Pain points!

Note that the scale is from 1-5, where 1 represents an issue that does not matter so much, and 5 represents a larger issue.

Persona and scenario - Secondary

Peter is a 30 years old painter whos living in the Årsta area. He lives alone except every other week when his daughter Klara, 7 years, stays with him. He doesn’t have alot of hobbies except soccer, but he watches alot of european leauges witch keeps him pretty busy. He’s a social drinker and prefer to drink a Carlsberg close to Medborgarplatsen. He also have a tendency to exaggerate his maleness after a beer or two in the right (wrong?) company. He’s not super ambitious but neither lazy, he completes the work that is expected from him. In the food spectrum from McDonalds to Indian Lentil Stew, Peter is in the middle right at ‘Falukorv & makaroner’. His goal is to live a decent life and to raise his daugther well (and to make her love Hammarby). Peter have a iPhone 5 witch he uses to follow live score when he's not at home. He has a Smart TV at home which he use Viaplay to match games.

Scenario 1
Its a saturday afternoon and the game has just ended. The day has been filled with a lovely pre-game get-together at Gröna Jägaren and right now Hammarby has just defeated Kalmar with 2 to 1. The end signal is sounding. Peter ties his scarf and heads hastely towards the light rail train. Even though he ate a hot dog in the intermission he is still feeling a little bit hungry and he wants to get home quickly to be in time to see the days last round of Premier League. When he arrives to the platform it is relatively empty with people but during the three minutes he is waiting it gets close to full. The empty train arrives at the platform and everybody wants to get in first. Though, Peter has a good spot and get in among the first. The train gets filled up but in the joy of victory everybody cooperates nicely and a lot of people get on the train. The train takes off smoothly and the atmosphere is positive. Peter gets home. Eats some food, watches the Premier League game and opens up another can of beer. New Castle wins. Peter is satisfied. “Today was a good day” Peter thinks for himself.

Scenario 2
It’s a wednesday evening and Peter have been working late to be able to complete a task before the weekend.  He’s going to pick his daughter up from soccer practise on his way home. While on the tvärbana Peter discovers that a event seem to be happenig in the Globenarea since the tvärbana is crowded with people on their way to the area. Peter is not going to travel very far and therefor he tries to not get to far into the train. When the doors have closed, Peter is nearby the doors and he’s trying to find something to hold on to while people are pushing against him from every direction. “I hope everything is calmer when I’m going in the other direction with Klara”, Peter thinks for himself.

Persona & scenarios - Johan

Johan, 35

Johan lives in the Gullmarsplan-area in a 2 room apartment together with his cat, Affo. He works as a software developer at a small Stockholm based firm. His life is full of routine and he does grocery shopping every week. Preferably at the Ica located in Liljeholmen, at the other end of the Tvärbana

Technology is Johans primary interest. Since he likes to plan his life and keep up to date with the world around him he keeps his phone full of apps. If something turns out in a way he didn’t expect he can easily get stresed.

Johan is very kind but shy. He care a lot for the environment and sustainability issues and his other interests include cooking and different crafts you can do at home. He likes to invite his friends over for dinner and he has yet to find the one in his life.

Often times the amount of traffic that comes with the sports and culture events in his neighbourhood, gets on his nerves and he gets irritated. He doesn’t like when its crowded and loud on the subway or on the Tvärbana. Also he makes sure he is always on time for his appointments.

Sometimes it’s a good thing living close to Globen though. He likes music and sometimes he goes to a concert himself. At these occasions he choose walking to the arena. What he doesn’t like is sports, he feels unsafe when the football supporters arrive to the the area. But also, screaming teens whenever band such as One Direction visits Stockholm, is almost as bad.

Johans cat, Affo.

Scenarios

Johan 1 - Positive experience

It is Tuesday and Johan gets off from work early today, at 2.00pm. This day has become the perfect day for his weakly grocery shopping. He’s got the time to go home to get his shopping cart after work and still be able to catch a train to Liljeholmen leaving before rush hour. The trip with “Tvärbanan” is calm and quite and gives Johan some extra time to plan his visit at ICA Liljeholmen more in detail. At this time there is no event-traffic going on and also he’s moving away from the Globe area.

“Oh, well! Look at that. An add from ICA at the train. How cool.”, Johan thinks to himself while feeling happy and surprised. He hadn’t though it would be such a good price for bell peppers today, and he who was going to buy lots of them. What a lucky day.

