I think this highlights the most prominent weakness of these user studies. Despite that weakness, it seems like usability tests can be very valuable and worthwhile when designing an interface. It seems like all of the design methods we learn about are strong in one way and weak in another, so it's really starting to click for me why we should do so many types of tests and use different methods.

I like this way of talking about design and the use of balance. I don't often give much thought to the way my phone alarm clock or my real alarm clock have attempted to balance simplicity, clarity, and convention. It's interesting to compare different designs, such as a phone alarm versus a physical alarm, and see how these things are balanced differently in different contexts.

This really changed my perspective on what prototyping actually means. I have never created a prototype for something before and I honestly just thought of it as a crude version of the final product. This use of prototypes makes much more sense for the design process and the idea of prototypes teaching you about the effectiveness of your solution seems incredibly useful.

Reading the sample critique above really helped me understand what a "good" critique looks like, which is something I feel like is rarely focused on in other courses I have taken. I like the idea of critique as a conversation more than just a required Canvas comment. It's much easier to misunderstand ideas if you are not able to ask the designers any questions– I feel I have misunderstood other people's ideas and that my own ideas have been misunderstood when there is no communication. This has also shown me how I can improve my own critiques if I really engage with the idea I am critiquing and ask the designer questions about their idea.

As somebody who is interested in library science, I really liked this point. I have thought, written, and talked about why people should be using libraries more but I had never considered it from this type of design perspective. Looking at a library as a resource for generating ideas, rather than only doing research or building up knowledge, adds another way that libraries are underutilized to my list.

I wonder how to determine whether a persona is "valid" or not, or how this validity could be verified. I imagine you would need some sort of evidence of what makes a persona realistic, like relevant data from a population or a personal story from a potential user. A potential issue would be the biases of designers when it comes to creating personas, it could be hard not to let those biases affect the persona in some way.

It's interesting to consider how "user research" is not needed if someone is fully involved within the community they are designing for. I think it's still important to get information from users but I understand how that would be easier and/or more casual if it was users from a community you are a part of. I wonder in what other ways does designing for your own community affect the design process?

I had never considered how the reasoning and perspective behind design can differ so much; it's nice to define it as a "unit of analysis." I am also taking INFO 300: Research Methods right now and I just read about the different perspectives going into research as well. Reading these two things back to back is making me think about how design and research have a lot of overlap and I'm wondering how design ideologies and research ideologies interact in situations where they are both at play.

This statement made me consider how much influence that designers have over the final product of a company. I think it's also important to consider the "profit motive" mentioned a few paragraphs above. I think that in professional contexts, there is a lot of power with the profit motive, potentially more than there is with the designers. I think that most "bad" design (loosely defining that as design that doesn't work efficiently and/or effectively for its users) comes from when the profit motive is more powerful than the designers, when cheap and quick production is prioritized.