though sometimes he had to walk backwards for a while to be sure we didn’t start pelting him when his head was turned
Jeff is simply trying to get somewhere and has to go through this neighborhood and gets this kind of treatment just for passing through
Did Jeff go to school?
Jeff wasn't even a boy the author knew from school and him and other boys were harassing him.
Superfluous animations
Again, not being professional designers might benefit us here. I know for me personally, I wouldn't even know how to do interactive animations.
Clever” Design that Ignores Usability
I think us not being "professional" designers might benefit us in this respect. We are all students in college that have very little professional design experience (or at least most of us). We understand that people like us don't want a creative design if it isn't easy to understand. We will be able to see a bad design through what might be something creative.
Adding Friction to User Actions
What does the term "add friction" mean?
Mystery Meat Navigation
Going back to the first generation students/high school students, we need to be very clear with what we create and we need to make sure that we're not supplying students with out of date information or bad links to what would be a helpful websites.
Information overload
I think we could easily succumb to this issue. We might include too much information in our Twine journey map that college students (us) and admission counselors might understand, but might overwhelm a high school student/first generation college student.
This process of trial and error helps designers to improve and refine their ideas.
This is an important period that we are in right now. Personally, I wouldn't want to put a lot of work and effort into something that no one likes or deems useful. I think that goes for all of us working on the prototype as well. If one of us has a problem with what we're doing or working towards, we should feel comfortable enough to speak up and discuss what they are seeing as issues. Maybe someone else feels that way or no one is seeing a major flaw within the project.
This means that ideas are developed, tested and refined a number of times, with weak ideas dropped in the process
I feel like this is where prototypes are made, like the one we're working on with Twine. We're creating a piece of it, we're going to get feedback from the Admissions counselors and then we will refine what we have created so far, or we will try to think about the problem from another perspective.
One of the greatest mistakes is to omit the left-hand diamond and end up solving the wrong problem.
I know on Mondsy we had a discussion about the problem we're solving currently. This was (and still might be) an important discussion to have through out our design process to see if we're all still on he same page and agree on the direction we're taking.
The goal of the Define mode is to craft a meaningful and actionable problem statement – this is what we call a point-of-view
I think that this is going to be our next step after we finish our journey maps.
Get all the information out of your head and onto a wall where you can start to make connections—post pictures of your user, post-its with quotes, maps of journeys or experiences—anything that captures impressions and information about your user.
It would be interesting if we could create this "wall" for us to physically connect our dots and track the things that we're learning and observing.
Have them physically go through the steps, and talk you through why they are doing what they do.
Maybe we can do this with some part of the admissions office if it's possible?
Engaging with people directly reveals a tremendous amount about the way they think and the values they hold.
I know I keep talking about this, but it is brought up in every article we read so to me it is really important that we get in contact with the current first year class to get their feedback and experiences while they were on the path to coming to PSU after their high school graduation.
We need to learn to see things “with a fresh set of eyes,” and empathizing is what gives us those new eyes
Bringing our ideas and/or prototypes to the admissions office for their feedback on what went well or what could be fixed with our projects
This will allow you to infer the intangible meaning of those experiences in order to uncover insights.
How could we get insights on what the on boarding experience will be like for perspective students? Is there a way we could emulate this?
the problems you are trying to solve are rarely your own
We have all been through the "on boarding" experience to this school and we need to simply explain it to high school juniors or seniors, some of them may have no knowledge of what college is like at all (i.e. first generation college students).
It is your effort to understand the way they do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about world, and what is meaningful to them.
All very important things we need to keep in mind while creating or editing our projects. We also need to recognize the many different audiences that are going to use our projects.
simple steps (the number of clicks to complete the task)
I remember reading something sometime ago that if what you're looking for that's online takes more than two or three clicks to find, the website isn't user friendly or something to that extent.
how do you evaluate a good user experience?
This might be a good question to discuss in class. To me, a good user experience is when the product is simple to use and understand and it effectively addresses the solution in a way that everyone can understand easily.
users want to pay the minimum cost to meet their own needs.
this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Working on a project and making it "lazy" for the users will improve their satisfaction with whatever we create, so it'll be worth it for us designers to have higher satisfaction levels. If it's what the user wants then we should deliver.
A person who is relevant to a product or service in some way
For us, could this be a student's parent(s) or guardian(s)?
A session bringing together various individuals involved in a product or service, especially those who might not usually interact.
This section reminded me of our class. Even though most of us are CM majors, we all bring different things, ideas, and experiences to this project. By using these to our advantage we could really think of and design something great.
A persona
I think this is a really neat and useful tool that could really work well when we are creating something like the journey map.
one-on-one interviews
I think it would be interesting if we interview people from admissions outside of class to get a more personal relationship with them and we can bounce an idea that we may have off of them as an outside perspective.
optimism is required
As far as I know, this is everyone's first time redesigning a process that is currently being used by professional staff. I think being optimistic and acknowledging our mistakes is going to be an important part of the projects we work on so we can all grow.
that by putting yourself in the shoes of your users and learning as much about them as you can, you are more likely to create solutions that hit the mark for them.
I think I've said this before, but talking to the current first year students who just experienced the on boarding at PSU process could be really helpful to us when we begin to redesign the process(es).
The concept of “fit”
Can we discuss this while in class? I read it like three times and I don't understand the concept of it entirely.
design should be about improving situations as design should be is ultimately about making things better.
I think this is an important thing to remember when we begin our first redesigning project. If we don't see something wrong with the way something is designed now, then we don't need to change it. It's kind of like that saying, "Don't fix what isn't broken". We should remember that we're trying to improve the process of respective/admitted students, not trying to just change it for the heck of it.
How did you decide that PSU was the college for you? How did you learn things like which classes to take and when to take them?
As well as us reflecting on our own experiences as perspective PSU students to where we are now, talking to this year's first year students about their experiences could be beneficial to us. Unless we're orientation leaders, we have not experienced what it's like to be a new student to PSU in 3 or so years, so getting reactions from people who went through it less than a year ago could help us learn what they liked and didn't like about the process they went through to get to be almost sophomores at PSU.
Tentative Schedule
As the class proceeds and we begin really working on this project, can we track when things get done on the schedule? For example, if we get a big piece of the project done on Wednesday February 27, can we mark down the piece we got done so we can remember when things were accomplished and what needs to be done next?
research how other colleges and universities are engaging with prospective and new students.
What other colleges/universities? Should it be within New Hampshire/New England or should we reach further out West to see what colleges in other areas of the country do? Should they be similar in size/geographic location/student demographics to PSU or should they vary? How will this research be done? Are we going to call admissions offices/orientation staff at other colleges or universities, or could this information be on their websites?
This is just a suggestion for how to determine your semester grade.
I think this is a great idea as far as grading for the class goes. Since this class is mostly independent work with the group, it will be most beneficial for the people we work with the give us a grade they think that we deserve, but also the opportunity to give ourselves a grade based on our participation and effort put into the project.
Learning Outcomes (Habits of Mind):
I like that each habit of mind is somehow related to this course. I think knowing these habits of mind and having them on this site as a reference as we move on with our project is going to be helpful.