I am very passionate about design personally because design is everywhere impact people’s life.
I am very passionate about design personally because good design makes our life more beautiful, easier, however bad design often makes people feel really bad about themselves and did not realize it is the design.

After 10 weeks study, I learned a lot.
Here are few highlights:
1. Design vocabulary and language.
With design vocabulary and language, I am able to communicate with designers about my ideas in a standard way.
Layout composition typography are the tools to use for design interactive website.
Wire Frame, Task Flow Chart, Site Map are 3 useful tool to structure web site design.

2. Real world practices
I really enjoy listen to the real world practices.
In week 5, we have XBOX out of box experience lecture from MS. That was a good practice to review the reality world, to learn from the real experiences of success and failure. In that lecture, I also learned user experience study theory and real world case implementation.

There are a lot differences between theory and real implementation. The reality is usually = “theory” – “budget constrain” – “time constrain” – “resource constrain”

3. Hands on experiences
In 2 classes, we had hands-on experiences.
One is in the User Centered Design class to design an new experience to change the current world experience that you always wanted to.
The hands on experience force us to think the experience from different perspective to address users’ different scenarios.
The challenge part is also how to present the experience.
In the end, we are able to present the complicate processes and scenarios with simple presentations, illustrators, demos, instruction. Offer our customers to experience our design.

The user experience was not 100% as we designed. We have to explain some detail of design with our words. That made me continue think some of the details might not be as useful as we originally thought.

Experience other team’s design.
It was fun to experience other team’s design. Just like every time we try something new, it was exciting, mysterious.
It was also great learning experience by talking to the designers face to face. This shows us their thinking behind.

The other is to play and evaluate the Game, instructor brought in the classroom for Game Design.
This experience forces us to think of how other games are designed and learn from them.
In the class we played and evaluated game called Max.
It is a collaboration game designed for 4-7 years old kid. The game is on a small board with colorful creatures as main characters.
All players work together for the same goal, which can be save the creatures from the wild cat or be the cat to eat all the creatures. It is up to the players to define the goal.
The scenario in the game make kids who play with it really care about the result: no one want the creatures are ate by the cat.
We can finish the game in 10min which also fits the best to 4-7 years old kid’s attention focus length.

Summary, this is a good class for design with a broad coverage. It is like a map, showcase us the design field. If we want to drill down specific topic in the future, we can always find the right way to go with the guidence of this map.

AT&T develop kit is your best buddy:

o In AT&T develop kit, we know what your customers need, we share that info with you in the kit as a build in persona database + online update with latest data analysis and refresh.
o In AT&T develop kit, we offer a solution instead of just a feature or application. This solution is to help connect your customer, his/her cell phone and his/her existing online communities together by you.
o We will turn you into a community hero.
You are not just that developer behind the senene, you are the hero helping them make their life easier by tracking their already busy life up to date with single click on their compainon Mobile Phone.
Build in persona database – with auto update feature to refect latest maket info
Get to know your customers is the most important thing for service providers.
It is also the most expensive information to achieve.
AT&T develop kit leverage AT&T customer center’s massive data from customers survey, customer research, usability studies. The toolkit analysised these data, provide a set of customer persona in the kit for mobile developers like you. You can easily find the right audiences as your targeted development audiences.
Once you identify your target audiences, the detailed customer data is in the kit to help you refine your solution design.
For example, you want to develop a game solution. You quickly find out, your audiences will be Derek (male, 25) owns 3 different game consoles, spent average 8 hrs playing games. He has no children, spent average hrs on cell phone during his commute to work and social. His facebook has ~ 500 friends from universities and game buddies. He likes to communicate his gaming ideas on facebook.
Once you find him in AT&T toolkit, you can find all detail info above.
You know connect to online communities will help him very much. You can easily use the facebook plug in to create this solution for audience like Derek.

Develop Solution instead of feature/application
You are not like traditional developer, develop a feature or an application for the mobile phone.
You are providing a End to End solution.
AT &T develop kit offer a set of online community plug in: facebook, twitter, my spaces, windows live spaces.
With these kit you can easily create that solution connect your customers with their communities.
 

Turn yourself or your customers into the community hero – they can add you as their facebook friend, follow you on twitter, they become your audience of your blogs, you can invite them for customer survey.
You don’t have to be behind the senene any more. Your customers love to connect to you as you know the solution very well.
The toolkit offer option for customers to connect back to your communities if they want to.
Turn on that option, they can add you as their facebook friend, follow you on twitter, even invite you to their real life. You are their hero as you can help their life easier.
They become your blog subscribers, you can invite them to do customer survey during your regular chat.
They can be hero as well if they want to by option to share their thoughts, solutions on the communities site with their friends.
AT&T developer kits provides you something that never happen before.

New wireframe

Media Space is serving as the collaboration hub for MCDM (Master of Communication with Digital Media) program in University of Washington

“Members” is the foundation of the platform.

Every collaboration task is around members, for members and by members. Without members there is no reason for Media Space to exist.

Speaking of re-architect the Media Space, re-architect for members should be the place to start and to end.

1^st think of the category of members:

There are possible 7 different kind of members will be on this space

1. MCDM staff

Role	Actions	Improvement	Priority
Professors	Driver of each class in the program		1
Teaching assistants	Help professors drive the class as well as task assignments. They will involve in a lot of the collaborations for the program		1
Program assistants	Who help students and professors on the job openings, program applications, etc. Their job has less collaboration more towards information push.		2
Library assistants	They assist professors and students to have the right library query for the class. The level of their involvement is also limited to information share and push		3
Guest Speakers	This is a huge asset for MCDM program. These guest speakers brought great information to the classroom. They are the hub between the study and the real world. Often after guest speak is over, their connection with the students are over. Media center can serve as a place for the students keep interact with these enterprises heroes.		0
Current MCDM students	This is main users of the Media Space.		0
MCDM alumni	After 2-5 years, students graduated, they become alumni. Their activities will change from fully involve to much less involvement.	Allow member retire from the site	1
Potential MCDM students in the future	People who are interested to check out this program, should have the ability to glimpse the program in this space. This can be a market for MCDM program	Set different membership level. For this audience, no membership required to allow them view the none confidential data	1

2^nd – what is the future of the MCDM and Media Space in next 5-10 years?

