15 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2025
    1. The And-But-Therefore template is useful precisely because it temporarily puts aside the need to craft public-facing language, and focuses instead on the key structure of the narrative you need to communicate to your audiences.

      I totally agree that And-But-Therefore is an efficient way because it can attract the readers' attention and can also efficiently introduce how we can help users to solve their worries also it makes readers more willing to continue to spend their time exploring the next steps. I changed my perspective because at first, I didn't notice the importance of And-But-Therefore and I didn't know the sequence to tell the story clearly, so sometimes the story makes the readers confused and don't understand what the key point is and now I understand that what kind of narrative is suitable for providing to users. In addition, I consider that the And-But-Therefore is a good way to let users know if the solutions are useful and suitable for helping them resolve their worries through a clear narrative.

  2. Feb 2025
    1. There is already a growing design justice community: people and organizations who work to realize design justice principles in our daily practices.

      I totally agree that there are more and more people starting to care about design justice in daily practices. I find it useful because paying more attention to what marginalized people think about is very crucial and the design should let everyone feel included and considered regardless of who they are. In addition, the design justice principles can indeed influence how the world changes which is a key factor that designers need time to consider while designing it.

    1. The fundamental idea of a walkthrough is to think as the user would, evaluating every step of a task in an interface for usability problems.

      I totally agree that it's indispensable to take the users' perspectives into account to analyze the problems. In addition, evaluating every step of a task can let designers discover potential usability problems that might be ignored during the process of design. I changed my perspective, at first I didn't analyze each step of a task, which might cause confusion for users and they don't know what they should do next and then it causes the interface to be not user-friendly. Now, I realize that the importance of evaluating each step of a task can decrease the possibility of usability problems happening while users using it and it can also save time and money.

    1. While user studies can tell you a lot about the usability problems in your interface and help you identify incremental improvements to your design, they can’t identify fundamental flaws and they can’t tell you whether your design is useful

      I totally agree that looking for usability problems is a key factor in making a user-friendly prototype. The user studies indeed let designers realize if the option for the interface can help users solve their problems without any confusion while using it. I changed my perspective because I realized that a good design needs to let everyone feel included and not just only for a specific group of people, at first I just knew what kind of design I wanted to do but now focusing on what users really want.

    1. affordances arise when a person recognizes that opportunity and knows how to act upon it

      I totally agree that affordances mean that users can directly know how to interact with prototypes without any signifiers. This is because it is very important to identify if the design is good or not because the products need to be user-friendly and don't let the users feel confused while interacting with products. I changed my perspective because at first I didn't realize the importance of affordances and then I realized that affordances can determine the experience of interacting between users and products and it also can determine if users want to continue to use it.

    1. The fastest and easiest form of prototype is a sketch, which is a low-fidelity prototype that’s created by hand. See the drawing at the top of this page? That’s a sketch. Get good at using your hands to draw things that you want to create so that you can see them, communicate them, and evaluate them. With enough skill, people can sketch anything, and they almost always do it faster than in any other media. On the other hand, because they have the least detail of any prototype (making them low-fidelity), they’re most useful at the beginning of a design process

      I totally agree that a sketch is an easier and more efficient way to build up the thoughts for the design before doing high fidelity prototype; the sketch can clarify the main target for how to solve the problems for users and make a plan for each element in order to ensure the layout is appropriate and efficient for users to use without confusions. I changed my perspectives because at first I just directly did the high-fidelity prototype and it might not be efficient enough because I didn't have a plan before doing it, which means it might cause the situation to forget some key elements in the design process.

    1. In general, questions that use simple and concrete language are more easily understood by respondents. It is especially important to consider the education level of the survey population when thinking about how easy it will be for respondents to interpret and answer a question.

      I totally agree that using simple and concrete language is a key point for a survey because if the words are too professional or unclear, then respondents will be confused and it might affect the accuracy of the survey at the end. I changed my perspectives because at first I considered that using professional words might increase the connection with my problem but it might make respondents confused about it.

    1. Don’t simply copy the designs you find in your research. The competitors may not be using best practices. Instead, be inspired by the solutions found in your research and adapt the solutions to fit your brand, product, and users.

      I totally agree that copying designs directly from the research I found is not a good way to fulfill my own design because it might be not useful for my design based on different products, brands, and users. I changed my perspectives because at first, I considered that other designs are more possibly useful because there are already been used by users and not many problems happened but now I realize that I need to create my own designs by referring to the examples.

