Exercise 10: An Experience Evaluation

During and immediately after the Activate event, please fill out the following form for three different experiences from different sections of the course. Part 1 requires you to ethnographically observe the experience and make field notes, as you did in Project One and as reviewed on right side of the page. Part 2 requires you to fill out the chart I showed you more recently - with it you will identify the correlation between sensory stimulus provided and your resultant emotional responses, throughout the chronology of the experience.

I will provide the form on the day of the event. Please come and find me if you need a copy. Please fill out three separate forms for three experiences, scan them, and post them to the blog in a single post. Please ensure that they're neat enough for your colleagues to read.



Exercise Ten is due at 18:00 on Saturday, April 4, 2009 - the day after the event.

Katie, Dennis and Margarita: on the day of the event, please document each experience with photo and/or video. After the event, compile the information provided by your colleagues on the Evaluation Forms in an organized fashion, and create individual blog posts for each experience which include a selection of media and the compiled data. This will help us collectively evaluate the Activate experiences in class next week. This is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, April 8.

Exercise Nine: A Meeting in a Supermarket

This exercise is designed to continue to get you thinking in narrative, and about how narrative applies to user experience. Using one of the attached grocery store receipts as your inspiration/evidence, create two narratives. Post your narratives to the blog. At least one of these narratives should consist of more than just prose. Consider images, video, poetry and sound. Be creative! Here's an example of a variety of possible responses to a single receipt.

Your receipt assignments (the page number) are as follows:

Olivia: 1
Komal: 2
Kaitlynd: 3
Christian: 4
Andrea Chan: 5
Catherine: 6
Claudia: 7
Anna: 8
Annika: 9
Margarita: 10
Nicole: 11
Anthea: 12
Wendy: 13
Lesley: 14
Dennis: 15
Karan: 16
Stephanie: 1
Jeannie: 2
Kyla: 3
Andrea Rodriguez: 4
Gretchen Joy: 5
Garrett: 6

Exercise Nine is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, February 25, 2009.

Exercise Eight: OCAD Student Personas

As discussed today in class, your constructive feedback to your collegue's Project Two toy concepts should take the form of answers to the following questions:

How (or how not) is the prototype fun? Here, discuss design specifics of the toy - communication strategies, clever mapping, appropriate affordances, etc. - either in terms of design successes, or missed opportunities (and suggestions for improvement). Make reference to course material presentented to date where possible.

Why (or why not) is the prototype fun? Here, discuss your gut feelings about the toy's "fun-ness." This is a more subjective, synthetic and ultimately difficult question than the previous one. Make reference to our (or Donald Norman's) deconstruction of fun where possible.

Who (or who not) is the prototype fun for? This last question should be answered in terms of personas, summarized below. In short, list the which persona(s) the toy or game would appeal to. If none, posit a missing persona, or discuss why this toy or game is inappropriate for the target audience.

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"Personas (figure 5.8) are a documented set of archetypal people who are involved with a product or a service. . . . To create a persona, designers find a common set of behaviours or motivations among the people they have researched. This becomes the basis for the persona, which should be given a name, a picture, and a veneer of demographic data to make the persona seem like a real person."

(from Dan Saffer, Designing for Interaction, 89-119)

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The "veneer of demographic data" for your OCAD Student Personas will consist of, at a minimum, answers to the following questions:

What do they love?

What do they hate?

What do they wear?

What do they eat?

What do they listen to?

Where do they live?

In groups of four, generate two detailed personas, that consist of a name, an image and answers to the above questions, along with any other details that would help make the persona seem like a real person. Post your personas to the blog. Remember to include the names of all the members of your group in your post.

Exercise Eight is due at 11:30 on Wednesday, February 11.

Exercise Seven: Photoshop Tennis

In this Exercise you will be working with your partner to collaborative create a series of images that will form an emerging narrative.

We will begin with a brief Photoshop tutorial, where we will go through the following steps as a group. It is important that you follow these steps carefully so that your narrative emerges as seamlessly as possible.

1) One partner should open Temporary Storage, and create a folder with the following format: FirstName1_FirstName2. For example, Maya and I would make one folder called Jesse_Maya.

