Information Design Critique

Interface design critique site: www.gcast.com

Screen shot of front page of site:

Screen shot of site with registered user:

Information Design

Regarding the information design of this page, it is very straightforward and concise in getting its point across to the visitor.  The tuturials on the left and numbered steps indicate that their main target are first time podcasters.  The front page keeps the amount of information to a miniumum by introducing what a podcast is, saying that their service is free to basic users, and mentions what their company is all in a very simple, non technical, and casual matter.  Probably what best demonstrates a podcast is the player in the left of the page loaded with the ONE Campaign podcast. In the step by step tour of their site, screen shots are provided to show the new user what to expect as they go through the process. With this approach, information is provided in small portions at a time to pull in a potential user with very little technical knowledge.  

Interactivity

The links regarding what you need to do within the site is very easy to get around and direct in terms of navigation.  Even in the registered user area it is very simple in the layout and function -- if you want to go to your podcast account you click "Podcasting Home", if you want to upload your audio file you click "Upload new audio", etc..  One thing about this site which makes it a bit frustrating to use is that not all of the links go to pages within the gcast.com site.  Gcast is another part of a company that runs two other sites called Garageband.com (podcasting site for musicians) and iLike.com (social community site for music fans) so there are links such as "Podcasting FAQ" and "Find pod-safe music" that take a user to those sites with no link back to Gcast.  The only way back is use the reverse navigation arrow on my web browser.

Screen Design

The overall look of the site is very plain and unobtrusive with a black, orange, gray, and light blue color scheme.  In terms of aesthetics, it is not very eye pleasing, nothing really "pops" out of the screen and makes it look really exciting.  However, this plain dull look could be something the creators of site had in mind to compliment the simple lay out and readability of the site. With the knowledge of the site being the same company that runs Garageband.com and iLike.com I think that it would be beneficial to them if they made the overall look of all their sites the same so that that they could have new users of their site to crossover easier to all of their services.

Donald Norman on Interface Design

During this class we discussed the first chapter Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" which covered these several concepts:

• perceived affordances = perceived functionality
  
• causality = cause and effect
  
• visible constraints = limitations based on the obvious appearance of the object, the more constraints the more obvious the appearance of function
• mapping = set of possible relations between objects
  
• transfer effects = the transfer of knowledge of previous, familiar objects towards newer ones
  
• idioms & population stereotypes = how some populations of people within certain cultures will determine certain cues from an object’s physical appearance.
  
• conceptual models =mental models of how things work
  
• individual differences = not everyone thinks the same so a designer can not make something for everyone.
  
• why design is hard = a designer has to take in many considerations such as marketplace pressures (brand recognition, cost, etc.), the increased amount of controls on one thing, and how much more serious / costly errors in the function of a product is
  

Just by going over these points I can not even begin to imagine what kind of process goes into desigining something such as a cell phone which has to compete with other designs in areas such as those very things that indicate why designing is hard.   The cell phone market is VERY competitve for price and value, there are so much more different features on a cell phone today than ten years ago (phone, camera, web browser, etc.), and people nowadays depend heavily on the use of their phones instead of landlines.  With that in mind, I now have a great deal of respect for the designer of my cell even though I do not like the functionality of it.

Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I will be working in conjunction with Brian on the one he proposed in his blog entry -- for the sake of not repeating what Brian already posted, you can refer to the details here.

Since we are both in the same group at work (he's my manager) and that the project is relevant to my job I would like to take part in developing it. I think by approaching is project from both angles as a manager and a subordinate it will be an effective way in creating a well rounded final product.

Rodney Dunican and Project Management (4/19/09)

For this class we had the pleasure of having Rodney Dunican, a former ITEC graduate talk with us on project management. Through his presentation, Rodney really shed some light on what I thought project management was and passed on what I thought was really sage like advice in approaching the mangement of a project.

To me, when I first heard the two words project and management together I pictured a world full of headaches, conflicts, arguments, and frustration -- I'm sure those aspects are part of it from to time however Rodney brought up some positive qualities to balance out my interpretation. He mentioned about how much he enjoyed the comeraderie involved in working with an effective group, friends he sometimes gets to have involved with on his projects, and the celebrations at the end of a project. The human connection seemed to be what kept him so involved in project managing.

