[M2] IA for small screen devices

I am not good at reflections, I kind of summarise things instead!

1. Mobile IA (mobiForge

2. Designing for the mobile web (by A. Rehm, whatwasithinking.co.uk)

3. Designing for the mobile (by E. McVicar, UXbooth)

First thing that seems very important while designing for mobile small screen devices, is that since the device is small it does not allow large amounts of information and links to be displayed. These devices dont have many in/out-put options. So we should avoid over crowding and should keep it as simple as possible with only necessary functions.

Mobile devices are used in different conditions than desktops and laptops. They are used in high distraction situations like in bus or while doing something else in parallel. Again avoiding complications and too many links will be a good practice.

It is possible that small screen devices (because of their contexts of use), face slow or limited internet connection. They are also generally slower in processing time than desktops too. That makes it necessary to avoid extra clicking to get to the desired information. Nested pages are better not to be too deep.

I liked that second link mentioned navigation and footer at the end of page to save extra scrolling to top. This is something that I have personally suffered from!

I also found the different possible structures from third link really interesting, specially the part that she concludes what are the cons and pros of each approach.

Evaluating user experience, individual assignment 4

This weeks methods were:
1. Affect Grid
Affect grid seems to be a type of scale to measure affect. It is simple and effective but has limitations compared to more detailed methods. In this papers this method is used for measuring pleasure and arousal, However author claims that it can be used for any other feeling and emotions measurements too.

2. Cognitive Walkthrough
"The cognitive walkthrough is a precisely specified procedure for simulating a user's cognitive processes as the user interacts with an interface in an effort to accomplish a specific task". It provides user with atomic actions and then lets user to decide about sequence of necessary or required actions to fulfil the task.

This method is based on theory of exploratory learning and methods driven from this theory tries to minimise the user effort for learning the steps he needs to perform to fulfil system tasks. It seems to have a really strong theoretical background however I cant claim to understand the connection between its theory and actual steps that one must perform.
I think this method can be useful during prototyping phase, because it will help to design a system that is intuitive for the user.

3. Group-based expert walkthrough
To my understanding group-based walk through is a cognitive walk though that is done in a group. In Group-based expert walkthrough's case the user also is a domain expert. It can be used in domain specific, or work related application. This method seems better that normal cognitive walk through because being done in group, it does produce extra discussion and may give richer feedback. On the other hand it is very time consuming and finding a group of domain experts may be difficult.


I think if no limitations given, I will choose group-based expert walk though for our project, first because it is a domain specific tool, and second we can use a group discussion to improve the system function and usability.

Crazy Cat

Can't stop thinking about this:

Evaluating user experience : Individual assignment 3, paper review

Wizard of Oz prototyping

I think this method(the version described in this paper) is specially useful for designs including more aspects than mere screen interface. Although even in case of simpler web or mobile application it can provide more realistic test settings than paper or clickable prototypes. Well actually I am not sure if I can consider prototypes a subset of WOZ in general..

ImmersionWell I am not sure about this method. I think this is(or can) be done in any case even when we have real users. Since the experimenter is one person here, the question is how difficult it is to find "one" user for the system?
Bottom line is that no harm on doing it in addition to some other evaluation method.

Emofaces
Capturing emotional response through emo-pics sounds interesting and engaging. It can help break the (sometimes boring) routine of testing a design. However I dont see much use in our current design project, because this tool is a job related tool and my assumption is that it does not contain much emotional reaction.

My choice:
I have not indicated this choice clearly before. my original thought was WOZ . But during the class we decided to use WOZ in combination with emofaces and it was good combination.