Usage of Design principles

Throughout our designing of the CityWindow, we followed various rules like Norman’s principles, Gestalt Laws, Golden Rules, etc. We tried to put feedback on every user interaction. The city window can have feedback in two ways; firstly any feedback in the CityWindow big screen, or secondly in the mobile phone. We made sure the user knows where the feedback is. Suppose whenever we sent some feedback to the mobile phone, it will make a beep so the user knows something happened with the mobile phone.

We also used natural mapping for features like zoom in, zoom out. When you take your mobile phone closer to the map, it will give you a zoom in view on the center of the map. And when you take it further away from the map, it will zoom out. This resembles with our everyday use of a real map. When we use a real map, and want to have a closer look, we move our head towards it and when we want to have a look on a greater portion of the map, we move our head backwards.

We also help users to minimize their memory load. We have an option to send displayed information to the mobile phone on user’s request. Thus the user can take the information with him. Also we provide a handy ticket code with the information. So the user can buy a ticket for his destination by just sending that handy ticket code to the handy ticket system. This way the users don’t need to remember all the details to buy the ticket. This will be particularly helpful when there are two or more short trips make the whole route.

Biggest Challenge

We had our biggest challenge when we tried to put ourselves in the user’s shoe. What seems very obvious to us did not seem so with real users. Although we knew this from the beginning, we realized this when we had our first phase of interviews with the users. This was mainly a problem with the visibility and feedback of the system. We found that our users don’t realize what the system has to offer to him and where to find the results.

After the first phase of interviews, we became more cautious. We followed design principles like 9 Golden Rules with more emphasis. We always asked ourselves the question if a feature is really visible. We made sure feedback clearly points out where the result is provided. When all four of our team members agreed upon a solution, we went to talk with real users. After getting the feedback from them, we modified the system accordingly. Thus we resolved our greatest challenge of putting ourselves in the user’s shoe by talking with the users, taking more interviews and sticking more with various design principles.