From http://www.creativeuncut.com

I remember early days of my childhood, when I was able to appreciate the power of stories. Fairy tales took a large part of my free time and the tower of books was growing more and more reaching the critical height, threatening to make a big bang by falling on the ground. This was time full of reading stories that kept my attention for hours, gently leading me through an imagination path and involving me in the magical world of kings and queens.

Well, I am glad to discover that stories haven’t disappeared even in academic and professional life. Not only they have remained, they are so useful in communicating ideas. The greatest example are my inspiring teachers at Syddansk university where in each lecture examples from professional and academic fields are being actively involved in form of stories of their professional experience. I am sure that the power that non-linear information that for instance Wikipedia gives is invaluable. However, I would like to argue that good (inspiring, catching) stories is a good way in efficiently (and effectively) leading listeners into the topic. How much do you remember from your all-time most favorite teacher/hero/movie, and how much do you remember the content of the last encyclopedia you read recently?

Communicating ideas in a design team

I have experienced that it is not enough to have really great solution and idea when working in team. Actually there is not much sense of having one if I can’t communicate it in a way that other people can understand it and add to it (or argue against it). Badly communicated idea is being listened (by patient audience), then accompanied with blank eye-winks and  forgotten immediately leaving a feel of emptiness and disappointment. On the other side, telling your ideas as a fairy tale, with a lot of imagination, examples, in expressive and coherent manner can really attract people attention and share your point with them.

Jacob is explaining us a Video Card game

In a field of design, communicating ideas is an essential part of teamwork. There are a lot of ideas flying around, and there is a significant need to share these ideas so that everybody understands and can evaluate them. In hard sciences there is often one common truth (like laws of physics) and involved people understand that. While in design ideas are arguable, both designs could make a sense, but which is better?

Is storytelling just about talent?

Some people seems to have natural grasp on communicating ideas clearly, convincingly and often inspiring the audience. That includes my fellow mates at university (Smaranda among them), friends and of course – professional speakers like Robin Sharma (whose books I am reading with a great enthusiasm), powerful Gary Vaynerchuk – the wine expert, amazing/incredible/unbelievable Steve Jobs and many more.

Such people I call  good storytellers. Passioned about their topic, courageous,  imaginative, to some extent – talkative. Are you born with such skills?

Well, as some people seems to be more communicative and imaginative as other, I think it could be learned (by doing). In a high school I could die when I had to communicate my work or other ideas in public. And many people have fear of that, even a special term has been introduced to describe that. So in that time I thought that good public speech is just about losing your fear and using your natural improvisation skills. As this is true to same extent (even the best have a little bit of anxiety), there is something more. A time invested.

Good storytellers and presenters respect the audience. They have prepared their story (or know topic very well, or if not – then have reaaaly great imagination skills) and they are passioned about sharing it with audience. They are proud of their story and seems that they are seeing a story in their mind visually making their speech a reflection of that cognitive movie. They are keen on seeing audience inspired.

I wish everyone, including me, to develop such passion of sharing good ideas to others in an attractive manner. A good way to start is to watch people who are good at it. And then try it by ourselves.

The idea of the mental models seems very useful to me, as it is important to take into account what is going on in people’s heads  in order to make a successful user interface design (and of course other kind of design). With the successful design I mean one that user can learn easily and naturaly and use it effectively.

Quick attempt to make OpenID interface easy to use (HCI classes)

OpenID interface proposal

As the task for discussions in HCI class we needed to prepare proposals for a successful OpenID interface. We had to test the design on one user at least. In my case I used the Skype screen-sharing feature to watch and listen how my girlfriend is using various OpenID log in designs, such as Facebook, Twitter (at RWW to comment an article).

I immediately noticed a problem that different services puts different contexts on log in feature. In other words, users might think that by logging in by, for instance, Twitter account, it not only allows to post a comment in RWW, but also affects her Twitter accout (will a note appear in my Twitter? will I be required to follow someone?).

So I tried to develop common interface for all services (Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.), meaning that there won’t be differently designed pop-up windows, only similar username/password/url text boxes. However, I guess this violates the idea of OpenID, that you are redirected to the authentic website (e.g. Facebook) to confirm your data in order to log into website (such as RWW). Otherwise, I personally would be hesitant  to share my Facebook password with other website I don’t know.

So, my design was more like attempt to highlight a problem of different contexts in OpenID log in design.

