Lots of talk around sketching interfaces and sketchnotes for talks in the UX community right now, but I really find it helps me focus and it makes the ideas go in my head. So I sketch chapters from my course textbook. I even look up the writers to try and approximate little caricatures (it’s all in the hair).
The Open University, locations of students on my module.
I’m going to map this against the frequency and number of forum posts as well (as a way of avoiding my set reading & assignments).
It’s going well, cumulative average score across all modules so far is 80%, not a distinction, but it keeps my motivation high. Better grades than my undergrad BA, but I don’t spend every waking hour in the pub/club this time. It’s interesting stuff too; although the course is limited (the OU is withdrawing all Psych. courses and re-structuring, thanks Tories) it’s bloody excellent, interesting stuff.
“Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again”
So said Karl Popper, as part of his Theory of Falsification
Too often though, ‘testing’ in the form of under-defined and confusing prototypes, or shoutie & pre-determined focus groups, or even ‘lab’ tests with leading questions and alien environments, is touted as ‘good tests’ of a UX design.
But a test can be bad. It can be a badly defined test, a poorly run test, one made by someone with no concept of the innate problems of logicity and psychology. These bad tests are no killer of flawed design, instead are all too often the harbinger.
I was at a conference recently in Berlin: Cognitive Cities. The bulk of the day was centred around the data generated through ‘use of cities, and the patterns seen and mapped (during or afterwards). Some interesting stuff happening then but one speaker summed it up for me when he said
“we find the patterns we are looking for”
no . shit . sherlock
I’ve just read an article, referred by the lovely @wickedgeekie. She and I disagree on this but it’s good to debate:
Too right. But don’t tell the marketeers I said that… they’ll think I’m happy with ‘segments’ after all.
Make it user-centred, rather than user-led and then I’ll agree that breakthroughs are possible.
car keys | house keys | selection of pens | notebook | passport | ipad | penicillin | pencil | pencil (propelling) | moisturiser | hairbrush | engagement ring | paracetamol | water | book | in-ear headphones | audio splitter cable | contact lenses | eyeliner | lip balm | wallet | ipad sd card reader | scarf | spot-zapper | nose-balloon | bulldog clip
todays’ life-pack
