Week 10: Physical Design

Design is a process about making choices and decisions.
physical design is a step in the standard design cycle which follows after the circuit design. At this step, circuit representations of the components (devices and interconnects) of the design are converted into geometric representations of shapes which, when manufactured in the corresponding layers of materials, will ensure the required functioning of the components. This geometric representation is called integrated circuit layout. This step is usually split into several sub-steps, which include both design and verification and validation of the layout.

Using Scenarios in Design
4 roles for scenarios:
A basis for overall design.
For technical implementation.
As a means of cooperation within design teams.
As a means of cooperation across professional boundaries

Week 10: Physical Design

Design is a process about making choices and decisions.

Designing for different culture using prototype in Design.

Generating Storyboards from Scenarios

Generating card-based prototype from use cases

-use case for the visa requirement

-paper prototype study

-animatic

-Denim visual language

-Denim software

-Rapid prototype SketchFlow (microsoft)

Week 10: Physical Design

Hi, this week we learned about physical design, getting concrete.

Design, is about making choices and decision. To balance it, we need :

Environmental, user, data, usability requirement 
and
Functional requirement. 

- Physical interface of interactive product should not conflict with the user's cognitive processes involved in achieving the task.

Guidelines to help with international design : 
- Be careful about using images that depict hand gestures of people.
- Use generic icon ( common icon )
- Choose colour that are not associated with national flags or political movements
- make sure the product supports different calenders, date formats and time formats
- Make sure the product support different number formats, currencies, weights and measurement systems.
- The product supports international paper size, envelope size and address format
- Not to integrating text in graphics as they cannot be translated easily
- Allow for text expansion when translated from English

Using scenarios in design 
- scenarios can be sued to explicate existing work situation but use more for expressing proposed or imagines situations to help in conceptual design


- 4 roles for scenarios :
> basis for the overall design
> technical implementation
> means of cooperation within design teams
> means of cooperation across professional boundaries eg. in a multidisciplinary team

- Used for the notion of plus and minus scenarios
> capture the most positive and the most negative consequences of a particular proposed design solution
> helping designers to gain a more comprehensive view of the proposal

Generating storyboards from scenarios
- storyboard > a sequence of actions/ events that the user and system go through to achieve a task
- scenario > one story about how the product may be used to achieve a task

Thank you.

Week 10: Physical Design

Design is a process about making choices and decisions. We need to made decision in using suitable design element and apply design principal that we know in the design. Design is about balance. In visual, it about the balance of the element of design. In the term of interactive, it about the balance between Environmental, User, Data, Usability requirement and Functional requirement.

There are some guidelines that we need to pay attention when designing for a different culture. There are:

-Be careful when using images that represented by people or hand gesture.

-Use general or common icon

- use color that are not related to any political movements or national flag color.

-make sure the product supports different date and time format, calendar, currency, and other measurement system.

-Do not used integrating text image since they cannot be translated easily.

-Allow the expansion and contraction when translate from /to English.

Scenarios also used in Design to make it more functional. Scenarios act as a basic for overall design. It is used for technical implementation. It also plays an important role in cooperation within design teams and cooperation that cross professional boundaries.

Scenarios can also be used as the basic to generating the prototype like storyboard. We can go through the organizer scenarios by focus solely on the screen or solely in the environment. Story board and other card based prototype like index card can be generated base on the use case .

Physical design can be prototyping with low fidelity prototype like paper or card base prototype. With the help of technology nowadays, there are software in the market with the tool support that help to prototype the physical design,

Example of Some Graphical User interface(GUi) prototyping tools are:
- Adobe FireWorks CS4

-Adobe Flash Catalyst (former Thermo)

- Antetype(work on Mac Os only)

- App Sketcher

- Axure

- Blueprint (work on ipad)

-ForeUI

Source of information:

thefreedictionary.com

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiPrototypingTools

lecture note

Week 10 Physical Design: Getting Concrete

Design is about making choices and decisions.
It is where we balance out between Environmental, User, Data, Usability requirement and Functional requirement.

Guideline for us when designing for a different culture like for international design:

• Be careful about using images that depict hand gestures or people.
• Use generic icon.
• Choose colour that are not associated with national flags or political movements.
• Ensure that the product supports different calenders, date formats and time formats.
• Ensure that the product supports different formats, currencies, weights and measurement system.
• Ensure that the product supports international paper sizes, envelope sizes and address format.
• Avoid integrating text in graphics as they cannot be translated easily.
• Allow for text expansion when translated from English.

Using Scenarios in Design
4 roles for scenarios:

1. A basis for overall design.
2. For technical implementation.
3. As a means of cooperation within design teams.
4. As a means of cooperation across professional boundaries.

