22 Jan o Discuss how the current

IT3301

Unit 1 Assignment

Planning User Research

Note: Complete the discussion in this unit before you begin this assignment.

It is tempting to start building an interface right away, but design needs to start with research. If you were building an actual online food ordering system for a restaurant, you would conduct a user research project to get the data you need. For this assignment, you will simply describe the restaurant and write a plan for user research. Then you will describe how this information and the human factors you explored in this unit should influence the design choices you make for the interface.

Assignment Preparation

Complete the following:

o Choose a restaurant as your hypothetical client for the project. The course project information describes the criteria to make this choice. Note that you need to keep the same client throughout all assignments in this project, and throughout the course.

o Complete your initial post for the unit discussion. This will help you prepare for the assignment.

Before you begin Part A (restaurant description) of this assignment, brainstorm about the restaurant itself. Take 15–30 minutes to note as many details as possible about who its main patron groups are and what makes the restaurant attractive to these people. You can do this by visiting the restaurant itself, visiting the Web site, and/or by recalling from memory. A few key questions include:

o What kind of restaurant is it? (Fast food? Ethnically-themed? Family-friendly? Casual or high-end?)

o What are some patron demographic groups who would be likely to order food here?

o When do they do most of their business? (Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late night?)

o Where would the patrons be and what would they be doing, if they decided to order online from this restaurant?

o When or how might the patrons be distracted or need to look away from the screen, if they are placing an online order? Do they need to confer with others?

Note: You do not need to submit these brainstorming notes; use them to write the paragraphs described in Part A.

Assignment Instructions

Part A: Restaurant Description

Identify characteristics of your chosen restaurant that should inform your design of this online food ordering system.

o State the name of the restaurant and the URL of its Web site. (If the restaurant has no Web site, provide the link to an official social media page or to the online menu.)

o Create a concise description of the restaurant, based on your brainstorming notes. Aim to write one or two paragraphs, choosing only the key details to provide a complete picture of the restaurant environment.

Part B: User Research Plan

If you were actually building this ordering system, you would spend a lot of time conducting this research. For the purposes of this assignment, develop a plan as though you were going to do that hypothetical research. You would want to learn which groups of people are likely to visit this ordering system, what is important to them, and what they need to accomplish. In Unit 2, you will be developing a single, brief persona based on some of the ideas you generate here.

Create a plan for how you would identify users, their roles and tasks, their motivations, and their expectations for the restaurant experience. Please be sure to read or review all resources in the unit studies before you begin. Using Sherwin’s 2013 article, “A 5 Step Process for Conducting User Research,” as a guide, write a plan that addresses all of the following:

o Explain what you think you already understand about your users.

? What are there gaps in your understanding that need to be filled so that you can design a user experience that will meet their needs?

o State your goals.

? What (hypothetically) would you hope to accomplish in your user research?

? How will you make this a vital part of the design process? Explain.

o Develop a set of research questions to find out what users would expect from your interface.

? Consider what you need to know about your users to build personas and design an engaging user experience, following the five-step process described in the Sherwin article.

? Formulate these priorities into questions that would be answered by representative patrons. Some sample questions are provided in steps 1–4 in Part 2 of Goltz’s 2014 article, “A Closer Look at Personas.” These may give you some ideas and you can modify them to meet your needs in addition to adding your own questions.

o Develop a user research method for learning what users will expect from your interface.

? How will you ask these questions—interview, surveys, or other methods?

? Are there other methods that you might use to get answers to your questions?

o Include representative users.

? Who are they, and how will you gain their cooperation?

o Include information capture.

? How will you compile the information—notes, online survey, or audio files?

Do not be deceived by this plan’s brevity. You will need to put some careful thought and into your questions and your research approach, based on the resources provided in the unit studies.

