4 - Julie Rogers

Chapter 3 of Designing the Obvious addresses many views on how things should be designed. Hoekman talks about user-centered design, activity-centered design, and self-design. The user is not always correct according to him. The users will say they want something but then not want it. He gives the example of the burger that is healthier for you. Most people said they would order it if they went to this fast food place because it is better for them and their families. This was a huge fail. Of course people will say that they will order something that is healthier and better for them but people don't always do what they think they would do. Also, Hoekman also states that more features do not necessarily mean that the application is better. He gave the example of Word. Word has many features but when he uses word, he uses maybe 1% of the features available. He then goes on to say that users usually only use 20% of the features that an application offers. Just because the user asks for certain features, does not mean they will use them or find them useful. They want these things but the real solution is to make the current features better. Designing for certain situations is actually better according to Hoekman. Focusing only on a certain user can limit the features you decide to put on this application and make it worse than improving it. This type of design method is better for applications that are to be used for many different types of people that have one thing in common. He uses the librarian example to explain this. Many people work the same job but have totally different lives. Their different lives are not important to the application they use for a common job.

Situation-centric approach to research is what we did in Project #2. We were given the task to redesign a workout machine panel and this in turn, was situation-centric because we had to focus on one machine and how people used it. This was one situation and to be able to come up with the best design, we had to view the situation that the user would be in when using this machine. We could use this method for this project since the user would be using this machine and this is one situation that they would be in. There are many ways of using the machine also which would make this method a bit tricky. We could also use the self-centered method because most of us have an opinion on how these panels should be laid out. Most people believed that the panels should be simpler. For example, the original panel for my project was very complicated with many buttons. Alex and I simplified this panel by making less buttons and making some features more functional by having multiple things to be able to be done with just one or two buttons.