the app was. We told the users to do a think-aloud, meaning that they say everything they think when they take action and make a decision while navigating within the app.

The first screen the user is met by in the app is a screen with a bunch of flags, which represent the language in which the app and all the information will be in. Directly after choosing a language (by clicking on a flag) [intuitive to click flags, no text], the user is taken to the Exhibitions screen. This was a little confusing to a couple of users, so we're thinking of adding a sort of Welcome screen after the language selection, so that the users are introduced to the application properly.

The first task was "Using the application, how would you do to find your way to the museum?" So after choosing their language, all of our users pressed the three lines in the upper left corner, signaling that there is a menu to be reached. Here, we had a couple of different results where some users pressed "Museum Map", or "Info" instead of "Get Here", probably because the word "map" was in the title - something they were looking for. We might have to rethink our titles to better match the initial thought of the user.

The second task was to find information about the dinosaur with the longest neck. Our users' reactions here were pretty much the same. They clicked the menu button, and then "Exhibitions", chose the dinosaur exhibition and found the one with the tallest neck by looking at the pictures of the different exhibits. We also had a user that said that he would either do it this way, or by going to the museum map (which he accidently went to during the first scenario) and selecting the dinosaur exhibition. One user went to the menu and pressed "Info" at first, only to see that the link didn't go anywhere at the moment, but then went for "Exhibitions".

The third task was to change the language of the application. This is where most people had difficulties, as they would go directly for "Settings" in the menu, instead of the direct link "Language". This is probably because most people are used to finding those kind of options within the settings, and not directly via the menu. We talked this over and we're thinking of maybe keeping the intuition from the very first language selection screen, and making a flag in the menu instead of the title "Language". Not only is it visually compelling and intuitive - it also helps users that accidently chose the wrong language at first to find their way back to the language selection menu by only having to interpret icons on their way.

The fourth and final task that we let the users do was to try and find their way (imagining that they were inside the museum) to a specific exhibition. At this point, most of our users found their way to the menu and then "Museum Map" at once, seeing as they had been in the menu a couple of times already so they had learned what they could do from there. Some tried to find their way by going to “Exhibitions”, but later realized that it didn’t work and that “Museum Map” was the way to go.

All in all, the think-aloud sessions was a great way to test our application out and see how other people react when they use it. We have come to the conclusion that we have a couple of things that we can improve and implement in our design, hopefully making it easier to use.

Some of the users expressed a need for a return button to make the navigation easier. This is something our critics also mentioned at the last exercise and of course we have taken it into consideration. We haven’t made any final decisions about it yet, though, because we are still discussing whether we should have an actual button for it or if it should be a motion, for example swiping the screen from left to right.

What can we take from these user tests, looking at the different “laws” that we learned last week? Well, first of all, every single user directly understood that the 3 lines was the menu, which is because it is (in today’s society) intuitive that a menu will look like that, and that makes it a so called standard.

We also incorporated Hick’s law, since they had a limited amount of options on whatever screen they currently are on, it felt like the users found it easy to point to the menu (since it is one of very few options), and then navigate from there - once again because there are a limited amount of options. The menu currently has six options, which Hick’s law says is good (that it is easier to navigate two menues of five, rather than one menu of ten). It also follows “The Magical Number Seven” that it is easier for the human mind to remember options of seven (plus minus two) - and guess what? Six is right in that range!

One thing we can look further into, based on the user tests, is Tesler’s Law of the Conservation of Complexity, which basically says that everything should be dumbed down as much as humanly possible to avoid confusion. There was some confusion when it came to things such as getting to the museum and getting to a specific exhibit. So we need to look into how we can make those options even simpler.

Reading Seminar 2 - Adam Nyberg

This week’s reading had a lot to do with how to take your design from a concept to prototype with much focus on fine tuning during the process. Much of what is discussed in the chapters is something our group has worked on, or at least touched, but there is also a wide variety of techniques I feel we should use as we continue our work. When working on ideation, or how to concepts are to be executed, we should definitely look into affordances, how intuitive the design feels before using it, and what feedback should be given and when.

There are some things I wish we would have done better before we created a final design but I hope at least that we might be able to still make use of them. One of these is the use of metaphors which I feel could really give our design a unique touch. Another technique I would like to get started on is a moodboard. By using a moodboard we can collectively define how we want our design to “feel”, another aspect that can set it aside from other groups’ designs.

In the near future I feel we should start applying techniques from the chapter on prototyping. We have started on a prototype already, but we have just been creating it “on the fly” and using our own experiences. At our last presentation we presented a sort of low-fidelity prototype so I don’t think a high-fidelity prototype is far off.

Question for the seminar: Is Hick’s law something we should take into account for our design?

