Conclusion: The Project Finale

The main objective of the project was to design a useful piece of technology for children under the age of 11. Our team focused on children between the ages of 7 and 11, as outlined in this post.
We have followed the User-Centred Design approach, as outlined by Russell during the lectures, to tackle this objective. Part of the process involved us creating personas based on our target audience. This ensured that the potential user space was consulted at every stage of development and therefore that the device would appeal to children.

We used a large variety of evaluation techniques. The Cooperative design with Paul Anderson (one of the personas) allowed us to gain vital feedback from the user base about the prototype designs. Paul is left handed, and if we hadn't of used this evaluation technique, we would never have realised that the scanner's screen was the wrong way round when a left handed person held it. This, as well as other points made by Paul, allowed us to develop our design to guarantee that children would be able to use it. The Cognitive Walkthrough and the Heuristic Evaluation both supported and contributed to this.

The word scanner will help children to learn to read, which, by definition, makes it an extremely useful piece of technology. It has been designed in such a way that it will be quick and easy to use, thus increasing the likelihood that children will use it.

It is clear from the above points that the team has successfully met this main objective.

However, as our final evaluations stated, there are still some issues with the word scanner. The most damaging is that the Dictionary definition and Thesaurus entries may also be too difficult for a child to read/understand. There are also issues with some words having many meanings. These are all matters that come from the nature of the English language. The team has discussed this issue and they believe that the only way that it can be dealt with is by trial and improvement. Fortunately our scanning device can be updated automatically when it is plugged into a PC with an Internet connection, so it will only improve in the future. Hopefully by tackling words that children are most likely to come across and struggle with, the issue will be addressed.
The team built up an extensive research area, allowing us to dip into it every time we needed some help with designing the device. This was very helpful throughout the project, especially when choosing our initial ideas, as we could identify niche areas within the current market and apply the ideas we gathered from our research to them.

As outlined above, our personas were very useful to us. The reason for this is that the team made them very strong and diverse, covering a large section of the target audience. By avoiding creating personas that were too similar, helped us really understand what the potential users wanted.

The team successfully designed the word scanner by using a wide range of prototype designs and concepts. This meant that at every stage we were building on solid project foundations. Each new prototype brought with it new inspiration and innovation, leading to the ergonomically designed word scanning device that we have now.

Finally the team worked well together. There was a real sense of camaraderie and excellent teamwork. The team benefited from having two meetings a week, which helped us develop our ideas thoroughly and quickly. The cross communication was excellent also, everybody's ideas were listened to and evaluated with no exception.

The team are very pleased with the final result. However, there are some areas we would tackle differently in the future. It would have been very beneficial to of actually gotten in contact with some children, rather than solely relying on the personas. If we had more time, this would definitely be an avenue we would pursue. Furthermore, we initially had 2 strong ideas, it would have been valuable (if we had more time) to of developed these ideas in parallel, which would have ensured that the weakest one was definitely identified, but at a later stage.

Conclusion: John's Personal Conclusion

My overall conclusion of our HCI project is that our progress over the past term was quite remarkable and shows that our team moulded together rather effectively and produced a high standard of work in a relatively short period of time. This was mostly down to regular meetings to review our development and to discuss future progress in the designs of our ideas.

I feel that our final design concepts for the word-scanning device show great depth and understanding for a possible gap in the market where such a device could be utilised. I believe that this was achieved through the use of in depth research into the specific field, following a ‘user centred design’ process and in particular using personas to review our design decisions.

Personas are a good way to develop a concept by reviewing choices made during the design phase, though the eyes of the products target audience. This way we can see where a design’s features are in need of improvement or development. I feel that the personas we came up with for our project provided a good insight into possible users of our design and helped us observe issues with our original prototype, which we would of never thought of on our own accord.

Overall I think our project was a great success and was a good insight into the issues of human computer interaction. Everything was well documented in the team’s blog and a concrete design concept has been achieved.

If we were to redo this project again I feel that it could have been improved though the use of feedback from actual target users as well as personas developed with the concept in mind. Time constraints were also a major issue with the project and trying to achieve everything the team set out to do in this period was a challenge, with more time available our concept could have been developed further with more extensive documentation on the blog covering every aspect.

Conclusion: Mark's Personal Conclusion

As a team, I believe we functioned very well, showing evidence of strong communication and dedication to the project.

The final product is a very strong concept and is well designed in terms of both the physical and software features.
By testing the product on a group of personas twice, it meant we could come up with a strong re-prototype in order to iron out all the problems we missed in the first stages of design.

On a personal note, using personas was a good learning curve for me - it's not something i'd ever considered using before, and as such gave me a good insight into how developers of products act when there is no sample audience available.
The user-centred design practise was also very worthwhile as it is far easier to grasp the concepts using a hands-on approach rather than simply reading and researching it.

Overall, I think the team worked very well together - no-one acted as the overall 'leader', although Elliot took on a co-ordinating role in organising meeting times and tasks, which was beneficial for all involved as it would have been quite easy to not take a long task like this seriously.

In summary, I feel the project, product and blog were a huge success.

Conclusion: Elliot's Personal Conclusion

My 'management' role within the team developed from convenience rather than necessity. Any person within our team was capable of being the project manager, and as the manager I did not feel that I was the sole person keeping the team on track, the team made my job very easy. I mostly made sure everyone was aware of when and where meetings were and also made it my responsibility to check any team queries with Russell and/or the Supervisors. During meetings I found myself merely summarising the groups decisions/thoughts and at no point felt like I was the captain of a sinking boat. I liked the responsibility and would seek it again in the future.

I enjoyed working in the team. The use of the blog gave us an area to splash ideas down quickly, but in a formal environment. I believe it helped harbor and develop some of our strongest ideas and posting as a team meant that our ideas could spread and grow rapidly.

In terms of HCI, the project has opened up new avenues for development. I had never created a persona before, but I liked the experience. It gave me a chance to really get into the minds of the target audience, and I think, even if you have easy access to a large subset of your target audience, personas can still aid development.

I believe the product that we have designed is a fine one. It's charm is in it's simplicity. Although there are some weaknesses in the tool (see the main conclusion and the evaluations), I think the team has successfully designed a useful piece of technology for children.

If I were to do this project again, I would perhaps try and document our decisions in more detail, it's easy to assume that you have done when the group has discussed them thoroughly in the meetings. I would also of liked to have gotten access to a subset of the target audience, but due to the time constraints, this wasn't feasible.

I would just like to close by again stressing the real class of the team, the best I have ever worked with. We have, even with the other stresses during our final year, enthusiastically tackled the problem and have an excellent blog to demonstrate this. I'm personally astonished by the shear number and frequency of the posts on the blog, further showing the team's impeccable nature.

Conclusions : Ash's Personal Conclusion

I feel that the strength in this project has been its breadth of ideas. Unlike many similar projects this one began with a range of concepts which were each explored and discounted for one reason or another until the strongest idea was left. This approach meant that we had an excellent concept with which to begin development with and a good sense of direction.

The user-centered techniques discovered and developed have certainly been beneficial to me. The use of personas seems to be a point which everyone has gained a lot from, but it is smaller things involved with considering the user while designing which have had most impact for me. It has always been a tendency of mine to design things to be similar to those which have gone before, however this project has shown me that involving the user in the design process can lead to far stronger solutions.

This learning process has been greatly aided by the team. While exploring our ideas and concepts in such depth has been stressful at times, in the the end what has resulted is an excellent product which we are all very pleased with. This team has thrived because of the strength of character of every member and a strong commitment to the project.