P3 Low Fidelity

Unit 8 Reading

In the first part of the reading about the iPhone app icons, they list and explain the do's and don'ts of app icon design.  They mention to not use words but if needed only a single letter is needed because otherwise it wouldn't represent an icon anymore. Don't standardize the gloss to keep a unified look, I would rather stand out then to look like the others. Keeping it simple doesn't mean it has to be boring, yet it should add some flare to the detail to give it a more life. Figuring out way to stand out from the rest of the crowds will help sway customers attention.

The second part of the reading talks about creating an iPhone app and steps to achieve success in it. First step is to figure out the marketing plan and the profit it can project, the next step is signing up with a developer account like iOS Development Center, sketching the application would be the next step and just like all other designs it is important to sketch it first before going at it digitally. You then to start outsourcing work to help you because it is like a small business and it would be difficult to tackle by yourself. Hiring your team which includes 3 different roles; information architecture, interaction design, and visual design.


http://mashable.com/2009/02/21/how-to-build-an-iphone-app/
http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/21/iphone-apps-design-mistakes-overblown-visuals/
http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/09/10/ios-sdk-for-designers/

P3 Research

American Nerd

The Tourists

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

Love Today: Stories

Oh the Glory of It All

The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival

Unit 6 Reading

In chapter 10, some of the topics it discusses is "The Reservoir of Goodwill", where things like idiosyncratic where different people have a different tolerance for reservoir, depending on the situation some audiences might of had a bad experience with a previous site so they are irritated to go to a new one, refilling it by trying to making up for what the audience have gone through a bad experience (this is kind of like me, because I am a server at a restaurant and sometimes mistakes are  done and I have to rebuttal with good intentions in hopes of them coming back returning), and sometimes a mistake is just too great to fix. Also under the topic of diminishing goodwill, where hiding information that audience would want can cause a bad experience with the audience. When I want to order items online and I want to know like how fast shipping will take if I am on a time crunch I would like a way to contact them asap instead of digging through their site.

In Chapter 11, where the topic talks about what designers and developers fear there are two listed which are more work and compromised design. I can concur with the part about compromising the design because I've done work for friends, where they wanted a design a certain way but I felt like it wasn't working or appealing enough. The chapter later recommends 5 things to to help your website such as fixing the problems with usability, reading articles (I actually do this a lot to help improve myself), reading a book, using cascading style sheets (I actually did CSS Zen Garden in a previous class, it was a great experience!) and going for "low-hanging fruit".

Talks about problems with websites such as diminishing goodwill.

http://www.mainstreetwebworx.com/are-you-making-any-of-these-user-unfriendly-mistakes-on-your-website/

Article about what CSS Cascading Style Sheets.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/beginningcss/a/aa021607.htm

Points out issues to usability in design.

http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/

P2 Progress

Unit 5 Reading

In chapter 8 "The Farmer and the Cowman" talks about how development teams wastes a lot of time on debating what they like or disagrees, rather they should instead to put in the research and development to see if it works or not. The author calls this a "religious debate", it comes down to a lot of tension and arguments between team members. Everyone have a preference of what they like and they strongly enforce their opinions. He also explains that the phrase "Farmers vs. Cowmen" is like the analogy of web designers and web developers. To cure this religious debate he believes that what needs to be done is testing. I found this chapter very valuable as to whenever I would work in a team instead of debating about it we should do testing.

In chapter 9 "Usability testing on 10 cents a day" talks about how he is pro usability testers, because focus groups are opinions that a grouped together (which is ok for abstract audiences) whereas usability testers are individually testing to see if the site works or not and what needs to be improved. The chapter goes on into more details on certain topics about usability testings such as how many users to test, grading it on a curve, where to do the testing, who to test/observe, and shows examples of testing samples. I feel like it does make sense with a usability testing versus group focus because I know if I was in a group I am less likely to stand firm with my opinions and agree to others within the group.

Lists of tools for usability testing.
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/20/comprehensive-review-usability-user-experience-testing-tools/

10 usability findings/guidelines.
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/24/10-useful-usability-findings-and-guidelines/

Embracing other viewpoints to improve usability.
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/06/test-usability-by-embracing-other-viewpoints/