The Problem

According to Donald Schön, being reflective about the decisions you make as a designer helps a person understand why they do what they do, and it also helps them build a repertoire that will aid when encountering new design situations.

However, we found from our primary research that designers understand the value of reflection, but do not reflect because of three main issues:

• They are not sure when to reflect
• They are not sure how to reflect
• They are not sure what to reflect upon

Based on the issues uncovered, we created our solution that had designers reflecting five times a day via short activities.

• When: Morning, before lunch, during lunch, after lunch, and at the end of the day (five set times).
• How: Blog post, twitter, text message, post-it note, sketch, video commentary, etc.
• What: The current project.

Testing this method ourselves, we found that it did not work for the following reasons:

• The when was too structured and did not allow for flexibility
• The how was too varied and provided too many options
• The what was too specific; Often projects can move slowly and we found we were struggling to come up with things to reflect upon

In order for our model to be successful, the following changes were integrated:

• The when is flexible
• The what is any event in your life
• The how is a specific activity

Based on our insights, we created a Non-obtrusive way to Integrate Reflection into Daily practice (NIRD).

Using a pen and a post-it note, the designer keeps a log of any event in their day (personal or professional) in the form of a mind map that grows throughout the day. Then, at the end of the day, an overall reflection can be written on the back of the Post-It.

This final incarnation of the model has a very low barrier to entry, is quick and simple, and the materials are ready at hand. The Post-Its can be kept within a notebook or sketch book, daily planner, or organized in many other ways.

We also found this model is flexible enough to allow people to incorporate it into their lives in many different ways. Below are four variations:

I self-published a book on Lulu.com about basic photography principles, using the Canon SD 1200 IS as a model. The book is aimed primarily at beginners using point-and-shoot cameras, introducing them to concepts such as:

• Holding the camera
• Focusing
• Composition
• Positioning
• Shooting Indoors and Outdoors (White Balance and Flash control)
• Importing and Displaying photos

I also created a Letter-sized foldout guide that contains the most salient principles of the book for easy access and referencing while in the field.

The book is available in both print and PDF on Lulu.com.

Overview

We designed a museum exhibit that engaged participants in 17th Century navigation techniques. Set in the form of a pirate treasure hunt, participants found artifacts and learned little-known facts about historical pirates. The project took seven weeks to complete.

Research

We started by visiting the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis to find out for ourselves what qualities engaging various exhibits had on people. We found that:

• Immersive environments made for highly-engaging experiences (especially role-playing)
• Engaging experiences led to higher educational value
• Immersive and engaging experiences were highly enjoyable

As this project required full consideration for universal accessibility to our exhibit, we also researched and prototyped three different disabilities (cataracts, tinnitus and ADHD) that each team member would experience in order to draw design insights.

Concept

From our observations, we determined that the core of our design would need to be immersive,  enjoyable and educational, as well as incorporate role-play. After brainstorming various themes, we decided to do a pirate treasure hunt using navigational techniques employed by pirates and sailors of the 17th Century.

First Prototype

After researching various historical navigation techniques, we made a quick prototype of an indoor exhibit that employed a modified version of “dead reckoning”: navigation by “the stars” and determining distance by human paces. After several rounds of usability evaluations, we realized that our method would require tools similar to those used in an actual dead reckoning technique, as pacing distances varied from person to person. We also realized that familiarity with the space we were using for our prototype skewed the participant’s experience.

Second Prototype

We decided to provide participants with a compass and a spool of knotted rope (inspired by a chip log) , and relocated our prototype to an outdoor location. We tested two pairs and a group of four to determine collaborative qualities in the experience. The tests were done both in the day and night to determine the prototype’s feasibility in various lighting conditions.

The results were very favorable; teams enjoyed the experience, and suggested that we expand the scale and difficulty of the treasure hunt, improve initial training of the navigational tools, and introduce mini-puzzles to be solved before revealing clues.

Team

Chris Basham
Pan Yue

Role & Responsibilities

Facilitator – led the team through the design process
Videographer – shot and edited experience design video

Skills

Ideation
Videography
Photography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Video editing/animation
Presenting

Overview

For our Interaction Design Methods course at Indiana University, teams were tasked to design a cultural probe to send to a group of elderly citizens in San Francisco. The goal was to understand their beliefs, desires and preferences, in order to aid our design of a public interactive art installation to encourage their engagement with the city’s nightlife.

Cultural probe contents. We provided a clay bird house that our audience could paint on as a warm-up to the rest of the probe's contents, and a packet of toy dinosaurs to encourage whimsical thinking about visiting museums.

We provided a specimen thousand dollar bill and asked our audience to write down in the notebook (provided in the probe package) what activities would they engage in if they were in downtown San Francisco at night.