  3. Jan 2025
    1. In many ways, being critical is easier than being generative. Our society values criticism much more than it does creation, constantly engaging us in judging and analyzing rather than generating and creating things. It’s also easy to provide vague, high level critical feedback like “Yeah, it’s good” or “Not great, could be improved”. This type of critique sounds like feedback, but it’s not particularly constructive feedback, leading to alternatives or new insights.

      I totally agree that giving constructive feedback is not an easy thing. This is because giving a useful critique might need professional knowledge somehow and also some feedback like it's good and not great cannot let people realize how to improve their current solutions and indeed know what others' thoughts about it and test it if it's user-friendly enough. I changed my perspective because at first, I hadn't taken this course I might just give vague feedback to others but now I comprehend the importance of giving feedback.

    1. Your best idea will probably be your 100th idea and not your first, because it will incorporate all of the wonderful things about the first 99 ideas. So start generating those bad ideas, figuring out what’s wrong with them, and then making better ones

      I totally agree that the 100th idea will combine all of the wonderful things together based on the first 99 ideas. This is because the first idea might not be the best and also the 100th idea can be more thorough than others based on the overall explorations. I changed my perspectives because at first I usually pick the first idea and then I will not continue to think about more ideas, which means the first idea I chose might not be logical enough and then it might affect the design later. So, that's the reason I agree that thinking about more ideas is crucial.

    2. However, most societies do not value creative thinking and so our skills in generating ideas rapidly atrophies, as we do not practice it, and instead actively learn to suppress it11 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. Springer Netherlands. . That time you said something creative and your mother called you weird? You learned to stop being creative. That time you painted something in elementary school and your classmate called it ugly? You learned to stop taking creative risks. That time you offered an idea in a class project and everyone ignored it? You must not be creative. Add up all of these little moments and where most people end up in life is possessing a strong disbelief in their ability to generate ideas. Some of my students have also argued that pressure to pursue more “logical” careers rather than creative ones disincentivizes youth to pursue (and therefore practice) creative endeavors.

      I totally agree that situation of creative thinking is sometimes not accepted by society is happening. This is because it's common for not all creative ideas to be encouraged in society. I changed my perspectives because at first if I am using creative thinking to do my work then I will feel worried because I am not sure if my idea is suitable and acceptable now I will keep myself creative in order to explore more things that I might not get without using the creative thinking.

    1. One simple form of knowledge is to derive goals and values from your data. What are people trying to achieve? For example, let’s say you did a bunch of interviews about trying to find a place to rent in Seattle. One person talked about trying to afford rent, another person talked about trying to save time by finding the right location, another person had a physical disability that made the layout of the house important. You need to extract these goals and represent them explicitly and try to understand what they are. Different designs may serve different goals, and so understanding the space of goals that you might design for is critical.

      I totally agree that designs are created depending on the different needs and goals of different people. For example, if people are considering choosing to buy a gift for friends, some will care more about the usability and if the products are user-friendly, but others might only consider what the products themselves look like. I changed my perspectives because at first, I didn't understand the key concepts of designing a solution or prototype and then I realized that a good and reliable design is created by different needs and goals from different people.

    1. Therefore, you can’t define a problem without being very explicit about whose problem you’re addressing.

      I agree that clarifying questions is designed for which part of people before defining questions is crucial in a way. Since it can make sure I received the expected information from the interview. I changed my perspectives because at first I always created questions before thinking about what part of the people I wanted to interview, and then it sometimes made interviewees confused.

    1. encouraging designers to consider human values77 Friedman, B., & Hendry, D. G. (2019). Value sensitive design: Shaping technology with moral imagination. MIT Press. . For example, instead of viewing a pizza delivery app as a way to get pizza faster and more easily, we might view it as a way of supporting the independence of elderly who do not have the mobility to pick up a pizza on their own.

      I agree that thinking about human values first before starting to design is useful and meaningful. It changed my perspective because human values can determine what kind of design will be produced and also if the design indeed helps some people solve their problems. In addition, empathy is also a key point for overall design and making sure what kind of users the target is.

    1. In a way, all of these skills are fundamentally about empathy55 Wright, P., & McCarthy, J. (2008). Empathy and experience in HCI. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI). , because they all require a designer to see problems and solutions from other people’s perspectives, whether these people are users, other designers, or people in other roles, such as marketers, engineers, project managers, etc

      I agree with that empathy is a key point for designing a helpful object and it can efficiently help people to solve their problems. It also change my perspectives because it let me indeed realize that it is indispensable for doing some research for the user's perspectives in order to ensure the design is suitable and efficient for them. Spending time on specializing what the problem is necessary for a designer.