Reading Seminar 2 - Marcus Frisell

The chapters we read this week was mostly about concepts and how to create them. We have already gone through multiple iterations of design concepts but maybe not reached all the way. There are several different methods we could try to refine and better our ideas and concepts and to do so we can’t skip steps on the way. We have to go through the whole process. From strategy to research to observation, analysis and so forth.

A way of creating concepts that I think most people, if not everyone already have tried is brainstorming. When you brainstorm you come up with multiple ideas, most of them are not very thought out but that’s not the point here. The purpose of the brainstorm is to generate as many ideas as possible as fast as you can. More ideas gives you a broader view and feature-set of the concept.

When we went through this face we didn’t really know about all the different approaches and ways to improve our concept and therefore we missed some, possibly, critical information and ways to analyse our ideas that we probably should take into consideration. We went from brainstorming to refining to prototyping. We should probably do, as Niklas said, take a step back and take a closer look at what we have accomplished to see if we can improve our concept some more.

Some things we should have in mind when we prototype in a detailed manner is both Fitts’s- and Hick’s law.

Fitt’s law determines how fast the user can accomplish tasks when moving from a start location to a target location. This law is determined by two things, distance between the points and the size of the target. A bigger target is easier to hit and therefore makes it easier for the user to navigate around.

Hick’s law explains the time correlation between decisions and number of choices they have. Interestingly users makes decisions faster in bigger menus than multiple smaller ones.

These are things we didn’t consider before that we probably should implement into our concept.

An interesting question i think is: In which ways can we simplify design to please users?

Reading seminar 2 - Linn Lahtinen

The content of this week's literature was mostly information about different methods and approaches you can use during a design process, covering almost everything from ideation to prototype and development. There was many new concepts and terms I have never heard about before and reading about it all made me realize that there are a lot more things to think about when you go through a design process than I could have imagined.

The first chapter covers brainstorming, how to do it and how to keep it organized. It tells us to be open-minded, not to think rationally because every idea counts in this stage, and that you should document and save all ideas. I think the most important point, though, is that it’s hard to come up with ideas when you’re forced to, and therefore ideas often come when you’re doing something else. Because of this it is good to always carry something you can write down your idea on with you when you’re in a brainstorming process of a project.

The second chapter, which is about refinement, contains a lot of the new terms I mentioned earlier. I can’t help to feel that the meaning of many of these terms are really simple and obvious, it’s just the fact that you haven’t had a word for it before. There is of course also concepts I’ve never thought about before and I can barely even understand now. But overall, I think all of it is very helpful and educational, and that it makes the design process easier and more palpable.

The last chapter of this week's literature is about interface design and prototyping. As mentioned in the chapter, there is a lot to think about when making a prototype. For example, there is several different types of prototypes, such as low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes. It’s not only important to choose what kind of prototype you want to make, but also to make the testers understand so that they can focus on the right things. At the end of the chapter something called agile methodology is brought up, which means that you take a big task and break it into smaller pieces. I think this is a great way of working and that it can not only be essential for our project, but also for tasks in everyday life.

My question is: Which non-traditional inputs could we include in our design?

Reading seminar 2 - Niklas Gustavsson

Reading seminar 2 - Niklas Gustavsson

This weeks reading seminar was about creating concepts (through brainstorming for example), refining your concepts using different “laws”, documentation  and a plethora of other ways of doing this, and then lastly about prototyping.

We have already gone through the brainstorming part, where we as a team sat together and went through a whole lot of brainstorming. We were all familiar with this concept seeing we have read a course very similar to this one, so we all got it done - and got a whole lot of concepts out. The thing we did differently was that we subconsciously did the second part, the refining - without knowing about all these laws and storyboards and such, and we went straight to the prototyping part. Now that we have more information about (researched) facts about user design, we might have to take one step back and go through all the laws as a group, and refine our concept a little bit more.

One law that stuck out to me was Hick’s law, about how many options a user processes, this one is essential for us seeing we are designing an application with several options. We might have to reconsider where we want to put the options in order to not confuse the user, or give the user to much information at once. The magic number seven is something we could use. In this process we should also use a wireframe, which I felt was essential in a software type product.

And after we have gone through all of these steps, we need to go back to the prototyping (which we already started on) in order to optimize and let people test our product. User tests are really important, as it shows our product in use - and a user will be able to tell us what works, and what can be tweaked upon. And once we have that information, we could do several steps over again, to eventually do another user test - to optimize our product. Something like this:

When we did the prototyping last time, we went straight for the high-fidelity prototype, and I feel that this one is the one that suits us the most - it does not take a whole lot of time, and it represents our software better than a paper version or a physical version. And once we have done more prototypes and user tests, we might move on to an even higher-fidelity prototype with an actual web-based application.

Question for the seminar: How do you know which one of the concepts you get from brainstorming to pursue?

