Week 5 Reading Assignment

These two chapters discuss how a design team can tear itself apart, how to deal with that and the importance of usability testing. When it comes to working with other designers in a team- I can tell from a brief experience in my life that it can be pretty challenging. First and foremost, there is the description of roles. When starting a new company and the entrepreneurs hire the design team, there is the decision of role play. If the entrepreneurs do not have a well thought out proposal, all of a sudden you have a group of designers all confused about what the tasks are and the lack of organization can lead to even bigger disagreements.

As for usability testing, I did learn quite a bit from this chapter. I mean I knew before hand that when designing something that involves users, because it helps to get feedback on your progress from fresh eyes. But as I read through the chapter, it became more apparent to me that it is extremely important to keep a schedule of test users (not an overwhelming amount) for many solid reasons.

Once the team has the user feedback, then you have to make the decision about what to do with that feedback. Do you change everything? Of coarse not. You have to carefully decide what to take and pull from the feedback to get your message to be the most effective through your design.

:)