Dieses Semester habe ich vor, bei meinem Research-Thema Storytelling bzw. Visual Storytelling zu bleiben und es als Masterarbeitsthema auszubauen, zu fokussieren und Forschungsfragen zu bilden. Ursprünglich hat sich mein Thema stark auf Visual Storytelling in Illustrationen, speziell auf Comics und die Formensprache in Illustrationen, bezogen. Im zweiten Semester bin ich langsam eher auf Visual Storytelling im Editorial Design übergegangen, was mir als Masterarbeitsthema besser gefällt. Jedoch bin ich mir noch nicht sicher, auf welchen Bereich ich mich genau fokussieren möchte und wie eingeschränkt dieser Fokus sein wird, damit das Themengebiet nicht zu groß wird und sich gut als Masterarbeit behandeln lässt, ohne wichtige Teile davon weglassen zu müssen. Außerdem möchte ich nicht nur eine Theoriearbeit schreiben, sondern auch ein sinnvolles Werkstück gestalten für das ich die Theorie umsetzen kann, wofür ich aber noch keine wirklich gute Idee habe.
Semesterstart: Werde ich das derzeitige Thema behalten?
Die Reise in das Reich der erweiterten Realität (AR) in der Kunst war eine aufregende und zugleich herausfordernde Erfahrung. Die Erkundung des Potenzials von AR im künstlerischen Ausdruck war ein faszinierendes Unterfangen, aber es ist wichtig, die Rückschläge und Herausforderungen, die auf dem Weg aufgetreten sind, anzuerkennen.
Kürzlich, während eines Universitätsposterprojekts, funktionierte die AR-Ebene, die ich eingebaut hatte, nicht wie erwartet. Die Enttäuschung und Frustration waren deutlich spürbar. Ich fragte mich, ob ich diesen Weg angesichts der technischen Hürden weitergehen sollte.
Solche Rückschläge können entmutigend sein, aber sie bieten auch wertvolle Lektionen. Sie regen zum Nachdenken über die Feinheiten der Technologieintegration in der Kunst an und zeigen, wie wichtig es ist, technische Pannen zu vermeiden. Trotz dieses Rückschlags denke ich über die nächsten Schritte auf meiner AR-Forschungsreise nach – und wäge ab, ob ich dieses Thema weiterführen möchte.
Impulse #2_”Money Talk” by Ines Mahmoud_Master’s Thesis Review
In preparation for writing the master’s thesis next semester, we were asked to review a completed thesis from a past year. I took a look at Money Talk by Ines Mahmoud, and found a lot of inspiration for my own work in the content, structure, and heart of the thesis.
Money Talk analyzes the issue of the financial knowledge disparity between men and women and proposes an intervention in the form of an app. The thesis is broken down into 5 parts, plus the conclusion and reference list. The introduction includes the relevance of research, problem statement, state of research, goal & hypothesis, and approach. The main body of research is titled “Money, Money, Money”, and highlights various belief systems around money, money as a taboo topic, psychological phenomena such as human-money interaction, mental accounting, and materiality of money, and finally the relationship between women, finances, and money, including topics such as pensions, part-time and care work.
The third section is dedicated to expert interviews. The author first interviews Nicole Katsioulis, a political foundation employee and founder of blog “Geldmarie”, which empowers women to understand finances and become financially independent, sustainable investors. Nina von Gayl, the third interviewee, is the curator for Erste Group’s Financial Life Park, and the third interviewee, Maria Mann, is the CEO of a Munich-based start-up called Financery, a “pragmatic tool for women to invest and grow their wealth”.
Following the interviews, the author titles the fourth section “Auto-Ethnographic Observations”, where she dives into her own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and histories around money and financial management. I found this section particularly interesting because of the method’s inherent bias, which the author addresses on the first page with the following quotes: “Authoethnography is a set of research that seeks to describe and systematically analyse (grafie) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (Ellis 2004; Holman Jones 2005). “It challenges canonical practices of conducting and presenting research (Spry 2001) and treats research as a political and social act” (Adams & Holman Jones 2008). I am interested in looking further into this unfamiliar and seemingly unorthodox research method, as I greatly admire the “human-ness” it brings to the work.
