Thursday, March 21, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

“Unit 10: How People Decide”

The way people decide to take an action is less straightforward than we think. This chapter looks at how people make decisions.

People make most decisions unconsciously. Unconscious decisions include factors such as

1.)What other people are deciding to buy an example would be ratings and reviews done by other people that have bought a similar product you are looking at buying.

2.) What is consistent with the persona of the individual. If you are a mac buyer you will probably buy more mac products. If you are a person that stays up with the top trends you will probably buy more stuff more frequently ect.

3.) Whether you can pay off any obligations or social debts with this purchase. This could be something that you buy that you feel will be good for something or someone besides yourself, buying it because you think it will pay off in the long run.

4.) Fear or loss. The felling that if you don't get it someone else will. It's a now or never feeling. It could also be something that you think is in high demand and you buy it because you don't believe it will be there later. An example would be you buying 50 boxes of twinkies because they are going out of business, or buying a ton of pointless stuff on black friday that you don't really need but prices are good so why not.

5.) Your particular drives motivations, and fears.

These five things are decisions that we make unconsciously, these things are different than the research we do intentionally when deciding on buying a product.

Just because we say decisions are made contentiously however doesn't mean we are all impulse buyers, irrational, or bad. Because we are subjected to so many things a day our subconscious has evolved and developed super human powers that process most of the data to make decisions for us according to guidelines and rules that are best for us, the book refers to it as trusting you gut.






The unconscious knows first, they pick up and respond to ques and signals of danger, the book used a poker game as the example. The unconscious also acts more quickly than the conscious mind. unconscious minds rely on hunches before the conscious mind even knows what is going on. The poker game study basically gave each individual 2,000  fake dollars and told them to keep as much of it as possible and play a card game without knowing the rules. Each participant assumed certain things when going into the study and made there own conclusions without actually knowing what the right thing was. This means that people often take action or have preferences, but cannot explain why they prefer what they do.

People want more choices and more information than they can process. If you ask people it they prefer to choose from a few alternatives or have lots of choices, most people will say they want lots of choices.  However too many choices can overwhelm the individual and paralyze the thought process ( a study conducted by Sheena, called the art of choosing found that people that had too many choices will not choose at all).  The example the book used was setting up tables that sampled jam one table had a few flavors and the other had over twenty the table that was visited the most was the one with a larger variety but the people that went there only tasted a few flavors and didn't buy as frequently because they couldn't decide, this is because people can only remember three or four things at a time, and on the same note they can only decide among three or four things as well.

So when you design something make sure you resists from giving the person to many options , people will always say they want more options, so if they ask make sure you can deviate from the what they want. The rule of thumb is to have only about three to four options , and if you have more make sure you add them in a progressive way so it doesn't come off as overwhelming or something that would be easy to forget an example of this would be to have three options and some of those options have subset options.

People think Choice equals control. The need for control starts at a young age. Lyengar did a study with infants as young as four months that pulled on a string that controlled when the music was played. when the string was taken away from the and the music was still played at the same intervals the babies became sad and angry. All the conditions were the same except for the control that they has in choosing. The same is true with adults whether it is true or not people feel that choice equals control. For people to feel in control they need to feel that their actions are powerful and. that they have choices to make.  sometimes these choices are not good for the individual but it is still important for the individual to make them.

People when they make a choice wont always pick the best choice or the fastest route but it is important to give them options.

People may care more about time than money.  A study was conducted on spending time versus spending money. researchers hypothesis were that when you invoke time in the message you make more of a personal connection than when you invoke money. After the experiments were over the study found that people want to connect. The personal connection relates back to time.

Another thing that influences the decision making process is the individuals mood. some people make decisions intuitively and others in more of a deliberate way. If the person is in a good mood they are more likely to rate a product as being more valuable or have more of a positive experience towards it baised on their first feelings. If the individual is sad they will rate the items as being more valuable ins a deliberate way.  So basically you can influence people's moods by suggesting to them on how to think about a certain product.

Group decision making can be faulty, this is why we have things like controlled experiments so one persons thoughts don't contradict someone elses. Because people don't get ride of the outlier in a group it often makes them week when it comes to making a decision so giving people a way to consider the relevant information on their own before they see what others think is a good way to go about it. The example I thought about even though it wasn't designed based was playing a game on the soccer field. People play better when they play with people that are better, if they play with newbies, or people that have bad habits they are not being pushed and tend to develop bad habits themselves. We talked about group thinking as being bad because feelings arnt always fully expressed in big groups, but it works well among pairs as long as both people can freely discuss their disagreements.

