What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website?

Ethnographic tools give me to improve the interactivity of an online banking website by understanding the many different cultures and languages that might me used on the site.

At what point is a design finish? What makes it a success? What is its purpose?

Design is really never finished but to make a design a success it has to give the user a pleasurable experience. A designs purpose is to give a user a pleasurable experience and to get the user to want to continue buying the products such when there are upgrades and new editions.

Identify a product family you use regularly. How has its branding effected your use, relationship and experience with the product? 

Apple products are products that I use regularly. Its branding effected my use even more because all of the products operate in the same way and the brand is simple. The brand also keeps that simple feel at the store and the associates are very helpful and welcoming when you go in to interact with their products. It is also less likely for Apple products to get viruses than a PC which is always great and my relationship with the product is like it’s ‘my best friend’. I love Apple and only like to use Apple. It is that simple. Apple has clear, user-friendly products that make me always want more. I love my experience with Apple and I could not be any happier.

-Interaction Design is what the name entails making products that will be interacted with by humans. This mean knowing how that product affects a person senses such as sight, hearing, touch, smell, and even taste. The combination of any of these senses and what emotions they bring up are what Interaction Designers look to exploit to induce the feeling they wish to express through their product. The biggest challenge that this brings up is the fact that everyone is different. This means that an emotion that is sparked in one person may not spark the same emotion in another. Interaction designers need to do a lot of research to make sure that the emotion they are invoking is felt by the majority of people to do their jobs right.

-As stated in the last paragraph an Interaction designer is a person who designs a product to affect the senses and invoke an emotional response. This means using scientific data to diagnose weather their products are doing what they are made to evoke. Drawing on fields like Phycology, Engineering, and Marketing, Phycology field helps the designer know how their audience thinks and how to go about testing what they think about a product without any bias. Engineering to know how materials can be manipulated to get the response that they wished. Lastly is Marketing where they know exactly how to bring the product to the masses in the best way to again elicit a favorable response.

• Ethnographic tools can first help me identify the operations in the online banking website and what roles they do. Ethnographic tools can then help people see how the different parts of the website relate to each and how they can be used. By studying how everything is organized, a designer can gain an understanding on how a user uses a site and can create new ways to improve the site. Ethnographic tools basically help people see how individuals handle certain sites and what changes need to be made to boost user experience.
• A design takes a very long time to finish because designers work to improve the visual, emotional, and experiential aspects of human life. Even when all of these aspects are met, a design can still be incomplete and designers may still work to improve on their designs. What makes a design a success is how it can show a clear indication of use and how it relates to people emotionally. The purpose of a design is to display a pattern of words used to communicate a message to people. What that message is can vary to the many people that see it.
• A product family that I use daily would be my Apple laptop. I ‘m very familiar with this brand an I can tell if a computer is an Apple computer Its branding has affected my use of it to a point that I rely on it to help me do school work, help me do research, and help me communicate with people who are also online. Apple computers are very user friendly and it is easy for me to use the different functions that are on it. My experience with it has improved the more I use it and I am able to follow all the new products and attachments that the company produces. It has made me realize that Apple computers are one of the best computers to use and you can rely on them to do any kind of work you have.

What makes up interaction design? Considering the whole, intuition, thoughtful reflection, new discovery, uncovering rich data, to design for behavior, to test retest and revisit ideas ; it is a form of design that should be user centered and the only true way to find out what users want is to interact with them.

What are some industry challenges for interaction design? Trying to find all of the variables of how many different people will interact with an object is a major problem, for many people approach things in a very different ways. Another problem is cultural and language barriers. Different cultures approach interaction in many different ways. Differences in peoples life and experience prohibits the interaction designer from creating in just one way. They have to explore every possibility that they can discover.

What is interaction design? Interaction design is the dialogue between a person and a product, service or system. It draws it’s knowledge from engineering and design. It is always evolving through different ways of discovering rich data, revisiting, re-designing and constantly searching for the new wants and needs of the user.

What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?

