Final Reflections: NM4210

In retrospect, this module has completely changed my perception of what user experience design is. Before this, I did have a preliminary idea that UX was to design something that was user centric, but I did not expect that there were so much more work going on behind this whole UX thing!!

The most interesting I had learnt was designing for personas. It didn't make sense to me at first, to design for a pseudo character who didnt exist in the first place! Mr. Reddy mentioned in class that it was better to design for one person, rather than to design for a large segment as you will tend to lose the focus of the design and end up catering for all (to the extent of none!). He also added that designing for a wide audience does not necessarily mean that some of these people will buy the product. However, if you designed for a particular one person, the product becomes exclusive and belongs only to that person. It does not seem to fit the 'probability' theory working in my head and I wasn't really enlightened until I started to create my own personas. I suddenly understood Mr. Reddy's point that we have to think of personas who will like what type of design and buy what kind of product.

And also after reading the article of 'smoke and mirrors' I further understood the usefulness of qualitative research. Instead of the idea of 'probability'- Design for wider audiences equates to higher chances that some of them will purchase the product, we should think about maximizing the chances of having a particular persona purchasing a specially tailored product to their needs and wants.

But even after learning about the research methodologies about understanding our users, to apply it was really difficult. It is easy to speak of using what kind of methods to gain insights to users experience but in actual fact, it is very hard to execute it.

I have stumbled many times when working on our final project on creating the health monitoring device for elderly. It seemed rather commonsensical while conducting the interview-experiment. By asking users to perform tasks and asking them to vocalize their thoughts was really a chore and a weird experience! More importantly, it was necessary not to reveal too much or give assistance to the users and as facillitators even if it were always tempting to do so. Hence, in my opinion, while qualitative user experience methods may 'seem' easier to conduct, it is definitely not more straightforward than quantitative methods.

Through this course, it has been reiterated many times that to truly create a user centric product, a designer should design for the user, and not for 'himself' . I guess this undeniably conflicts with the designer's ego as it is innate in a designer to want to let his creativity and imagination run wild. While creativity and innovation is crucial, building a user centric product is still about creating the desired experience a user should have based on his interactions with the product. Even though I'm still trying to digest this whole thing about UX design, I believe throughout this course, I have grown to appreciate the importance of this aspect in the design process. : )