Johan 2 - Negative Experience

Affo has gotten sick and needs to see a vet as soon as possible.  The only time avaliable today (Sunday) is at 4.00pm. With his mind completely focused on Affo Johan sets of to “Tvärbanan” at 3.30pm with the cat cage in one hand and the folder with the insurance papers in the other. He doesn’t have time to think about the game that’s about to start soon. Johan gets surprised by all the people at the station screaming and being very aggressive in general. Affo gets scared and cries out a hartbreaking “meow!”.

“This is not going to work”, Johan thinks and instead he calls for a cab. Affo is too scared and the train doesn’t seem to go according to schedule. He can’t be late.

Picture soruce:
Johan
Affo

Reflections after exercise 2

At last weeks Exercise (24 september) we discussed our findings from the field studies we had been out on. We came to the conclusion that since everyone didn’t get the chance to do an semi structured interview (our first session was a little bit of a failure) some of us are going to do our interviews until this week. Because we got pretty good answers from one of our field study-days we also decided that it could be interesting to now ask people we know who live in the area around ’Tvärbanan’. They probably get affected by the traffic several times. 

We also talked about different personas for next weeks task. We came up with ”Peter - the football fan” and ”Johan - that hates people in general”. We will keep working with these personas this week and create different scenarios for them. 

For a while we talked about all the great state-of-the-art analysis we all had done and we told each other more about them. It got us very inspired to talk about what we could do with these techniques and if feels like we will have a lot of great options to choose from when we develop a product. 

The best thing that happened today was that we met before the Exercise to schedule time when we can sit and work together every week. Even weekly meetings were put into the schedule. We think that this will be very good for us when we are doing tasks like the one this week where we will want to discuss a lot and make decisions together. The weekly meetings are also good as a catching up time to make sure everyone is onboard. 

Keep checking in for soon the latest news about Personas & Scenarios will be posted here. 

Over and out

/Josefine, Linnea, Emma, Frida, Ariel, Viktor

Semi structured interviews, Transcript 7

Since we didn't manage to get all the interviews we wanted at our first field study I decided to interview a friend who lives nearby "Tvärbanan" to ask about her experiences with the traffic during events.

Josefine: Märker du av (på tvärbanan) om det händer något stort på Globen?  

Brukar du ha koll på evenemang?

Intervjuad: Ja det märks jättetydligt, speciellt vid stationen Globen (surprise) och/eller vid Gullmarsplan. Ibland kommer jag från andra hållet (Liljeholmen) och då brukar jag inte märka så mycket av det.

Jag har sällan koll på evenemang tyvärr, men det händer någon gång ibland att jag har koll, om vänner pratar om nåt.

Josefine: Märker du skillnad på om det är konsert eller match?

Intervjuad: Haha ja framförallt på kläderna. Om det är någon match så är det alltid fans. Dessutom är det oftast betydligt fler män än kvinnor, nästan bara, som har matchtröjor på sig. De kan också vara mer högljudda och bröliga, men det är inte alltid. Konsert då är det oftast bara väldigt mycket folk.

Josefine: Hur upplever du överlag att det är att resa i evenemangstrafiken?

Intervjuad: Om man hamnar mitt i att ett evenemang slutar, då är det ofta ganska jobbigt. Det är inte så vanligt att en tvärbana blir överfull, men då blir den VERKLIGEN det. Men det är inte så ofta det händer, och om folk är trevliga och lugna och på bra humör så brukar det gå bra. Dessutom brukar ju jag vara i läget att jag redan är på tvärbanan när det händer (eftersom jag går på gullmars och kaoset brukar börja vid Globen) så jag behöver aldrig vänta på nästa, vilket många andra ofta får, eftersom det inte går in fler.

Josefine: Påverkar det ditt val att åka med tvärbanan?

Intervjuad: Det har hänt någon enstaka gång, men inte att jag tänker på det jätteofta.

Josefine: Har du någon annan tanke om/inför din resa när det är något som händer på Globen?

Intervjuad: Nja, men några gånger har de pratat mycket i högtalarsystemet vid gullmars, och då är man förberedd på att det kommer vara mycket folk där. Och någon gång har de sagt att de har extrainsatta avgångar, så det har jag tyckt varit bra.

Josefine: Hade det gjort någon skillnad för dig i valet av tvärbanan (kontra annan trafik) om du fick veta om evenemangen tidigare?

Intervjuad: Det beror lite på, om jag VET att jag kommer komma mitt i värsta ruschen redan innan t.ex. Slussen, då hade jag med stor sannolikhet valt den andra vägen, dvs åkt via liljeholmen istället för via globen.