Interaction design is made up of components such as define, discover, synthesize, construct, refine, and reflect. Some industry’s challenges are discovery due to tight budgets and poor understanding of the value presented, point of views are hard to have an open mind, formal methods of testing, difficulty in the interpretation and application of the results of the prototype, and reflection is nearly always ignored by professional designers.

What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?

Interaction design is a creative process focused on people. Interaction design is evolving because the way users interact with the interface tools the system and application provides. When technology continues to change so does the design of that product.

The fields that draw knowledge for interaction design are; engineers, industrial designers, graphic designers, anthropology or other social sciences and marketing.

Joe Hale-9/2/2014-Questions-Thoughts on Interaction Design.

What are the goals of Apple’s website?

Credibility,visual hi fidelity,depth,breadth,interactivity, and data fidelity.

How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (pp. 41-56)

The designers made the site usable, useful and desirable. The navigation

to the support section is intuitive. There is easy to find useful information

for the new user as well as a clean graphic interface.

What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (pp. 72-75) Facebook’s function is to connect people and share images and information between many users and to create community.

What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one

example of each. (pp. 94-106) Hierachal=Apple site. Matrix=Amazon site.

Sequential =Amazon checkout. Organic=Wikepedia

What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation and what

percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy?134)

Huffington Post 25% Navigation 75% Content.

Google 100% Navigation  https://www.google.com

Wikipedia 100% Navigation  http://www.wikipedia.org

Etsy 75% Navigation 25% t https://www.etsy.com

How does http://www.landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (pp. 144-155) They use color, black and white and contrast to lead your eyes to the important items.

1. What are the goals of Apple’s website?

The goals of Apple’s website is to make the company sell their products, brand identity which is how users easily interact with their site, to present products in a clear, simple way and to educate the users.

How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (pp. 41-56)

Apple’s website addresses the needs of the user who just purchased their first MacBook by having a Support section, support articles and a discussion forum where users type questions or ask for advise. (Learn how to use it.)

2. What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (pp. 72-75)

The functional specifications of Facebook’s wall are letting the user to POST statuses for Facebook to connect people together and to share your status/information with their friends on their feed.

3. What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each. (pp. 94-106)

The four architectural approaches to information structure are, Hierarchical, Matrix, Organic, and Sequential.

Example of each:

Hierarchical: Apple  (most common)

Matrix: Amazon (information found by keywords that can connect you from each section… color, brand, size..etc.)

Organic: Wikipedia/Facebook Wall (no specific path you have to follow to see different information)

Sequential: movies/books/buying something online at checkout like Apple’s check out or Amazon’s check out (single process)

4. What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (pp. 116-134)

The percentage of the Huffington Post index page that is navigation and the percent that is content is (estimated) 35% navigation and 65% content.

Google- 75% navigation and 25% content

Wikipedia- 40% navigation and 60% content

Etsy- 55% navigation and 45% content

5.How does http://www.landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (pp. 144-155 )

They use colors to guide reader’s eyes which focuses on what is important. Grey was used for not so important information.

• The goals of Apple’s website are to educate the people on the products they sell, create the image that impresses customers, read up on news on new products, and answer the questions that customers ask. Apple addresses the needs of each user through the use of tutorials, updates on current products, and customer service with real people.
• The functional specifications of Facebook’s wall are information that connected people have access to like blogs, pictures and videos. The specs for the signup page are personal information like our birth date.
• The 4 architectural approaches are Hierarchical Structure (Ex. RMU Website), Matrix (Ex. Amazon website), Organic Structure (Ex. Wikipedia), and Sequential Structure (Ex. Any Tutorial)
• Like many web site, the Huffington Post index page takes up a little of the top of the page. I would say 5% is navigation and at least 85% is content. This same percentage goes with Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy.
• The way http://www.landor.com guides the readers eyes is the use of bright colors and large size boxes for the more important parts.

• The whole goal of Apple’s website is to sell products. They sell product by convincing customers that they have a more favorable product than their competition. They can do this by not just selling the product but also the persona that comes with the product; such as community, easier life, or even acceptance.

