Ideal Design Exercise
The next step in our project strategy was to address user intents through design and functionality. The data from the user interaction study gave us a solid foundation on which to build our designs. Even with good data, designing to intents is a difficult process that depends heavily on creativity. In order to tap into our own intuitions and ideas about music playback and organization in the car, we created a design exercise for ourselves. Each member of the group sketched out what his or her ideal design would be, keeping the user intents in mind without explicitly designing to them.
The saying “the user is not like me” is often held as a central tenant of human-computer interaction. Despite that, designing for ourselves allowed us to think more creatively about the problem. There was no real danger of leaving user intents behind, since every member of our team participated in the collection and analysis of the interview data collected in the user interaction study.
Design iterations
After opening up some more creative possibilities with our ideal design exercise, we broke up the design problem into its functional components: playback, playlist management, and ripping. This approach made the task more manageable – instead of creating an entire interface, we could focus on certain aspects of the design. It also grounded our efforts in the functional uses of the in-car jukebox.
For the next round of designs, we were faced with the challenge of integrating our various designs for playback, playlist management, and ripping. In order to stay aligned with our user’s needs, we formulated a number of core user values, which we drew out of the intents we identified earlier in the process. These values were simplicity, consistency, control, and visibility. Each of these values had a summary phrase, as well, which allowed our group to think of each characteristic from a user-centered standpoint.
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User Value
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Key Phrase
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Simplicity
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"Don't make me think."
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Consistency
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"Don't change on me."
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User Control
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"Give me control of my music."
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Visibility
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"Where am I?"
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Our next step involved creating a separate design for each user value. This approach allowed us to explore the space of possible designs in a more explicit way, while still maintaining a user-centered approach. By understanding a range of possible design directions, we were able to make stronger decisions about the future direction of the interface.
As we moved towards the next step in our project strategy, we worked to consolidate our wide range of design ideas into a single, complete interface. To avoid the pitfall of designing in a vacuum, we chose to incorporate some informal user feedback into this process. Each group member presented several of our paper designs to a number of subjects in order to gather some high-level data about features, functionality, and interaction design. This extra data helped us make decisions during the consolidation process.