Summary field study

We went out on several field study sessions. The first one didn't go as planned. Beforehand we had planned on focusing on event traffic and therefor we tried musical event. That didn't give us the result we had hoped for. It turned out people like travelling with the subway instead of the "tvärbana" at these occasions. Also the people we met were from the wrong target group. This didn't make us give up. 

A few days later we went out on another field study to try out another event, this time when there was a football game going on. We figured this would lead to more locals using the public transportation. This time the results were a lot better. We got to experience the environment of a crowded "tvärbana" and also made a lot of interesting interviews. We also interviewed with friend living in the area afterwards to get a wider perspective. 

The field study lead us to a clearer picture of how our personas could look like. 

Semi Structured Interviews - Transcript 6

I asked a friend, a frequent “tvärbana” user who lives at one of our end stations, Liljeholmen, how he felt about the traffic on “tvärbanan” during events.

Linnea: Märker du av när det händer något stort på Globen?  Brukar du ha koll på evenemang?

Intervjuad: Inte direkt, bara de riktigt stora, I guess man kan säga mainstream evenemangen.

Linnea: Märker du skillnad på om det är konsert eller match?

Intervjuad: Jag kanske har haft tur, för jag har aldrig åkt med tvärbanan då jag upplevt att det varit sjukt mycket folk, så det blir supertrångt. Så jag personligen märker ingen skillnad, nej.

Linnea: Hur upplever du överlag att det är att resa i evenemangstrafiken?

Intervjuad: Jag har ju gjort det, påväg till typ konserter själv, och då upplever jag det som behagligt. Återigen aldrig upplevt att det var trångt eller problematisk på något sätt att åka med tvärbanan till, i detta exempel, globen.

Linnea: Påverkar det ditt val att åka mellan Liljeholmen och Gullmarsplan?

Intervjuad:  Nej.

Linnea: Har du någon annan tanke om/inför din resa när det är något som händer?

Intervjuad: Alltid skönt att sitta, men blir det ståplats så blir det!

Linnea: Hade det gjort någon skillnad för dig om du fick veta om evenemangen tidigare?

Intervjuad: Nej.

State of the art analysis - Behavior design

Behavior design is a design field where the designers focus is on the users psychology and to find the design which best fits the users need. The approach is trying to change users behavior in a (hopefully) good way and a good design can help users for example to stop smoking or to exercise more.

If we decide to put a lot of effort into the design itself, i think this is the way to go. One recent example can be found in Moscow's subway system where traveller got the chance to get a free ticket to the subway, if they did 30 squats at the station. The campaign was a part of the promotion of the Winter Olympics in Sotji witch aimed to involve Russia’s population in more of a sporting lifestyle. Another example, which is a couple of years old, is when they installed a piano in the stairs of Odenplan subway station in Stockholm. The aim of the piano was to make people take the stairs rather then the escalator by making the stairs more fun to use and it seemed to have succeeded.

Both of the examples uses rather simple technology to involve the user in a new way and to make the user break one of their everyday habits. New ideas doesn’t require new technology, in a way behavior design is about using existing technology in the best possible way for the user.

When there’s a event going on tvärbanan is crowded, but only for a short time since almost everybody who’s going to the event is traveling at the same time. By using the behavior design approach we can perhaps motivate travellers to take a walk to another station or to use another train entrance then usual. Perhaps we can make them change their habits regarding tvärbanan in a way which also benefits them when there’s no event going on.

My view is that people like easy and fast feedback. If you know right away that you have succeeded with a small change or step in a process, it’s much easier to continue. I’ve been using an app for a couple of months witch is extremely simple but have done a huge impact on my own behavior. The app simply keeps track of the things I try do to daily where one is to walk a certain amount of steps. The counter is connected to iOS built-in step counter which make the feedback really quick. This have changed my behavior in such a way that I actually care how many steps I take each day since I have an goal to reach and the app encourage me to reach the goal as many days in a row as possible. What I’m trying to say is, simple design in combination with a smart idea can make a bigger impact than one might think.

State of the Art analysis - Virtual reality

In Wired magazine I found an interesting article about how a new virtual reality experience has gotten some attention for their very realistic product. A bunch of new technology has made it possible for some companies to bring VR technology out on the streets. And the result is astonishing. By filming with top of the line cameras and picking up sound transforming it into binaural audio the user is practically living inside a virtual world for a moment. Or as Mariott Hotels describes it, teleports to another spot.

To describe the relevance of Virtual Reality for our project might best be done with some shameless word play. What do you think about Escape Reality? Lots of people travel because they have to. They need to get somewhere and they just want the time to pass. What if the travellers could be sitting on the rocks on a beach in Maui, listening to the waves crashing in and the birds tweeting in the trees.

