Module thoughts
After going through this module, I have gained a new perspective in the development process of products. The product development process’s main focus is not the product itself but the users that are going to use the product. However, most designers neglected this fact. By truly understanding the users, we can make out product more successful. I have understood the importance and difficulty of user research after all the projects and assignments in this course.
This course also let us understands that a product is beyond its physical and tangible form. The product experience starts before the point of purchase and it does not end when users have finished with the product. It leaves a certain image to its user, affecting their mood and feeling.
Frameworks such as Patrick Jordon’s four pleasures and Norman’s three level of design taught in this module has also been useful in analyzing users’ needs and emotions relating to these needs. Various techniques and methods in capturing user problems and requirements would be valuable for developing a product in the future too.
However, I find that the materials taught mainly focuses on the development of websites and computer systems. It is hard to apply some of it on development of a physical product like what we have done in the final project. But it does not mean that the materials taught are inappropriate as this module is a new media course. Thus, the focus is right but it would be good too add some insights on how these materials can be extended to the physical product.
Final Project - Kneon
The final project has been good applications of some of the techniques we have learn in this course. Though we are the only group that is creating a physical product, our final project is an interesting one. From conceptualizing of the alcoholic beverage to doing up the actual bottle drink, the development process is a difficult but a pleasurable one. It is also a new experience to me. And since this is a new media module, we also came up with a promotional website for the drink.This website supposes to build up the image for our drink, Kneon and also serves as an information page for it. Although our project is about alcohol, we don't really go around tasting other alcohol for our market research. We ask our friends who are frequent drinkers and also pub waiters and waitress for their opinions about Kneon. However, the development process was not always smooth. There were good comments about Kneon as well as bad ones. Moreover, it is difficult to get the responses of users from only the exterior looks of the bottle and they cannot try the inner contents due to our lack of ability to create the drink. Thus, user testing could not be done on the drink itself.
Alhough rounds of user testing and evaluation have been done on the website, we cannot gurantee Kneon drink would be a success in the alcoholic market. All the evaluations are based on selected users and not the general public. Also, it takes time and money to maket and let users know Kneon. The product would only be considered a success when it achieve the objectives that we have set earlier. Thus, we cannot measure the effectiveness of our research and test results without testing Kneon in the real market.
Lessons learned
Creating an effective user experience is never easy. It involves various steps take we have done in this course. The focus is on the users themselves and thus having a well-defined primary target user is important. It sets the first step in structuring how your product is going to be. However, gathering information about the users is often faced with many problems. Even with existing tools and techniques in probing user behaviour, it is not possible to gather all the information about the user. There are always things that the user do not want to disclose or failure to capture some elements due to environmental factors. Users are always not themselves when you are "researching" on them.
Moreover, having a sufficient market research and a detail understanding of the users does not guarantee the success of the product. It only minimise the risk of the product becoming a failure in the market. Therefore, it is valuable to gain a good understanding of your target users and what they want from the product before releasing it. No company wants their product to be a failure after spending so much money and effort on it.
Another point that I have noted is that it is not possible to create a product that pleases everyone. When product designers want to capture a greater audience range, they try to add more functionality into their product. Unfortunately, this would be more confusing to the users and dilute the product objective. In this module, we learnt to create products that target the primary users we have defined and not everyone.
Lastly, good experiences with a product or brand do not last forever. Making users remembering the product is the first step to its success but it must grow with the users in order to ensure a lasting place in the their hearts.
")