Different understandings of OpenID

In the class we tried our designs on each other. I was surprised how diverse understandings (mental models) about OpenID were. And I was more surprised that each person defended their own mental model (belief?) quite convincingly, even if their mental model was incorrect. For instance, some people claimed that OpenID is a big database containing all password, while some people said that in their understanding it is decentralized collection of databases.

Mental models (http://middledigit.net/)

What is a mental model?

Before reading books, doing excercises and having discussions I had very blurred understanding of mental models. I knew that this is something that happens in people’s heads, but that’s all. How can that be used in design, and why? Does it change by the time? Do everyone have their own mental model and does it differ a lot? There were many questions I had no clue about (actually I didn’t have questions before that ).

From a book I understood that main concepts of mental models are information processing and external cognition.

Information processing

The mind is thought as information processor. Information comes into mind, goes through various processing stages (comparing, matching) and goes out in form of behaviour (including, no reaction at information). There is much interest in calculating how long does it take to perform a certain task.

Of course, there is limited amount of information that is possible to process. That creates bottlenecks in procession information.

Information overload is a common concept nowadays, so there is a need for structuring information, so I guess librarians and information designers (in physical world) together with information architects (in digital world) are doing a great job in making a complex clear.

As I am personally interested in information architecture and am following community for a longer time, I have noticed that there are some difficulties in defining this practice. However, I am glad that effort in explaining IA is being made and on right side there is a pretty neat explanation if IA. I guess something the same could be with information design practice.

External cognition

This concept refers to thought that people interact with or create information through using a variety of external representations including books, maps, diagrams, notes, images.

This is for reducing cognitive load:

1. memory load,
2. computing,
3. and to reflect changes (crossing out what’s done, manipulating models).

No more than 7 elements in User Interface?

Have you heard of  7 +/- 2 rule? It argues that average person can hold from 5 up to 9 unrelated objects in his/her working memory at one time. That comes from George Miller’s paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

This rule is sometimes applied to design including user interface design (UID). Even some recognized books devoted to UID refer to that rule. Read (old) post by Edward Tufte. There are lot of suggestions on the internet around rule of 7.

So, now we know that people can store  about 7 objects in their working memories, should we use only 7 elements in design?  7 options on menu? Well, as it appears, not really.

Well, when operating in UI, user doesn’t use only memory as the only one cognitive function. We can’t forget also about recognition. And there are a lot more cognitive functions that would help user to operate. For instance there are some techniques that helps people to memorize more by using their imagination. For instance I have personally found a very useful technique of memorizing things by relating them to constant pictures in my mind.

Well, in short words, usually there are more complicated things going out in user interfaces than some general rules (which might, and also might not be true in our specific cases). And as there is something about not having too many elements in user interface, it is always better to be critical and have real tests on users to tell whether our claims are true or not. Of course, there is always a problem of having a good testing in fast paced development environments where pressure from clients is an everyday event. Some people are talking about integrating user centred practices in such agile environments, but this is a story for other time.

Thank’s for our HCI course teacher Jared, for bringing attention upon that. I was one the people who sometimes blindly believed in such sticky-attractive-number-rule.

Usability issues of photo camera in Sony Ericsson K750i

From the moment when I started taking HCI course (2 lectures already), I really feel that I have broadened my understaning of various computer sytems. Coming from Computer Science background (strictly from Web development field), everything around HCI was associated to me with PCs and usability of websites. Now I have seen that apart from that, there exists various original computer systems used in manufactory.  There are washing machines that we are using often with their own user interfaces. Not mentioning mobile phones (oh hell, how many pain I have experienced with mine), photo cameras and other often used products.

Well, the thing that also surprised me was the mathematics (actually a lot) in HCI field, especially for predictive models. While the math formulas seems quite scary, actually they can bring a benefit by predicting the user behaviour without making time consuming experiments. That includes famous Fitts’s law (practical illustration there), Hick’s law and Keystroke level model.

Then there are those descriptive models, meant to provide context and vocabulary for thinking about a problem. For instance thinking about what  people are doing with each of their hands while using a computer system (is the interaction comfortable both for left and right handies?). Other popular theories include Key-action model (operation of keys on keyboard), Three-State Model of Graphical lnput (relationship between pointing devices and the interaction techniques they offer) and Model for Mapping Degrees of Freedom to Dimensions.

Our task was also to find a bug from our daily life. As I mentioned later, I had some pain with my mobile phone, so this was a perfect moment for letting it out

When we analysed HCI issues, we divided them in 4 categories by their relation – performance, mental models, affordances (action possibilities an artifact offers to a user) and organisational problems. Like in my case it is possible to state technical problem as a HCI problem. For instance the speed issue is more engineering problem.