The fifth section of the thesis is dedicated to the practical work, where Mahmoud details her process designing the app, Money Talk, and presents the outcome in a creative and engaging format, utilizing cutouts to showcase the screen design. In this section, Mahmoud details each step of the design process, and walks the reader through every consideration of the screen designs, resulting in a complete and comprehensive analysis.
I really enjoyed sifting through Money Talk. I found myself greatly inspired by the content, structure, and heart of this thesis, and already plan to reference it later on as I continue developing my own thesis. I found Mahmoud’s approach extremely well-organized and thoughtful. Stylistically, the work was beautifully presented, readable but also fun and engaging. The inclusion of research, expert interviews, and practical components was a winning combination in my view, and a format I would consider emulating, or being inspired by, for my own work.
Impulse #1: Measuring the Emotional User Experience. WUC
During World Usability Congress 2023, I attended the talk by Bill Albert “Measuring the Emotional User Experience”, who is the SVP and Global Head of Customer Experience at Mach 49. He began his talk by making us think about what makes a successful UX design and showing that it actually goes beyond just good usability and functionality. What matters are the emotions the product makes users feel.
He was talking about how considering a variety of potential emotions a user may experience while interacting with a product helps in designing the experience. To show how this works, Bill had a few examples of when users’ emotions and facial expressions were analysed when they were trying out a certain service or product. He highlighted that the topic of emotional analysis is complex and unequivocal because certain expressions may represent two completely different feelings, for example, a smile can represent either happiness, joy, or uncertainty and confusion. Because of this complexity, researchers try to think of techniques, methods, and tools to help interpret and understand human emotions. Additionally, Bill Albert mentioned the Journal of User Experience – an online journal, which can be accessed by everyone and to my mind, will be a good resource for my future research.
What additionally makes this process even more complex is cultural differences and mentalities. Bill didn’t state this in his talk, but one of the quests had a question about it, which is really important to always keep in mind. Due to this, researchers try to find a way to create more universal models that can adapt to different contexts.
In summary, I chose this for my Impulse because it’s always been fascinating to me – the topic of the multifaceted nature of emotions, and this talk gave me information about what softwares are being used for that and how important it is in the field of UX Design.
Sources:
1. Themenwahl
Vorerst möchte ich mich mit meinem aktuellen Thema noch beschäftigen und untersuchen, ob ich vielleicht eine spannende Erweiterung dazu finden könnte. Ich bin mir relativ sicher, dass ich meine Masterarbeit nicht ausschließlich zum Thema Drucktechniken schreiben möchte, jedoch möchte ich noch weiters untersuchen, ob ich eine passende Verknüpfung zu diesem Themenfeld finden könnte.
Ich finde den Ansatz mit analogen Techniken zu arbeiten und andere Gestaltungsprinzipien einzubinden sehr interessant. Analoges Gestalten und verschiedene Techniken zu erlernen, erscheint für mich besonders reizvoll, um neue Wege des Gestaltens zu entdecken.
New Semester – New Research Topic
Last year I was exploring the topic of cultural adaptation through interfaces. It was an interesting topic to explore because through it I also could learn something new. I analysed government websites, conducted surveys, and explored technologies that are out there relevant to my topic. It was a nice experience, which helped me understand that researching and analysing different emotional states of people while using certain products/interfaces is what is interesting to me.
Because of this, I decided to take the opportunity to change the topic and try something a little bit different. The topic I want to explore in this semester is – Digital Well-Being. Why the shift? The past few years have strongly shown that technologies will become a part of our daily lives more and more with each year and it sometimes becomes harder to control time and quality of the experience. We rely on our digital devices a lot, which we can notice even more during global events like COVID-19.
