In this class I completed several projects that explore the steps of the Human Centered Design process model. Here, I highlight my Ideation and Usability Testing projects.

Usability Testing

My partner and I had to find ways to improve the design of a point and shoot camera. We conducted testing through inviting experienced camera users and having them perform certain activities then give us feedback.

I helped recruit people from my film production club to participate. During testing, I read from our script (we used this to be consistent when testing our four participants) and timed some activities while my partner took notes.

At the end of the testing, we made redesign suggestions and presented relevant metrics in a video, which can be seen here.

For most of the projects I was designing for user groups that I could personally relate to. Despite being in a film production club, I don’t have much experience or interest in cameras. Doing this exercise taught me how to learn about and work with a user group that has interests that don’t affect me personally.

Ideation

The goal of this project was to generate ideas to solve issues that have to do with accessible commuting.

We did this by sketching 10 different ideas (“divergent ideas”), then sketching 10 more ideas (“convergent ideas”) that combined some of the different ideas together. After sketching all those ideas, we highlighted our “overall most promising” idea and wrote an explanation about it.

You can see my “overall most promising idea” on the right and all the other ideas here.

The user that I chose to ideate for was a train commuter with motion sickness. In this class, we were taught to design for specific user groups and that we would design better if we could personally relate to that group. I chose this user group because I also have slight motion sickness and have to commute to and from school using the Light Rail. I think my understanding of this user group helped me ideate for this project.