Roadmap of our UX project

As the last course of our first master’s semester, we were allowed to choose our own project that reflects our interests. Even though I am coming from computer science background, I felt that I lacked enough chances to do a user research . That’s why I decided to design a User Experience (UX), because this involves large spectrum of work related to users and visual design. As a bases we (me and my teammate Jia) used a structure created by Jesse James Garrett.

In a 3 week period that we had, we wanted to plan a collaborative creative writing website and felt that this UX structure can help us to structure our way forward.

1. User needs and requirements

Mind maps and personas

We started by brainstorming sessions with people in Latvia and China who are interested (and have experience) in creative writing. There we were able to determine general attitude towards idea, and we got a lot of useful ideas as well which we categorized in form of mind map diagrams with a FreeMind software which is quite easy to use (even though we were making mind maps for the first time). It was quite useful to put these on a wall for making decision of features and form of website. In my case I conducted a brainstorming session in Skype (because I was in Denmark at that time). In the beginning I was afraid if textual environment (Skype chat) will be enough to understand each other and if this space will be encouraging to share thoughts. However, it appeared to be a nice brainstorming, definetly longer than 30 minutes I planned in the beginning. And people were actually able to understand each other, argue for idea, and provide valuable inputs on idea.

We conducted also a competitor research which contributed a lot to our idea. Even more, there actually were some experiments going on about collaborative writing like A million penguins project. Comments of participators gave us also a good insight on collaborative writing and user needs.

2. Video scenarious

Website wireframe

In a first step we have got general ideas for our website. By many user inputs we have got, we were actually able to create 4 main user groups, that resulted in different personas. As I noticed later, these personas did a great job in helping to make decisions like “Would these people use a story commenting feature?”. In the same time we created wireframes of most important webpages like frontpage, user account page, read a story page etc.

After that we wanted to do a more detailed user inquiry. In order to do that, we needed to show them what we have got until this time. So we decided to make these personas alive – make a video of different use cases (relevant for each persona) using wireframes that we have created. As an inspiration for videos we took a Paper Prototype scenario for Restaurant Tablet menu available on Youtube.

3. Detailed user inquiry

As we still learned throught this project, we searched an internet for inspiration in user research field. We have found a great resource of User Experience Research method comparison by Jakob Nielsen. By taking account our time limit and possible outcome, we chose to show video scenarious to the same people we had on brainstorming and ask them to fill out more detailed inquiry. For creating a detailed inquire we also have found a source of inspiration.

Results gave us impression on which features would be most important on our collaborative writing website. We also got some fresh understanding on how people would use it.

4. Final thoughts

Even though we didn’t manage to go through all User Experience stages, I felt that we have got a good insight on the User Experience field. It is a fun and pleasure to work with people, as there are unexpected and surprising output. However, it requires some work to open people’s mind and get non-trivial responses.

The Three Circles of IA 3.0 from semanticstudios.com

There is a lot of effort being made in community of IA practicioners, academists and enthusiasts on explaining the role and field of Information Architecture . Is the IA part of Enterprise Architecture or User Experience design? Or is IAstill defined under Information Systems architecture, as it was 20 – 30 years ago? Like related to Business Processes and Data modelling or maybe Information Systems planning?

Well, I am sure that definition (form) will follow deliverables (content) of IA practice. The more practical/useful/recognized deliverables by IA practicioners will be created, the closer the definition will come. What you see, is what you get, right?

However, it is great that some initiatives are emerging that gathers Information Architects together in explaining and discussing IA field. One of the initiatives, made by Peter Morville and IA Insitute,  is The Explain IA contest where people like you can submit their creative work (photos, illustrations, definitions, diagrams, videos …) that contributes in explaining IA role. As a little teaser, best works win really useful prizes.

Interested in IA? Contribute as well. I have contributed too, check it out.

Scene from a Robin Hood movie project

I had pretty much experience on teamwork while studying and working. And the practical side is much more dirty than just reading books. Understanding teamwork begins from a feeling the power of community, frustration on making decisions, having a laugh together while working, blaming each other for failures and leaving behind own ego to move forward.

