One of the primary conflicts that a designer will experience is how to determine the consumer needs. Of course, every consumer is different than the next and the needs of these consumers will differ as well. Receiving feedback from the consumer can help the designer decipher what the consumer wants. However, it can be difficult at times to draw the line between the necessary elements of the project and the little things that may be nice to have, but we could all mostly do without. Gathering input from the consumer is absolutely valuable, but it is far from being a sufficient primary source of feedback. User feedback can be a great starting point for any design or redesign, but it is the designer's responsibility to "take the reigns", so to speak, and make decisions based on what is best for the entire targeted audience, not just a handful of consumers. As designers are usually on rather tight time constraints for projects already, what is most important is developing the absolute necessities for a particular project, as opposed to devoting more energy and focus on the "luxuries." People enjoy using applications that simply get the job completed quickly and effectively. The more features that the user can do away with without compromising their routine for performing whatever action it is that they perform, the better.
With regards to my design in project 2, there is one main thing that I would eliminate: the amount of buttons on the panel. When stepping on the treadmill, it is almost as if the user is looking down at a large keyboard with a plethora of options for a workout. As most of the treadmill users are not looking for a headache when deciding what kind of workout to choose from, it is clear that the primary aspect of the panel that was rather weak was the amount of choices and buttons that the user could select from. During my testing, this weakness was reinforced as my user became puzzled at times as to how to actually operate the machine. Overall, I think that if the panel became simpler and refrained from attempting at making a treadmill run more complicated on the user than any other task in the gym, it prove to be more efficient and easier to accomplish a workout.
-Michael Jacobsmeyer
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"Taking the reigns" is definitely something a designer is responsible for. Feature-creep or the desire to add "just one more thing" can overly complicate a design, especially if you listen to everything the user says.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you've determined that your redesign could still be simplified, but could you think of some specifics? You can't just reduce the number of buttons without reducing the number of features. What features of a treadmill may be superfluous? How could this help focus the '20%'.