A Thought About The Role of Designer In Digital Industry

After some practice, the whole product design pattern is part of what defines a designer in my mind. I learnt the pattern from class works and Google Ventures. That is, finding the problems, ideating solutions, deciding, producing and etc. This recalls me something I heard before. Somehow I know a person works for MS for years. Once when we talks about internship in MS, he mentioned something interesting. He said there were only positions for develops in the internship program of MS until 2 or 3 years ago. Then, things changed. In that year's internship, one guy came up an idea during a presentation. He felt that the current way to present was somehow hard to control, so that he scripted a little shell program to help control. I am not aware of the detail but I image it to be a feature like how you can control your slides during presentation. This small program is recognized by the company. It even became a product for customer later. After that, my friend said, MS internship adds one more type of position: Program Manager. I am not sure how much accurate the story was when my friend told me that, and how much accurate it is when I restate it here. Yet, I deem that the main idea is true. After a quick search online it confirms me that part of the role of PM is help design the product. So think about it. On of the largest corporations in the industry adds a kind of position in their internship program, because a small design works! What a success for the designers! Bibliography: The Product Design Sprint (Google Ventures) https://library.gv.com/the-product-design-sprint-diverge-day-2-c7a5df8e7cd0#.8cszo95ps What is it like to be a program manager intern at Microsoft? https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-a-Program-Manager-intern-at-Microsoft

Improve the Question, or the Instruction?

    - We usually encounter numbers of forms to fill in in their lives, whether online or as a hard copy. It is common that we always meet some problems when we fill in certain fields. That may sometimes due to our lack of understanding, but often bad explanation/instruction may be the cause, too. Let's see how the problems would be and how we may solve them from some examples.

Fill in the Flight "Number"

    - A case has been discussed about during the lecture a few weeks ago. That is filling the flight number filed on United Airline's website. Later, a member in our project group met a similar question, while filling in the teammates feedback session.

Are we really distributing some $?

    The instruction part, as well as the question description ask us to "distribute 1000$". The dollar sign makes a problem here. While the group member tried to filled in a number with the dollar sign, she received an error prompt. She soon figured out that she should only put in the numbers. Nothing special happened anymore.

    It just takes her few seconds to figure out and correct the answers. But like the flight number case, can the experience be improved? My suggestion would be change the "1000$" to 1000 points, which would be pretty straight forward.

What is original entry?

    Another example happened while I tried to fill in a form. As a really official PDF form to fill in, you will see detailed description of a certain filed when you move your mouse over the filed. This is generally a good feature, yet, some descriptions appear to be useless. The description in the following image does not answer my specific question. What does the phrase "original entry" means? The first entry ever in my life, or the first one for my current status in Canada? It may confuse people with several visa experience like me.

    But there are good design in the form, too. I definitely did not want to include the info I filled in, when I decided to take this as an example. Here comes the "Clear Form" button! It quickly erases everything for me, ease me from the pain of deleting everything by myself.

One button, all clear!

    - As I experience more and more form/field filling and instruction design pairs, I hope it improves my understanding about them. So, I will keep sharing what I have learnt and hope we will improve all together.

Reference:
    https://teammatesv4.appspot.com
    http://www.cic.gc.ca
    CSC318 Lecture Slides

How Bad UI Kills?

- During this week's lecture, prof Pandeliev showed an example of a tragedy caused by a bad UI design. That is the Airbus A320 case in 1992. Early today I found out that the aircraft case is not the only case that UI kills.

(The entire story, all the info and pictures I use in this blog post are all credited to the following blog: https://medium.com/tragic-design/how-bad-ux-killed-jenny-ef915419879e#.wnsiab6xh)

- In brief, the story talks about a little girl who suffered from severe cancer. One day three experienced nurses were confused by the software they were using. Then they made a serious mistake. They missed to give the little girl a crucial treatment she needed, so we lost her before the next morning.

Well, I guess some of you have the exactly same reaction now as I had back then. How on earth could they miss that treatment, if that is so critical? But soon after I saw some pictures I sort of found the answer.

(A screenshot of the software used by the nurses)

(Some other similar systems; also similar in complexity too)

- This is basically another tragedy caused by same kind of reason, with respect to the A320 case.

We all totally understand that, as technology has been developed rapidly, more and more info is to be displayed in use. But I also believe that there is always a way to avoid tragedy caused by this reason, instead of decreasing technology involved in our lives. At least, like the A320 case, there will always be a better UI design. Maybe in the UI it is better to hide non-urgent info, leave what is really important only. And also it could remind the professionals some possible critical movements.

- Once again, hope technology will always lead us to a better future, instead of a future with tragedy.

Getting Started: the Design on Our Hands

    - We see designs everywhere in our daily life, such as, on our own hands. Today, almost everyone uses a smartphone. So let's talk about Apple, one of the most competitive smartphone brands in the world.

The iPhone Family (the newest iPhone 7/7 Plus are not included)

iPhone 7/7 Plus: Released Sept 2016

    As an user of iPhone 4S, 6 and 7, I want to point out 2 changes in iPhone's model design throughout these years. One thing is good, and the other one is not really.

    - The good one is the position of the On/Off (or Sleep/Wake) button. 5S used to be the latest model that has the button on the top side instead of right side. That had been the design since the 1st generation of iPhone, but not the case anymore since iPhone 6. (Apple released iPhone SE in 2016 which is a replacement of 5S, so the button is of course on the top. It also has the exactly same dimensions with 5S)

iPhone 5S

iPhone SE: Released March, 2016

    By my real experience, 4S is small enough in a single hand, such that I can press the button easily by my index finger. I don't have my 4S on hand, so sorry I cannot provide a real life picture for reference, but I do can provide pictures for using an iPhone 6.

iPhone 4S

My iPhone 6 with thumb pressing the button (ignore how broken it is)

Hard to reach top with index finger

    If the button is still on the top side for a model as large as 6 (or larger, like all the plus models), it could be a hard time for the user to press it. Since the button is moved to the right side, the problem has been perfectly solved.

    - An "bad" design (at least to me), is that 3.5mm headphone jack disappears iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. That may due to the need of improving inner device structure design (i.e., it saves more space for other units such as the battery). Yet, I just cannot get used to the fact that I cannot charge my phone and listen to music via headphone at the same time. 

Would iPhone 6 be the last iPhone with 3.5mm?

iPhone 7: No more charging and listening together!

    - Eventually, what are cheered to be a good design may be seen normal soon, and what people complain about may later be got used to. Hope technology will change our lives in a good way, instead of change ourselves.