Innovation – a fight between different personalities

So a teamwork is a mixure of the pleasant and the unpleasant. This system is unpredictable to some extent just like everything related to people. Some of them wants to lead, some of them doesn’t want to be lead, others have communication issues. Well, and very often – most of the team members have different characters. This is especially the case related to innovations, because innovation is most likely to happen in the mixture of different personalities and experiences. That means – a lot of arguing, crying, fighting, dealing with uncertainity, returning back, creating & trying & destroying ideas. And to actually move somewhere with ideas, everyone should be intelligent enough to understand that there are different personalities sitting around, and that disagreements shouldn’t be taken personality. Of course, there is a need also for a good leader, who can observe what is happening and put everybody on the right track again, if something goes wrong (some people are about to harm each other physically etc. ). Influence of a leader should be delicate – to much authority and creativity is limited, too much freedom and creativity flies around without a common goal. However, it is always a good idea to introduce each other in the beginning, so everybody is aware of other team member’s skills, talents, experience, personality and expecations.

But one is clear in the innovation process, team members shouldn’t afraid of constructive conflicts. These are actually quite natural (and useful) parts in giving a birth to new ideas and perspectives, in spite of that it might be exhausting to get a common sense. To get somewhere with these flying ideas, everybody should have a common understanding of what they want to achieve – do they want solve a problem, decide on concepts (of products), have a kick-start in a project … ?

Having a chance to go this stage over and over again in many projects, I learned that it is critical to learn explaining and presenting your ideas as good as possible. That could include not just story, but also quick sketches, models, mock-ups. It is important to be aware of how you are explaining your ideas, if nobody will understand the point of it, somebody else (who will present more clearly) will bring through his/her ideas.

Time to start working

Burning the brains to get innovation out

Well, after ideas have been thrown on table and common consensus has been found, it is time for actually trying out ideas. That includes building mock-ups to test on users, bulding prototypes, conducting surveys and observing users. If in the first phase there was relatively plenty of freedom and everybody were the same, then now it is a time for actually having different roles (some are good writers, some are great at listening, someone at building electronics) and responsibilities. From my experience, when there is a lack on agreement of who is doing what, then plenty of work overlays. A frustration comes out because usually the work of just one person is being chosen in such cases. And what is important, every member on team wants to feel that he/she has contributed in the success of a team.

Some personalities appear in this stage as well. There are people who prefer to work alone, and there are people who prefer to talk with other people, discuss problems etc. And of course, we can’t forget people who like to supervise everything – to worry about whole project and be sure, that everyone is doing right things.

By the way, if you are a salsa lover, you definetly should visit Riga. And check out both Riga salsa festival and Latvia salsa festival which will take a part there in summer.

So, about the last project. It began on December before going home where we had to create an interactive lamp. This was heavy but interesting project just for a week.

Planning an interactive lamp

Before sketching and presenting our ideas of the lamp, we concentrated on  4 things:

Sketch interactive lamp

• light – you can do amazing things with this beautiful phenomenon of the world,
• interaction – it needed to be simple, but innovative, and fitting in overall theme of the lamp,
• materials – should be high quality, also fitting with a theme of the lamp,
• symbolism – represent the light, communicate theme.

Then we continued with sketching our (crazy) ideas and presenting 3 selected to our peers. As I haven’t done a sketching much before, I was surprised how creativity starts to flow after diving into sketching. I ensured again that our minds (individually and collectively) are such a great source of ideas if opened by right techniques.

So basically my idea was to create a lamp where you put a finger inside and blinks accordingly to your heartbeats.

Planning a form & interaction

Ideas on a form of interactive lamp

After talking with people (our supervisor and course mates) we decided that this idea would be interesting to make. As this was a first I am creating any electronics (I have been only breaking it when I was a child), I also contacted our electronics teacher as early as possible. After his accept of possibility to create electronics for this in a week, I continued further.

Now as idea was clear it needed to decide on form which would support a topic of heartbeats/life. There were a couple of candidates – an egg, a stream, century plant, an oak leaf and a circle. I selected an egg, as I thought it would be more interesting that something would happen inside. Besides, it supports an idea of life pretty well (a birth).

Next part was to plan how somebody will interact with this lamp. It was clear from beginning that a finger will be put in. But what should happen? Will the color of light change? So in my case I chose the easiest way – just to blink a light according to heartbeats.

Creating a form & assembling electronics

Form of an interactive lamp

When the idea of what should be created was clear, I decided to start making a form. I thought it would be more appropirate to make the container (egg) from a foam. So I cut two halfs of an egg with an empty middle (for electronics and LEDs).