How many members there are in the Media Space right now?

How many members there will be in the next 5-10 years?

Since Media Space is serving MCDM program, it should consider the program’s needs.

How many students in each cohort?

The future direction of MCDM program in terms of how many people in each cohort each year in the next 5-10 years.

The growth of the staff, the growth of the students, the graduated students, all should put into consideration. Architect for future, then the site will have a chance to last for that future we aimed.

3^rd Architect around the actions of the members

Today in Oct. 2009,  i am half way through the program.

I learned a lot in the program: research methodology, digital media marketing, predict media trend, story telling strategy and so on.

In each class, i achieved a lot to contribute back to my professional career. We did many Blogs towards today’s social media society, we did personal and group projects deep dive into today’s social media platform; we did thorough research of  the history of digital media and predict the future, we also finished so many paper, videos, slides, podcasting projects and so on.

With this huge accomplishments, explain to people what i am studying in this program  is always a challenge.

Explain what it is the key of this program, what it is i learned that’s beneficial to professional career, is very difficult in short period of time.

Why not use what we learned the class to start building up my personal Digital Portfolio to present who i am today and tomorrow after studying in this program.

Digital Personal/Professional Portfolio has not being seen as a popular method.

People still using traditional paper resume to look for a job when they need.

Why not start building digital portfolio create your own brand, and let the opportunities come to my way?, 

Idea:

• Build up digital personal portfolio

Benefits:

1. New personal image in job market – compare traditional job application (paper based resume)
2. Build up image for MCDM program – each student success career after the program is fruit of MCDM program
3. Voice for MCDM  program – instead of what MCDM program is doing today try to build up centralized hub for the program, each student’s portfolio will be a strong voice for the program to speak to the rest of the world

Outline:

1. Research today’s portfolio
2. Predict future portfolio
3. Differences of professional profile and portfolio
4. Benefit of personal digital portfolio

Every students will send their questions through text messaging use cell phone.

Twitter messaging to classroom

twitter our questions to classroom

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If you visit Seattle downtown, you will see this kind of street parking meter here and there.

They were placed in Seattle downtown in March 21, 2009 according to the sign on the meter.

The first impression when I have to face this machine is “busy” too much information, and the information is everywhere on the interface, hard to find the right flow to digest the right information in front of this machine.

I would divide this User interface into 3 different sections:

Section 1: Top right corner

There is a clock, Max 2 hrs parking information

Parking schedule

Direction for more instruction

Fare information

How to display receipt

Section 2: Middle Left section,

There are complicate Cards instructions here.

Different language choices

Two choices of time: Max or Add

Credit card in put slot

Section 3: Bottom of this user interface

One Coin input window

Print Receipt button: green

Cancel button: Red

Coin Return window

Receipt return window

Customers:

In Seattle downtown, except this kind of parking meter, there are also other parking options: parking garages under most of big shopping malls, parking lot for every other streets and sections. This kind of street parking is really designed for short term parking and visiting. This is a common knowledge shared with most of customers.

What information do our customers care the most?

Of course all the information present on the meter is what customer cares.

Let’s walk in customers’ shoes and share their experiences

Scenario 1: Saturday morning, John drove his families visiting Seattle downtown the pike market.

After drive around for a little bit, they found a street parking, John parked the car parallel with the street and walked to the meter.

First few questions popup into his mind is:

1. How long does he need to and able to park here.

2. How much will the parking cost.

3. How to pay

The parking meter provides this information on top right of the user interface.

2 hours of parking is max and general parking schedule as well as fare.

What are the Free Parking Days? This info is confusing.

Change to:

Since the Free Parking Days, and free parking hours are free to customers. Also, the time and date information could be flexible and changeable. Why not just program this schedule into the machine to save lots of busy information to read for customer to figure out.

That said, this clock can be a very useful one to share the schedule information.

The entire schedule information can be saved.

But there is a piece of miss leading information: “See Side for parking rules” with date under it.

What is this information for? It was not pop up in John’s mind when he first parked there. Did I break the rule? This thought made him nervous; he had to turn around on the side of the meter to read the rule to make sure he is not breaking the rules. What does the date under the Rules mean? Does it mean it is the rule set on this date? Or does it mean it is the date the rule is valid?

All this information is very distractive and only make customer more nervous in front of this machine.

Also the position of this information is on the Right side of this meter seems against the common used customs. Usually people start reading the information from top left based on the common used customs.

There are people speaks Right to Left languages such as Farsi or Hebrew.

How to pay?

Left corner there is instruction for pay by Credit card. But it full of words and buttons are under the user interface in another section.

4 steps:

Step	Interface	Position on UI
1. Insert card	Slot	bottom
2. Choose time	2 buttons	Above the Card input
3. Print receipt
4. Remove card quickly and take the receipt

Flaws in the design:

The Instruction does not really match the input below. The layout of these interfaces is not flowing with the instructions. They are positioned on the interface everywhere with random order. This makes they are very harder for customers to follow.

Here I redesigned it make it easier to follow:

Re ordered the layout;

Re ordered the work flow to select time first then payment;

Use the typography to direct the flow.

1.Insert Card/Coin

2.Choose time

3.Print receipt and remove your card

To have a clear flow, clean User Interface parking meter.