User Experience for a Better World

Guidance on writing my term paper on Handheld Devices.

I'm writing a 6 page paper on "Design & Usability for Handheld devices: An Interaction Designers Introductory Guide."

My instructor has been of little or no help during this class. She
actually has made this class more confusing. But that's irrelevant
right now...

Does anyone have any guidance or advice to give me? Where should I start? Where should I be looking?

Here are the topics the paper MUST cover:
- Provide a basic anatomy or architecture of handheld devices; components and elements of the
handheld experience to be successful.

- Present a brief History of the evolution of handheld devices.

- Define the "mobile and handheld" user persona. Who are these user
groups? What are their backgrounds, objectives, needs and usage
patterns? Who are we designing for?

- Discuss the challenges of designing for small screen interactions. Why they are important for
designers to understand as they enter this space. How are they
different from designing for the "Big Screen"?

- What can you provide a designer who is starting in this field with to use on day one
of a "mobile and handheld design project" for a client?

There you have it.

Should I be doing interviews or surveys?

Thanks for any help you can throw my way.

Warmest Regards,
~Roy

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roy Torres on March 17, 2010 at 2:35pm

http://library.depaul.edu/Find/resourceList.aspx?s=89

Permalink Reply by Stan Brown on March 17, 2010 at 10:41am

The nokia forum site is really good.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Roy Torres on March 17, 2010 at 11:08am

Cool.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Roy Torres on March 19, 2010 at 12:23pm

No Way Dude!
You didn't finish?

I did just over 4 pages and uploaded that with 10 minutes to spare.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Stan Brown on March 19, 2010 at 12:27pm

I just emailed my paper to her about 5 minutes ago. I cranked out 7 but it was hard.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Danielle Smith on March 16, 2010 at 6:11pm

Here is a citation and a link to a paper that may help you. The focus is on prototyping, but it may shed some light on some of the challenges designers face in re-designing websites/etc for small screen devices.

James Lin and James Landay. Employing patterns and layers for early-stage design and prototyping of cross-device user interfaces. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI 2008). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1357054.1357260

And remember, don't forget about your user! :) Best of luck on your paper! (I'm in the process of writing a conceptual paper on Smart House control interfaces using Smart Phones, so I'm kind of in the same boat!)

--Danielle

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Roy Torres on March 17, 2010 at 10:33am

Right On!
Thank You!!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Regis L. Magyar, Ph.D. on April 13, 2010 at 5:21pm

There's lots you can do. First examine the physical usabiity problems associated with any small formfactor mobile device like it's screen size, limited keypad, and other physical parameters (lights, signals, icons, acoutics) and note how these formfactor aspects effect the usablity of tasks and where these tasks can be done. Speaking of tasks, which ones are those needed by people on the go? How often are they used, and for what purposes? Conduct surveys and collect user and product requirements from people via interviews that address these three areas of study: Behavior (What we do...), Cognition (What we think or requires thnking), and Emotion (What we Feel about it..). Analyze your data using what I call the "SOC it to me" technique of Sorting (S) things into categories, Counting the number in each category (C) and thern Ordering (O) the iitems from highest tol lowest frequency on a nice bar graph. To make it really cool write it up using APA Report formatting (Title, Author, Abstract, Introduction, Method (Users & Procedure), Results, Conclusions) That ought to knock her socks off! Good luck!