March+30...movin'+along

March 30... Wow - we are movin' along now! I loved all the ideas and the fun visuals created by everyone. Shari, the cartoons are a great way to engage folks and I think humor can really connect with people. Wasatree, Chatchada and Miriam, "way to go on the story-boarding" and map metaphor. Again, very appealing visually. But I have to say, the magnet metaphor and video that Manal & Suzan created really HIT the mark!! It will be interesting to see how we merge the best of the best ideas into our final deliverable.

As I think about what our final product may look like, I went to find a book we have called //About Face: The Essential of User Interface Design // by Alan Cooper (1995). Sometimes, I think the end user gets lost in our effort to create and deliver meaningful content in a meaningful way. That's not to say that our metaphors, stories and analogies don't work, quite the contrary. But, I think Cooper has a few good reminders for anyone working on something the user will need to manipulate and or navigate.

He explains that the practice of interface design is not formulaic, (duh) saying there is no such thing as good interface design, just like there is no such thing as good furniture arrangement. Both need to be judged within the context of their intended use (p.16). We have talked about context in class, but it bears repeating as we look at the best way to present the idea of aligning objectives in the context of a new TA, who will probably be accessing our work from a Web site.

Cooper then goes on to talk about how metaphors can really mess things up for the user because they are based on helping users //**intuit** // how something works. Hmmm. He supports his position by saying interpreting a metaphor is based on the idiosyncratic human mind, which may not have the necessary knowledge, language, or inferential power to make the connections the metaphor provides. He says in order for metaphors to work, they rely on those associations being perceived in the same way by both the designer and the user. OK --I buy that. So, note to self, we need to make sure the metaphor we use for our project is simple and readily understood. But then he also adds, "never bend your interface to fit a metaphor" (p. 62). He cautions that once the user depends on the metaphor for recognition, he or she will expect consistency. In other words, the metaphor may have to be stretched and twisted a bit in order to provide this expected consistency, but then it no longer resembles its referent.

He also says, "don't make the user look stupid".

Anyway, enough thinking about the interface; I may have the cart before the horse. We need to saddle up and keep movin towards finalizing the content, with our end user and the context in the forefront.