Part C: Design Strategies

Next, think forward to the interface you are about to build by employing the strategies you have explored in the unit readings. Use ideas, concepts, and quotes from the unit studies to describe the design strategies you plan to adopt in building your prototype food ordering system during one of the later assignments. Respond to some or all of the following questions:

o What implications do the past experience, current context, and future goals of your user groups have for the design of your online food ordering system? How would this change based on different groups of patrons?

o What are the implications that your own experiences and context might have on your design choices? What assumptions might you make about a good interface that might not be true for others?

o Are the Gestalt principles likely to play a role in your user interface design? If so, explain their relevance.

o How might visual structure enhance users’ interaction with the system?

o What useful and important roles might color play in the design of the interactive restaurant experience?

o Is users’ peripheral vision likely to be a main factor in your design decision? Why or why not?

Note: You will be gathering ideas and design strategies throughout the course. For this reason, it may be efficient to start a design journal document for yourself to keep track from week to week how you are planning to incorporate these design strategies into your prototype.

Refer to the Planning User Research Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.

When complete, compile all three parts in a single Microsoft Word document and submit it as an attachment in the assignment area.

Submission Requirements

Your assignment should meet the following requirements:

o Written communication: Communicate effectively. While content is the most important aspect of your assignment submission, organization, readability, grammar, and spelling are also important.

o APA format: Resources and citations must follow current APA guidelines.

o Document type: Submit the assignment as a Microsoft Word document.

Resources

o Planning User Research Scoring Guide.

o A Closer Look at Personas: What They Are and How They Work (Part 2).

o A 5-Step Process for Conducting User Research.

o A Closer Look at Personas: What They Are and How They Work | 1.

o APA Style and Format.

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IT3301

Unit 2 Assignment

Creating Personas and Task Requirements

Note: Complete the discussion in this unit before you begin this assignment.

Assignment Overview

Now that you have explored some of the major research strategies available to you, it is time to apply them to one of the patron demographic groups that you identified in this unit’s discussion. In this assignment, you will conduct the next step in the UX design process: creating personas and conducting task flow analysis. Personas and task flow analysis provide a method for analyzing user research to help the designer better understand the user from the user’s perspective, not from the designer’s perspective.

Assignment Preparation

Before you begin the assignment:

o Complete your initial post for the unit discussion.

o Review the course project information to make sure you are focusing on the required project scenario.

o Make use of feedback you have received from your instructor on the Unit 1 assignment and any responses from your fellow learners for your discussion post.

Assignment Instructions

Continue to consider the persona that you developed for the unit discussion. You will write about this persona in this assignment, and you will determine best design strategies to suit their expectations. As you do so, keep in mind that you will ultimately be building your interface for more than one patron demographic group. Although you do not need to submit them, you will want to continue building personas for other groups.

Part A: Develop the Persona

Develop a persona representing one of the core demographic groups for your interface. For the persona you have chosen, and using your own blank Word document, complete the items listed on The Persona Core Poster form (given in the resources). Feel free to add example photos, quotes, and other realistic factors that you have observed or can reasonably be derived from your experiences. Make sure your persona meets the guidelines for good personas as described in the unit studies.

Part B: Build a Task Flow

Complete the following:

o Create a task flow for your persona going through a typical restaurant experience. Consider the restaurant experience from their perspective. First, create the task flow for ordering at a restaurant in the traditional way—without using an online food ordering system. Next, create a task flow that describes the steps the persona will take from entering the restaurant through ordering and paying for a meal to leaving with a full stomach. Use the first page of the Task Analysis Template (given in the resources).

o Modify the task flow to reduce steps and maximize system capabilities. After you have documented the task flow for the customer persona you selected that describes visiting a restaurant, ordering food, and paying for it in the traditional way, use the second page of the Task Analysis Template to complete a task flow that would describe your persona using the online ordering system to achieve the same objectives. Can you reduce the steps? Can you minimize the activity that must be performed by the user and maximize the system capabilities? You may wish to use some of the techniques described in the unit readings to streamline the task flow. In your final task analysis, clearly indicate what the user must do and what the system must facilitate to help the user meet their goal.

o Adapt this task flow to the needs of a persona from a different patron demographic group. Reflect on the task flow you developed for your persona using the online ordering system as compared to the other customer persona you developed.