Reflection for seminar 2 - Erik Forsberg

Going through the chapters, there are a bunch of different techniques that we are using in our process, but also a lot that we should look into even more. The Method Design that is mentioned in chapter six seems like the logical choice when starting out and it is also what we have been doing, as we're trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the user, but to do this, we have to have a good understanding about the user (your persona). This is also why we do research and interviews, and then try to use them as a base for our design choices. Something that I believe can take our design work and prototyping to the next level is the use of our pain points. We need to know what to focus on when brainstorming for new design elements and ideas. I believe that there is a myriad of opportunities to be explored and to express our creativity and innovation when it comes to our pain points.

Another thing that I believe our group could benefit from, is to adapt to a more Agile methodology meaning that we should break down our tasks into smaller pieces of work so that we could distribute them among the group members and really focus our energy in a good way. Sometimes having two or more people focusing on the exact same problem can be too much as the ideas could clash and stop the workflow. Discussing process moments within the group and then distributing the work is what I believe is the way we can really advance in this project.

One more thing that I thought was really interesting was Fitts's Law, stating that the time is takes for a user to reach an element is determined by the distance to the element and the size of the element. This is something that I believe we can use in our design, as a simple and intuitive UI is a very strong component in an application.

The question I'd like to discuss during the seminar is: How can we use ambient audio cues to enhance our application?

We are getting closer to a final design

Design process, week 1

Where are we right now?

This week we have focused on getting closer to more refined final design, we have iterated through several designs (4!), and we feel that the fourth is one that we can stand by. We are very much aware that we will have to change our design in the upcoming weeks, but as of now this design feels very good. We landed on this design because it is something that our group has knowledge in, and that we strongly believe in. 

Design one

Our first design was the down to earth, doable design. The conventional design.

Here are some pictures of the design process:

Start page you chose language, then information about everything

Map of the museum, interactive

The first design was an application with information about the museum, the exhibitions, exhibits, and such. 

What we later took from this design is that we want to do an application with several of these functions, but the later designs also had things we took from them! 

Design two

Our second design, we went crazy. This design was intended to get us to think outside of the box, and try to see how far we could expand our product. So we decided to do a futuristic device that you borrowed at the museum. The design was a device which looked a lot like the Nintendo 3ds which projects a hologram. The hologram was intended to be interactive where you could see the exhibits in extra context. This product was intended so that tourists do not have to wait for a tour guide in order to learn more about the exhibits, but instead the device was multi language compatible, so tourists could learn what they wanted about the exhibits they found extra interesting. The device also showed the way around the museum, with hologram arrows pointing the way to different exhibits.

Here is an image of the design process:

Design three

After we had made these two designs, we did a third (and second to final) design. This design, we tried to stray away from hand held devices, and we decided to make displays around the museum. These displays had extra information about the exhibits in every language, and also works as a substitute for tour guides. In these displays there would also be information about the museum as a whole (such as a maps and current information). What this design did not have was a way to attract tourists, it only helps them once they get there - not getting them there!

Picture of the design process:

Fourth and final 

So, after we had these three designs, all with very valid ideas - which all would make the tourist experience a lot better - we tried to combine them, and take the best from each design to land on some final design. What we decide upon was a web based application with several functions that both benefit tourists, but also non-tourists. Our product is amazingly easy to expand upon, and hence it is not 100% directed at tourists, but, there are several functions in it which would make the tourist experience better. 

First, it is available in every language, which makes the application a lot easier to navigate with. Second, it has the function to check where you currently are, and send you updated information on how to get to the museum (it takes your location, and uses an application similar to "Res i stockholm", to show you exactly how to get to the museum). No longer will it be difficult to get to the museum! 

Third, once you are at the museum, it has information about every exhibit, in every language! So that if you feel that something is extra interesting, you can read up on it even more that ever before. This makes it so that people who are not interested in going on guided tours will not miss out on any information.

Fourth, there is an interactive map of the museum, so you can easily navigate around, without having to talk to some museum host every time. 

But these are not all the functions, there will be several others that will attract more people. For example, we have an idea of implementing some sort of gamification, because research shows that people will be more interested in attending museums. The first idea we had was that some exhibits had a quiz about them - this enables people to learn about the exhibits, so that you get all correct answers on the quizzes! 

Here is a picture of our first (final) design:

Target group

As we have previously mentioned, our main target group is tech savvy tourists. What we mean by tech savvy is that they are well enough updated with todays technology to own a smartphone and know how to use applications. 

So how does our product target these tech savvy tourists? Well, first of it is available in every language, so that no matter which languages you speak, you can get the same information as everybody else. Second, it gets tourists to the museum with the updated stream of information, you can easily get the application to check your current location using GPS, and it will show you exactly where to go to the closest communication, and where to go from there (for example, go 300m to the odenplan subway, take the subway to t-centralen, switch to the red line towards Mörby, get off at universitetet and walk this way (shows a map)). This will get even more tourists to the museum.