This raises the question about the negative consequences this has on our mental and physical well-being. It is now nearly impossible to control what you’ll see on your feed and how that will affect you. For this many resources were created to help with controlling time spent on digital devices or certain apps (for example: do not disturb or lock app modes) but what I’ve experienced and what I saw people experiencing is the result of thinking even more about your devices, feeling guilty/irritated, avoiding any locks. And since we rely on our devices too much these days, the solution of just leaving or turning off your phone (for example) won’t work.
So, my idea now lies in the question – is it possible to create something that would make the experience with the device more “ecological” for the user without compromising their need for the device? And what emotions/feelings do users have while interacting with their device?
Impuls #1
Während meiner Teilnahme an der World Usability Konferenz konnte ich aus drei inspirierenden Vorträgen wertvolle Erkenntnisse gewinnen, die meine Recherche für meine Masterarbeit und die Design&Research Blogs bereichern werden:
- Aus dem Vortrag von Jen Romano blieb folgender Satz im Gedächtnis hängen: „You are not your User“. Obwohl mir ihr Vortrag nicht wirklich zusagte, mochte ich diesen Satz. Er ist für mich wichtig, weil für den Relaunch der Website der TU Graz „digital university hub“ viel umstrukturiert werden muss, und der Input von manchen Mitwirkenden nicht unbedingt hilfreich ist. Diesen einfachen aber fundamentalen Satz werde ich schon bald im Team in meiner Arbeit erwähnen.
- Aus dem Talk von Javier Bargas Avila, fand ich für mich, wo er darüber sprach, wie die auf englisch designte Website „youtube“ in alle möglichen Sprachen übersetzt werden konnte. Obwohl ich kein Fan von reinen Piktogrammen bin, weil ich die Meinung vertrete, dass Icons zunächst immer erlernt werden müssen, außer das Icon ist textlich unterlegt, hat mich Javier überzeugt, dass Buttons mit einem X Symbol nicht extra nochmal das Wort „schließen“ benötigen. Erst recht nicht, wenn es sich bei der Zielgruppe (der Plattform der TU Graz) digital affine Menschen sind, welche die Bedeutung ohnehin kennen.
- Von der Keynote am Donnerstag, 11.10.2023 von Jamie Levy über „The Best and Worst Practises of the Discovery Phase“ wurde mir wieder bewusst, wie wichtig es ist, zuerst Probleme zu definieren, um dann nach Lösungen suchen zu können. Für den Relaunch der Plattform der TU Graz werde ich im nächsten Schritt eine Problem-analyse machen und alle Probleme definieren, um weiters Lösungen finden zu
Impules#2-#4 World Usability Congres 2023
I had the privilege of attending the 2023 World Usability Congress, where I immersed myself in a series of captivating talks delivered by renowned speakers. One particular keynote that left a lasting impression on me was “Beyoung UX: The Truth About Digital Product Success,” presented by Russ Wilson from Google Cloud. Wilson’s presentation was a thought-provoking exploration of the factors that underpin the success of digital products.
At the heart of his keynote was a unique approach, a sort of guided quest through a series of thought-provoking questions. For instance, he delved into what truly makes people fall in love with a product and what ultimately defines a product’s success. To illustrate his points, he shared an anecdote about his boss sending him an article about a well-funded startup that meticulously followed every established best practice in user research, prototyping, experimentation, iteration, and design to create a beautiful product. Despite their thorough efforts, this startup met with failure. This prompted Wilson to ask, “What went wrong?”
In his pursuit of understanding digital product success, Wilson conducted interviews with 300 individuals (can’t remember the exact number) over the years, posing a fundamental question: “What is the single most important factor that leads to a digital product’s success?” While acknowledging the significance of aspects like personalization and adaptability, he made a crucial distinction. He argued that these aspects, although important, are secondary. His compelling conclusion was that success primarily hinges on differentiation – the ability to offer something unique or perform better than any other product in the market.
He urged us to consider products that excel in a way no other option can match. These products, initially, had strong differentiators that set them apart, whether it was offering something no one else did or excelling in a particular aspect. As competition inevitably emerges, they continue to seek fresh ways to differentiate, whether through superior performance, reliability, branding, pricing, or exceptional service.
