Data gathering: probes – results 1
I have handed in all of the probes that I made, and tried to analyze the result. I have been looking for patterns and results that stand out and seen if some of the results can help me answer the research question. (This is post describes only some of the results).
As mentioned in my las blog post the study included ten students from the department of informatics. The only requirement I had was that they owned a smart phone, some had an iPhone and some had an Android. This was a qualitative research with few participant, so the results cannot be used to generalize, but does give an impression of the trends among students.
Data gathering: probes
One of the methods I am using to gather data is cultural probes. Probes are supposed to work as an instrument to provoke a response from the participants.
Having said that, ‘cultural probe’ is actually a very good description of what these things are about. If you think about a probe as something you send off into the unknown — typically I use the analogy of a space probe like Voyager — it’s something that goes somewhere where we can’t go ourselves and transmits back data. So ‘probe’ is a very appropriate word. (Source)
Mobile Media Design
Print screen of the prototype
This semester I’ve been taking a course called mobile media design at the institute of media and communication. As the course description says the goal was to be trained in exploring the possibilities for mobile media design, while gaining a basic knowledge about the main obstacles and how to overcome them, through a practical, project-based approach in which we would develop our own prototype of a mobile web application.
Universal Design or Multimodal User Interface?
E.g. Multimodal User Interface (biometrics) Source: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxKdbyRiHlgAWHTgt69iefF3Miq0kcLGKZ1DR-fhbe-ijl5oKS3EmR87_2
There are several ways of making sure that people with disabilities are included and can use a product. Two approaches are Universal Design (UD) and multimodale user interafaces.
Universal Design aims to create products that are usable to as many users as possible without the need for addoption or specialized design (CUD, 1997).
A flexible multimodal user interface can meet different users needs, abilities, situations, preferences and devices by making it possible for users to adjust the product settings based on their needs (Fuglerud 2009; Helman 2008).
e-Me: Sound and images becomes passwords
The online newspaper Forskning.no that cover Norwegian and international research news, recently wrote about the e-Me research project and how they have tested out using combinations of sounds or images as passwords instead of numbers or characters.
A lot of todays web services that are supposed to be accessible to all, are because of safety too advanced. This is an issue that the e-Me project have looked into and tries to solve by creating a prototype and testing it on elderly to uncover advantages and disadvantages with the different methods both for people with disabilities and other people. The different methods are also ranked by the level of usability
Read the article here. (The article is unfortunately only in Norwegian. )
This is how it can look like when the test users log on using sounds. (Illustration: e-Me-prosjektet)
Rappid prototyping tool: Flowella
I was introduced to the prototyping tool Flowella on a meetup with IXDA Oslo for a couple of weeks ago, Flowella is a free prototyping tool created by Nokia, and I have decided to test it out in context of my master thesis. Usually at one point in the design process I create sketches in photoshop, but photoshop in it self does not support transactions and interaction.
What Flowella does is that it allows you to drag and drop image files into a library and put them together with easy image mapping, one good thing is that you can import all sorts of images, it doesn’t need to be high-fidelity photoshop sketches, it could for instance also be images of low-fidelity sketches drawn by hand if you want the focus of the testing to be mostly on the concept and content and not on details as font or color.
When you are finished putting together your sketches you can export the file to flash, WRT or QML and test the prototype on a phone that support one of these files.
I have still not created proper sketches that I can try out, but I have tested the functionality and can confirm that it at least is really easy to use. My interests are mostly design and interaction and since my coding skills are quite poor I need a tool for prototyping that do not require me to use to much time on coding and give me more time to focus on designing for a good user experience. So far Flowella looks like tool that will allow me to do this.
Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com
Master Thesis: an instrumental case study
I have now decided which case I will focus on in my Master thesis. This is a project where my main purpose is to provide knowledge about accessible authentication on touch phones. I will try to achieve this by study one individual case. The case in it self is not the main focus, but are used as an instrument to provide insight into the issue. This is thus an instrumental case study.
The case I will use in my thesis is Feide (Felles Elektronisk IDEntitet, eng. Common electronic Identity). Feide is a solution for secure identification to educational web services in Norway, chosen by the Ministry of Education and Research.
Master thesis
I have started my last year on my master degree at the University of Oslo and have been encouraged by my supervisor to blog about my thesis. He was convinced that it was a subject that would be interesting to some people and it is also a good opportunity to get some feedback on my work.
I am still in the process of narrowing down the scope of the thesis, and have not decided on what case I will focus on. However I can at least introduce the research area and motivation for my work.
Nytt semester, nye bøker
Neste uke begynner jeg på mitt siste år på mastergraden min, og i den forbindelse har jeg kjøpt meg noen bøker på Amazon for å få litt inspirasjon og lære litt mer om blant annet web standarder og design for mobile enheter.
Her er en liste over bøkene, jeg har ikke lest dem enda, så vet ikke om jeg kan anbefale dem, men de hadde i hvertfal fått greie kritikker på Amazon.
Siri goes public 