So why is it that groups let others lead them in decision making even if they know it is wrong? The book says people are swayed by a dominant personality. There is always someone that take the lead role in a group that is how things get done, not everyone is an extravert and because of this not all group decisions are made by the entire group because not all people will voice their opinions. Because of this it is important to be careful in following the first solution just because its first. Have everyone come up with different solutions and make everyone talk so you can develope the best outcome.

When people are uncertain they let others decide for them. This is highly driven by fear of messing up, or not wanting to choose because others may disagree. People take action if others take action because then it isn't all just on them it's on the group. If testimonials and rating are involved as well it makes it easier for people to get involved because it gives them research on how it could work. People are easily influenced by other people so the more information you leave in a review about a person who left the review the more influential the rating will be.

People value a product more highly when it is physical in front of them. A test showed that when buying a product that people were more willing to buy it if it was in person, followed by a picture of a product, than lastly by a written description. This was the same across the board for toys, and  trinkets, samples of products, and whether it was olfactory. The hypothesis after this study was that they is a pavlovian response going on when the item is actually available right in front of the person.  When you are selling things a place that has products directly on hand, having products directly behind glass where the person feels they are unattainable can lower the price that the customer is willing to pay.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Thesis Presentations

Design for Manuals 

The first thesis topic was about designing for manuals because they are becoming obsolete, media is the new form for learning. Learning from manuals take time opposed to watching a quick video on youtube, so she looked into how you could design a manual that will be more intriguing than a video. Her idea was instead to streamline these manuals. She talks about a social  networking app that people can join and log there thoughts on solutions to problems they might have on a certain product.

Kinetic Typography Implementing Narrative: by Corina Rivera

Telling stories is the way we share experiences, the most common storytelling these day are though cinematic film. Typography can be used to convey a type of setting, to voice a personality, behaviors, or flaws. She talks about the physical characteristics of animation and gives examples of how they are applied in specific scenes of different movies (such as the shrink and stretch method used when jumping).  Just like the physical characteristics you see in animation you can also see it in typography (they are called typographic personas). Understanding key principles of the gestalt system along with using appropriate typography in the right settings will save you from an ironic feeling that puts you into a different frame of mind. Using typography appropriately will help to understand the self organizing tendencies of the brain and it's nature.

Through this thesis Corina would like to apply her new found knowledge and design a typographic logo/ title sequence.

Science Fiction As A Reactive Cultural Determinant: Kelsey Hatch


Utopia: the ideal society with equality 
Distopia: degraded society with political issues.

Both of these can be related to society but it can also be used for an individual character as well. She talks about certain science fiction movies and how they are known for certain things. An example she used was the lightsabors from Star Wars, and the live long and proper sign that Spock gives in Star Track. These are Icon that viewers remember; and maintaing these icons are very important in recognizing these films. This Is important when moving forward as well our technology is changing and we want to update, add new effects, and change things to look more futuristic; by doing this however you are walking a fine line of losing the originality of the link the viewers use to associate themselves with those films.


Her next step now that she has an understanding of the theories in science fiction she wants to apply it in making a fantom game website combining Pinterest in a game type of way.

this is a very interesting topic that brought up a lot of conversation.

Information Graphics

Dates back to the hieroglyphs that were commonly used to tell stories, and to record history. We are shifting to that again by organizing a lot of different information and organizing it into graph like imagery known as Info-graphics. Info-graphics simplify everything into a few simple images instead of using large amounts of data. Although simplifying is good, he has also considered that to much simplification considered over simplification can lead to confusion,  simplifying things like symbols can start to look like other things and might me misunderstood and then the meaning itself is lost.

He also talks about Analytical Design where people automatically know what something will be talking about based on it's icon example, the apple icon, the twitter bird, and the Facebook logo.

his final project will be two print versions of info-graphic one with a smart phone application, and another one as a motion info-graphic piece. 

Right now he has a basis of his thesis but I don't understand what he is doing with it or why. He hasn't fully addressed the idea of color on info graphics. In info-graphics uou have a subject, an amount, and a change, all of which you use color for. He never really addressed color in this way, he mentioned culture and color but I feel like this is something he could have addressed as well.





Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Thesis repost

After a long talk with Toni I have decided to choose a drier paper topic that will probably make for an overall better portfolio piece. The topic will be biased on html 5 doing this I feel will make me more marketable by the time I graduate. My paper topic will be on the design processes and techniques for html 5. My Concentration will be on many sites that are currently using it, studying how they use it and for what. That will then help me to better understand how it is used to create a compelling site. My senior project with deal with video motion graphics on a website probably dealing with a big event like the Super Bowl or the olympic bid for a certain country.