2) Mine the web for image content. Go to:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Note that we should only use images that use an appropriate form of Creative Commons license. Read over the Creative Commons information on the right. The first category (Attribution License) is the most appropriate for our purposes. Click on "see more," or go to:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

Now, find 6 images in total with your partner, that you like, and download them to your desktop. Click on "all sizes" at the top left of the image. You want the large file size (1024 x 768). Copy these images to your folder on the temporary storage so both you and your partner can access them.

3) One partner should open Photoshop and create a new .psd file in Photoshop with the following characteristics: 1024 x 768 pixels, 72 pixels/inch resolution, RGB 8 bit colour mode. Save this file to your folder using the same FirstName1_FirstName2 format, ie.: Jesse_Maya.

Now, open the images you downloaded to your desktop in Photoshop, and select one of these images as your background, which will begin your narrative. Cut and paste this image into your .psd file. Manipulate the image, and add content from your other images. There are many image manipulation tools in Photoshop - Maya and I will go over a few of them to get you started.

4) After a few minutes, you will prepare the file for transfer to your partner. Follow these instructions carefully.

(i) Save your .psd file.

(ii) Select Save-as, select JPEG as your filetype, and change the name to FirstName1_FirstName2_FrameNumber, ie.: Jesse_Maya_1.jpg.
In this way, you'll end up with a .jpg "snapshot" of your .psd file at the moment of transfer.

(iii) Now, close the .psd file.

Please ask Maya and I for help if this is at all confusing. There should only ever be one .psd file per pair.

The second partner should now re-open the .psd file and add their own visual information to move the emerging narrative forward.

Don’t completely erase your partner’s work - that ruins the game and destroys the narrative. Whenever possible, use layers to separate the elements in your .psd file. This will give both partners more flexibility in re-working your collaborative creation.

5) Repeat the transfer step 4 more times, progressively adding to the narrative until the "tennis match" is over and you have a narrative that is 6 images long. You should end up with 6 .jpg files and one .psd file between the two of you.

Take a moment to ensure that all your files are in order, and to post only the six .jpeg images in sequential order to the blog in a single post. Make sure both your names are in the post. Be sure to adequately credit the source of your images as per the Creative Commons licence if you have not used your own images.

Exercise Six: Deconstruct a Toy - What is Fun?

PART 1 (Before Class):

Please bring, beg, borrow or steal (OK, don't steal) one or more toy from home or elsewhere to class next week (February 4). Our definition of a toy is as yet undetermined, so feel free to challenge our preconceived notions. The only restriction is that the toy not be something that you already have in your bag (i.e. not your cell phone).

PART 2 (During Class):

Exchange toys with your collegues. Ethnographically observe your assigned partner (note that this is your partner for Project Two) playing with the toys. As noted in Class Two's Ethnography presentation:

• Take detailed descriptive notes of what you observe.
• Where possible, capture your partner's views of their experience in their own words.
• Clearly separate description from interpretation.
• Include in your notes your own thoughts, feelings and related experiences - these are also field data.

With your partner, analyse your field observations by distilling them into a series of answers to today's fundamental question: "What is Fun?" Record these answers on the sticky notes provided. Collectively we will use these sticky notes to interpret the structure of fun.

PART THREE (After Class):

Post an image of your toy to the blog. Post the transcript of your field notes and your analytical distillations as a comment on your partner's post. I will post an image of our collective interpretation to the blog.

Exercise Five Video Example

Exercise Five: Make a Music Video, Make a Diagram

In Exercise Five, you will create a music video in iMovie HD, and then make a diagram of the interaction model of the experience. Please read the instructions that follow carefully, as there are many steps and a number of deliverables.

1) Locate the source files for the music video, located in TEMPORARY_STORAGE in a folder called "Exercise Five."

2) Check out the video clips and audio files. You're welcome to use your own video clips and/or audio files if you have any available.

3) Open iMovie HD, and save an iMovie Project to your desktop using a title of your choice.