There are a bunch of scenarios when you would want to escape reality.

- A train cart full of soccer supporters?
- Rough day at school or work?
- Rainy day?
- And so on...

Needless to say the technique still has a long way to go before being accessible within a public space but I got really hooked on the idea of Escape Reality. We are all doing it already, right? Just in a poorer format (e.g. our phones, tablets or computers). 

State of the art analysis - Frida

While traveling to and from work we're always in a hurry, and if a train is late that feels like the end of the world. And the trains are often late. To avoid this feeling of doom every morning Stockholmstågen developed an application that in real time shows where the train is, where in the train there is crowded and allows you activate push-notifications for selected journeys so that you will know that the train is late in advance. The application is only available for the pendeltåg, since that's the only trains that has the technology needed right now.

Demo: https://vimeo.com/86974761 

I don't usually go by pendeltåg, but my view of the pendeltåg is that people ALWAYS complain about how late they are, that they are cancelled and that they have signal errors. When I then found Pendelkollen, I thought that that would be the main focus for the users. Though, when I googled Pendelkollen, I mainly found articles and reviews that focus on that you now are able to see which part of the train that is less crowed, so that people won't have to stand up, which I really didn't expect to be the worst issue. Of course, Stockholmståg can't market the app through "Now you're able to see when we're late in advance", but at least I expected peoples online opinions would be more like that.

http://www.mobil.se/appar/pendelkollen#.VgLGBoedqGU
http://www.postvagnen.com/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=820204
http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.550449/trangt-pa-pendeln-nu-far-du-hjalp-att-valja-vagn

Semi Structured Interviews - Transcript 5

Ariel: Det är ju fotbollsmatch ikväll på tele2-arena, som du kanske känner till. Ska du på matchen?

Intervjuad: Yes

Ariel: Det ska du?! Hur fick du reda på att matchen är? 

Intervjuad: Jag är på alla matcher

Ariel: Har du bestämt din hur du skulle åka till arenan i förväg? 

Intervjuad: Öööh. nej. Jag bor närmare en busstation men det var långt till bussen skulle gå så jag gick hit istället.

(Här tjuter en långtradare så lite svårt att höra) 

Ariel: Okej. Så du valde att ta tvärbanan istället istället för bussen? 

Intervjuad: Ah. Istället för bussen. 

Ariel: Har du tidigare erfarenhet av att åka här när det är evenemang? 

(Långtradaren slutar)

Intervjuad: Ah, nästan varje gång. 

Ariel: Hur upplever du att det är att resa när det är evenemang? 

Intervjuad: Oftast är det ju bra. Tågen är oftast bättre än bussarna egentligen. Busstorget kan ju stängas ner och det gör livet typ dåligt.

Ariel: Vad händer då? När busstorget stängs ner? 

Intervjuad: Då går det inga bussar till Gullmarsplan. 

Ariel: Och det är pågrund av att det är stökigt eller? 

Intervjuad: Nej, det är framförallt premiärmatchen och kanske några andra stormatcher, för att det är så mycket folk.

Ariel: Aha, så då brukar de bara stänga... 

Intervjuad: Ah, då brukar dom flytta. Tyresöbussarna flyttas söderut och dom som kommer härifrån brukar stanna vid... Ah... Innan någonstans. 

Ariel: Okej. Vad spännande. Det visst inte vi! 

Frida: Får jag bara ställa en fråga? Om det blir så, vet du det i förväg eller? 

Intervjuad: Ja, det brukar snurra på dom här skärmarna på SL som när det är marathon och sånt också. Dom vet ju om att det händer.

Ariel: Men då antar jag att du märker skillnad när det är evenemang? 

Intervjuad: Ja det är mer folk, det blir ju rusningstrafik på kvällen. 

Ariel: Påverkar det hur du väljer att åka till arenan? 

Intervjuad: Näe, jag tar den som kommer först. 

Ariel: Hur tror du att det kommer vara att åka idag? 

Intervjuad: Som vanligt. Ganska lugnt dit, väldigt mycket folk hem.

Ariel: Hur kan det vara när man åker hem? Är det jobbigare då? 

Intervjuad: Då går ju alla samtidigt. Så då blir det ju väldigt mycket folk på tvärbanan. Dom första två efter matchen, då är det ju ståplats varje kväll. 

Frida: Brukar du välja att åka senare tåg då för att slippa folk? 

Intervjuad: Näe jag brukar bara springa.  