In his advice what I really took away as being valuable were his five phases of every project he takes over:

• Initiate = Identify the key stakeholders and those primarily affected by the project and lay out a Statement of Work (SOW) to show everyone involved what needs to be get done, by what time, with how much cost, etc..
• Plan = Go over schedules, timetables, and resource with a kick off meeting.
• Monitor and Execute = conduct team status meetings, task updates, go over change requests, bring up issues, look at risk logs, look where milestones in the project are, sign off on documentation, do Q and As sessions, alpha and beta testing, and report project info to the finance department.
• Close = Celebrate when the project is done to end things on a positive note with everyoone involved

In conclusion, I am really appreciative of Rodney's presentation on what really deals with in magaging a project. It really helped me get a clearer picture of what I could expect if I should ever take lead in future projects and brushed away a lot of negative qualities I usually associated with the job.

Web 2.0 Conference

During April 2nd, we attended the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center in which we got a glimpse at what is making a buzz within the Web 2.0 world.

Upon surveying the exhibit / presenter booths I was amazed at how little educational based / online community based groups were there compared to the amount of large corporation / enterprise solution companies there. With the user-empowerment features of Web 2.0 I was under the naive impression that more developers who were more concerned about such things "voices of the minority" or "bringing knowledge to the masses" were going to be there. I guess I was expecting more of a Lollapalooza for web developers for some reason.

I did spot at least two exhibitors that did catch my eye and fit that criteria:

• Open Educational Resource Commons = an open resource site that allows educators and learners all over the world to openly share and collaborate on learning materials (lesson plans, syllabi, assignments, etc.) for whatever they may need it for (K-12, training, universities, whatever). For me, this was the true representative of what kind of empowerment Web 2.0 can provide.

• Meetup.com = group site that allows users to create groups of interest on their site so that others may join and have discussions on their favorite topics within that group. What I thought was really interesting about this site was that groups were categorized along with locations where most of their members were to allow members to easily meet face to face -- it is a mash up of meeting virtually along with meeting up in person in the safety of being with others in the group. Even though they make some of their money from advertisers I still felt that the spirit of community is still predominantly there based upon what I gathered from the site.
  

The overall impression I got from the exhibitor area was that in order for the grass roots / open source movements to grow and evolve in the web developing community, large corporations will have to commericalize and sell the concepts and ideas of web technologies in order for things to progress. It's sort of a symbiotic relationship -- corporations need the ideas from the grass roots folks to make money and the grass roots folks need the corporations to market and imbed their concepts into the public conciousness.

Joseph Khane (Civic Potential of Video Games)

For March 19th's class we attended a talk by Mills College professor / researcher Joseph Khane in which he presented his findings on the benefits of video gaming in teaching civics to teens 12 to 17 years old. According to his research video gaming can promote such points as team play, care or giving aid for another player, learning about problems in society, exploration of social issues, morality / ethics, and decision making in how a community or world should be run.

This is something I never really thought about too much since video games are not usually marketed as "educational" due to the stigma it usually carries being labeled as such -- meaning boring. However when I look back at successful games I have played in the past such as Warcraft or The Sims series, those games did do most of those previously mentioned points pretty well without the "educational" label. These games immerse the players in worlds in which they can pick sides, interact with others, and collaborate in missions, construct buildings, and even build upon relationships. If video gaming is truly to be part of the classroom experience, in my opinion these games are the primary models to refer to.

What needs to be looked at closer is when is it enough? Being a casual gamer, I do sometimes get sidetracked in my day whenever I really get immersed in a game. When I do this I tend to put some important things aside such as sleep and even homework! I am not saying that all teens will do the same as I do but there will be a significant contigency that will.

Another point I ponder is that how entertaining do these exercises / programs have to be in order to interest teens in the materials? In the future, will educators have to stand in the middle of the classroom and ask: "Are you not entertained?!" like Russel Crowe's character Maximus asked of the Roman mob in the move "Gladiator"?

ITEC 830 Dr. Wagner Reflections (re-edit)

I was not that satisfied with my first post of this so I decided to re-edit it so the voices are heard a bit better...

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