Skip to main content

The Deeper Value of Group Reports


For this capstone writing course, we were asked to put together a team of 3 or 4 classmates in which we would design materials that could be used for user-testing and then make a report about whatever we are testing. My group has four people, and we plan to analyze three different website-building tools: Wix, Weebly, and WordPress–the three "w's" of amateur website building. Each member is responsible for learning about one of the aforementioned website-building tools and the fourth member is responsible for bringing in information about website building in general. This is an especially important piece because the fourth member's general knowledge will help us other three members to have a standard to compare our respective sites to, rather than simply comparing three tools to each other. In other words, the general knowledge and research for website-building tools gives context to what the other three of us (who are analyzing specific sites) should look for.

For the user-test design component of the project, one of our members already conducted a study with users. There are some high achievers in this group and this person is certainly one of them. Because this person already conducted a user study of Wix, we can use the same format for a proposed study about Weebly and WordPress. Having one script and test that is used for each website will help us in the overall goal of our assignment, which is to compare the three applications. We are well set up because we now have two baselines, the general website building tools information and the same test design. While we complete this project, we will be looking for any necessary adaptions that need to be made to the test design, but for now, we are positioned for success.

The interesting aspect of the team, in my opinion, is the size. Perhaps in the "real world" that we say we are working toward, teams can have more people, a person for each job–but there is a more important skill involved here, and that is the ability to have multiple jobs. Let's face it, we're all about to try to get jobs in a world in which, for the most part, being the newbie in the workforce means you have to catch up. Being multi-faceted in our abilities and being able to play multiple roles (and multiple roles simultaneously) in the workforce will determine the rate in which we find our niche in our future careers. Whereas it might be convenient as well as traditional for each person in an academic role to have one job, the real value in this project is that we have to put on a few different hats to complete the project. We are analysts, test-designers, researchers, readers, and editors.

And of course, as any capstone project should, it ties into the main theme of the class, user design and experience architecture. On a more obvious level, we are analyzing the design (and architecture) of these website-building tools. Under that, though, there is a deeper learning about experience architecture–the kind of minds and thinking that it takes to understand and to build it well. As we learn to use multiple skills and play multiple roles in our groups, we ingrain in ourselves that it takes multi-faceted thinking in order to design, build, critique, and change designs to give users the best iteration of a user-centered design until the next iteration is discovered.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Proposed Plan for Socially Distanced User Study of Wix.com

Plan for User Study: www.Wix.com I. Introduction Although a usability test is unlikely in this socially-distanced and pandemic-filled world, if I were to do one, this post describes how I would see myself doing it as well as a basic overview of my plan of study, had this been an option. II. Identifying Users 1. The users of this site align most with the age group of 20-35. This demographic uses Wix primarily for educational purpose and small business website platforms. 2. Users in this case will work through website creation, as that is the main function of the site. III. Target Identification of Problems Below are the main heuristics and an associated question to further explore the content of the site as I plan a User Study. A. Engagement Are the screen and workplace too crowded, and are they layered to maximize engagement? Is the site   nested too deeply with helpful tools to be useful? B. Error Tolerance Does the Help Desk analysis show enough specific problem de...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design Surrounds Us

Despite surrounding us in every object that we own, encounter, and interact with, design is oftentimes an invisible sort of force. Good design generally directs the user without being overtly noticeable, which means that it is often easier for us to pick out elements of bad design—that is, we most often notice design when we’re frustrated or confused by it. However, when we feel these emotions, it is important to understand which aspect of a design has caused them. Sometimes the failure in design is not caused by the most obvious component; indeed, the design of a specific frustrating component may have been the best design available if there are external and unmalleable constraints that it had to work within. Noting which level a design fails at, then, will make addressing design concerns much more exact and relevant, as critiquing a specific frustration without addressing the wider problematic system brings about no progress. While perhaps not the most exciting topic, a strong exampl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Think “Experience Architecture”

At the beginning of this class, we were assigned readings and videos about airports in order to conceptualize the main theme of the course, experience architecture. Experience architecture is the design of spaces (architecture) for users (experience), such as an airport. In de Botton's work, "A Week at the Airport," de Botton addresses a doubt about experience architecture that sheds light on the scope in which the concept applies. "Standing before costly objects of technological beauty, we may be tempted to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we could grow stupid through admiration...[and] yet to refuse to be awed at all might in the end be merely another kind of foolishness. In a world full of a chaos and irregularity, the terminal seemed a worthy and intriguing refuge of elegance and logic." (de Botton, 2009, p. 3-4). Simply put, experience architecture is design that is meant for the experience of the user. De Botton communicates this through an exp...
Post a Comment
Read more