Ariel: Hur är stämningen då då? 

Intervjuad: Det beror på resultatet på matchen! Hehe. Nej det brukar vara ganska bra. Jag har åkt med barnen också och det har inte varit några problem. 

Ariel: Har du någon annan tanke om att åka tvärbana? 

Intervjuad: Nej. Det är bra så länge den är öppen. Den är lite väl mycket stängd på sommaren. 

Ariel: Ah det är den. Nu ska du få åka! Tack så mycket och ha det så kul ikväll. 

Intervjuad: Ah, tack! 

Semi Structured Interviews - Transcript 4

Since mondays interview hunt didn’t turn out great I asked a friend who live close to the tvärbana a couple of questions to get a glimse of what it’s like to use “evenemangstrafik”.

Emma: Visste du om att det var ett evenemang ikväll? Brukar du ha koll på evenemang?

Intervjuad: Ja om jag inte visste det innan så märks det när jag går på tåget.

Emma: Märker du skillnad när det är konsert eller match? På vilket sätt?

Intervjuad: Det märks då det inte går att röra sig eller andas, det är antingen miljarder huliganer eller massa småflickor.

Emma: Hur upplever du att det är att resa i evenemangstrafiken?

Intervjuad: Obehagligt i matchtrafik, mest irriterande konsert. Kan

Emma: Påverkar det ditt val att åka den här vägen?

Intervjuad: Ja, går av tidigare eller tar en annan uppgång bereoende på vad det är för event.

Emma: Hur tror du att det kommer vara just idag, har du några speciella förväntningar?

Intervjuad: Lugnt med U2, mycket folk men inte rörig stämning.

Emma: Har du någon annan tanke om/inför din resa?

Intervjuad: Nej

Emma: Hade det spelat någon roll för vilken väg du skulle ta om du skulle veta om evenemangen tidigare?

Intervjuad: Nej, hade inte tagit en annan väg eller liknande.

Semi Structured Interviews - Transcript 3

Viktor: Ska du på evenemanget ikväll?

Intervjuad : ja

Viktor: Hur fick du reda på evenemanget?

Intervjuad: Jag såg det på Hammarby fotboll.

Viktor: Hur har du bestämt din färdväg?

Intervjuad: Jag bor här precis bredvid tvärbanan.

Viktor: Har du tidigare erfarenhet av att åka den här sträckan?

Intervjuad: Ja

Viktor: Hur upplever du att det är att resa i evenemangstrafik?

Intervjuad: Dåligt. För lite trafik. För dålig frekvens på tågen.

Viktor: Märker du skillnad mot när det är konsert eller match?

Intervjuad: Nä, det är nog ganska lika.

Viktor: Påverkar det ditt val att åka den här vägen?

Intervjuad: Nej.

Viktor: Hur upplever du att färdas den här sträckan just idag? Har du några speciella förväntningar?

Intervjuad: Jag tror det kommer vara trångt. 

Viktor: Varför?

Intervjuad: För det brukar alltid vara trångt här. Man får så intryck mot ena dörren i princip.

Viktor: Har du någon annan tanke om din resa?

Intervjuad: Nej

Viktor: Tack!

State of the art analysis, smart watches!

Smart watches are a growing industry combined with so called wearables in general. After releasing the Apple Watch, other wearable companies had to really step up their game. The possibilities for usage are endless, and of course someone has taken this into handling the commuting traffic already. Maybe a lot of everyday passengers fell asleep on the train and someone got sick of it? This app allows the user to enter information about their ride and alerts the user when the destination is getting closer. Some of the other features include setting up automatic friend alerts to those of your friends that are expecting the user at the destination.

This is probably just the beginning of all kinds of information your smart watch can provide for you. Why not set up charging stations at the platforms or free wi-fi, for easier access to information about the location and details like why there are so many passengers on the train on this particular ride. Is there a big game? Or a concert? The interactive uses of a smart watch are innumerable and it’s probably a good idea to start trying to keep up from the beginning.

This is already being implemented in large parts of the world, and like in any other field, China is at its forefront. There you can use your smart watch to access public transportation.

”Imagine walking up to the turnstile at the train 

station, waving your wrist past the scanner, 

and then proceeding into the station."

http://smartwatchfuture.com/android-wear-apps/train-station-alert/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/21/these-5-smartwatch-functions-will-start-the-fall-of-the-smartphone/

Semi structured interviews - Transcript 2

Frida: Ja, det är ju match idag som du kanske vet om. Då är det ju evenemangstrafik. Ska du på evenemanget?

