Paul's Blog 07017421: 5th Entry

The topic of this weeks lecture was usability, a very broad subject covering many areas of technology.

Almost every piece of technology we encounter has been designed with usability in mind. Designers have to think about how a user is going to interact with a piece of technology and what the actual purpose of the technology is if it benefits the user in the correct manor. Our lecturer used the example when you go to a cash machine you just want to get cash out, you don’t want to complete a level collecting notes like you might want to do in video games for example. The designers must always think about contingency because if a user can do something wrong, they probably will.

Different applications involve single use or multiple use, single user or group user, informing, teaching or entertaining, controlled environments or uncontrolled environments.

One good way of organising the thought process when designing these type of applications is to spilt it up into different sections. There are many different ways of doing this but one we focused on was called CUTS or context, user, task and system. Context consists of the why the user will be using the system and where he or she might be accessing it. User consists of the users physical attributes, mental capabilities and general technological skill level. Task is what the user hopes to achieve from using the system like the goals and end result whether that be physical or emotional (eg. games). System is what system the application will be running on, for example will it need multiple monitors, will they need to be touch screen.

The lecture was very informative and really made you think what questions had to be asking during the design process in making these applications. Its amazing how much technology has come one and how many new devices have entered our lives like the MP3 player. There are so many new technological innovations being thought out and designed and it has become a huge industry. I’ll definitely be coming back to this topic if I have to design anything that requires and user interaction. I look forward to the second part of the lecture next week!

The tutorial was similar to last weeks tutorial following on from usability and design of websites. Instead of being given another huge checklist we got given two links containing guidelines for web design to make websites more usable (links 1, 2). The first set of guidelines consisted of 292 page PDF document with each page dedicated to a design feature. Thankfully we only had to look at the homepage section. The second website was a short list listing only the fundamentals.

The guidelines were presented in a usable way, the key points were highlighted and were clearly visible. The guidelines are sensible to an extent. Using the 292 page PDF document in chapters one bit at a time would work well but users could get annoyed sifting though all 292 pages when they just want to get a quick and basic interpretation of how good their website is, but that’s when the shorter checklist can come in useful. I don’t believe however that there is a one size fits all set of guidelines. For example, the guidelines say that websites should display the contents on the front page, but this wouldn’t be appropriate for small websites. Also, for websites where some users will have vision problems, big clear text would be a high priority. You can’t just follow a set of guidelines to the book and expect to get a perfect website. The guidelines can be fantastic for creating ideas but you need to combine them with independent thought. This is the same for almost all guidelines, not just ones for making websites. If I ever needed to design a website but had no idea how to design a website, the first thing I would do is look at some guidelines to get some ideas.