Written by lulu li on May 17, 2021

Blog 10 Design and New Media study reflective report

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We reflect in our daily lives, think about an event that has changed the trajectory of your life, and try to understand how this event changed you. In academia, reflective writing is essential to your growth and learning, so you should open your heart and face yourself with an open and tolerant attitude. Learning based on experience is not enough. If you do not reflect on this experience, it may soon be forgotten or lose its learning potential (Gibbs, 1988).

Interaction design is mainly in the past ten years, mainly due to the rise of intelligent mobile devices (especially smartphones) and constant changes and updates. And as people continue to rely on the mobile Internet, including mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. These devices have become a medium for the mobile Internet to interact with people, so the interactive experience of the mobile phone system has become more and more critical.

From the perspective of interaction designers, interaction design can make products easier to use, make users more enjoyable when using products, and meet user goals and expectations. Interaction designers design various effective interaction design methods by understanding the psychological and behavioral characteristics of “people” and combining their inspiration.

In the first semester, the course Design and New Media was where I was exposed to user design practice for the first time, and I had a broader understanding of interaction design. That is, user design is about ideas, not based on simple skills. Interaction design can design the user experience from the bottom up from 5 elements; from the earliest design of this book for the web to the current mobile Internet app design, because of its super universality and practical guidance, it has been widely circulated as The classic project creation and research methodology in UX design (Garrett, 2011).

The five elements are: Strategic level: Why do we make this product?; Scope level: What kind of helpful content do we want to build? ; Structure layer: how to present it to users? Mode, order, a priority?; Framework layer: which functions are completed on which pages? How are these functions implemented on the page? ; Performance layer: not only beautification but whether the product function is well displayed? (Garrett, 2011)

The second project of the course practiced the strategic level. Through the practice and experience of this work, I learned that the reason for the failure of a product is not user experience or technical implementation. Still, no one answered the two questions before the product was built: “What do we want to get through this product?” and “Users What can we get through our products?” (GShostack,1982). The two dimensions of “product goals” and “user needs” are a question in a nutshell.

Project2 study reflective：

Project 2 works are about researching and understanding users. You will study the COLLECT and COMPREHEND elements of the 5C design model. In this project, you will learn about people-user groups that are particularly relevant to daily life. Fitness during Lockdown is the subject of project 2. The area of life that is significantly affected by the COVID-19 lock-in is sports activities. Closing stadiums and restricting “unnecessary” travel may result in a reduction in overall physical activity.

On the contrary, the changing environment may form new healthy habits. I plan to conduct sports research during the lock-in period. I researched three different ways: persona, user experiences map, and storyboard (Figure 1-3).I learned about user research for the first time in project2. This critical step is essential for interaction design. To understand what users need, we need first to define who our users are and then conduct relevant user research for the specified user group.

Project 3 study reflective：

The third project of the course practiced strategy level, scope level, structure level, and framework level. The project design is about weather app design, and the target audience for my project is Cyclists and motorbike riders. Through the practice of project 2, project three has completed preliminary user research and has identified a potential target user group.

Through primary user research, the project identified user needs. Next, the question of the project is in what way the app functions are presented. The final work is presented in a hand-drawn interface (Figure 4-6). I learned the detailed interaction design process through this project, but it is not enough for the initial designer. Designers should practice more assignments so that they can accumulate experience and design relatively good works.

Project 4 study reflective：

Project 4 Use the CC Awards as a framework and select one of the THREE available topics: Equality, Climate Crisis, and Conscious Consumption. After identifying a suitable design challenge, use an iterative, user-centered design approach to produce your response.

my project topic is Equality. “SHE” is my project name. The inspiration for this project came from the movie “Legal Blonde.” The main point of the movie is: Don’t use stereotypes to judge others. Have confidence in yourself. The heroine fully embodies femininity. The vast majority of the film reflects hidden inequalities.

SHE is an app-based application designed to unite underrepresented groups through personal experience and unfairness to women in the workplace. The App will feature a discussion on sexism by acting as a safe place for discussion and self-expression. It strives to build a creative atmosphere in which women feel inspired without fear of inequality or discrimination in such a male-dominated field and strengthen our discussion of gender discrimination.

The work of this project has done a lot of research, and the work has carried out a series of research from these four questions:

1.What is the significance of the feminist

movement?

2.Unequal employment of women in the

workplace

3.How are the benefits of gender equality reflected

in work?

4.How to eliminate the prejudice of gender

equality in the workplace?

Through the first research, it can be understood that most women have indeed suffered unequal treatment in the workplace. To better understand this issue, I used to interview three workers in the workplace. The interviewees included a male and two females. The results are eye-opening. Others realize this lack of diversity, and both women responded that they had experienced sexism. Another male worker said that in his professional field, the proportion of women is tiny.

After that, my work was to design the framework of the app. The app was mainly designed into four parts: homepage, resource page, message page, and profile (Figure 7).

There are some stories about women on the homepage, and users can watch stories posted by people and some news. Users can also upload their own experiences and stories.

The resource page consists of media, events, education, and donations. This page can call for gender equality. In the activities section, users can participate in some exciting activities. Participation in such activities can make more people pay attention to gender equality issues.

Users on the news page can contact their favorite blogs. This interactive design can attract more users to pay attention to gender equality.

At the same time, to call more people to pay attention to gender equality, I designed an activity about female poetry. This experimental typesetting project aims to find a new way of reading and displaying poetry. Using Cinema 4D and augmented reality technology, different 3D poems were created and set in the real world around us (Figure 8-9).

For this work, the tutor gave me a suggestion. I did a lot of research, but there are still many shortcomings in this project. The framework design of this app is not rigorous enough, such as emphasizing how unique a way of addressing the issue and your design skills have contributed through the creation of this app to make women’s lives better.

An academically rigorous course is a course that continuously challenges students throughout the course to improve their previous knowledge and skills. The difficulty of the instructor is to establish the initial ability of the student and constantly determine whether new skills and expertise challenge the student. On the other hand, overly rigorous courses cannot respond to students’ achievements. Teachers should transform more materials before students show that they have mastered the content and skills they need.

The most potent source of the curriculum is the students’ attention to themselves and social issues. Linking the curriculum with students’ attention and interest in themselves and the world seems to have nothing to do with rigor. All rigorous meanings are precise. By definition, students’ concerns and claims are not specific.

The practical significance of the Design and New Media course is to try to connect the course to the community and involve students in decision-making about how they will be evaluated. For example, in Design and New Media, the instructor intends to connect scholars with community problems or needs and provide students with theories. These skills and knowledge gradually match the students’ abilities, and students can gain experience and learning from them.

I see the trend of interaction design and user experience design in this age of data and long for a place in this filed. Traveling around is helping me seek my cultural identity in the design world, examining the relation of my cultural background to the interactive design I make.  In the future, I want to observe and reflect this rapidly changing world with a better understanding of user design and society. I wish to be a professional designer participating in interactive products and systems that will have lasting cultural and commercial importance development in China.

references：

Garrett, J., 2011. The elements of user experience. Berkeley, Calif.: New Riders.

Gibbs, G (1988). Learning by doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford: Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.

Shostack, L.G. (1982). How to design a service. European Journal of Marketing