Intervjuad: Ja.

Frida: Hur har du bestämt din färdväg hit?

Intervjuad: Jag åker det vanliga. Från Södertälje...

Frida: Du har kommit med pendeltåget?

Intervjuad: Ja.

Frida: Har du åkt här när det inte är evenamng?

Intervjaud: Nej.

Frida: Då kanske du inte upplever någon skillnad?

Intervjuad: Jo, lite, med pendeltåget.

Frida: På vilket sätt?

Intervjuad: På vägen hem är det mycket folk. Men inte jobbigt.

Frida: Har du några förväntningar på hur resan kommer att vara?

Intervjuad: Mycket folk.

Frida: Har du någon annan tanke?

Intervjuad: Nä.

Frida: Tack!

Semi structured interviews - Transcript 1

Ariel: Jo, det är ju match idag och därför så kallad evenemangstrafik. Ska du på matchen?

Intervjuad: Nej.

Ariel: Vart ska du?

Intervjuad: Hem.

Ariel: Har du tidigare erfarenhet av att åka den här sträckan när det är evenemang?

Intervjuad: Jaa, jag har bott här i ganska många år.

Ariel: HUr upplever du att det är att åka när det är match?

Intervjuad: Jag brukar själv gå på matcher så jag tycker inte att det är någon fara.

Ariel: Märker man av att det är mer folk?

Intervjuad: Nae, det luktar lite mer öl... Och svett.

Ariel: Hur är det?

Intervjuad: Nae, jag stör mig inte så mycket på det.

Ariel: Har det någon gång påverkat ditt val att åka den här vägen?

Intervjuad: Nä, det tror jag inte.

Ariel: Hur tror du att det kommer vara att åka idag?

Intervjuad: Ganska mycket folk, nästan rusning. Men jag kommer precis få en plats, kommer sitta där i två stationer och sen kommer jag gå av.

Ariel: Har du någon annan tanke om resan?

Intervjuad: Nej men det ska bli skönt. Slipper man åka buss.

Ariel: Tack!

THIS is event traffic!

We went out again and this time around we actually experienced the REAL DEAL. Fans of Hammarby football team turned out to be users of Tvärbanan to a much larger extent than U2 fans. Following this entry is the first round of transcripts from our interviews.

Also! Here's a picture depicting happy team members in Årstaberg:

State-of-the-art analysis

After reading about ”air based gestures” in the book i realised this technique has been used for a long time. I remember when I was little and had gotten the coolest video game ever, the EyeToy. A game where you play by using gestures. I got to polish windows, catching falling things, jump over obstacles and so on. How cool is that? 

I am thinking that this technique could be interesting for us to apply to an environment with lots of people. Though probably it will be to intimidating for some to be playing a game like EyeToy surrounded by strangers it could instead be used as a way for people to easily get desired information. Or if we want to go with the entertaining approach maybe this is more suitable for children and can be a good way of keeping them focused and not wandering away from their parents or kindergarden teachers . 

I found this video showing how this technique has been applied to a Galaxy S4, and if we would like to use this in a more informative way this could be an example of how it could work.(So sorry for a cheesy and very commercial video, but just want to show you an example of how to use the technique in another way). 

This could then be applied to bigger screens placed on platforms/bus stations or maybe even on the transportations. 

As was also mentioned in the book a problem with this kind of technique is to get the device to understand what is a movement and what is not. When does it begin and end. 

Some other troubles that might occur for us is that it can be hard for the device to decide who is making a gesture if several people are moving at the same time. It might also be hard for the user to understand how it works and to have the time to use it. 

I think it is interesting to have all this in mind later on when we figure out what problem we want to solve. Maybe this technique will be perfect or maybe it wont be applicable at all. 

The future will tell. 

/Josefine Möller 

State of the art analysis - Ariel

Interactive booth

New York City began installing interactive booths in their subway. When not in use they just rotate traffic information. When interacted with, a user can get instuctions on how to go wherever they're going, view maps and timetables. If there is any service disruptions the booth also takes that into consideration. While this demo is very cool both the news articles (Gizmodo, Futurevision) I read to find out more, stresses there's also negative aspects and constraints;

• Making touchscreens that big and yet keep response rate and precision like the mobile touch screen we are used to, is very expensive and complex.
• During testing the screen responded to vibrations which proved to be a problem during testing since there already is a lot of vibrations in busy subway stations. They had to change type of screen to make it work in that particular environment, an enviromental requirement. 
• The Gizmodo-journalist observed that some people seemed intimidated by them and it was first after he (the journalist) had played around with one for a while that they actually dared to give it a go themselves. People are afraid at the risk of looking silly.