? Would the exact same task flow apply to the other customer persona, or would they be different?

? Would some parts be the same and some very different? Explain.

Part C: Design Strategies

Assess the implications of human factors on your users’ experience with this interface. Consider your customer personas restaurant experience from the perspective of information display and reading, as well as attention, memory, and behavioral patterns.

o What are the implications of these human factors for the design of your user interface?

o What design strategies do you need to employ in the creation of your user interface design for the restaurant’s online food ordering system, based on these implications?

Note the design strategies related to these four categories that are most useful to the creation of the restaurant user experience, given your customer persona and the restaurant context. Specifically, address information display and reading, and attention span in your restaurant’s physical environment, as well as memory and behavioral patterns. Plan how you will incorporate these design strategies in your design project. You may want to copy and paste this section into your design journal so that you have them readily available for the upcoming units.

Refer to the Creating Personas and Task Requirements Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.

When complete, compile all three parts in a single Microsoft Word document and submit it as an attachment in the assignment area.

Submission Requirements

Your assignment should meet the following requirements:

o Written communication. Communicate effectively. While content is the most important aspect of your assignment submission, organization, readability, grammar, and spelling are also important.

o APA format: Resources and citations should follow current APA guidelines.

o Document type: Submit the assignment as a Microsoft Word document.

Resources

o Creating Personas and Task Requirements Scoring Guide.

o APA Style and Format.

o The Persona Core Poster [PDF].

o Task Analysis Template [DOC].

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IT3301

Unit 3 Assignment

Model User Flow and Wireframes

Note: Complete the discussion in this unit before you begin this assignment.

Assignment Overview

Finally, it is time to start designing your interface. In this assignment, you will continue to the next step in the user interface design process—creating skeleton screen or page layouts to indicate where the key elements of your design will be located on each page. To do this, you will need to consider the task flow that you created in the Unit 2 assignment, and make sure you are enabling your user to engagingly and efficiently complete the desired task.

Assignment Preparation

Review feedback

Before you begin the assignment, review the course project information to make sure you are focusing on the required project scenario. Then review the feedback you received on your task analysis and task flow as well the comments from your classmates on your discussion post in this unit. You may also want to read the notes from your design journal regarding human factors related to information display and structure, as well as visual perception. You should build this wireframe and task flow for the same restaurant that you have researched in the previous assignments.

As in previous assignments, you will also want to complete your initial discussion post before you start.

Choose a Tool to Design Your Wireframes

You may use any tool available to you that will allow you to create simple skeletal sketches of each screen or page, and to label the location of the key elements described in Part B of the assignment. You should save the sketches in one of the following formats: docx, .pptx, .sketch, .psd, .pdf, .png, .jpg, .gif, .png, or .rtf.

Possible tools include Paint, PowerPoint, Word, Adobe Illustrator, Visual Studio, Visio, et cetera. You may also use other prototyping tools that are available as open source or via free trial downloads. The only requirement is that you should be able to save the page in one of the formats identified above (one screen per page per file).

Assignment Instructions

Once you have completed your preparation, you will create a document that contains the following.

Part A: Task Flow – Customer Orders and Pays for Meal

Revise the task flow from your Unit 2 assignment. Your goal should be to make the user’s food-ordering process more efficient. Include this revised version in this assignment as Part A.

This task flow should be the focus of your wireframe and user flow efforts. To make sure that your wireframe is doable in a reasonable amount of time, simplify the project in the following ways:

o Focus only on the tasks associated with a customer selecting and ordering a meal, and then paying for the meal.

o Design for the limited menu described in the course project information (three entrées, three beverages, and three sides).

o Simplify the task flow as much as possible without sacrificing any valuable steps.

