Blog Assignment#7

I am not an I300 Loser

Evan Samuels - Blog post #7

I am not an I300 Loser.....

....but I know I can do a little better!

Enrique Pérez Blog 7

Kym Pagel - Blog 7

I am not an I300 loser.

Chris Hall - Blog #7

I am not an I300 loser!

Bethany Hufford - Blog 7

I am not an I300 loser!

James Berghoff-Week 07

I am not an I300 loser!

#7 - Nik Spurgetis

I am not an I300 loser!

Week 07 Blog Assignment

This is a very easy assignment.

I want you to take a look at the way points are distributed for this course. See pages 8-9 of the syllabus. Look at your grades in the Oncourse gradebook and enter them into the Personal I300 Gradebook (it's an Excel file that you can download from Oncourse resources; it's at the bottom of the resource list of files).

If you think you’re in trouble, please make an appointment to see me. I will help you recover through the “Professor Siegel’s Academic Recovery Stimulus Package!” Note, however, that the stimulus package will not be available throughout the semester. This is a mid-semester correction. So take action now if your grades in this class need a bail-out.

If you’ve calculated your personal grade and decided if you need to make an appointment with me or not, then all you need to do to get 15 points on this blog assignment is to write a post simply with the words “I am not an I300 loser.” Feel free to say more, but this assignment only requires you to do this. That’s it!  

blog 6- Janelle Velkoff

I am choosing to look away from project 4 for a moment since it's also heavily incorporated into project 5... I decided to look at the site Pandora Radio (mostly because I was already using it when reading this assignment and thought about how simple it is) and the section of chapter 5 that talks about one click interfaces. When opening Pandora and creating a new station it literally can be done in two steps, type the song or artist you want to listen to and click "create". It's so simple and takes no prior knowledge of the site to get started. If you mess up just click "hey that's not what I wanted!" and it takes you right back to the beginning. I can't think of an easier to use website, they completely take advantage of the one click interface and it really works for them.

Mark Rodriguez - Blog #6

I went with www.ebay.com, and their sign up screen. It helps you through Up-To-Speed Aids throughout the sign up process. At the first screen it gives you little hints about how easy it is to sign up and exactly what you're signing up for. Also under each of the fill-in boxes it tells you what you can and can't fill in each of the boxes. This helps the unexperienced users with knowledge of how to set up their accounts, what they're signing up for and what they end up using the service for!

Evan Samuels - Blog post #6

Chapter 5 was very interesting because right away I could relate the concepts to a a few well known applications-- twitter and YouTube. With twitter, I got hooked about a year ago. I was a early majority user and found out about twitter from some professors and I tried to use it. My intent was to follow some celebrities and also some authors of books I enjoy. However, my main goal was to use it for useful information like info for around IU, news, tech updates and more. How this story relates to chapter 5 is that I initally got hooked by a video and started using the application. However, there was nothing to keep me hooked and wanting more- I wanted to become a more advanced user, but there were no features or feedback that helped accelerate my expertise. It is hard to critique twitter because I feel that twitter's most useful audience is people who are connected-- scholars, professors, journalists, celebrities, protestors, government.... so on. I am just a college student and being connected to the "real world" is coming more and more important, but right now my own interests are a bit incompatible with twitter. As I start my career, maybe twitter will become more useful to me.

With YouTube, the story starts out similarly, but it is a different concept. I recently became a YouTube user and have spent a lot of my time watching Bob Dylan and The Band singing "Forever Young" at the Last Waltz Concert. Just like twitter, when I initially started, I was hooked and I commented and rated a few of my favorites. A month or so later, my experience is still based on watching the same videos. This may be because enjoy listening to the same music, but it also is evidence that YouTube needs to work on moving users from intermediates to experts and allow users to experience a wide variety of videos, not just ones they see all the time. One way you tube can do this to provide a more personalized welcome screen. Currently, YouTube's welcome screen displays random videos that people have recently watched. Because these videos are irrelevant to my interests, I immediately search for my favorite videos and I am not provoked to explore YouTube. Even a little relevant information on the welcome screen could keep me hooked and allow me to explore more videos than just my favorites.

Jeff Lewis Blog 6

For this assignment I chose the website www.youtube.com . I chose this because I think they did a good job with Designing for information. They cover all four principle ways that people search for content. The first principle is "Known Item", and is when the user knows what they are looking for. Youtube covers this search by implementing a search box on the main page. The second principle is "Exploratory", and this is when the user knows what they want but can't find it. Youtube covers this by showing you related items to the one you searched. The third principle, "Don't know what you need to know" , this is when users are just browsing the web for information. Youtube captures this audience by showing you a list of things being viewed right now by other users. This is a good way of showing up to date information. The last method is "Re-finding" which is when users are trying to find something they've already viewed. Youtube covers this by allowing you to mark a video as a favorite while watching it.