It was quite a challenge to cut a precise egg form in 3D environment, on a paper it looks easy, but not in real world … Significant part of cutting was based on intuition.

A grey tube on the top of egg is meant to be a place where a finger should be put in. Basically a technique was to let the light (LED) shine through a finger while on the other end receiving changes of the light (transparency of finger) by a light depended resistor.

A challenge here was to to keep as short distance between light emittor and receiver as possible. An additional thing was that if distance would be wrong, there wouldn’t be time for me to change this (so probably I needed more planning there).

The intellectual part of electronics was planned to make using an Arduino prototyping platform. Special thanks for Meng Li who has made her (similar) project accessible to the public.

After the form of a foam was ready, I needed to make the pieces of glass for holes (to see the light inside), put LEDs inside and a photoresistor. Then I glued both parts together and put another clay layer outside, so it would be an egg solid. Then I needed just to paint it black and add the electronic circuit (thanks to our electronics teacher). The electronic circuit was working, but I was concerned if the distance between light emitter and receiver will be enough. Unfortunately it was not, so I was sad a little bit and ashamed because I had also to present it at exhibition.

Are you alive?

However, the best thing we can do is to try better next time and not become too upset, because that becomes a paralysis – a waste of our hours of life that we can’t get back

Presenting at exhibition

At the end we had to present our work at exhibition, where students from electronics and interaction design also took a part. I was impressed what is possible to make by electronics and I never thought that I will do something like that will electronics. That was inspiring.

You can check some of other reeeeally interesting lamps and other interactive developments in my Flickr account.

Sounds scientifically, isn’t it? It was my topic for the portfolio exam, my viewpoint of how I understood our work so far in the semester. Basically it is about how i saw people sharing their tacit (non-articulated) knowledge when we involved them by different design objects (game, video, business model, mock-up & scenario). We had to show what we have learned through all projects, explain from our own viewpoint (teamwork, provoking, leadership etc.) and ideally – let the examinors experience our learning process by themselves (by making them to do something), and this is not easy actually.

As I have done research on knowledge concept before (while studying computer science), this theme came naturally. I am still interested in how people perceive information and how they gain knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge Acquisition Through Provocation by Design Objects

To be honest, it was a little bit unusual portfolio presentation. I am in doubt if employers would be interested much in scientifical topics or what we have learned. However, this is university and this is great opportunity for us to experiment, to learn, to broaden our horizon.

Well, I got 10 (by Danish system) which is equal to B by ECTS grading scale (hell, why European countries can’t have united grading system in practice?). I suppose I was lacking more impressive involvement of examinors. But I have a feeling of good job done and I appreciate more feedback. That’s the thing I really like, after each grade we have well-considered and useful feedback. That enabled us to improve next time.

Well, of course, there is a lot more of experience and topics I gained through our work including better understanding of teamwork, not to mention our sketching, woodwork, foam, writing classes. Well the teamwork is one big topic I want to talk about seperately. It is bloody hard sometimes to work in a team, make concensus. You better have to learn to present and argument your ideas very well, as there are often a resistance against it. However, I feel that I am improving in team work project-by-project. Most impressive things on this world are made in teams, it is a great power that needs to be practiced. Knowledge from books about teamwork topic equals almost to zero when not tried in practice.

Proposal of design for a social lamp

The last teamwork project this semester was a critical design. Our task was to create a design proposal for a critical artifact which enquires people about their experience of indoor climate environments. We were working in teams of three people.

As indoor climate has various aspects, we had a discussion about it using a-frame cards for inspiration. On one side there was picture and sentence describing a situation (from field studies). Inside there was broader explanation of situation including an involved person. On back there were our notes, that we would like to discuss.

Project was divided in three phases (three weeks total).

1. Getting inspiration – field studies

In the beginning and later in project we felt like we don’t know what we are going to built. It was like fumbling in the dark, experimenting and going forward step by step. I learned that is important to plan an meeting, so you both could feel more comfortable. Besides what we missed is explaining to people we meet, what we are going to do and that we are more interested of observing them when doing something, not only having an interview. However, in this moment we didn’t know quite clearly what we are going to do, though. Critical design was something new for us

Kitchen of university’s canteen

We grabbed a video camera and went downstairs to a kitchen of canteen. We didn’t warn them that we will arrive, however we were lucky enough to have an opportunity to observe how they are working in their most busy time of day. To be honest, we were allowed to do that only with a second time, so field studies in this case were a balance between politeness and perseverance. But they were really friendly and told a little bit what kind of food they are making.