Being in the design world we are constantly evolving our design thoughts, our strategies, and the way we target certain audiences. With the changing of design we also as designers have to be aware in the changing of technology. Html 5 is now the new standard for html, the previous version of html was html 4.01, which came out in 1999. The problem being that many things have changed since then. Html 5 though it does not work for every browser enables us to reach out even farther than ever before. Html 5 is a cooperation between the world wide web consortium and the web hypertext application technology working group; both these companies focus on different things and because they are coming together to work on html 5 it will eventually be better as a whole. Using HTM 5 will do things like reduce the need for external plugins, have better error handling, have more markup that will replace scripting.

Part of my paper with talk about how html 5 will change the way we design, how it will limit us and how it will push us forward. Another aspect of my paper will talk about the differences between html5 and all other coding languages.

my resources will mainly be internet biased and documents found on the school library database.
A few that I have found so far are as follows

1.
w3schools
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_intro.asp

2.
Html5 for developers
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/why

3.
How well browsers support Html 5
html5test.com/

4.
 Html 5 demos and examples
html5demos.com

5.
Dive into html 5
diveintohtml5.info

6.
Apple and html5
www.apple.com/html5

7.
HTML5 Standard
www.whatwg.org/html


8.What Is HTML5? by Brett McLaughlin


9. JavaScript and HTML5 Now by Kyle Simpson (Jun 30, 2012)


10. HTML5 for Masterminds, 2nd Edition: How to take advantage of HTML5 to create amazing websites and revolutionary applications [Paperback]



11. Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 by Ben Frain

12. 
HTML5: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Trend Community
community.trendmicro.com › Malware › Malware Discussions

13.

HTML5: The Facts And The Myths | Smashing Coding

coding.smashingmagazine.com/.../html5-the-facts-and-the-myt...

14.

Mozilla on HTML5: Here's what Zuckerberg really meant to say | ZDNet

www.zdnet.com/mozilla-on-html5-heres-what-zuckerberg-real


15. 

HTML5 is dead. Long live HTML5! | Internet & Media - CNET News

news.cnet.com › News › Internet & Media

16.

HTML5 Website Showcase: 48 Potential Flash-Killing Demos

www.hongkiat.com/blog/48-excellent-html5-demos/

17.

How to start web designing with HTML5

www.howtoplaza.com › Web Designing

18.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of HTML5--Internet--Tools ...

planetoftheweb.com › Internet

19.

seo - What are the pros and cons of adopting HTML 5 now for a site ...

stackoverflow.com/.../what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-adopting..

20.

HTML5 Splits Into Two Standards - Slashdot

developers.slashdot.org/story/.../html5-splits-into-two-standard...






“Unit 9: People Make Mistakes”

People make mistakes.

People will always make mistakes, there is no fail-safe product, so always assume that something will go wrong. weather it is mistakes while working with computers, software that is released with to many mistakes, or just a designer that made an application that is unusable because they didn't understand what the user needed it happens and there is nothing we can do about it but to learn from them.

it is hard to make a system where everything works smoothly without errors, because even if there is non you have to take into account that there may still be errors on the operating side. The only way to ensure errors is to test frequently and test often, and that can become pricey.

the best error message is no message. Of course no one wants an error message, but they are important to have on devices so if something does go wrong the people will be able to know what to do about it.


How to write an error message. Like mentioned above everyone makes mistakes so assume that a mistake will happen and you will have to inform the user with a warning sign.

the book says the best way to make a warning sign is to first:

-Tell the person what he or she did.
-Explain the problem.
-Instruct the person on how to correct it. 
- Make sure it is written in plain language using active not passive voice.
-Show plenty of examples.

The most common errors happen when people are under stress. Trying to meet deadlines are the most common ones. When using a website under stress people will make more errors, an example the book gave was dad was with a child out of the country and she was sick he needed to go to a website to find out where he could take her that would also take their insurance. At that exact moment he was having a hard time understanding the website but that was because of his wailing daughter in the background. When the father returned to the site a day later after the stress had subsided he was able to navigate the site quite easily. A little stress is good because it heightens awareness but the amount we were talking about above can actually degrade performance.

We need some type of arousal such as stress, or having something seem a little difficult to keep our attention. If humans perform a boring task the level of of arousal much be raised you can do this by incorporating sound, colors, or movement. If the task is more difficult however you don't want to have to much arousal or the task can get to complicated, you can do this by eliminating distracting elements like color, sounds, and movement unless it directly relates to the task being done. Another way to eliminate too much stress is to do research on it, find out which situations might be stressful, observe and interview the clients that could be using there products determine the level of stress and redesign if the stress level is too high. We need to test for mistakes because they are going to happen, and not all mistakes are bad mistakes lead to better ideas and better solutions for a stronger product. Since we know there will be errors we test for them and document wether the error consequences are positive, negative, or neutral and redesign after concentrating on errors with negative consequences first.