Part B: Wireframe and Flow Between Wireframes

Design a series of wireframes to support your users in their tasks as they order online from this restaurant. A simple skeletal sketch of each screen or page, with the location of the following items clearly labeled:

o Navigation controls and links.

o Images.

o Text areas.

o Headings and subheadings, as applicable.

o Headers and footers that will appear on each page, as applicable.

o Other information display areas, as applicable.

Please note that you will not be including content—the wireframe is just the layout or skeletal view of a screen or page. You will need to consider how each screen or page will support the completion of user tasks in the task flow you have created, and ensure that the wireframe contains the needed elements.

At a minimum, you should have three wireframes. You may have more, depending on how you design your task flow, but be sure to include one for each of the following:

o Entry page.

o Ordering.

o Payment.

Specify user flow between wireframes according to a task analysis. After you have created your wireframes, arrange them in a pattern that shows the flow of user actions from page to page, as supported by the task analysis. You may do this with directional arrows from wireframe to wireframe, and you may also number each wireframe. Note that you may reuse a wireframe layout in one or more screens or pages that you plan to include in your final application.

Part C: Design Strategies

Review your ideas about your project through the lens of human brain operations and the unit readings.

o Identify design strategies that address human recognition and recall, support user activities, and facilitate learning.

? How are you designing your online food ordering system user interface based on these human factors?

? What design strategies and features will you implement in your final prototype as a result of the readings and discussion?

o Include how you would modify the design of this interface for a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Include these ideas in your assignment, and also add them to your design journal, for use in developing your prototype in the next unit.

Refer to the Model User Flow and Wireframes Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.

When complete, add all three parts in a single zip file and submit it as an attachment in the assignment area.

Submission Requirements

Your assignment should meet the following requirements:

o Written communication: Communicate effectively. While content is the most important aspect of your assignment submission, organization, readability, grammar, and spelling are also important.

o APA format: Resources and citations must follow current APA guidelines.

o Document type: Submit the assignment as a zip file.

Resources

o Model User Flow and Wireframes Scoring Guide.

o APA Style and Format.

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IT3301

Unit 4 Assignment

Constructing a Prototype

Note: Complete the first discussion in this unit before you begin this assignment.

Assignment Overview

In this assignment, you will use the work you completed thus far in Units 1 through 4 to create a medium-fidelity prototype with mock-ups of what the pages will look like, and connections between them to illustrate user task flow. You will not be doing any coding.

Assignment Preparation

o Gather the wireframe you created for the Unit 3 assignment as well the feedback for the assignment, and your journal containing your design strategy notes.

o Complete the initial post for the first discussion in this unit.

o Consider and select colors and fonts, as well as other images or graphic resources you may need for your prototype.

Assignment Instructions

Once you have completed your preparation, you will create your prototype and design justification per the instructions below.

Part A: Prototype

Build a prototype that suits the goals and expectations of its users. This should be an adaptation of the wireframe that you submitted in Unit 3. Your prototype should provide the look and feel of your user experience, with all of the following demonstrated:

o Adhere to best design principles for layout and style.

o Build navigation and controls that users would find intuitive.

o Incorporate accessibility factors into the design of your interface.

o Develop a flow that allows users to achieve their goals efficiently.

Your prototype should provide the look and feel of your user experience, with all of the following illustrated: color, font styles and sizes, user controls, use of text and/or instructions, navigation controls, and the actual design layout of each page.

Choosing a Tool to Create Web pages

You may use any tool available to you to build the prototype Web pages as long as it will allow you to create one Web page per file in one of the following formats: .sketch, .psd, .pdf, .png, .jpg, .gif, or .png. Note that this means you could also draw your screen or page by hand, and take a clear photo of it to generate a .jpg file. However, it will be difficult for you to add color, fonts, images, et cetera, if you use this approach. Possible tools include Paint, PowerPoint, Word, Adobe Illustrator, Visual Studio, Visio, et cetera. You may also use other prototyping tools that are available as open source or via free trial downloads. The only requirement is that you should be able to save the page in one of the formats identified above (one screen per page per file).

