This weeks theme was ideation and we had to come with an idea to base our projects around. Because the nature of the UX brief was different from the other two courses, I approached this differently to my peers. We started off by looking at a range of ideation techniques. These included examples such as brainstorming, SCAMPER, mind-maps, storyboards, provocation and co-creation workshops. To get us thinking about these in more depth, we split into 2 teams and were each assigned a method. Jason and I had to research SCAMPER and I was instantly taken aback as I have never heard of this before. It turns out that it is an acronym for (S)ubstitute (C)ombine (A)dapt (M)odify (P)ut to other use (E)liminate (R)everse. The idea is to ask questions that are relevant to each acronym definition and generate a lot of random ideas. Some examples of these are:
S – What materials or resources can you substitute or swap to improve the product?
C – What would happen if you combined this product with another, to create something new?
A – How could you adapt or readjust this product to serve another purpose or use?
M – How could you change the shape, look or feel of your product?
P – Can you use this product somewhere else, perhaps in another industry?
E – How could you streamline or simplify this product?
R – What would happen if you reversed this process or sequenced things differently?
(Questions from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm)
Even if the ideas are impractical or unsuitable, this is OK because the point is to come up with as many ideas as you can. This method is based on the theory that new products are just based on old ones that can be adapted, modified and optimised. The other team had to look into the technique of brainstorming. This helps to generate random ideas and usually works better when collaborated as a group. Links can be found between seemingly unconnected ideas that originally came from different people. This differs from SCAMPER because of it’s sporadic and randomised nature.
After this, we each helped each other come up with some themes for our projects to base our ideas off. It was very interesting to hear where people thought I could go with the climate change subject matter. The ideas that came up were:
- Marine life – aqua colours (blue, green, turquoise)
- Tigger’s artwork is done with a biro, lino print style so the website could be black and white block colouration
- Soil – Earthy colours (green, brown etc)
- Hot/cold, fire/ice – reds and blues
- Air pollution: greenhouse gasses
- Thermometer: could include one in the corner to raise awareness. Through engagement with the website, they could keep the ‘temperature’ down.
As you can see they are very rough and straight off the bat. I think I will go with the soil theme of earthy tones and if I am able to I would like to add the thermometer idea into the corner of the page somewhere, even if the temperature stays static. It is important for a website to have a unique selling point and this could be mine. The main thing I took away from this session is that a good idea is original, exciting, visually appealing, fluid and easy to use, has high production value, is relevant, and above all else, achievable.
Our visiting lecturer this week was Tim Caynes, principal designer at Foolproof UX. He delivered an in-depth presentation about how to come up with and present ideas. This was extremely valuable information coming from someone so high up who works in a business as big as Foolproof. His essential tips for a good presentation:
- Gather your evidence
- Don’t be afraid to sketch out ideas with pen and paper
- Track your decisions
- Maintain active narrative – Start the powerpoint/presentation at the beginning of a project and add to it along the way to maintain relevance
As a warm-up exercise, we were given the brief of creating an online service where drunk users can order food from Tesco and get it delivered to their door. Where other participants came up with storyboards I took more of a logistical approach. I thought the user could have junk food set menu options to minimise cost because if they could order anything from Tesco, that has potential to get slightly ridiculous. It would have strict opening times where people may not have access to purchase other types of food. The delivery address would have to be pre-set when the user is sober, however, there could be a drunk dial feature where they would have to enter a password or sequence of numbers in to make sure they don’t overspend.
My favourite part of this session was the workshop. We played three rounds in two teams and had to think of an app idea from randomly selected cards which included an industry theme, two creative technologies and two APIs. I delivered my pitch from the cards fashion (industry), Tinder and Spotify (APIs) and holographic display and drones (creative technologies). I loved selling the idea because I genuinely believed it tied all the elements together almost seamlessly and Tim seemed to like it a lot too. Tim got some brilliant shots of the session so I have shared my favourite ones below.
To sum up, the week I presented my idea to the class of how I would improve The Greenhouse Trust’s website. I really enjoy doing group exercises like this because it opens my eyes to things I would have never had initially thought of. Hearing others feedback is so important, especially in my line of work because I am always providing services to be sued by other users. On the whole, people really enjoyed my presentation and commented that I got my point across really well. I delivered the key points in a clear and firm manner and throughout, spoke loudly with confidence, leading to an engaging presentation style. In regards to the information I was presenting, my peers enjoyed how I touched on the major elements on other sites and related those back to my work. I have solid observations that could be backed up my evidence and using positive references gave the presentation a happy feeling.
The negatives points were concentrated on my visual PowerPoint presentation and content rather than delivery. For the example of the first page I zoomed out to show how much of a mess it was, however, one of my peer group thought this was over exaggeration and I was overselling my point. It was clear enough to see why it was bad and I didn’t have to stress the point as much as I did. A few people mentioned that they would have liked to have seen a rough, even hand-drawn wireframe to have more of a visual aid to back up what I was explaining. A downloadable version of my PowerPoint presentation can be found here – Presentation