Digital products face unique challenges that set them apart. Their ever-changing nature means that traditional rules of architecture and industrial design often don’t apply. Moreover, technology evolves at an unprecedented pace in the digital realm, faster than any other medium. This rapid evolution presents a distinct challenge, as anyone can leap into the scene and introduce something entirely new.
So, what is the strategy for success in the digital world? Wilson emphasized that perfection is an unattainable goal. Customers and the market have been conditioned to expect rapid results and little patience. Hence, achieving perfection is not a viable strategy.
Wilson proposed a pragmatic approach to success, one that challenged conventional notions of good UX. He argued that, from a business perspective, it’s not about making a product aesthetically pleasing, but rather about how it differentiates itself. In the competitive digital landscape, standing out through a unique and meaningful user experience, not just visual appeal, is the key to success.
Additionally, I had the opportunity to attend several other enlightening talks during the World Usability Congress.
Impulse #3:
Andraea Picchi from Kroo Bank delivered a talk titled “The Contextual Nature of Design Leadership.” One key takeaway was the idea that our perception of reality is inherently limited by perceptual constraints. Picchi emphasized the concept of “reflective assumptions,” where what we consider a groundbreaking product may differ from what is genuinely valuable from a user’s perspective. He delved into leadership concepts in the context of design, emphasizing that a great leader may have strengths and weaknesses, with the latter requiring a targeted developmental approach. Picchi also highlighted that different experiences lead to varying levels of information, and increental leadership development can result in nonlinear improvements in performance.
Impulse #4:
Julien Vaniere from Sage shared insights in his talk, “Designing Systems at Large Scale.” He stressed the balance between full alignment and creative freedom when building a design system, highlighting that it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Julien underlined the importance of assessing resources, team composition, and priorities, as building trust within and for your company is a limited opportunity. Challenges in creating a design system for a large group include team composition, prioritization, and sustainability. He recommended establishing strong foundations, beginning with user needs, defining real principles, managing expectations, and applying Pareto’s law. The combination of these elements yields the value of a design system, considering OKRs (Objective Key Results) as well.
Impulse #5:
Peter Horvath from Whitespace delivered a talk on “The Principles of Systemic Design.” He introduced the concept of systemic design as an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to thinking and design. Mr. Horvath shared principles from the four orders of design, shedding light on what is that the core of the approach he is proposing on systemic design journey. He introduced us his twelves principles for systemic design. check the summary of those in the picture below.
Impulse #6:
Sabine NB from Human Factors Research & Design presented her insights on “Delivering Design at Scale.” She showcased examples of failed companies that started with promising products, with the main takeaway being the importance of consistency. In her view, the lack of consistency is a significant reason behind the failure of many digital products. She emphasized that if standardization of human interface guidelines by tech is done right, product design can become more scalable. She proposed a model for delivering at scale and concluded by offering five metrics for successful scalability: consistency in design, disciplined execution, repeatable inventory, measurable outcomes, and limited changes.
Impulse #7:
I also had the privilege of attending a talk by Riya Thosar from SAP, who explored the topic of “Leveraging Design Innovation for Business Success.” Her insights shed light on the potential of design innovation in driving business success.
Lastly, Jaime Levy from Jaime Levy Consulting delivered a captivating keynote on “The Best and Worst Practices of the Discovery Phase.” Levy shared techniques for conducting effective interviews, workshops, prototyping, and critical thinking to enhance the discovery phase in the design process. Her presentation provided valuable insights into optimizing the early stages of product development.
These talks and keynotes have not only broadened my perspective on design and research but also provided valuable insights for my ongoing work in developing a healthcare app for underserved rural communities. The emphasis on differentiation, systemic thinking, scalability, and the nuanced aspects of design leadership have offered great impulses and fresh approaches to tackle the unique challenges of this project. I’m excited to integrate these learnings into my work, ensuring that the app is not only user-centric but also stands out in a crowded digital landscape, making a real impact on healthcare accessibility for underserved communities.
