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Journal Assignment No. 5

Fifth journal entry due by 6pm, Wednesday, Nov 7.

The journal entries should include your name, date, and a title. They should be good writing, but do not need to be formal writing! 500-800 words.

Use your powers of observation in a manner that complements your research/project. Please keep the topic of "interaction" in mind.

For this entry, here are more resources for heuristic evaluations. Use them.

Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics

Journal Assignment No. 4.

Fourth journal entry due by 6pm, Wednesday, Oct 31.

The journal entries should include your name, date, and a title. They should be good writing, but do not need to be formal writing! 500-800 words.

01. Go see the Anthony McCall exhibit at Western Bridge in SODO (free admission, open Th-Sat) and write a review. Does the digital art work have an interactive component? If so, describe it. If not, in what ways could interactivity be integrated into the piece? Also, give your thoughts in general about how the exhibit makes you feel. The emotion it evokes, if any. How does it accomplish this?

OR

02. Research in depth one of the multimedia/digital artists or game designers listed in the Moggridge book or via the list I've provided. Summarize this artist's/designer's work. Voice an opinion about it.

Journal Assignment No. 3.

Third journal entry due by 6pm, Wednesday, Oct 24.

The journal entries should include your name, date, and a title. They should be good writing, but do not need to be formal writing!

01. Research reviews of the Audi MMI and the BMW iDrive or the iPod vs. the Zune (or any other two media or mp3 players). Based on these reviews, what are the differences between products in terms of the design models presented in class (e.g., Shneiderman, Norman, and Maeda)?

02. Compare two different major news site interfaces in terms of the design models presented in class (e.g., Shneiderman, Norman, and Maeda)?

OR

03. Think of a product or system you have used (one that involves a truly interactive component) that uses storytelling effectively. What story does it tell? How does it tell it?

Journal Assignment No. 2.

Second journal entry due by 6pm, Wednesday, Oct 17

The journal entries should include your name, date, and a title. They should be good writing, but do not need to be formal writing!

This assignment is to observe yourself interacting with some man-made object, preferably something computerized (does not have to be a computer, per se). What was the object? What were you trying to accomplish (goal)? What did you do? What happened? How did you feel about the interaction? Which design models did you (or maybe more importantly, did not) see at play?

A brief overview of Shneiderman's Syntactic/Semantic Model.

Norman's Seven-Stage Model.

Four elements of good design:
01. Visibility
02. A Good Conceptual Model
03. Mapping
04. Feedback

Knowledge in the Head vs. Knowledge in the World.
Gulf of Execution. Gulf of Evaluation. Constraints. Affordances.

Ask yourself these questions when determining the function of a product:
Can you tell what actions are possible?
Is the mapping from intention to physical movement evident?
Can you tell what you need to do to perform your desired action?
Can you determine if the system is in the desired state?
Can you tell what state the system is in at any given moment?