Week 4 Lecture Exercise

Exercise 1

In this week lecture，we discussed some questions about the car components.

Firstly, we were asked to list some components are relevant to driving behavior,

Here are some components discussed in my group:

Air condition control

Radio control

Navigation control

Steering wheel

light indicators

light control

gas indicators

gear control

speed meter

rear-view mirror control

parking assistance

side mirror control

Accelerator

Brake

and then we discussed which components are actually impact our driving. someone think that we only need some necessary components, such as steering wheel, accelerator, brake and gear control, then we can drive the car and go wherever we want. However, others think we also need light indicators, some light controls, because imagine everyone driving without light indicators, accidents will occur frequently, that why we need light indicators combine with traffic regulations to make this world better.

After that, we discuss two questions, What if change core components? &　How would you test it?

The idea from our team was to replace the steering wheel with a controller, this controller is like a game controller, it can control the direction, speed and gears. So driver can control main function of the car by only use one controller.  The idea to test this concept was to set up a simulated car experience with this controller and dashboard, the controller link to the car simulator, and the front window is a screen which shows the simulated environment （street）. Then user can test the controller by driving the virtual car in to simulated environment, and they test the controller weather can work well.

Exercise 2

Alarm clock application for your smartphone

Can set, edit & delete multiple alarms

Can daisy-chain alarms - if one is allowed to ring out, another is activated automatically

Can set different tones for different alarms

Shake phone to snooze

In this part of exercise, we design a horizontal, a vertical and a diagonal prototype for this alarm clock application.

Horizontal Prototype

Horizontal Prototype focus on multiple features of concept, but not digging too deep, and the purpose is to show the full scope and capabilities of a product without necessarily having the interaction behind them. One design of Horizontal Prototype for this alarm clock would be a large prototype contain few screens, there are settings for alarm on each screen, the screen also shows the advanced options menu where daisy-chain settings and alarm tone settings could be found. there is a speaker and behind each screen, so if user set daisy-chain alarms, when one speaker finish the ring, another speaker will be activated automatically, also if user set different tones, the sound will be different. User also can shake one of screen to snooze.

 Vertical Prototype

Vertical Prototype is different with Horizontal Prototype, because it is designed to show the depth of an interaction rather than the breadth of possible interactions. we pick up one feature and show more details on prototype.  For example, a prototype for test “Shake phone to snooze”, this prototype would have sensor, and it can sense any shake from different directions. There is also a speaker, when user test this prototype, they can shake it in any positions, such as lie down or sit there. Then the speaker will make sound, and we will see how users to shake the prototype to make the sound stop.

Diagonal Prototype

This prototype is focus on several features and put them into real scenario and test the prototype is “working” or not. For example, a prototype for “Can set different tones for different alarms” and “Shake phone to snooze”, prototype would have sensor, and it can sense any shake from different directions. There is a speaker inside the prototype, user set tones for different alarms, user need to shake the prototype to stop the alarm when the alarm activated, then next alarm would activate and so on. This prototype provides both some scope and some functionality without representing the full capabilities of the intended design.