Blog 4: Notes from lecture on Design Objectives

Date: 08/09/2016, Lecture number: 2

Today we received out enrolment codes for ‘Moodle,’ for ‘Digital Video’ and ‘Interactive Multimedia’ courses.

We talked about:

·         Visual components/ controls, text, images/videos and animation/graphics.

·         On a Microsoft page we viewed some controls and patterns such as: buttons, check-boxes and hyperlinks.

·         Touch-base interfaces e.g. phone for low volume work.

·         BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces): how we as users interact with these.

·         Date and time controls.

·         The aesthetics of controls and their usability: good/ bad experiences.

Then we discussed an interesting topic/concept called ‘don’t make user think,’ which relates to users expectations and their comfort zones in using designed controls. I did not realise that the attention span or patience of a user is 5 seconds. This is the only window of opportunity for a designer of controls to engage the user. If the user has trouble with figuring out where or/and how to operate a control, they will decide naturally within 5 seconds. If it is not clear by then users tend to abandon the site.

Therefore, the objective of a designer primarily twofold:

·         Usability i.e. to make the design a good user experience.

·         Functionality i.e. has software to do what it is supposed to.

Other important considerations are:

·         Reliability

·         Portable

·         Efficiency

I have found that the above are design challenges and designers objective is to create the best controls to achieve solutions.

User Experience (UX): this is what designers consider. To have a good UX is best achieved through having a good User Interface (UI). Examples of UI are buttons, checkboxes etc and use of animations such as the ‘hamburger menu.’

Follow up home study on this lecture is a link on Moodle on M.S. Controls.

Conclusion of lecture: the objective of this course is to focus on the Design Aesthetic.