Even though we didn’t have much talking with people in kitchen we gained good impression of the indoor climate there. It was a narrow space, hot with high humidity. It seemed like they didn’t have a time for making all the environment cosy, because there were improvised bookshelf, which didn’t support find a book coveniently. They used quite many workarounds in environment (spoon to keep doors opened).

Following a student in canteen

Getting inspiration from environment

Then we followed a student from the moment of picking up food to choosing a table to sit. After that we had short interview of how he feels like in canteen and what would it like to change.

He said that uncontrolled noise of the people sometimes is disturbing and music, green plants there and beautiful view outside seen through windows is something that keeps the atmosphere relaxed.

As it appeared later, we were mostly inspired by this case as we built a lamp that reflects an atmosphere around table.

Visiting local art school

We made an appointment before about visiting it and observing environment. They were nice people and made a trip through all the building telling about their environment.

We found out that interiour of the rooms really affects popularity of it. Too many colors (paintings) on the walls could make someone anxious, but much of white color can make a nice balance between relaxing and exciting environment. There were many interestingly styled rooms used for exhibitions. But after each exhibition they paint it back to white having a fresh start for the next one.

Literature and examples of critical design

For better understanding of critical design we had an assignment for reading a one scientific paper each about particular experiment. Then we made posters and presented to each other. For me personally that have a lot of understanding by examples.

Social Bubbles - critical design artifact

2. Provoking discussions – critical artefact

In the beginning of a week we had a guest lecturer for a workshop on critical artifact methodology. He showed examples of his own experience and directed us on making our artifacts in groups. The most important in this case was to find assumptions (related to findings from field studies) and thinking of the ways how can we challange these.

From discussions an idea about social climate in socially rich environment (canteen) appeared. We wanted to question value of private space and indicating a state of private space to other people. Two of our three teams as appeared later had works related to social climate, which shows that concept of indoor climate could be broad as well.

After that we built a mock-up of canteen and the bubbles around each table. We imagined that these bubbles could isolate people from outside, and people could decorate their private bubbles as they wish (music, light, color, transparency) in that way either inviting people to join in their private space or not.

This mock-up later supported us to explain our idea, and to help other people feel themselves in this situation in that way provoking them to think what would they do in this situation.

Social Lamp - critical design proposal

3. Design proposal

After presenting our mock-up and idea, we got a lot of feedback to transform it to a design proposal. People liked an idea about indicating their mood and overall social atmosphere around their private space. They also wanted something more realistic, because bubbles seems like too much into a future.

In the beginning we made a little human-like toy which reflects social climate around a table with its facial expressions. But then with a help of tutors we gave up the idea of human like creatures and started thinking of something more abstract. Because human-like creatures make people expect human-like behaviour. Besides emotions are very complex and facial expressions would limit indication.

Idea of social lamp

Then we came up with an idea of a lamp which reflects social climate with a light (intensity, color, brightness) reacting on voice and touch. This would give more richeness for expressing the mood and the abstract form could make it more interesting giving the people enough interest to play with it.

It is meant to provoke discussions about social climate indoors. Let people talk, imagine, argue … share their ideas and opinions.

Reacting on touch

The brightness of a light would change depended on voice, that would grab attention of people, making them touch it. When touched, a water ripples could appear right from fingertips.

When ovals being moved, a color of lamp would change in that way allowing people to choose a color that best describes social climate into their private space.

Reflections of project

After a project I had some reflections that could be better. I learned a lot, to be patient in team-work, to be more critical sometimes. I learned to work with a wood while making this provotype. I learned that I should practice more when presenting, and to get idea through, I should have a stronger opinion.

List of important points I would improve next time:

• It is easy in falling in trap of adjusting the idea to the design rather than extracting design from the idea.
• In teamwork sometimes it is hard to get concensus, takes a lot of the time for getting common view.
• Critical design requires a change of mindset – instead of thinking about usable, ready, intuitive product we should think about product that is open to interpretation, provokes discussions and is not very useful always.
• When there lack of ideas in the team (no ideas, no discussions) it is useful to invite somebody from outside to listen to us, make an opinion and suggestions.
• Tangible mock-ups help to discuss and generate new ideas. It helps to present idea as well, so that everybody understands it.
• Next time there is need to find consensus faster so time for user testing is more.
• Presentation should be practiced before, ideally if one person presents the idea and other persons make additions and helps to answer questions.

If you want to see more pictures of a project, check out my personal Flickr account or our common account.