Basically, the graphic design is about the layout of different elements. Before the era of smart devices, most of the screen-based interface designs were made for websites. And now designers are designing screen-based experience for both the mobile devices and web page. And most of them adapt the principle of the mobile-first design, which requires the designers to first think about the interface for mobile device and then transfer that experience to the desktop-size webpage. However, since the screen size of the mobile page is much smaller than the laptop, the interface design for mobile device become more and more similar to each other. We can see that after the new interface design of the Instagram came out, there are a lot of apps imitate its design. Because the size of mobile screen is limited, the visual design of elements also face the trend of homogenization. As for designers, making their product distinguishable is important but sometime it also requires compromise on the usability. (Xu)

This quote touches an interesting part of interaction design. It questions the goal of the interaction design, which is whether to make the design helps people to do things or motivate people to do things. In most cases, the technology is designed to help people carry out a certain type of work more easily. For instance, the robotic sweeper is designed to save time for people sweeping their floor, and cars are designed for people to save time for traveling. However, nowadays more and more side effects can be observed from some of those designed. There are news about children spend their whole day on the iPad and become less willing to go outside. Though the iPad saves time for children to learn things, it negatively affects their health. More and more designs are aimed to motivate people to do things. Apple Watch, for instance, has this health function which allows you to set goals for exercise and visualize the achievement. But still, those designs have their contexts. In this quotation, the author wants a smart home to lead people towards an active and richer life. But different people have different lifestyles. For people who treat their home as a place to have a good rest, it might not be a bad idea to make it be able to have housework done for those people. (Xu)

Since the Hi-fi prototype contains too much detail, it distracts reviewers and testers' attention to those design details and makes it hard for them to focus on the overall structure of a design. And this can lead to another drawback of the Hi-fi prototype, which is that it makes reviewers and testers feel like everything is well-done. They can be easily obsessed with those design patterns and pay less attention to the interaction and navigation process. When I invited some people to test my portfolio website, since I used a lot of animation effects on it, most people would say it's very cool. Though there are some problems within the structure of the website and it sometimes makes people hard to navigate, they are expressed with the whole experience. And this makes their feedbacks less critical. But if the prototypes are just sketches, the reviewers and testers won't feel any guilty changing anything. They will try to judge the system from a higher level such as structures. In this way, their feedbacks can be more critical for designers to revise their design. (Xu)

I like the way that the author approach a specific outcome by think of alternative stories. When designers are thinking of their product experience, their assumptions become from the existing features of the product. Without any further user research, their assumption might be biased and have limitations. The existing features can easily lead people to think in certain directions instead of thinking broadly. For instance, when I am designing a mobile app and I am trying to build a story map of the product. I would imagine all the actions only happen on the phone. It's very easy to ignore that there might be other devices that might be involved in the users' using scenarios such as smartwatch and laptops. By exploring alternative stories, the designers will be able to jump out of the existing solution and figure out other ideas that can be integrated into the product. And it helps the designers to build the product experience in a more comprehensive way. (Xu)

The tools for prototyping keeps developing. From the list given by the author, we can see that some tools are used less by people nowadays. Since this list was made in 2008, it didn't list tools that we are familiar with today such as InVision and Sketch. From my perspective, the key feature of any prototyping tool is simply creating illustrations. However, what makes those tools different is their ways of interaction and user experience. For instance, Figma might not be the one that has most functions but it allows cooperation from multiple people, which makes it stands out from those prototyping tools. And most of the functions of Sketch and InVision are the same but InVision allows users to easily create smooth transition animations. The market of prototyping tools is fragmented nowadays and there are different tools aim to solve different pain points. It's important to choose the tool that's the most suitable for the project. (Xu)

I like the way that the author used to organize the storyline, which is to have the beginning, the story develops, climax and ends. By organizing the story in this, the designer will have space to introduce the current problem in the beginning. It avoids the situation that the designer brings out the design at the very beginning, which leaves less space for the readers to think carefully about the problem thus makes the solution less convinced. The climax of the story serves as a good way to stress the product's function and leave a deep impression on the readers. And the end of the story will present the result or the goal that has been achieved. It leaves the space for readers to have their reflection on the whole process and evaluate the story critically. I found this way of organizing the storyline very useful when I am creating my own storyboards. (Xu)

This part perfectly described my experience of working on the Homework5. In this homework, we are asked to sketch 5 workflows to convey our design and solution. And we need to tell a good story within those 5 sketches. I found this process very inspiring. When I finished the 8 designs for the last week, the only thing I could think about is how people are going to use those products. However, the initial ideas lacked the context. I didn't think much about in which context would people use certain products. Telling a story to present the workflow helps me to put myself into the story. It is like what the author said, "to fill the gap". Since a good story must have a beginning and endpoint, I need to think carefully about how this certain design would come into the users' lives. This process helps me to find out that different types of design might attract different types of users. For instance, a design that allows only audio input and output might best attract users with visual impairment. The process of telling a story helps me to think in-depth and image the real using scenarios of the design. (Xu)