The presentations were on a variety of topics. None of the topics seemed incredibly technical and in fact a majority of the topics seemed almost to echo what we have developed as common sense when it comes to interface design. Often we get lost in our assumptions in how a user interface will behave and so we must take a step back to look at if the actual rules are being obeyed. We get a ‘feeling’ of them being off or wrong but mostly we just get frustrated by not being able to achieve our goals and leave. In the nearly endless choices of the internet, there isn’t time to deal with bad design and so we go elsewhere.
It is nice to break down and look at the various technical aspects of design. I learned or relearned a lot of information about design (for example, the radio buttons and why you can only push one button). I also kept thinking during the excise presentation about how it relates to exercise. (Too much work to find what I want….*goes and lays down with Cheetos bag*) I wish they had been able to finish their presentation with that comparison they had lined up.
We uniformly went over our time (excluding the last presenters and the group that didn’t get to present) and I think that we definitely all got caught up in the technicalities of our presentations. The topics, when we looked at them, were so much more indepth than our initial thoughts and so we wanted to show everything. Plus, we wanted to be good students and good students are thorough, right? well, good students are efficient and this a majority of us were not. Too much info!
Next week, the goal is efficiency!! The most important information in our given time frame! Go, go, go!!!
Katie Cissell 