When a customer buys a product at Apple, they provide a customer service   that helps anyone with their purchase. They give you many ways to contact their support team either by phone, taking the product to a local store, or  sending it in to Apple’s factory.

• On Facebook’s wall, the function is simply to post comments, videos, and links. They can then be viewed by anyone who wants to post content on the wall. This function is to complete Facebook’s goal of connecting people together.

If you don’t have a Facebook they make it very easy to get one and join their Community. All they require is some everyday information such as name, birthdate, email, password, and whether you are male or female. This makes it very user friendly and doesn’t deter people from signing up.

• The 4 architectures of information structure are hierarchical, matrix, organic and sequential. An example of hierarchical structure is Nike’s website, when searching for a product on that website it starts with searching for men, woman or kid’s products and expands to more products from there. An example of an organic structure would be Wikipedia, where one search result may take you to a completely unrelated subject and depending on the user, is different for each person. A matrix structure is Facebook, where all the content is related and people can navigate to subjects that are shared by others. Lastly, a sequential structure can be found in the buying of a product on Amazon. This is where there is no option, just a straight forward start and end. Starting with your information and ending in you putting in your credit card number and buying the product.

• On the Huffington Post, about 80% of the page is navigation and 20% is content. It is only when you click on the navigational words that it takes you to the article that has more information on it. Wikipedia is maybe a little less navigation and more content at about 70% content and maybe 30% navigation. Google is even more with about 60% content and 40% percent navigation. Etsy is almost all navigation with very little content until you get to the actual product, at about 90% navigation and 10% content.

• In Landor’s web site they use a grid platform and colors to bring the viewer’s eyes to the articles of the day. Then it slowly leads you to the outer edges where the content navigation is.

It opens up onto a screen that shows the viewer the location, temperature, and conditions outside. A smaller box shows wind, humidity, uv index, dew point, visibility, sunrise, sunset and barometric pressure. At the bottom of the home screen the ‘Now’ category of the standalone navigation bar is selected. To the right is Hourly, 36 Hour and 10 day forecast options. The viewer is able to scroll through the information under the categories provided in the smaller navigation bar (hourly, 36 hour and 10 day).  Each section of information differentiated by thin white lines.

Below this navigation bar is a bigger one that includes Map, video, weather (highlighted), social and in season. This larger bar is stationary on all pages of the app. Two other buttons also remain stationary on all pages. The search button and settings button. The search button allows the viewer to search a location. The settings button provides options such as adding and removing locations, changing the background, alerts, login to Facebook and Iwitness and information about the app.

After selecting the map button on the larger navigation bar the viewer is directed to an interactive map set up the same way it is on TV. On this map you can zoom in and out of the location as well as change it. A play button allows the viewer to see in real time a storm approaching. Next to this button is a layers button giving the viewer options such as Temperature and cloud cover. These options are then displayed on the map.

Next to the map button is video. Upon selecting the viewer can scroll through a selection of ‘must see’ videos. A small bar with the options of must see (highlighted) local/U.S, World and on TV are available. Each allows the viewer to scroll vertically through the videos provided under each category.

Under the social button are options to tweet. You can also login to Iwitness. Next to the Iwitness button are options to add tweets under nearby (area in your location) and regional. Upon tapping Iwitness options for categories of what type of picture or video or tweet the viewer can add. This list includes hit the Road, nearby, featured, boat and beach, clouds, Disney memories, fall foliage, fishing, floods, fog, hail, holidays and quite a few more (please refer to the flow diagram for the rest).

Next is the in season button. This page allows the viewer to select options from a Pollen and Tropical navigation bar.  Under the pollen button a map is provided that can be scrolled to the right to view pollen information for  trees, weeds and grass. Under the Tropical button information on hurricanes is provided. Under the information, scrolling down allows the viewer to select from resources for this page. The resources listed are FEMA, Weather Ready, and Red Cross. Tapping these buttons redirects the viewer to main pages of these sites.