WEEK 8
MORE RESEARCH
REVIEW OF THE FORMATIVE FEEDBACK
This is the last week before the RPO submission deadline. My formative feedback went quite well as it shows that I’m on track with both my research and practical work. I wasn’t told to change anything with my RPO so I will only do some language checks before I submit. I believe my improved readings, objectives, and approaches, have created a coherent proposal for my dissertation for the readers. This is good progress and hopefully will give me confidence while moving forward.
HOW TO ACHIEVE ETHICAL DESIGN?
Since the visually impaired are a part of my user testing, I have to think of ethical considerations during my process. Many ethical design principles revolve around respect for human rights, effort, and experience, and are even inspired by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
This pyramid created by Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag illustrates the core of ethical design and how each layer of the pyramid depends on the layer beneath it to ensure that the design is ethical. Below are the basic principles that fulfill the needs shown in the pyramid, and I should keep these in mind when working on my project:
USABILITY
The design should help the user achieve what they want, meet their needs, and be easy and enjoyable to use. Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group defines five core components of usability:
01
Learnability
How easy is it for first-time users?
02
Efficiency
How quickly can users perform tasks?
03
Memorability
What is the experience for returning users?
04
Errors
How many errors do users make and how severe are these errors?
05
Satisfaction
How pleasant is it to use the design?
PRIVACY
Privacy issues are always a popular topic in digital design, with applications listening to our conversations, monitoring our clicks, and reading our private messages. The best ethical design practice would be to develop designs that only collect personal information that is in the best interest of the users.
USER INVOLVEMENT
Human-Centered Design (HCD), a philosophy developed by Don Norman, supports “the active involvement of
users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements”. HCD calls for the target audience’s
involvement early and continuously throughout the process to understand the problems they have and how
my product can help solve those problems, which ultimately helps with usability.
The most effective way of studying user involvement is holding small groups of user testing which will
show me where the flaws lie, then I can revise the design and test again. And again. And again!
SUSTAINABILITY
Climate change is a global issue and it’s time that we as designers consider the impact of our work on
the world’s environment, resources, and climate. An excellent example of an ethical design trend
embracing sustainability is a circular design that uses a closed-loop design strategy where resources
are continuously repurposed.
Rather than creating products and services that have a linear lifecycle with a beginning, a middle, and
an end, the purpose is to design products that are continuously cycled in various forms, following reuse
and recycle loop resulting in less waste.
WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED?
Be more independent in my experiments.
Set myself new and achievable tasks regularly.
Be more confident in what I make and in my presentations.
Some design decisions should be reviewed and improved.
Study design works and designers that I like and learn from these studies.
TIMELINE FOR WEEK 9 - 16
All these small tasks will lead to my main goal: To create a
prototype of the simulator, incorporating tangible elements to let the user adjust the interface.
My goal for next week is to find a way to connect my p5.js experiments of macular degeneration, diabetic
retinopathy, and glaucoma with Arduino.
