Movable Feast – Week 10
Experience Design.
By Catriona Imray and Victoria Glover
Looking at the Frontiers Poll that we completed in the first week of classes, I remember looking at the one entitled “Experience Design” and thinking “Gosh, I hope I don’t get assigned that one for the movable feast. I don’t really understand what they are trying to say… at all!”
Fortunately, I can now boil it down to this: Experience design or UX design is all about how the user experiences the design.
So what is experience design?
One of the early examples of the definition of user experience that I could come up with, or designing specifically for the interaction – Pokemon GO
Going through the various websites and YouTube videos to get a real handle on the actual definition of “experience design”, I inadvertently stumbled on the best definition possible, when I posted about the adaptive learning that my truck goes through as I drive… it is designed to give me a great experience, or at least try to. Putting the controls at easy access for the driver, making sure that both the driver and the passengers have a way to enjoy being in the vehicle (with many, many cupholders!), are all parts of designing a good customer experience. This is essentially the definition of “experience design”. Figuring out the best way to design something so that the consumer/user has a great experience with the product/service/app/program.
Please click here for our website on Experience Design.
Feel free to experience the apps we have included, and post comments, responses, criticisms, etc., either here or on the Padlet embedded in the website.
https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/career-tips/what-is-ux-design/
This is one of the topics I like. The most important aspects of User interface design are ease of use and learning, including everything the user needs, responsiveness to the screen type and size and security. I also believe that the beauty and consistency of graphics and other multimedia elements are embedded in use friendly way.
I have really enjoyed browsing your experience design-friendly website.
Dear Catriona and Vicki,
Experience design is such a valuable topic to raise. Is it applicable to every occupation out there? Quite possible.
You know, international students shared their stories with me every semester – how hard it is to memorize new English words or to work & study, to rent, cook, clean, be on a budget, be away from parents, be on time, and so on. Or how cool it is to travel, experience snow, meet new people during Toronto film festivals, etc. I guess it was not only pragmatic: to complain to someone and feel better, or to make friends with a teacher to get an easy pass. They were young adults very far from home. I think it was their way of studying English as a foreign language in a bigger context of studying Canada and the world.
I read in one humanitarian resource recently that “the best stories originate from within someone’s lived experience” (Stoddart & Turnbull, 2016, p. 196), and I totally agree with it. I understand experiential learning much better now thanks to the strong theoretical part of your project.
The way the designers (and you!) explain what they do is suddenly so familiar and so related to me as a teacher. It also involves a working place psychology – to listen to the client/customer/user, sympathize, and suggest a way out or something new as the best option.
Design as research, design as a strategy, design as swimming, design as a way of making money and something good for humanity too; clients as loyal people (think about students-turned-lifelong-friends), experiences as something valid to spend time and effort in, etc. – brilliant!
Awesome selection of videos on UX Design, ladies. What can I say, I finally understood how I could describe my teaching activities using fancy technical terms and word combinations. Thank you so much for giving me this new linguistic and professional perspective!
I wish I saw a site like yours at the beginning of my MET studies – it’s excellent to mentally unite education and technology. Frankly, my first UBC courses didn’t bring me a lot of satisfaction, and I moved on more out of habit to finish what I start than out of curiosity.
Your project, on the other hand, is something that can be pretty useful tomorrow when an acquaintance of my acquaintance calls and asks how he can improve his English writing quickly for the coming language test, etc.
Thank you very-very much for this educational sensation, Catriona and Vicki!
Reference
Stoddart R., & Turnbull D. (2016). Why bother talking? On having cerebral palsy and speech impairment: Preserving and promoting oral communication through occupational community and communities of practice. In P. Block, D. Kasnitz, A. Nishida, & N. Pollard (Eds.), Occupying disability: Critical approaches to community, justice, and decolonizing disability (pp. 195-207). Springer.
Hello Anna!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! I’m glad that our artifact is something that can be useful to you! I always strive to create something that I can use in my practice, either on the teaching side (like you’ve talked about) or for my students to use (they won’t get as much out of this as older students would, since they are all 12-13 years old).
Experience is something that I feel really connects people with the content. In another MET course, we’ve been working on a gender identity project, something to educate all on the difference between gender identity and sex assigned at birth. It’s the stories from people living the experience of being a gender non-conforming person and having to deal with the ridicule/hardships that we get a lot of our content and learning from. Its all well and good to state facts, but theres an empathetic part in most of us that will connect with human emotions more. We remember it more when a face is attached to the information.