Instruction contained within dollar bill

We provided a postcard with questions to encourage our audience to respond and mail back to our design team. The questions were: "What place does music have in your life?" and "What is the most important thing in your life?"

We provided a set of invitation cards to simulate our audience inviting their friends to an event downtown, and asked who they would invite, and what type of party and activities they would engage in.

Team

Ravikumar Jayaraman
Evan Lipton

Role & Responsibilities

Facilitator – led the team through the design process
Photographer – documented the team’s design process through images

Skills

Ideation
Photography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Paper write-up / editing
Presenting

Overview

We designed an application that would allow football coaches to review video clips of previous plays in order to provide richer visual examples as they coach their players. The app would wirelessly download video clips from a central video server to a tablet PC, and both players and coaches can review, pan, zoom, pull up specific information (and related video clips) of a particular player, and annotate information that can be passed around to other team members for quick dissemination of information.

Progression of screen states for the Football Tablet App

Team

Ravikumar Jayaraman
Evan Lipton
Chenchun Lee

Role & Responsibilities

Photographer – documented the team’s design process through images
Usability test facilitator – conducted the usability test with several users

Skills

Ideation
Photography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Presenting

Downloads & Links

Usability test document

Overview

The challenge in this Interaction Design Practice project was to come up with a re-design of the ubiquitous thermostat (hypothetically as a designer for Honeywell) that would allow users to understand and operate it more intuitively. Based on our research, we came up with a design that would incorporate a thumb heat scanner to automatically measure the user’s temperature and set the thermostat based on that reading, aggregated against the user’s predefined ideal temperature settings and the current room temperature to prevent wide fluctuations in settings. In this manner, the design would:

• Make the user feel that s/he was communicating their desired temperature intuitively to the thermostat
• Allow the user to be oblivious of how it works, i.e. take away the need to know how it works
• Empower the user to feel that s/he was in control
• Prevent the user from practicing “bad habits” from their past experiences, e.g. cranking the settings

Thermostat initial sketch

First design

Final design

Team

Marisol Villacres

Role & Responsibilities

Co-designer – involved in the conceptualization and ideation process
Videographer – documented usability tests and produced video clips

Skills

Ideation
Videography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Paper write-up / editing
Presenting

Downloads & Links

Design document

Overview

This quiz app was one of the design projects in the Interaction Design Practice course at Indiana University. Teams were challenged to come up with a multiple-choice quiz application that would:

• Facilitate an intuitive means of answer input
• Provide suitable feedback for the answer
• Levarage the capabilities of the Palm Pre
• Comply with Section 508 accessibility guidelines

We took on the metaphor of a real-world paper quiz and designed an app that simluated the natural experience of taking a paper-based quiz with the affordances of a mobile device. We felt that the familiarity factor would result in greater productivity, and the quick and natural feel would result in an enjoyable experience.

Progression of screen states for the Palm Pre Quiz App

Team

Dan Richert
Samantha Merritt
Katie O’Donnell

Role & Responsibilities

Photographer – documented the team’s design process through images
Notetaker – documented team meetings and recorded design decisions

Skills

Ideation
Photography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Paper write-up / editing
Presenting

Downloads & Links

Design document

Presentation

Overview

Moogle is an interactive mirror design as one of the projects for the Interaction Design Practice course at Indiana University. In this project, teams were tasked to create a digital line of furniture for a hypothetical partnership between Crate and Barrel and Google. Inspiration for each team’s designed was to be derived from the Weasley clock (from Harry Potter). Given the context-aware nature of the clock, our team decided on a one-way ambient device that only displayed what loved ones would send to the mirror as information and images input via a web interface. This information would be represented as floating blobs that would shrink and fade over time.

Team

Holt Ellis
Varun Khanduja
Evan Lipton

Role & Responsibilities

Photographer – documented the team’s design process through images
Usability test facilitator – conducted the usability test with several users

Skills

Ethnography
Interview
Ideation
Sketching
Photography
Paper prototyping
Usability testing
Paper write-up / editing
Presenting

Downloads & Links

Presentation (contains large movie file)

Overview

The WALC (Walking Around the Local Community) system — an incentivized walking system based on local currency programs — was designed for the CHI 2010 Student Design Competition. This community-level system uses portable progress tracking devices, an interactive city display, and community/business integration technologies. It is a unique collection of existing technology components and visual interaction linked by the personal carabiner device that will track the walking progress of the community participants.

Team

Samantha Merritt
Candace Buggs
Anthony Nguyen

Role & Responsibilities

Photographer – documented the team’s design process through images
Notetaker – documented team meetings and recorded design decisions

Skills

Ethnography
Ideation
Photography
Prototyping
Usability testing
Paper write-up / editing
Presenting

Downloads & Links

CHI paper

Presentation