Generating prototypes in design

Generating storyboards from scenarios:

• Steps in the travel organizer scenario
  
  • Focus solely on the screen
  • Focus solely in the environment
• Generating storyboards from use cases
• Generating card-based prototype from use cases

Using prototypes in design

Prototyping physical design:

• Expand the cards to generate a more detailed software or paper-based pro type.
• Tool support:To support sketching tools, environments to support icon and menu design

Generate Card-based Prototype from Use Cases

• Paper prototype is a fast and easy way to change and re-design your interface.
• Four important people are involved in Paper Prototyping which are:
  
  1. user
  2. person who acts as a computer
  3. someone who becomes the facilitator
  4. observer

Other ways of prototyping: animatics and rapid sketch prototyping which uses a program to make it interactive.

Week 9-Design and Prototyping

Design and Prototyping

Prototype, this word I always hear from some sci-fi manga or movie. In that time, prototype in my view is a testing product to finalize and improve the end product. For example, in the comic or movie, before the factory come out the end product of their jet fighter or robot, there always use a test machine call prototype machine to obtain all information there need to improve the final machine.

After the class about prototyping this week, I realize there are more about prototype. According to Wikipedia.org, A prototype is an early model or sample that creates to test the concept or the process to create the final product. Prototype is created to allow the stakeholder to interact with the envision product, gain experience under the realistic setting and exploded imagined uses. In another word, Prototype is a limited representation of design that allow user to interact and experience it usability.

Prototyping is very useful in the process of design. It is an aid when discussing ideas with the stakeholders. Beside than that, it also smoothen the communication between the team members and make the test idea/concept effective.

Prototyping can be divided to 2 categories which are low fidelity prototyping and high fidelity prototyping.

Low fidelity prototyping is a way of prototyping that tend to be simple, cheap and quick to produce. It is simple and can be corrected easily so it very useful in the discussion or communication with the stakeholder and users. It supports the exploration of alternative designs and ideas. Since it is mostly used for communication and testing, it not intended to be kept and integrated to the final product. Low fidelity prototype mostly used for explode purpose. Low fidelity prototype do not look alike to the final product. This kind of prototype can be made by paper, cardboard rather than electronic product. Examples of low fidelity prototyping are: story board, sketches, index card and wizard of Oz (user sits in front of the computer and interacts with the computer software as through interacting the final product. The computer is connected to another machine that controlled by the operator that stimulated user‘s response.)

High fidelity prototyping

High fidelity is the opposite of the low fidelity prototyping. It use material that will used in final product and produce a test product that look alike to the final product. This kind of prototype not suitable for the purpose of explode and experience since it take a long time to build. Beside than that, the designer are reluctant to change the prototype since they put a lot of afford on it and the prototype can be spoiled by some unsolved bug or error. Even though there are some issues and disadvantages, it is useful to selling the ideas and testing of technical issues.

Prototyping involved of compromising. 2 common compromising methods in prototyping are horizontal and vertical prototyping. Prototype product need to transform to a conceptual product where people can easily know how to do with the product and understand how to interact with it. Key guiding principles of conceptual design are be open minded but not forget the users and the concept, always communicate with the stakeholder, used low fidelity prototype to gain the rapid feedback and iterate in any situation.

Source of information:

www.wikipedia.org

lecture note

Week 9-Design and Prototyping by Eyok

High Fidelity & Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools

Prototype:
an early sample or model for a product before it is finalise and mass produce.It is also use for testing by replicate a lot or learned from errors when testing.


what can considered a prototype:-
- paper based outline of a screen/sets of screen.
- Electronic 'picture'
- 3 dimensional paper/cardboard mockup
- stack of hyperlinked screen shots


Benefits of having prototype models :
- hand on testing in realistic setting as many as possible as long as prototype models are a lot.
- explore imagine uses *some of the setting sometimes is impossible to create.*
- interact with envisioned product


Low Fidelity Prototyping Tools :
- different design then the final product.
- it is simple,cheap and quick to produce
- using material like paper and cardboard rather than create in computer software and show to screen
- important during conceptual design are never intended to kept and integrated into final product.They are for exploration
only.

High Fidelity Prototyping Tools :

- using good material that would expected like final product including appearance and also material.
- prototype tools -Flash ,Visual Basic, smalltalk
- issue for creating high fidelity prototyping =

1) take a lot of time to built
2)reviewers and tester tend to comment on superficial aspects rather than
content
3)developer reluctant to change something that they crafted so long
4)a software prototype can set expectation high.
5) 1 error can destroy the whole model.