Together, our team spent hundreds of hours on project 2, and we feel we really thought through lots of things via exploration of many ideas and free exchange of questions and rethinking. Looking back, I feel we had a healthy team dynamic, and our approach struck a good balance between creativity and analysis.
If I had to self-critique our process doing the project, I’d say we probably could have started sketching earlier. We did lots of research before we started the ideation process. The number of relevant empirical studies we found was more than forty, which was probably excessive, even though we ended up reviewing only part of them. This excessiveness was mostly my fault as I was still having a hard time shaking off the research mind-set, but design and research are two related but distinct activities. I need to learn how to use research for design in a more effective way.
Additionally, the documentation process could have started earlier so that we would have had much less to do for the final write-up and we would have had more time to plan our presentation. It seems to me that another benefit of starting the documentation process early on is forcing us to think hard on the story behind the design, which could help fine-tune our design or identify the “holes” in our rationale.
Users in the three usability tests we conducted for project 2 had quite different mental models about password management programs in general, and impressions about our prototypes in particular. We went through a major redesign following the 2nd usability test we did based on the user’s extensive feedback, which really helped us see what we had not been able to see.
Our 3rd user was an IT expert who had used password management programs for years. It’s interesting to see that our redesign based on the 2nd user who was much less sophisticated in IT skills and knowledge also seemed to benefit the 3rd user. This leaves me wonder had we switched the users for our 2nd and 3rd tests, what would have happened, and more generally how to select users if we are doing multiple usability tests for a project.
Overall, I’m glad we are continuing working on the project to “go deeper.” Having heard critique for our and others’ project & presentations, we now have fresh eyes again to look at our project. It’ll be a great heuristic experience.
If I had to self-critique our process doing the project, I’d say we probably could have started sketching earlier. We did lots of research before we started the ideation process. The number of relevant empirical studies we found was more than forty, which was probably excessive, even though we ended up reviewing only part of them. This excessiveness was mostly my fault as I was still having a hard time shaking off the research mind-set, but design and research are two related but distinct activities. I need to learn how to use research for design in a more effective way.
Additionally, the documentation process could have started earlier so that we would have had much less to do for the final write-up and we would have had more time to plan our presentation. It seems to me that another benefit of starting the documentation process early on is forcing us to think hard on the story behind the design, which could help fine-tune our design or identify the “holes” in our rationale.
Users in the three usability tests we conducted for project 2 had quite different mental models about password management programs in general, and impressions about our prototypes in particular. We went through a major redesign following the 2nd usability test we did based on the user’s extensive feedback, which really helped us see what we had not been able to see.
Our 3rd user was an IT expert who had used password management programs for years. It’s interesting to see that our redesign based on the 2nd user who was much less sophisticated in IT skills and knowledge also seemed to benefit the 3rd user. This leaves me wonder had we switched the users for our 2nd and 3rd tests, what would have happened, and more generally how to select users if we are doing multiple usability tests for a project.
Overall, I’m glad we are continuing working on the project to “go deeper.” Having heard critique for our and others’ project & presentations, we now have fresh eyes again to look at our project. It’ll be a great heuristic experience.
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