Final thoughts

(yay)
Well, when I took the module, I never thought that I'll have to do so much research. Research is everywhere in NUS, but for this module we almost do research every week. It's extremely important because the focus is on USER experience, not designers' experience. Yep, the focus is on users themselves. If we dont have research, we won't be able to guess what users have in mind correctly and may introduce something the users don't need and don't want. Our product is for users to use, what's the point of it if users don't want and dont need it?

However, research is very difficult to conduct =( it's because it's very subjective. We've got to do a lot, but I think it's still not sufficient enough. (The main problem is our high fidelity prototype... As long as we haven't been able to introduce a 'real' high fidelity one that works just like the real product, there's no way we can receive the 'real' reactions from users...)

Another important thing that I've learnt in this module is that: Dont try to include everything, and dont try to satisfy everyone, because it's impossible! everyone has different taste. It has always seemed to be really scary when we have to exclude other user groups. We may think that the group we are targeting is not sufficient. Take the example from Mr Reddy about Chilly crab: some may afraid that if their chili crab is spicy, then not many people will be able to take it, and they make it milder, so that everyone can eat. after all, no one wants that. Those that cannot eat spicy food just simply turn to food that is not spicy at all. Take a look at some advertisements that says "Only for the strong " (I cannot remember exactly). Those advertisements are not afraid to narrow down their target users, and this make their target users feel more exclusive, more privileged.

User experience is not about the most usable product or the most beautiful product. It's about a desirable product that creates good feeling, pleasant experience for users, targeted users. Users will decide whether they want the product to be more about functions and usability or more about looks and fashion and style.