Thank you for your OER!
One of my least favourite aspects of user experience is the requirement to create accounts. While Single Sign On accounts through Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft help to reduce the number of usernames and passwords that need to be maintained, I still prefer to be able to try the app without creating an account. If and app forces me to create an account, I will often just delete it and try the next one.
Data security is a genuine concern, and small apps like these plant apps collect data that can and will be used for anything from targeted ads, to identity theft. Do we trust the data security of a website to which we are uploading geo-tagged pictures, often of the inside of our house, along with our names?
Recently, I was booking camping for this summer in a National Park. In this case, the need to create an account makes sense. What a difficult experience! After finally recovering the password from my old account, I had to confirm the account through an email that was sent. Of course that email ended up in Spam, which I discovered a day later, but there was also no option to resend the email.
Experience design really is a fascinating and triggering topic!
Hi Douglas! Thank you for your response.
I fully agree with you when it comes to account making. Even though I break the cardinal rule of never using the same password, when it’s a throw away account I don’t mind if it’s something I’ve used before. I have a password specifically set for that use. And it’s the most frustrating experience trying to recover an account when the company/organisation hasn’t bothered to think about what the experience is like on our end. Especially with something like camping – how quickly those spots fill up!
I hadn’t really thought about the privacy issues with these apps. You really are giving away your exact location, unless you have the settings turned off for geo-tagging. But you’d still have to give a general location for identification purposes. That’s when reading the fine print is so imperative. What are they going to use our information for? Is there a third party that is going to get the information for their own use? It’s important to know these things.
Thank you again for your response!
I have to agree wholeheartedly about having to create an account for using an app, and the associated privacy concerns. It was something I struggled with when trying to create the activity. I’m always pleased when we have an app that doesn’t require any identifying information, although, as Vicki mentioned, reading the fine print is imperative.
I experienced “errors loading flora” with PlantNet. I put it aside, though had better success with it the following day. Plantsnap and iNaturalist were my two favourites as they both offered useful information and warnings about plants right away. If I were to use one with students, I might choose iNaturalist; it tracked your progress, offered tips to improve your images and gave out badges. Great interaction! Thank you, again 🙂
I’m sorry that you had difficulty with PlantNet! Thank you, though, for trying again the next day and not giving up entirely. My preference is iNaturalist too, but that’s also because I want to know the bugs that are creeping all over the place as well.
Thank you for your great OER, Catriona & Victoria. As a user, my experience was delightful. I thoroughly enjoyed the activity and benefited from the resources you included. Well-done!
Thank you!
Thank you for the great site and VERY useful links. I am currently on a tangent and exploring “Sketch” as a digital tool to create a mid-fidelity wire frame. I really enjoyed learning about User Experience Designs and and am keen to apply it in A-3. I am also an avid gardener and have used a plant identifier app in the past. “Picture This” helped a friend and I to identify some berries, and possible side effects, that her 3 year old ate while we hiking/camping (2 years ago). I am looking forward to trying some other apps…
I’m so glad that you find the links useful. I have also used a number of other plant identifying apps, but struggled to get them to work well. PlantNet is currently my new favourite, and I love finding uncommon uses for plants, like sword fern being used as a topical pain reliever (too bad I’m no longer in the Lower Mainland, or the Island, and they don’t grow up here).
Eating unknown berries is terrifying! I’m so glad that you and your friend had access to something that could help right away!
Hi Catriona and Victoria, great OER!
As a plant enthusiast I appreciated your experience design example. The PlantNet app is free which is always great, it was accurate at identifying the plant I took a picture of, and I didn’t have to create an account. One thing that could be done better is the ability to highlight and copy the plant name. I had to try to remember the scientific name and type it into google to find the common and uncommon uses. Overall, my experience and interaction with the app was positive.
I love that your experience with the app was positive. You pointed out one of the many things desirable in a positive experience, that the app does the things that you want it to do! I can see how having to use recall to find the common and uncommon uses of the plants, and I agree that a “search Google for more info” or “Google it” button could make the experience far more engaging. I suppose that is feedback that developers would love to incorporate!
Congrats! You’re fast, Catriona and Victoria! I really like that you put as much info as possible on the ETEC 523 site for further generations of learners to appreciate your project. Very thoughtful of you! Just let me try to learn something here, ladies, and I will do my best to ask questions. Warm regards, Anna
Thank, Anna! Looking forward to your questions 🙂