Reflections!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The final entry! A grand finale

and so it is.. the end of my final year in NUS. It has been a good O 4 years here as an CNM major. I have taken Mr. Reddy's modules 3 times and this is the third and the final one. I am happy to say that it has been an eventful one. Met a lot of great friends and had a lot of fun designing lots of stuffs which I never thought I will be able to. It has been an enjoyable experience.

A final reflection on User experience???

I learned that as a designer, one must always design with the user as the focus, with the custumer's perspective in mind and not one's own liking and self-interest if we do want people to use and purchase our products. Also, a product design must not be one-sided and instead consists of visceral, behavioural and reflective attributes. A user will also consider their purchase according to their needs analysis of physio, socio, psycho and ideo factors. It is interesting how as a user, we were never aware of all these cognitive processes which were going on in our mind when we were considering making a purchasing or reflecting on the user experience of a product before.

The first lesson was an exercise which brought back alot of memories of the level 2 and 3 classes; the activity of finding a bad design. We did plenty of exercises back then during the level 2 and 3 modules about what constitues a good and bad design. However, this is more interesting this time as we were applying it to a real life object. I applied it to the Nokia N-Engage handphone.

The following lessons were specifically focused on user-experience. The second lesson, we learnt about the cognitive processes that goes on in a user's head while he/she is using a product and how different users would purchase a product based on different criterias. A person who goes for visceral attributes will buy products based on the look and feel of the product. A person who cares about the behavioural attributes will buy products based on the functionality whereas a reflective person is concerned with the branding and the values that a particular products has.

The classroom exercise about the physio, socio, psycho and ideo factors is very funny because all of us who did on the high platform wedge shoes thought that it is a very ugly design. However, as it turns out, it is one of the most fashionable shoe design of this year in Japan. Talk about cultural difference in tastes? Haha. However, we learnt how to evaluate a user and their needs in a product after that exercise.

Next up was the Nightmare Assignment which wasn't such a nightmare after all. It is a topic close to our heart as an NUS student; lecture theatres. Hours and hours of anguish and torture spent in that big room listening to endless lectures which seemed to go on for hours and hours every time. Finally, we get to critique the room which all of us learnt to dread. It was interesting during the presentation how different groups had different presentation style and different methods of approaching the topic. The most interesting one definitely has to be the Fengshui approach. But that exercise made me understand about the practicality of user-experience. User-experience is very important when it comes to making a user feel better/more comfortable when using a product. Even a small slight change can make a big difference. As a student, I understand the torture of sitting through a lecture when we cannot even hear a lecturer properly and this can be improved through a better sound system.

Then we had the BIG assignment which was torturous for my group. We struggled for a long time before we finally settled on a topic which is workable. The time taken to decide on a topic was painful but in the end we settled on CORS system which turns out to be a pretty good choice actually considering that no students are ever satisfied with CORS from the start. And trying to improve CORS system, a system which has given me a lot of headache when I was a freshmen was definitely a good farewell project as a senior in NUS. Through this project, we learn how to set our objectives when it comes to designing. We also did a hands on task of interacting with our target audience; the freshmen about their problems grappling with this new system and doing a experience with them with our new prototype. Very proud to say that all of them think that our new design is much better and innovate than the current one.

I think that I can proudly say that, I have become a more considerate and knowledgeable designer after taking this module. And as a user, I have become more conscious and aware of the choice-making processes that goes on in my head when I am using a product or purchasing one.

Goodbye!!!!!! Goodbye NM4210!!! Goodbye NUS!!!