THE END

As people always say: “All good things must come to an end”.

Well, I don’t know if this fits for my blog, that is something you need to decide for yourself.

All I can say is that I’ve tried to show you some interesting stuff I’ve came upon during the last semester of the Master “Business Communication and Digital Media”. I hope you found it at least a little interesting and fun to read.

In any case, I’m a bit relieved that it’s over.

Writing blogs isn’t that boring or stupid, but when you are obliged to write a post (almost) every week, it can feel a bit compulsory and frustrating.  

The only thing that remains me to say:

Thank you and goodbye!

Tired of waiting at a bus stop?

Understandable
Waiting at a bus stop is a boring and useless time period for people. Travelers often try to find something to do during this time period, but a bus stop does not offer them any potential activities. A bus stop can be defined as a simple and basic area. In order to pass time many people read a book, listen to music, call a friend or play a game with their mobile phone (See how all of these are individual activities).

These annoying moments have come to an end!
Group 2 from the User Interface Design proudly presents:

"The Buzzle"

“The Buzzle” can be described as an interactive bus stop “abri”, which people can use to play touchscreen puzzle games. Furthermore, cities are competing against each other, so the main goal of people at one bus stop is to beat the people who are playing at a bus stop in another city. Statistics of this “battle” are shown on a special Facebook page.

NOT CLEAR YET?

WHY WILL IT WORK?

The main reason why this concept will work is the simplicity and accessibility of the design. It can be assumed that everybody at a bus stop knows what a puzzle is. Furthermore, the interface works with a big touchscreen, making the experience of the puzzle a new, realistic and intuitive one. 

How can you gather realistic emotions?

To learn more about the process of investigating real emotions, Martijn Goudbeek has been interviewed.

Martijn Goudbeek  is a staff member of the Department of Communication and Information Sciences at Tilburg University. He is specialized in the production and perception of emotion, nonverbal communication (voice and gesture), speech perception, and the production of referring expressions and therefore, the appropriate person to ask the question: "How can you gather realistic emotions?"

What type of music to use when in a financial crisis?

Charity commercials
Everybody knows them and I bet you all remember at least one commercial in particular.
But what makes these commercials so memorable and more important, which types of commercials generate the best donate intention?

This last question will be (partially) answered in this post.
With the team of the course 'Onderzoekspracticum BDM' a studie was conducted in order to gather more insight in the relationship between people's donate intention and the type of backgroundmusic a charity commercial uses. In this studie we showed two groups of people 30 commercials. One group experienced the commercials with a combination of happy and none backgroundmusic and the other group experienced the commercials with a combination of sad and none backgroundmusic (the commercials that were shown without backgroundmusis functioned as a controlling variable). After each commercial people were given a fictional €10,- and were asked to indicate how much of this amount they wanted to donate to the charity.

So, what type of backgroundmusic do you need when you are finding yourself in a financial crisis?

It doesn't really matter!
The studie showed no significant difference between the amount of money people spended in the happy condition and the amount of money they spended in the sad condition.

Disappointed?

Don't be! After all, this studie provides enough posibillities for further research about this subject.
For example, try to allign the shown images in such manner, that they are not influencing people's emotion. In other words, try to exclude the infcluence of the images on the emotion and behaviour of your subjects.
Furthermore, think of a way to let your subjects think they are actually donating their own money, or at least real money instead of fictional money.

Who knowes, you might find a different answer to the title!

User research... The Movie!

As promised, the movieclip of our user research phase!
Unfortunately, the sound doesn't work via Youtube, but I still want to show it to you:

Importance of user research

Before I'm going to show you some sketches of our User Interface Design project, I want to underline the importance of a good user research phase for an interface/design.

When people start designing an interface without exactly knowing who their target audience is and what this target audience needs and want and moreover what their target audience definitely NOT needs and NOT wants, the results will (99 out of a 100 times) be poor. In one of my earlier blog posts I have showed you multiple of these poor designs, which all perfectly illustrate my point.

The user research phase of our UID project existed out of several interviews and contextual inquiry in which we observed people while they were waiting on the bus. The results of this user research confirmed our earlier ideas about 'waiting on the bus', and are essential for the further phases of our UID project.

We even made a short movieclip of this, which I will try to post in a couple of days!

So remember, when you are designing something (practically everything) always keep an eye on the users of your design before you end up the same way as the designs I've showed you before!

Back to the future!

Today I'm taking you on a journey into the future, as you all might know technology becomes more and more important in our everyday life. For example, what is your main activity while you are waiting on the bus or train? I bet you will be playing with your mobile phone or listening to music on your mp3 in such a scenario.

So, we become more and more depended on modern technologies, is this a good or a bad thing? I say it is good, new upcoming technology’s will make our life and communication better, easier and more efficient.

You don’t agree? See for yourself!

In my example I mentioned the bus- or train stop not without a reason, a recent research from my User Interface Design group has confirmed the idea that people are often bored while they are waiting on the bus or train. With the help of the aforementioned modern and new technologies we will change the boring time you encounter while waiting at a bus- or train stop into a whole new interactive experience.

Curious?

Wait for my next blog and I will maybe, just maybe show you some sketches or ideas!