After you have completed all of your screens or pages and saved them as individual files, plan the user flow between screens or pages for the customer to:

o Select from the menu.

o Pay for the meal.

o Submit the order.

Using InVision to Build Your Prototype

You are required to use InVision to build your prototype in this assignment. InVision offers a free account that will allow you to upload your screen or page files and link them together to mimic user task. Visit the InVision Web site (link given in the resources) and sign up for a free account.

Please note: InVision will ask for an e-mail address and a phone number. Promotional e-mails from InVision representatives are likely to arrive in the e-mail account you provide. You may wish to choose carefully what you share with InVision, if you would like to avoid being contacted by their representatives.

An initial Getting Started video will walk you through uploading your files and then linking them together by creating hotspots (ideally over buttons) so that you can establish the flow through the screens that the user will experience when using your restaurant ordering system. Complete creating the hotspots as well as the links between screens. Then test your prototype by beginning with the start screen and going through the user tasks involved in selecting a meal, paying for it, and submitting the order.

After you have completed your prototype and reviewed it carefully, from the Prototype view in InVision, click the green Share icon and then click Public Share Link that appears in the gray bar at the bottom of the dialog box that opens. Copy and paste the URL to your prototype in a document that will contain your design justification (see Part B).

Part B: Design Justification

Your design justification should explain the prototype design strategies and decisions that you made to address the human factors most likely to be impacted by use of the food ordering system. Specifically, describe your choices and justify the following items, and explain how they address important human factors:

o Structure of each screen or page (organization of elements on the page).

o Navigation controls.

o Colors.

o Font styles and sizes.

o User controls (interactive components—buttons, textboxes, et cetera).

o Use of text or instructions, as applicable.

When you have completed the prototype and the design justification document with the InVision public share link to your prototype, add all files to a zip file and submit it to the assignment area. Also, create a post in the second discussion in this unit that contains your InVision public share link, your e-mail address, and a brief description of the restaurant for your user interface design.

Refer to the Constructing a Prototype Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.

Submission Requirements

Your assignment should meet the following requirements:

o Written communication: Communicate effectively. While content is the most important aspect of your assignment submission, organization, readability, grammar, and spelling are also important.

o APA format: Resources and citations must follow current APA guidelines.

o Document type: Submit the assignment as a zip file.

Resources

o Constructing a Prototype Scoring Guide.

o Interactive Prototypes.

o Project Basics.

o InVision.

o APA Style and Format.

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IT3301

Unit 5 Assignment

Conducting a Usability Evaluation and Cross-Platform Design

Assignment Overview

Now that you have completed your first user experience design prototype, it is time to think about ways to evaluate designs to ensure that your application will appeal to users and help you achieve the intended goal. In this assignment, you will evaluate the prototype of one of your classmates, and do some thinking about what it would take to convert your food ordering system from a Web-based platform to a mobile platform.

Assignment Preparation

You will need to access the link to a classmate’s online food ordering system prototype, as found in the second discussion in Unit 4, before you begin Part B: Conduct an Expert Review of a Prototype. You may choose the prototype you would like to review. Important: If you have not already uploaded your prototype to the discussion area, do so right away.

Usability evaluation is about testing your user interface designs with a representative group of users. Ideally, you need to learn if users can complete their tasks successfully using the interface, how long it takes for them to complete the tasks, how satisfied they are with the application, whether modifications to the design are needed to improve user performance and satisfaction, and to see if the application meets usability objectives. Review the readings and resources related to usability test plan, as well as the accessibility standards from Unit 4, and you will be ready to complete the assignment.

