The Final Project

Killing me softly, but quickly

The final project for this module killed me in two swift stages.

They happened to be the two most important stages – conception and implementation. It was ridiculously difficult to discover a good and substantial problem that exists. One mistake that everyone seemed to make was this. They approach the search process with a solution already in mind, and therefore fail to find anything particularly brilliant and unexpected.

Searching without a thing in mind

I learnt that it is fiendishly difficult to go searching without a specific thing in mind. But that is what this stage of the project requires. We want to find a strong need that is unsatisfied, but we all have some vague conception of it already. I suppose the research methods were there to help us ignore our preconceived notions.

The approach to this project was so open-ended that oftentimes we were lost.

Our struggles against our own brains finally ended when we decided on “dating in Singapore” as the primary unsatisfied need. However, a daunting wall quickly slid up in front of us. Having a good need does not mean that you will necessarily find a good solution to satisfy this need. There was even more brainstorming to be done.

It was easy to do research on this topic, as the match-making industry was pretty mature by this time. But there I’ve made the same mistake again, by assuming that the need to date in Singapore has to be solved by nothing but match-making agencies. Until kindly pointed out by Mr. Reddy, we were under this impression for so long that we could not think of any other way to solve the need we identified.

(Ironically, our final solution took the form of a match-making agency)

Implementation woes

I remember learning in a previous NM module that User Experience and Usability are two separate and rather distinct fields. The former is more concerned with the visceral and emotional aspects, while the latter is more concerned with heuristics and functionality. There is no doubt, however, that Usability affects the user experience in a great deal.

The implementation phase of our project, which involved the design and testing processes, were based on User Experience as well as Usability. It seemed as though that as we proceeded, the focus constantly swung between User Experience and Usability. One moment we were tweaking the aesthetics, the next instant we were concerned with the functionality of the website.

I realize that it is impossible to split these core aspects into two cleanly separate elements. There has to be a compromise between aesthetics and functionality. The degree of compromise is therefore determined by the purpose of your product/service and the target user. In hindsight, we never really sat down and hammered out what our degree of compromise should be.

If I had to do this again, I would have done additional research on what is more important to our target user, the look and feel of the website, or the functionality. If you ask me, however, I would say that they are equally important.

If given an unlimited amount of time, we could test this baby of ours to perfection. The limit in time and resources meant that we could only produce a non-complete hi-fidelity prototype. Since it is not fully functional, user testing cannot be said to be a complete success either.

I would say that our idea, at the basic level, is a strong one. But it could be much better if we had more time to think through it and tweak some parts of it. The website looks and feels good, but could be great. The functions are useful, but could be more intuitive and add more value to the website.

Going live as a testing phase

I believe that one good way to measure User Experience is to weigh the amount of bad feedback on the site. The limited testing meant that we did not receive much bad feedback. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t any potential ones lying around. If the site had gone live I am sure the flood of bad feedback would be painfully valuable. But then again that would be too late already wouldn’t it.

No wait. Maybe that’s why all sites go live with a “beta” version.