aram’s blog

We, Laura, Sanjay and me, gathered together after class to talk more about project subject.

Laura came up with ‘cleaning’ subject:

• Why someone does cleaning a lot while the other doesn’t (at all?)
• What if we observe the house of the person who does cleaning for a living, whether it’d be (extremely) clean or not?

Group

Sanjay
Aram

We came up with a few ideas but could not narrow down on one:

Movies:
- movie as a product in theatres
- services for promotion
- movies on small screens such as psp,ipod, mobile,etc

Cleaning :
- sanitation
-recycling
-energy

Web Surfing
-different ways?
-different places

Bike Accident Device
-device to notify vehicles that a bike is coming and to becareful

Fashion
- customizing fashion , accessories, trends etc

On Sunday, I was being anxious for not getting anyone to observe and document an activity in the home. Originally, I was going to ask someone outside of my family boundary to do this assignment, luckily, my wife (right next to me at home) started doing something very interesting enough to catch my attention.

She was online, looking a number of grocery lists from Korean online shop - Hmart.com. Without asking her why, I began observing taking some pictures behind her(shutter sound disabled before action). No sooner had I got only couple shots from her, she noticed me and laughed, I had to ‘confess’ what I was doing and asked her ‘why’. The reason was that I ended up removing my car only couple weeks ago this made us uncomfortable to shop grocery in same volume that we used to. My house is 2.6 miles away from the nearest Korean grocery market, so we used our car to carry heavy loads. Since we removed the car, we had to shop grocery in very small volume from the other Korean market on 32nd st. NY. Then she found their website and decided to order mainly dry foods and some heavy items like rice and beverage.

While observing her ordering, I found following facts:

1. She began shopping without her own list. In the past when we shopped local, she always brought the list not to forget and not to ‘impulse buying’.
2. It took more time to search and ‘confirm’ online coupon to get $10 off than actual shopping time.
3. After she acquired coupon, she got confused how to properly ‘use’ it.
4. She accidentally reset the whole cart before checking out twice. This also impact the total running time to shop.
5. She turned on the radio while shopping. She seemed more relaxed than she was rushed in local store.
6. She had to concern total weight of the package. If it is over certain amount of weight, buyers should pay more. This made her going back to cart and remove some items such as canned foods.
7. She ended up losing patience getting organize the shopping list. After the ‘maximum weight’ issue came up, she just put some light weight snacks and two cup noodles in the cart.(randomly)

After placing order, she, again, began worrying about ‘next’ - receiving. The carrier that Hmart offers is UPS and there are chances that both of us are away home and they miss us, leaving the door tag. We have some issues with UPS before, that is no door tag was left and they stop attempting delivering so that we’re supposed to go distribute center and pick the package by ourselves. We fear that. Bottom line, online grocery shopping wasn’t a good idea.

- Now it’s Wednesday which is delivery day(UPS sent her ‘estimated shipping date’ as of today) -

Around 8pm, UPS delivered the package. It was too heavy for my wife to take onto the stairs, so I did it. She asked me a box cutter, then she started unpacking it.

onlineshop2.mov

1. She opened the box, looked at the packing list, and put it aside. While organizing all foods, she never looked it again to compare.
2. She grabbed bundled pack of rice punch cans first, opened the closet under the drawer and left the box opened in front of the closet.
3. She started moving other foods such as 5pks bundled ramen, cup ramens, tuna cans out of the box placing them around her.
4. She sorted out some Japanese snacks and put them over the box(in the picture, all snacks are placed ‘far from’ her position)
5. She started storing all other foods but rice punch cans. Interestingly, the rice punch box is in her way obviously, she doesn’t seem to be aware of it or feels subtle about it.
6. After organizing all ramens, she started storing rice punch cans.
7. She destroyed bubble cushions (used for protecting goods inside the box) and threw them away in garbage can.
8. She grabbed the heavies item - rice(15 lbs) and put it in the different closet.(under the sink)
9. She put the empty box of rice punch in the shipped box and put them in the stairway top(to throw them away later).

Conclusion: Time spent for online shopping - 48 mins   vs.   Time spent for receiving and organizing - 8 mins

My wife spent almost an hour to buy 18 items online and it took merely 10 minutes to ‘deal’ with them. Although she was going for getting $10 off coupon which is only one time benefit when you join the membership for the first time, I wondered if the total time spent was worthwhile. Beside, all food she ordered were mostly canned or instant food for long time use, we still need to shop rather fresh foods locally. Therefore, I’d like to say shopping grocery online couldn’t totally replace  shopping local with our own car.

In the process of unpacking, organizing, and storing in space(closet), she didn’t seem to take a moment to consider most optimized way of doing them, showing that she randomly grab whichever comes first in her hand.

• What is the purpose of this product?

• Who are its users?

• What aspects of the product are objects, communications, environments, services, or systems?

1. Objects:
2. Communications:
3. Environments:
4. Services/Systems:

• What are the product’s features and functions, and what user needs do they address?

• How were physical, cognitive social, cultural, and emotional human factors considered in the design? How are these successful or not?

• How could the product be more user-centered?

iPod is a portable mp3 music player designed and branded by Apple. The product line of iPod varies from video-playing, web-browsing enabled one from screenless one which only plays random sequence of musics. As with many other digital music players, iPods also can be used as external hard drives. When synchronized with iTunes, a digital media player/platform, users can organize, play, and purchase music online.

iPods have become unique, generic-looking device standing alone, gaining momentum from young, media-driven and casual consumers. This user base define their own ‘narrative’ of daily life through iPods’ capacity to store, organize and play digital media files. Passers-by wearing iPods’ ear-phone reminds the clever advertisement where white ear-buds contrasts human silhuettes.

Most significant features of iPod is a ‘click-wheel’ navigation interface. Its buttons perform basic functions such as play, next track, etc. Other operations such as scrolling through menu items and controlling the volume are performed by using the click wheel in a rotational manner. Ever since Apple introduced very first generation iPod on 2001, Apple kept this click-wheel physical interface, updating few improvements such as moving five control buttons beneath the wheel until they announced iPod Touch on 2007. Eliminating ‘outer’ buttons reflects Apple’s ‘less is more’ design philosophy, enabling users experience a luxury feeling of navigating and playing digital media files.

While Apple claims that iPod’s physical interface is human-centered and intuitive so that most users can grasp a sense of using it within a short amount of time, there has been some issues around. In fact, these issues are rather ‘love/hate’ thing, so many of them couldn’t be absolute ‘cons’ of iPods. For physical interface, some users found the power on and off function counter-intuitive. iPod doesn’t come with separate power on/off button, instead, it is powered on and off by holding down ‘play’ button for three or more seconds. Considering many other mp3 players come with normal on/off button, this could be subtle, while many ‘podsters’ would find this beauty. Click-wheel is also controversial, hatching numerous arguments from users. As I stated above, since Apple chose to design the device with minimal approaches, several features have dual-functions that dictate the users to go over ‘few’ steps unavoidably.(i.e. to disable ’shuffle’, users should go five steps back to first menu in the middle of listening music)

So, are these all ‘unsuccessful’ features of Apple iPod?  It is hard to say that way.  Mp3 player market nowadays they keep inventing so called ‘iPod killers’, however, iPod’s sell through is still increasing. With all ‘cons’ from haters and even possible ‘planned obsolescence’ suspect, many loyal podsters still believe that iPod is elegant, luxury digital media device that makes you keep buying it.