Assignment Instructions

Part A: Create a One-Page Test Plan

Create a usability test plan that would—if you performed it—predict the quality of your users’ experience with this online food ordering system. In Travis’s 2013 article, “1-Page Usability Test Plan,” the author describes an agile, one-page test plan that can help you think through the process of testing your food ordering user experience design.

Think carefully through the areas described in the plan and develop a summary of a test plan that will work for the food ordering system. Use Microsoft Word to write your summary.

Part B: Conduct an Expert Review of a Prototype

Conduct an expert review of a classmate’s prototype, demonstrating your understanding of best practices for layout and style. The expert review is one of the many methods of usability evaluation that you explored in your studies. You will also demonstrate your knowledge of how human factors should shape interface design. In this part of your assignment, conduct a usability test in the form of an expert review of the user interface design prototype created by one of your classmates, as described in Nielsen’s 1995 article, “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.” Note: You are not completing the full test plan you developed in Part A. This is a different process.

Select a classmate’s prototype from among those posted in the second discussion in Unit 4. This is your own choice.

Review Nielsen’s article and concisely explain how well your classmate’s prototype meets each of these heuristics. Please address each of the 10 heuristics individually; if any of them do not apply, indicate this in your assignment.

After you have completed the review for your classmate’s prototype, please send the evaluation to your classmate by an e-mail. Most likely, you will also receive an evaluation. The usability evaluation you receive will give you an idea of how a potential user views your user interface design. You will, of course, still receive feedback from your instructor when you submit this prototype as part of your assignment.

Part C: Exploring Strategies for Mobile Design

With this final section of the assignment, you will return your focus to your own prototype.

o Describe best design methods for converting your Web-based application into a mobile application. Some UX design experts advocate for a mobile first design strategy that is easier to modify for Web-based applications, and new tools make it possible to design for multiple devices at the same time. When you designed your food ordering system application, you focused on a Web-based application. Now you need to consider what it would take to convert your Web-based food ordering system to a mobile platform.

? What are some of the challenges you face in converting a Web-based application to a mobile application in terms of user experience design?

? How is the user experience likely to be impacted if the food ordering system is delivered on a mobile platform?

o Describe how human factors should be considered when converting a Web¬-based application into a mobile application. In your analysis, address at least five of the human factors you explore in this course, as well as accessibility considerations.

o Assume you have converted your food ordering system to a mobile platform, and the restaurant owner has decided to open an identical restaurant in rural Russia. Describe additional changes you would make to your user interface design to address the needs of a new persona that is part of Russian culture, and to provide an engaging user experience.

Refer to the Conducting a Usability Evaluation and Cross-Platform Design Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.

When complete, compile all three parts (usability test plan, expert review, and cross-platform mobile design strategies) in a single Microsoft Word document and submit it as an attachment in the assignment area.

Submission Requirements

Your assignment should meet the following requirements:

o Written communication: Communicate effectively. While content is the most important aspect of your assignment submission, organization, readability, grammar, and spelling are also important.

o APA format: Resources and citations must follow current APA guidelines.

o Document type: Submit the assignment as a Microsoft Word document.

Resources

o Conducting a Usability Evaluation and Cross-Platform Design Scoring Guide.

o APA Style and Format.

o The 1-Page Usability Test Plan.

o 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.

o Conducting Expert Reviews: What Works Best?.

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IT3301

Unit 1 Discussion

Perception Bias and Visual Human Factors

Select an online food ordering system about which you have a strong opinion—either positive or negative. Make sure you choose a Web site that someone else in the class has not already selected and posted. There are hundreds of options. Here are a few examples:

o McDonald’s.

o Panera Bread.

o Chili’s.

In your initial post:

o Include the URL for the online food ordering Web page and provide your assessment of what you do and do not like about it.

o Describe how your opinion may be influenced by two or more of the factors and sources of perceptual bias.

o Analyze the Web site in terms of visual principals, structures, color factors, and periphery as described in the unit readings, especially the chapter readings from the course text.