Field study, in its literal sense

Today, four of the group members went out on the first attempt of a field study. We had questions and follow up questions and everything, and the route was set. We knew what we where looking for. We were going to take "tvärbanan" between Liljeholmen and Gullmarsplan on one of our planned nights where we knew that there was going to be a larger event on the Ericsson Globe. Tonights big event was one of the four U2 concerts that was taking place this weekend. We expected multiple large groups of excited fans who we thought were going to be both loud and tightly packed together on the train. We expected, maybe, a little intoxication and an over-willingness to answer any or hopefully most of our questions.

Boy were we wrong.

First of all, we noticed pretty early on that most of the audience had decided on the subway and not the above land version. Second off, most of the crowd consisted of middle aged men and women, and not even close to our assigned target group, which was people between 18 and 35. Not a great event for our study. We did a few attempts at interviewing some of the travellers but no one was really interested or had time to participate.

We took some time to discuss why people chose the subway over "tvärbanan", and asked ourselves when it would be a better time for us to catch people in our target group.

Are U2 fans just not included our target group? Would the field study produce better results when the rest of our group go out on Wednesday, before a big soccer game? Or is this normal, and really something that we should take into consideration? Maybe our focus should shift from trying to improve something on or in the vicinity of the "tvärbana" to something that will make more people choose the "tvärbana" over the subway?

Stay tuned,
Two thirds of Coffee Train 5000 crew

Josefine, Emma, Ariel and (not pictured) Linnea on an empty platform

A short time lapse of the crowed subway station across from the tracks.

Exercise 1, field study

At todays exercise we discussed our upcoming field study. The head topic of our discussion was about which target group and route to pick. We had a couple of different alternatives and after changing thought with the teacher we decided which one to go with. The route we chose was ”Gullmarsplan - Liljeholmen” with the target group ”people, age 18-35, who travel when there’s an event going on but aren’t going there themselves”. 

We decided that when we are out doing our field study we are going to do semi-structured interviews because we want to allow the people we interview to explain things in there own way but still stay within the topic. Towards the end of the exercise we started putting together some questions for the interviews. When we were doing the question we focused very much on how to phrase the questions without formulating our own problem. We want the field study to present a problem to us so we don’t want to bring a problem with us when going out. 

We also made the conclusion that it will be hard for us to go out on the field study all together since everyones schedule looks different. Therefore we are going to work in teams of two when interviewing. 

Stay tuned for the next episode of Field study. Coming up next week, at Coffeetrain5000. (Todays chitchat at the break was about tv-series starting this week)

/ Josefine, Frida, Linnea, Emma, Ariel, Viktor

Group discussion

During today's seminar our group met for the second time since we'd had our startup meeting three days ago. It felt great getting together again, and "we broke the ice" by chatting about yesterdays big Apple release event. We all agreed on that the products were relevant, interesting and that we pretty much wanted all of them. Ariel pointed out that he was the only one without a Macbook, and established that as soon as he had money he needed to invest in one.

The first part of the seminar was supposed to be about the group and our thoughts about the reading. We started to discuss the text and pretty soon we realised that most of us had thought about how obvious a lot of what we had read felt - the parts about data gathering and analysis especially. However, we did agree on that we've never actually read about these subjects in this format earlier, and concluded that it probably was part of the fact that we've never actually seen studies satisfactorily executed, and that it probably was more important than we initially thought. We agreed on the importance of defining what techniques we needed and that several studies needs to be done. At least two studies were critical: one type of study where we assess the issue, field study, and another where we observe and try our potential solution, evaluation. 

One aspect, when deciding on which direction to stir towards, is to solve a problem that already exists. The other aspect is to bring something into the mix that our target group in didn't even know they needed. We discussed with the teacher briefly and he confirmed what we thought about defining target groups: narrow target groups are preferable.

After getting stuck on discussing target grops we started to question the methods listed in the text. Generally; to what extent are these techniques used in business? This is something we need to investigate. 

Questions from the group, do discuss further. What methods in situations similar to ours has worked the best, and why? What techniques do we want to use? Which techniques are possible, and which techniques are adequate enough? When do we know that we're done? When are we done establishing the requirements?

Seminar 1 - Frida Eklund

During the years I've been in school, I've several times got the assignment to create, develop or design something for a user. The first task is always to do some data gathering, and the easy way out is to do a questionnaire in google form, or interviewed some people you meet in Nymble - and the result is never good enough to make any conclusions. By reading this literature I can see why.