While interviewing tourists at the NRM, the subjects found that there was not enough information about the exhibits, and that they would want to know more. They also said that the exhibits were outdated and felt old - they would prefer some sort of a modern interaction.  This application enables both of those things - one function where you get extended information about the exhibits in your language, and secondly some sort of ramification that will get people to interact with the exhibits. 

As previously mentioned, an application like this can be extended upon as much as possible, and going deeper in the design process we will definitely figure out even more functions that would further benefit tourists, which will be added on as we get there.

Citronfest out! 

Pain Points

Issue/Opportunity	Secondary persona	Main persona
No easily accessed application specific for the museum	4	3
Too little detail in the information texts of the exhibits	4	3
Exhibit information not in their native language	3	2
Not enough interactivity at the museum	5	3
The design of the museum application is horrible and does not facilitate information searching	4	3
Information about the museum, i.e. opening hours and directions was unclear	3	4
Translated exhibit information was freely available using a mobile application	2	2

Main persona and scenarios

Name: Julia Benitez

Age: 27

Hometown: Barcelona, Spain

Background:

Grew up in the Barcelonian suburbs where she spent her days playing soccer with her friends. Early on, she grew an interest in nature, animals, but also historical events such as medieval times and wars. After acquiring a Bachelor’s degree in national history, and working a couple of years, she set out to travel the world and learn about different countries’ history from a native perspective. She travels with her girlfriend Carla whom she has been with for three years now. They try to visit museums in every city they go to. Back home in Barcelona, she teaches national history in high school.  Her girlfriend works at Zoo de Barcelona where she is a zookeeper.

Personality:

Julia loves to cook and learn new things. She keeps an open mind to most things and likes to go outside of her comfort zone. She is a technologically savvy person and keeps up with trends and news when it comes to technology. She usually looks up which museums she wants to visit and does a little research about them before travelling to a new city.

Today:

Julia and Carla decided to go to Stockholm to visit the Swedish Museum of National History to learn more about the climate and the animal life in Sweden. They’re currently staying at the Fridhemsplan Hotel & Hostel where Julia had a bad night’s sleep and isn’t really in the mood for complications during the day. She is easily agitated today and just wants everything to flow smoothly.

Scenario 1

After waking up at 8:00, Julia and Carla goes down to the hotel breakfast and try to find a mobile application for the museum, using the hotel’s WiFi. They’re trying to prepare as well as they can, since they don’t want to use the roaming mobile network while abroad. She doesn’t find a specific application for the Swedish Museum of Natural History, but she does find one that has a little information. Unfortunately, the application doesn’t really suit her needs and she as a tech savvy person dislikes the design as she feels that it is outdated. She wishes that there was a modern application specifically for the NRM with updated information about current exhibits, open hours and how to get there. The lack of a good application makes her annoyed, but Carla calms her down and they get going by looking up the address on Google Maps.

Before going to Stockholm, they had checked out the website of the museum and found that there was also an IMAX-theatre at the location. They thought it would be great to see a movie after the visit, so they bought combo-tickets for both the museum and for a movie at the theatre. Moving through the exhibitions of the museum, they noticed that there was only a Swedish and an English version of the information texts for the exhibits. This was unfortunate as Carla doesn’t read or speak English well so Julia had to translate every piece of information. They wished for some kind of easy way to directly translate the texts, but didn’t feel like asking for a guide so they went on throughout the museum by translating themselves. At the end of the visit, Julia also found that the information wasn’t detailed enough as she would have wanted to learn more about specific exhibits that interested her.

Scenario 2

After waking up and having breakfast, Julia and Carla decides to try find an application online, but realizes that the only one available is very sub-par. After finding sufficient information about the location, she has to find information on how to get there using another web page - she would much have preferred if they somehow were linked and she could find everything at the same place, maybe an app?

When arriving, 2 hours later, Carla and Julia starts touring the museum, but feels that there isn’t enough interactive exhibits. She likes it when she can take part somehow, maybe through some gamification or other interactive ways - she thinks to herself that she would have loved some way to play games about the exhibits, so she would have more fun touring the exhibits. She finds that what she thought was most enjoyable at the Swedish museum of national history was a game where you had to hit the light of whatever fruit was glowing (much like the carnival game whack-a-mole) - however, this had almost nothing to do with the exhibit, so she felt that it was very misplaced, and almost tragic that the thing that was most enjoyable wasn't even something about an exhibit. She thinks to herself, maybe there could be some kind of mobile game about some exhibits, which makes the visits a whole lot nicer?