Impulse #1 – WUC Talk The Best and Worst Practices of the Discovery Phase (Jaime Levy)
Jaime Levy’s talk was about the importance of the Discovery Phase within UX Design. Discovering in the context of UX is significant for gathering evidence and is for example a part of the Double Diamond Process. She built her talk by using the example of finding an apartment in Berlin which was on the one hand funny and on the other a good example to understand her points. Step by step she introduced different methods and how they are used. Within each method she examined the dos and don’ts. The talk reminded me of the importance of using empirical methods as the foundation for a successful digital product. This is essential in order to be able to justify decisions on the one hand and on the other hand to have the requirements for the product examined from all sides. Of the methods (Steakholder Interviews, Competitive Research, Workshops, Costumer Interviews, Prototype Experiments, Critical thinking) she presented, some will be for sure useful for my topic. For example, costumer interviews will play a role for me. My intention is to interview my potential target group (kids/teens between 12 and 16) to be able to define the basic requirements on Instagram for this age group. Prototype experiments may also become interesting at a later stage in my project to test the implementation of initial ideas. I was lucky to be one of the youngest in the room to win a book by Jaime Levy on UX Strategy. I will definitely use this with regard to my master thesis and use methods from it to have a support for my approaches.
IMPULSE #1 – Healthcare: Equality, Affordability, and Accessibility from Nick Freitas’s podcast Ep26
Nick Freitas, a Green Beret combat veteran who has established himself as a leading proponent of conservative policies and thought throughout the USA, hosts a podcast show called Making the Argument, or MTA. In this podcast, Nick deconstructs the left’s arguments and makes the case for the conservative values and principles that form the foundation of the conservative movement by examining contemporary events, legislation, and political philosophies. His 26ep podcast tackled the issue of Equality, Affordability, and Accessibility in healthcare.
The podcast is a valuable impulse for my research in designing a healthcare app for underserved communities. Let’s break down the key takeaways and how they connect to my research work:
- Healthcare’s Significance: Nick emphasized the importance of healthcare, which is a universal need. This message is crucial for my project, as it underscores the significance of the healthcare app I am planning to designing for underserved populations.
- Government vs. Free Market: Nick discussed the debate about government control in healthcare. While this may not directly relate to my research in providing digital solution to underserved communities, it highlights the significance of understanding the healthcare system’s structure, which can influence the app’s design and functionality.
- Quality and Accessibility: Nick stressed the need for quality and affordable healthcare. This aligns with my project’s goal to improve healthcare accessibility for underserved populations. It highlights that the primary focus should be on delivering quality care efficiently.
- Wait Times: Nick discussed the issue of long wait times in countries with government-controlled healthcare systems. This is seemingly the case in most west African countries. This insight informs on an important feature the app could incorporate by emphasizing timely access to healthcare services, which is crucial for underserved communities.
- Government Regulations: Nick pointed out the impact of government regulations on healthcare in the U.S. This is a reminder that, in my app design, you should consider how to streamline processes and reduce bureaucracy, making healthcare more efficient and accessible.
- Policy Analysis: Nick’s analysis of healthcare policies is valuable. It suggests that while I am designing a healthcare app, I better also explore how government policies may affect the target populations and consider policy-related solutions to improve healthcare access.
In summary, Nick’s podcast reinforces the importance of quality, accessibility, and affordability in healthcare. It emphasizes the need to understand the existing healthcare landscape and policies. This information served as an impulse for my research and design work, prompting me to consider the real-world implications of healthcare policies on the app’s functionality and how it can address the unique challenges faced by underserved communities.
Sources:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTkHPrF3wTQ
- The future of healthcare is sustainable: how e-health, robotics, and miot can help tackle the climate crisis – Institute of Design & Communication (netornot.at)
- Researching and Developing a Prototype for Sustainable Healthcare app in Benin – Institute of Design & Communication (netornot.at)