{"id":130,"date":"2009-10-27T14:41:42","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T13:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2019-11-06T17:45:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T16:45:04","slug":"evaluating-existing-technologies-paper-prototypes-in-action-windows-7-and-the-disappointing-user-experience-of-my-dvd-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/27\/evaluating-existing-technologies-paper-prototypes-in-action-windows-7-and-the-disappointing-user-experience-of-my-dvd-player\/","title":{"rendered":"Evaluating existing technologies, paper prototypes in action, Windows 7 and the disappointing user experience of my DVD player!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week our HCI course featured an introduction to starting the design process by evaluating existing technologies, and the key advantages of this were made apparent when we started to build paper prototypes.<\/p>\n

In an abstract sense, the advantages of evaluating existing technology is that aids redesign – you can see what elements turned out successful, and which did not. What this means in practise is that you can steal the best bits of the competition, and fix the bits that users complain about (and hence find raw user experience data on the internet). This is particularly pertinent with this week\u2019s release of Windows 7.<\/p>\n

Aside from multitouch (surely useless for most home users), two of the main \u2018new’ features of Windows 7 are likely to be the result of evaluating existing technologies \u2013 mainly OSX.<\/p>\n

The task bar now has persistent icons, so they don\u2019t go away when you close the program. Programs that are closed have a slightly different visual effect applied to them on the task bar. OSX users will of course remember this from their own Dock.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Windows

Windows 7 Taskbar<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Or

Or is it this one?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Another borrowed feature is the new way show desktop works on Windows Seven. Hover over the bottom right hand corner of the screen, and it will look like this:<\/p>\n

\n
\"show

show desktop<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0
\nAs OSX users will know, this is the same as leopards\u2019 expos\u00e9 feature, which allows users to show all open windows, all application windows, or (as in windows 7) the desktop, by moving the mouse into the corner of the screen. When I used to work on Mac\u2019s, I thought this was a great feature, and its no surprise why Microsoft borrowed it.<\/p>\n

Both of these are examples of taking ideas that were either popular or productive, from a rival operating system, and integrating them into your own design.<\/p>\n

Also this week is the launch of the first Microsoft Store<\/a>. Again, they evaluated the existing user experience of an Apple store (sleek design, answers bar, the layout) and\u2026 nicked it. Great success!<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just Microsoft bashing by the way, its just relevant examples of evaluating existing ideas, and taking the good bits. Everyone knows that Apple nicked all its ideas from Xerox anyhow!<\/p>\n

So, in the spirit of \u2018evaluating existing ideas\u2019, we have been involved in the design of a new system for the University. User Experience will be important here, for the feature we are designing is likely to be used by students in high stress situations. We had half an hour to paper prototype some ideas on how to build the system (which it quickly become apparent was not enough time). Then we swapped, and compared our own designs to those produced by other groups. My personal favourite design (by Hassan <\/a> and James<\/a> ) had emulated key features from eBay, particularly how they categorised entries by the status (i.e. on eBay, \u2018items being bid for\u2019, \u2018items I\u2019m watching\u2019, \u2018items sold\u2019 appear on separate lists).<\/p>\n

This practical exercise brought home the advantages of paper prototyping, and evaluating other designs. Paper prototyping had proved to be:<\/p>\n