4) Pick the audio file that you want to make a video for. Import it to iMovie HD by drag-and-dropping the file into the bar at the bottom of the iMovie screen. Note that this automatically changes iMovie from "clips viewer" mode to "timeline viewer" mode. You can also do this with the two buttons near the bottom right of the screen.

5) Pick some video clips that you might want to use to make your video. Drag-and-drop them into the "clips" pane at the right of the iMovie screen. From here, you'll drag-and-drop them into the upper bar in the timeline, once you've decided how you want to use them.

6) Make your video! Play around. There are a lot of features in iMovie HD, but some that you'll want to be sure to learn how to use include:
-the volume control on the audio clip (select the clip, View>Show Clip Volume Levels, fiddle with the audio "line");
-how to cut the audio clip (place the playhead; Edit>Split Audio Clip at Playhead);
-the fact that iMovie measures time in Minutes:Seconds:Frames, and that there are only 30 frames per second;
-the fact that some of the video clips have sound in them already, which you may want to control/eliminate (again, select the clip, View>Show Clip Volume Levels, fiddle with the audio "line"), and
-the editing pane (the button for this is on the bottom right), especially transitions (once in the editing pane, the button for this is on the top right).

7) Keep making your video. Play for about an hour. Learn as much as you can. iMovie is a great tool for making quick videos, and will serve you well for Project One.

8) Remember to save your iMovie project often. iMovie doesn't create a playable file directly - in order to do this, you'll need to perform one last action. Click File>Export, and then select "Web Streaming". This will take a few minutes, and will create a playable Quicktime file, just like the video clips you were given to work with.

9) Upload your finished video to the course blog.

10) Last but not least, make a diagram of the entire interactive experience of creating your video and uploading it to the blog. It would be prudent to take notes throughout the process (it's also always prudent to read all of the instructions before you start a task). Draw the diagram by hand, scan it and post it to the blog in the same post as your video. There's a scanner in the lab, and the monitor can help you if you've never scanned before. Remember to name and label your post appropriately.

Exercise Five is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, February 4th.

Exercise Four Example: Jesse Colin Jackson

An object I love is the STAEDTLER Mars technico 780 C lead holder. I have 4 of them. One I've had since 1996, and the rest I've acquired later. In each I keep a different weight of lead: 6H, 4H, 2H and HB.

Affordances are subtle yet clear. The knurled end gives a tactile indication of where to best hold the lead holder; the clip keeps it secure in my pocket protector (ha, ha). As we expect, the end serves as a push-button to advance the lead. More unusually, it also serves as a sharpener, a possibility subtly suggested by its size (the same as the lead) and clarified by a diagram on the Staedtler website.

When the end is depressed, the lead advances. One potentially problematic aspect of the design is that unlike most lead holders, the lead does not advance incrementally. Instead, the push-button opens the jaws at the end that grip the lead, allowing the lead to potentially fall out of the pencil (an expensive error, at 2 bucks a lead). Once learned, it becomes natural to guard against this with your other hand when advancing a lead, and the infinite adjustability allows the lead to be sharpened to both a sharp and rounded tip, but perhaps a physical constraint could be introduced that prevents the lead from falling out completely.

There's no way to automatically differentiate between the different weights of lead, as the only available colour is blue. I've added an ugly label made of masking tape to each, which provides crude visible feedback, but it's an ugly solution at best.

[Disclaimer: I'll concede that I don't actually use a lead-holder much anymore. So perhaps there's some wistful nostalgia in my praise.]

An object I hate is my Sony Ericsson W810i mobile phone. It seems clever, at first: I'm impressed with the fact that the camera elements are mapped to a conventional camera. To operate the camera, you turn the phone sideways, which places the shutter button exactly where you expect it to be. By taking advantage of my existing camera interaction model, Sony has made it easier to take pictures. . . if I could figure out how to turn the camera on. There are no physical constraints to keep me from pressing the buttons when the phone is in my pocket, and these affordances are way too small in the first place: I'm forever turning the walkman on when I want to answer a call, as the buttons for these functions are right beside each other.

The audible feedback is excruciating: why can't mobile phones come with a normal ring tone? Why does my phone have to sound like a cat? I know, I know, I can download new ring tones - perhaps one of you can show me how.