Blog 6 - Stephen Miller

I’m going to return to my personal favorite, www.bikely.com. Bikely is designed so that even a user who has never interacted with the site and has only cursory knowledge of digital map applications can make use of the search function and the route builder. Both features expertly utilize good defaults, instructive hints, and tips to ease the process. No part of the process is bogged down and none of the helpers obstruct the use of the application. A box in the upper left hand corner of the screen accents the route builder application – this contains the prompts for the user’s interaction. They direct the user towards what would be the most effective next step; however, if the user is experienced, the box is easily ignored and is relegated to its dual role as a toolbox. Each step also contains instructive hints that are quite helpful. For instance, the box where the user inputs the city where the route runs is prefaced by “Find a city:” followed by the text box.

Blog Post 5

The Twitter Sign Up page utilizes some of the technique mentioned in Chapter 5. For example, when the user clicks to enter his/her name to create an account, the site prompts the user with "Enter your first in last name" which falls into the "give instructive hints" technique mentioned in the book. They use this method for each one of the input boxes, and for the email box it says, "We'll send you a confirmation" which informs the user to look in their inbox for the account creation confirmation. Using these helpful tips and reminders make it easier for the user to begin using an application like twitter quickly and easily.


Tanner Sheridan

Bethany Hufford - Blog 6

In Chapter 5, Hoekman talks about using up-to-speed aids. Hoekman gives multiple examples of how users are typically shown how to first use a web application such as wizards, getting started guides, and video tours. These ways are typically ineffective because they do not allow the user to use the application while also seeing how the application works in the tour or guide because it uses two different windows. An effective way of getting users up to speed is shown on StumbleUpon. On the first page StumbleUpon allows you to pick your interests and then 'Start Stumbling.' Once you click this button your first page pops up based on your interest. Stumble then teaches the user how to use the site by displaying a tip on how to navigate to new websites using the toolbar across the top. The user can then hide this tip and it won't be shown again after they being using it or create an account. This gets the user up to speed quickly on how to use the site by actually using it and following the tips.

#6 - Nik Spurgetis

Up-to-Speed Aids can help immensely in turning newbies into proficient users of your service. The new Google Wave project may be confusing to many people, but from the home page, you are only a click away from the support page which has a clearly-labeled link to a ~5 minute video which tells and shows you exactly how to take advantage of 15 of the features of the service. By providing this primer/crash course/whatever you want to call it, the designer(s) have been able to launch a fairly complex product without leaving users in the dark.

Many software applications attempt something similar, by showing a small window with a randomly selected "tip" upon startup, informing the user of something they may not have known.

Ryan Cortese - Blog 6

I really felt that Chapter Five gave a very cool insight into designing for the user. As informatics students we all have been very technologically literate in a sense and would have the intuition of how to interact with new forms of technology and problem solve on the spot to meet our needs. By having the idea that your user is not someone who is an expert or of relatively the same skill level as you in this particular area we can develop new process of how we might design with this source of information in the back of our mind. For example with my project four, I might find it useful to use the card sorting technique to full develop how certain aspects of the key chain might be used and which processes they will connect. By physically seeing this with a deck of notecards, it can become simple and illustrated physically to me the designer what aspects need to be co-related and often part of each other in the design. This would give a definitive example and also be easy to have around for a usability test for a projected user.

Chris Hall - Blog #6

Given my groups design choices for project #4, I am opting to review a web application for this blog assignment. The site that I chose is drop.io. This site allows you to create a personalized 100 MB file drop, which can be made private or public, at the user’s discretion. The aspect of this site that I am focusing on is the creation of a new file drop. When you first load the page the welcome screen is divided into three parts, the new drop creation (left), the log in feature (top right), and the intro video (bottom right). The new drop creation menu is simple and to the point. Like Hoekman says “users tend to quickly learn what they need to know in order to become proficient with the application…” which is just what this design allows them to do.

When the page is first loaded drop.io automatically generates a name for a new file drop, or allows the user to input a name of their choosing. The great thing here is that if the name the user inputs is to short, or already used, drop.io changes the color of the box to red, and provides a very brief explanation below the input box. The color change offers a visual cue to the user that something is amiss. The explanation is usually 1 or 2 sentences long and provides a suggestion as to how the user might correct the error. These explanations are a great example of the types of tips Hoekman talks about in his book. Hoekman says that “tips should be short and to the point. The object is the help the user not interfere with their work flow”. If, on the other hand, the name of the drop is acceptable the box turns green and the user is allowed to proceed.

The last thing about the new file drop creation menu that seems to follow Hoekman book, is the grayed out text example around both the input and file upload boxes. This grayed out text, as Hoekman says in his book, gives the user an idea of what belongs there, without disrupting their workflow.

Blog Assignment # 6

One technique in Chapter 5 I chose is card-sorting which might be applied to my project #4. Basically, card-sorting exercises help us organize features and uses. As stated in the textbook, card-sorting is “typically used by information architects to help determine an understandable navigation scheme within an information space”. Not only I believe this technique can be applied to web sites, but also I believe that card-sorting technique can be applied to certain designs. For instance, I chose the refrigerator for the project #4, and by having stack of index cards with all the features I planned to build for the refrigerator, I can hand the stack off to some users and ask them to sort the cards into stacks according to how they think the features should be organized. The user will allow me to get basic idea which features should be prioritized in designing.