Skip to main content

Reading Note - Designing for Usability: Key Principles and What Designers Think by John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis

 

Thought :

For Cutting Game, the project I am working on.
  1. Early Focus on Users and Tasks
    • I will say that we did or we didn't.
    • Did
      • Our user is clearly stated at the beginning of the project : child with autism.
      • The idea is raised by Prof. Lo from OT who was an expert on autism child therapy.
      • The environment for the task (cutting game) is firmed : Playing the game at home.
    • Didn't
      • We did not have direct contact with child, at least we did not have chance to get children's trust and talk to them.
      • Even we have the chance, it is still need a lot of effort and training to be able to
        • interact with autism child carefully and properly.
        • speak in a way that they can understand
        • understand what they say
          • At least this one is very difficult, as I  attend the user study for so long.
          • It will need you to understand in details what problem this child has (from the medical aspect), why the child react or behave like that (behavioral science, psychology, ...).
          • All of these are far beyond my understanding, it need time for one to learn the knowledge (from occupational therapy), observe the child for a period, and get experience through practicing, which is impossible for a student from CS along(not even the chance and qualification, unless our school have program to support this kind of interdisciplinary research more actively, instead of just giving budget and saying that something like "We definitely encourage interdisciplinary research")
  2. Empirical Measurement
    1. The problem we met is like the "Didn't" part in the first principle, we reply on prof. Lo's specialism.
    2. The problem is a special one that common project focus on usual people may not encounter, our target user (autism child) is not so accessible.
    3. On the other hand, under such condition, I need to think more about learnability and usability of the cutting game by myself, find method to evaluate how easy to know everything need to play the game and thus be able to improve them.
  3. Iterative Design
    • It is clear that we are working in this style, besides that we rely on prof. Lo's specialism to represent the target user at first.
    • On the other hand, we don't have skill and chance to communicate with autism child, so rely on domain expert may be a reasonable and effective way.
    • Though the study, we indeed revise the cutting game according to our observation and feedback from child and their parents.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Setting MySQL to Use UTF-8 on MAMP (MySQL 5.5.9, or 5+)

I wanted to setup MySQL to use utf-8 on the MAMP installation on my Mac. I tried the instructions from this article: http://cameronyule.com/2008/07/configuring-mysql-to-use-utf-8/ However, I kept getting error messages that are similar to this one [ERROR] /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqld: unknown variable 'default-collation=utf8_general_ci' I did some search and realized that several variables are deprecated. Reference: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/server-options.html Therefore, I added the following lines into /Applications/MAMP/conf/my.cnf [mysql] character-set-server=utf8 [client] character-set-server=utf8 [mysqld] character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_general_ci init-connect='SET NAMES utf8' I restarted the server and mysql run successfully with relevant variables being set correctly. In the "Variables" tab under phpMyAdmin interface (ex. http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English) character set c...
2 comments
Read more

Use NVM to handle Angular-Node.js incompatibility (e.g., Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'export')

Overview If you are a fullstack developer, the chances are that you will be creating multiple frontend or Node.js projects along the way. When you are creating new projects using the newest version of the cli (command-line interface) of a particular framework, you might be asked to install the most updated version of Node.js in order to utilize the newest feature. This might involve upgrading your Node.js version, which might not be compatible with other existing projects (e.g., using Angular) you have created before. A potential solution is to use nvm (Node Version Manager) to install multiple versions of Node.js and use a particular version of the Node.js to install the proper version of the cli (e.g., Angular-CLI) that can be used to manage a particular project. Here I will use a problem I run into to explain how to solve it. Problem There is a compatibility issue between Node.js and angular.js. For instance, I run into an error when I was using an incompatible version of Node.js ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Resolve "Box Sync" (online storage) recent issue of crashing (halting) and not syncing on Mac/macbook

My Box (https://www.box.com/) online storage client software stop working on your Mac recently. I found one possible workaround, and I will describe it here. Open "Activity Monitor". Search among "All Processes" for "Box". You will see two process: "Box Sync Engine and "Box Sync".  Stop those two processes by first selecting process and then pressing "Quit Process". Download the latest version of "Box Sync" from Box's web site. (I didn't check whether it is a newer version then what I have on my computer.) Install the latest version of "Box Sync". Provide account information to login and start syncing. Your Box should work correctly after executing the above procedure. I didn't investigate the issue, but I got my Box working by following this procedure. Hope this help!
1 comment
Read more