Although we can't control errors from happening there are some patterns that have formed that we can keep in mind to avoid them. People make predictable types of errors in the performance categories, the first ones are commission errors, which is  when you take additional steps that are unnecessary, Omission errors  which are when you skip steps, then you have the wrong-action errors which are when you take an action at the appropriate point in the procedure, but it was the wrong action.

People use different error strategies to correct errors. some use systematic explorations where in user testing they collect data on the way the audience uses strategies to get through a particular task, which is helpful in predicting future failures and in the strategy of the redesigned product. Then you have trial and error strategies, where the person randomly tries out different actions, menus, icons, and controls. The last strategy that the book talks about is rigid exploratins which is when you do the action over and over again even though it  doesn't solve the error because they think the product is just not registering properly.  The overall chapter just talks about that we can't stop mistakes from happening we can do things to make them happen less frequently but that we need to expect that they will sometimes happen in our designs and we need to design with that in mind.


Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Thesis


Fear In Design

My thesis  idea is dealing with fear and how it relates to design. Human beings for the most part try to consider themselves  optimists, so things like fear can fog their mind and play with their judgment, I think it would be interesting to write about whether fear stops the creative bubble from forming or helps to push us forward and create great pieces of work. In my thesis I will also be discussing how we use fear in design to attract a viewer or sway them in a certain direction depending on how we use fear. This is seen in the media everywhere it is why we only get to hear negative things, or things that scare us on the news, and It’s why they only say one side of the story on presidential campaigns. For humans to remember something they must be able to relate to it, be connected to it in some way or to be scared of it. If you use fear to target an audience you have their attention. It would be interesting to research how many of the design ideas were designed in a particular way to get the target audience to do one thing and then it actually pushed them into going in the opposite direction.

Smashing magazine talks about how propaganda is most known in the form in war posters, but it is used in other forms of media playing on fear that influences the attitudes of a certain group to move towards some cause or position. They say this doesn't have to be a bad thing. They say propaganda is a stratigic way to manipulate human emotions by displaying facts selectively, this way they are bot lieing they just are not saying everything, which can be effective in conveying messages and it can be used in web design too.


1.)Norman, D A
    (2004). Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books

2.)Maslow, A H
    (1954). Motivation and Personality. Hong Kong: Longman


3.)Fear as a Design Brief
     http://www.academia.edu/526590/Fear_as_a_Design_Brief

4.)Should Designer fear design
     http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671970/should-designers-fear-design-thinking-mbas

5.)Playing Fear by the rules
     http://cultureramp.com/playing-fear-by-the-rules/

6.) FEAR AND DESIGN; HOW CAN DESIGN IMPACT ON FEAR? HOW CAN DESIGN RAISE     QUESTIONS ABOUT FEAR?
      http://www.nordes.org/opj/index.php/n13/article/view/188

7.) Out of Fear (Will Stallworth sold his soul to the advertising business. Now he’s taking it back.) by Don Hutcheson (Apr 22, 2011)

8.)Cancer Ads that play on fear and emotions 
    http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/2009/12/cancer-center-a.html

9.) Fear in advertizing
     http://www.punny.org/money/fear-in-advertising-how-to-make-people-buy-your-stuff-by-scaring-the-  crap-out-of-them/

10.) Latest McCain And Obama Ads Play On Fear In Time Of Crisis: Out Of Touch Versus Unprepared
       http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/mccain-and-obama-out-of-t_b_130218.html

        http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/13/100-years-of-propaganda-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

12.) Ignorance is Bliss for a creative mind
        http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/08/ignorance-bliss-creative-mind/

13.) media fear tactics
       http://gavindebecker.com/resources/article/media_fear_tactics/

14.) Altheide says media driving “discourse of fear” 

        http://www.asu.edu/feature/includes/spring05/readmore/altheide.html

 15.) Media and Advertizing 

         http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/media/08carr.html?_r=0

 16.) The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things: Crime, Drugs, Minorities, Teen Moms, Killer Kids, Mutant Microbes, Plane Crashes, Road Rage, & So Much More by: berry Glassner

  

17.) Fighting the Fear of Social Media

        http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/social-media-fighting-the-fear/ 

18.) If it bleeds, it leads understanding fear based media

        http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media 

 19.)The psychology of design explained

        http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/graphic-design/psychology-of-design-explained/ 

20.) Phychology of design and social products

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojr-s9mPCKw