IT3301

Unit 2 Discussion

Designing for a Persona

One of the roles you identified while constructing your research plan was the restaurant customer or patron. When you identified this role, did you think about whether the patron would be likely to order only for themselves, or for a larger group? Might there be an event or occasion for some of the patrons to place their orders? What sorts of dietary restrictions or preferences would the ordering system need to address? Which customers may want to place their order in a different way when using this the online food ordering system, and would it make sense for the restaurant to provide this option?

Start your initial post by making a list of at least five demographic groups who might be regular patrons of the restaurant for which you are building the online food ordering system. Examples of demographic groups can be found in the unit readings.

When you have completed your list of five demographic groups of patrons, choose just one of these groups to explore more deeply. Address all of the following for this chosen demographic group:

o Develop a persona for this group. Use the persona form you will be submitting as part of the unit assignment to develop your answer for this question. You do not need to upload the form itself in this discussion, but provide some of your key insights about the group based on what you wrote there.

o Imagine the persona you have just described as they order a meal through an online food ordering system for your restaurant.

? What is the process they prefer to take?

? What do they want (or not want) to see?

? What decisions will they make as they order the meal?

o Discuss the kinds of design strategies you will need to employ in building an online food ordering system that meets this persona’s needs and expectations. Be sure to mention key considerations such as information display, attention, memory and behavioral patterns, as described in the chapter readings in this unit.

IT3301

Unit 3 Discussion

Designing for Human Factors

In the unit readings, you explored different aspects of human brain operations, including:

o Recognition and recall.

o Learning and performing actions.

o Actions that are more difficult than others for humans to perform.

o Approaches that make human learning faster and easier.

All of these factors have implications for the design of user experience and interaction with systems.

In your initial post, describe the most important ways in which at least two of these factors should be taken into consideration in the design of your online food ordering system. How can this knowledge be applied to improve or enhance the user experience with the ordering system?

Once again, you will be using the ideas you develop in this discussion to get started on the unit assignment.

IT3301

Unit 4 Discussion

Cross-Cultural User Experience

Parts 1 and 2 of Idler’s blog post, “How to Design for a Cross-Cultural User Experience,” review Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, and describe how these dimensions may impact the user experience. For each dimension, the article depicts an image that shows where different countries are located on Hofstede’s cultural dimension scale, which should influence how the user experience might best be designed for users in that country. For each of the cultural dimensions listed below, two countries are identified that are on opposite ends of the scale for that dimension.

o Power distance: Australia and Russia.

o Individualism versus collectivism: Mexico and Norway.

o Masculinity versus femininity: Philippines and Sweden.

o Uncertainty avoidance: Poland and Greenland.

o Long-term versus short-term orientation: Argentina and France.

In your initial post, select a cultural dimension and describe the likely differences between users in the two countries listed above based on the cultural dimension you selected. What design strategies would you need to include in your food ordering system user interface if you were planning to implement a version of the application in each country?

IT3301

Unit 5 Discussion

Beyond the Screen

Consider the range of new technology, from the Internet of things to wearable technology to virtual reality or augmented reality devices to self-driving cars. The definition of user experience is moving far beyond a computer screen-human interface into new and exciting areas. What implications do you see for designers in these new areas—particularly related to human factors?

In your initial post:

o Select a new or emerging technology and include the URL to a site that provides an overview.

o Discuss how the current ideas of UX design, as they have been presented in this course, will challenge you to think outside the box as a user interaction designer for this new technology.

You may choose one from the options given in the following resources, or select your own cool futuristic tech toys:

o Oculus: Rift + Touch.

o 11 Best AR Smart Glasses (Augmented Reality Headsets)!

o Why Hololens.

o The Best Smartglasses 2017: Snap, Vuzix, ODG, Sony & More

o The Best Smart Clothing: From Biometric Shirts to Contactless Payment Jackets.