We have mostly done web-based questionnaires, without any clear goals, no pilot-study and without any structure or planned design. We haven't had enough time to gather data and we haven't really thought about what we want to investigate. Therefore the responses haven't comed out as we wanted. 

We have also done semi-structured interviews. Kind of. We have walked around with a few questions, asking random people. But since we, just as with the questionnaires, don't really have known what we're looking for, the result haven't been very successful.

Before reading the literature, I think we all knew the different ways to collect data, but not how to prepare the collection or what to think about. After reading all of this seems pretty obvious, but clearly, since we have failed before, it isn't. 

How do we in this project gather data, that's useful, possible analyse and draw conclusions from with the resources available? Is it possible?

Seminarium 1 - Viktor Gustafsson

Initial thoughts

When I first started reading chapter 7 I felt a bit distressed because it seemed like the book was stating each obvious method after another. But then I realised that even though the techniques being brought up was quite intuitive, it felt good to know that this actually is the professional way to do it. 

Data analysis

I really enjoyed reading about the different ways of analysing different sets of data since I have never really thought about treating data in such a digital way. It got me thinking about how powerful this more scientific approach to interaction design could be. Also, I knew since before that analysing qualitative data is a really complex task but I didn’t know that there was so many different methods and models that one could use to help with this. However, I still believe that one should be very careful with stating conclusions from this type of data without having enough quantitative data to back it up. 

The cartoon

The cartoon in chapter 10 describes how very wrong a project can turn out if you haven't clarified a projects requirements. I think it illustrates a “spot on” common problem in many types of organisations where there might be insufficient communication between different departments responsible for developing a new service or product. I think that this might be a key role for media technology student like ourselves to fill in a missing gap in organisations. - Making sure that the message (e.g requirements) is clearly delivered to each and everyone in larger organisations or projects. 

I hope that we will have enough time for our project to really practice data gathering, analysing it and then try to solve a problem/develop a new feature for public transportation from as finely tuned requirements as possible. If it turns out as the cartoon it would be a disaster.

Questions

I am curious about what typ of situations in the industry these methods are used? And how often are they used? Are they commonly used at big companies or is this a fairly unused approach for developing products?

Seminar 1 - Emma Klint

While doing a design project it’s important to set up goals and requirements. What these requirements are depend on a lot of different aspects, and getting them right is important for the success of the design. There are different kinds of requirements and you might have to use different methods for data gathering and analysis to find them all. It’s actually preferable to use a couple of different methods to make sure you get all the data you need.  Before doing a study you need to set up goals and really think through your choice of method. Your method need to provide you with the data you need to use the, for the project, preferable analysis technique. What also matters is how you’re presenting you’re gathered data. Regardless if you’re presenting it to a colleague or a customer, the data need to be presented in a distinct way to make sure that everybody understand the importance in the design choices you’d like to make.

What really got me thinking during the reading was, when do you stop setting up new requirements and are a software project ever considered all done? Perhaps it’s was easier a couple of years ago, when software was more of a physical product which was sold in i physical store without the possibility of sending out a small updates at any time. How do you keep a design team motivated if they can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel? 

Seminar 1 - Josefine Möller

The task of this project is to find an area of improvement for the travel experience when going from point A to point B. 

Right now we are at the stage where we haven’t yet decided what we are going to create. We have all agreed that the best way for us to move forward is to start with doing a field study. A field study in this case would mean that we choose and try out a specific route with a certain transportation. For example we all take the bus from A to B a couple of times to collect as much data as possible about that trip.

It is then important that we gather all of our data to find out where there are areas that need to be improved. Hopefully we even find more than one way to move towards and thereby get to decide which one we prefer the most.

When we have decided what path we want our project to take we need to focus on how we are going to collect even more data. Should we do interviews, questionnaires or more observations? A mixture of several methods would give us both quantitative and qualitative data, which is preferable. 

We also need to specify what requirements we have for our product. Do we want our product to work as a guidance for the traveller or as something that entertains him or her on the go? Maybe we even want a mixture of both? When we’ve gotten to this conclusion it is also good to think about more specific functional requirements like what features the product need to have. 

An other important task for us in this stage is to define our target group. This might be good to decide before the field study so that we know what to look for. But it can also be good to keep an open mind during an observation in case something unexpected happens. I think finding out user characteristics is critical when shaping the product. If we for example decide to design a product for either retirees or children we will probably have two completely different results in the end. Therefore it is important we decide a target group as soon as possible so that we know what to focus on when moving forward.