I think use cases do not limited by what Saffer mentions here. I want to mention an article I read last week. It's "The Nine States of Design" (https://medium.com/swlh/the-nine-states-of-design-5bfe9b3d6d85#.ry49edpbd) This article also list some use cases such as "loading," "too many," "incorrect." I think the use cases are endless. While we could list some most typical cases, we still need to pay attentions and might always find other use cases.

This article reminds me of one conversation with my friend. She told me that everyday she woke up, she wanted to turn on the light without walking off her bed, but the position of the switch was too far from her bed. Most people at this situation would start to think about how to extend the switch and make it close to the bed. Perhaps an extended cable controlling the switch would be good enough to solve this problem. However, I kept asking her, “why do you want to turn on the light without leaving your bed?” She said because it would be easier for her to wake up if the light was turned on. Then I asked her again why she wants to wake up and finally I got her need: she wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Thus her problem changed from the far way switch to how to get up early. This whole process was me trying to find her really need. After reading this article, I keep remind myself that the users might not discover what they really need unless you keep ask them questions.

Reflective design is all about taking a step back and examine your design. From my experience, I was trying to design solutions for non-native speakers and see how my design intervention could help them learning. In this situation, I did not consider the people who are native speakers. Therefore, my reflection design would be how to design to make the native speakers aware of the learning environment and thus to help the international students catch the learning step.

Participatory design is mainly about users. How we design is driven by the user data. I like how this article address this topic. From my experience, I was so used to think of things by myself, search online, but talked to nearly no one. I'm thinking about changing this behavior and try to be more comfortable to talk to people. I'm also inspired by that is when I'm not very sure my design is helpful/good/appropriate or not, just go ask the users!

Although personally I don't like that, we could not deny how to make money is important. When designer work, they need to communicate with project managers or their "bosses," who mainly focus on how to make money. We could admire a good design that help users solve their problems, but we still need to face the reality.

I didn't realize communication is really important in our daily work until I'm here. I was a programmer so I often felt like "you just do it." You just program and when your code works, it explains everything. However, in design, where there is no absolutely right or wrong, we need to articulate what we think and it is never easy. What we do is practice and practice.

I'm wondering the design strategy steps listed here are always the some or not? I feel like the strategy provide a really good guideline for designers to think of a problem and find the solutions, but does it always process as it was? Does anyone has any opinion?

When we see something too often, we become too familiar with then we forget what is feels like to not know about it. Everyone has their own blind spots. At this moment, we need participants, or users, to help us disclosure what we are missing. That is also why the participatory design is significant. Also "The User Is Not Like Me" deliver an important idea we should all keep in mind: we are not designed things for ourselves----we design it for our users. Thus when we consider every change of our design, we should discover what user think, what would they act first.

For me, this is difficult. I was too limited by my own experiences. This steps requires a lot of discussions, especially with those experienced designers. But still do't take your own opinions too worthless. There is always some value exist within each opinion.

The powerful strength of UX research is that we, as UX designers, care about users far more than others, such as engineer. The user research could always surprise us. I was used to think of myself, like "I don't like it" or "that's not useful to me," "I would not do things like that." However, from the process of doing user research, I could always find things that I did not expect.