Excellent! Our book that the first reading comes from begins with a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy quote! “Don’t panic” Words to live life by. Even if there are bees involved. (I went to Turkey Run today and four young boys found out why you don’t kick a bees nest. I could hear them across the river. 😦 Poor guys.
The book we are reading from is called The UX Book. It’s authors are Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla. Published this year! (2012)
But on to the reading. The first chapter was a lovely overview about what user experience design is. The reading also pointed out that to a user, the interaction experience is the system. So if they can’t or won’t use something, it doesn’t exist to them. User experience includes: effects experiences due to usability factors, effects experienced due to usefulness factors, and effects experienced due to emotional impact factors. (my favorite is the emotional factors. For example, I bought a pair of cooking tongs the other day that are yellow. Yup, yellow. Do they work the same as metal tongs? Indeed, but I love using my yellow tongs just because they are a happy color!) I also liked the statement, “A user experience cannot be designed ,only experienced.” (20) The chapter encompasses much more than that, but I want to get on to Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 was a bit more confusing. At least, I felt that perhaps they were making it overly complicated. I wanted my examples back that I had in the first chapter. Hopefully we can discuss this is in class so I get a bit of a better understanding. I know the concept of the product lifecycle wheel. Analyze, Design, prototype, evaluate. This chapter seems to go into much more detail than just explaining the four steps. In fact, I felt it went into too much detail but I can understand the authors need to make certain the reader understands. My fear is that it was overly complex and that I was missing something important by focusing mainly on the wheel analogy.
I loved the multitude of examples of bad or good user experience design in the first chapter and hope that we get more as we read on. (Poor Windows Vista, he never gets a break. Also, being an air traffic controller must be extremely stressful because the authors used that example many times.)
I also encourage my classmates to look at the footnotes. They are funny and occasionally flattering.
Anyone else’s book smell a bit odd? it is definitely affecting my emotional user experience with the book. I love a good new book smell. It has let me down in this regard.
Ok, so now I have finished the Blackboard reading. I found that reading to be quite enjoyable. I loved the concept of visibility and was thinking about his door example when I realized there is a perfect example of poor visibility right here on campus. The doors leading into the Loeb playhouse have the pull handle on both sides. So, I always pull and I would say I have an 80% of getting it wrong. (I know it should be 50% but I’m unlucky like that). Sure, I can look at the hinges to see which side they’re on, but its not apparent that I should do that. I see a pull handle, so I pull. Whether I should pull or push is not visible. I dislike those doors and they put me in annoyed mood whenever I have to use them. But at least now I have a name for why I don’t like them, poor visibility.
Katie Cissell 
Such a present to read your post, very interesting! And of course “a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is definitely a Saturday Night great movie (Actually many usability issue we can address from the movie) About the Ux Book, I agree with you that more sometime is confusing, but you are paying for it, the authors are trying to give you as much as they can, and maybe the book is not mean for us to read it in a few hours and forget about it. I hope will can share more in class. Thank you for your post. Thumb up!
No, my book does not have a funny smell… but I can recommend ways you can enhance your user experience… good point though about the “new book smell” and its importance for the book UX.