Exercise Four: An Object you Love, an Object you Hate

In your home, find two functional objects: one that you love, and one that you hate.

Make a brief post to the blog where you describe your love/hate relationships, using the tools and vocabulary introduced in the Basic Principles of Experience Design presentation. Before you post, download and review the following terms in Universal Principles of Design: Affordance, Constraint, Mapping and Visibility.

Be sure to include photographs of your objects in your post. Make sure the photographs adequately represent the source of your love/hate relationship.

Exercise Four is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, January 28.

Exercise Three: Strategies for Conveying Information

Your group for Project One has been assigned 3 or more examples of strategies derived from the Gestalt Laws of Pattern Perception that can be employed to convey information.

Click here to download the relevant pages from Universal Principles of Design. In your Project One groups, create a blog post that summarizes your assigned strategies for the class. For each strategy, include at least one illustration that is not found in Universal Principles of Design. Be prepared to briefly present your post next week.

Exercise Three is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, January 21.

Exercise Two: Perception and Cognition Research

In the first class, your Project One group developed a system model for one of the senses, to the best of your knowledge. Expand your knowledge by researching the sense in question, and post the results of your research to the blog.

Make your post succinct. It should no more than three paragraphs, and should make use of images where appropriate. Specifically identify any misconceptions in the mental model developed in class and correct them. Informally cite any sources employed.

Only one post per group is necessary. Please include the name of all of your group members in the title of your post.

Exercise Two is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, January 14th.

Exercise Evaluation

As discussed in class, Exercises will be evaluated as follows.

1) Each Exercise will be evaluation out of 1. Adequate completion of an exercise will result in an evaluation of 1; inadequate completion of an exercise will result in an evaluation of 0. At Maya and I's discretion, you may receive an evaluation of 1/2 if you adequately complete some but not all of an Exercise.

2) Exceptional completion of an Exercise will result in a bonus evaluation mark. The magnitude of these bonus marks will be at Maya and I's discretion. It is expected that bonus marks will be rare.

3) Exercises will be weighted relative to one another at the end of the term, to reflect their relative time commitment. For example, an Exercise that takes most students 4 hours will be assigned approximately 4 times as much weight as an Exercise that takes most students 1 hour.

4) Exercises constitute 20% of your final grade. With sufficient diligence, all students are capable of being awarded a perfect aggregate evaluation on the Exercises. Bonus marks will not used to elevate your aggregate evaluation beyond perfect.

5) Exercises may not be submitted late for any reason other than a documented illness.

5) You will not receive regular feedback on your Exercise submissions. An anonymous list of evaluations to date will be posted to the blog before the final deadline to withdraw from the course without academic penalty.

Please post a comment here if you have any questions about Exercises.

Exercise One: A Blog Introduction

Your first Exercise is to perform a number of administrative tasks that will help our section of Introduction to Experience Design run smoothly.

1) Join the Blog. I have sent and email to your OCAD email account inviting you to join the blog. You will need to set up a Google account if you don't already have one.

2) Gain access to the TEMPORARY_STORAGE drive. I will demonstrate how to do this in class. Here, you'll find a folder that contains the class photos that were shot earlier. Please find your photo, and prepare it for uploading to the blog. Make modifications as you see fit - cropping, enhancing, effects - but don't spend too much time, as there's lots left to do. If you have access to another photo that you prefer, feel free to use it, but make sure the photo clearly shows your face.

3) Make a post to the blog which includes the following.
-Your full (and your preferred) name.
-Your discipline: graphic design, industrial design, etcetera.
-Your general level of comfort with technology, ranging from "I don't have a clue" to "I'm an expert at the use of all software and hardware." Be specific: name the software and hardware that you know, and how well you know it. This will help us tailor the class to your existing skills.
-Your photo.

Please title your post "Exercise One - Name." For example, my post would be called "Exercise One - Jesse." Also, label your post with the 3.1 Exercise One label provided at the bottom left of the posting window. Please consistently follow these conventions for titles and labels in the future.

Exercise One is due at 08:30 on Wednesday, January 14.