Seminar 2 - Linnea Holm

I think we’re in a great stage of our design project, the stage right before we’ve started to form a more tangible idea to continue to develop our prototype. Obviously, this is the stage where evaluation methods needs to be taken into consideration even before formulating the specifics of our design. The design process is, according to chapter 13, always a process where the designers are working to develop a product that meets users’ requirements, but where we as designers needs to realize that understanding and settling on these requirements are more of a negotiation over time. When the user’s needs are understood, the design reflects this.

Chapter 13 focus on the framework for different evaluation tactics, primarily on the DECIDE-framework, an iterative process where it’s important to go over each step in preparing for evaluation. I really thought these were accurate questions and check points in setting up an evaluation method. Who wants the design, and why? What are the attitudes and how is the feedback during the testing working? What approach should we take on? Chapter 15 however goes into how heuristic evaluation and walkthroughs work. Those two are inspection methods where experts evaluate according to certain guidelines whether the user interface elements conform to certain principles, called heuristics. Cognitive walkthrough evaluates design based on learning experience, also mostly carried out by an expert according to certain principles. Sometimes there aren’t enough resources or time for field studies or user studies, and that where these methods come in.

Chapter 13 also goes into analytics, which is based on users by observation, or other methods, and analysing their behaviour, something that is often used in handling large amounts of data, that can be visualised easily. If our ideas form into what I think it will form into, without getting too much ahead of myself, this is something we probably need to use for our project. We need to think about what evaluation methods to use, and really consider what requirements we want our project to be based on. Will we be able to establish what we need to reach with this? How will we know when we're done?