Reece's Website
A website to showcase a collection of my work, including recent research projects, interactive prototypes, sketches, UML, wireframes, styles and other experimental concepts.
Introduction
Many of the issues that influence User Experience (UX) projects are studied in the discipline of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The underlying principle of HCI is '... the study of interaction between people and computers’ (Dix 2004, p.5).
Computer systems exist within the context of real-world human activity. The term ‘application’ or ‘app’ is used to describe the use to which computers are put. The extent to which the application fits within this context of human activity can have a profound effect on its success. The application needs to satisfy cultural requirements in addition to technical, business and legal ones.
Research
My current research project involves utilizing mobile technology, primarily mobile phones, to improve maternal health outcomes for Indigenous Australian woman and newborn infants. It is currently at the proposal stage. Preliminary prototype ideas are included in the prototype section below.
'Capturing cultural requirements in the design of a website for an Aboriginal community' is a Ph.D research thesis completed in 2012. It studies cultural requirements, using an ethnographic design methodology, to develop a web interface for an Indigenous Australian community. The thesis includes numerous screenshots of the final design and can be used as a starting point for any Australian Indigenous interface project.
Peer reviewed papers:
1. 'Evaluating Indigenous Design Features Using Cultural Dimensions', the Australian Computer Society, 2012.
2. 'Focusing on Cultural Design Features for an Indigenous Website', the Australasian Conference on Information Systems, 2011.
3. 'Identifying cultural design requirements for an Australian indigenous website', the Eleventh Australasian Conference on User Interface, 2010.
Prototypes
Disclaimer: The software examples below are experimental in nature, and therefore you should not expect them to look or act in a finished manner. The technology itself may or may not be in a finished state. As such, seeing and interacting with this software is no guarantee that the product or functionality will ever be released, or if it is, may look different to its current form.
Mobile App Prototypes
Mobile SMS Health Messages App: The design of this system is currently in progress and subject to further modification. An initial paper sketch, wireframe and responsive web prototype are available. These concepts will be used to develop an operational SMS subscribe/unsubscribe system, to be implemented within the NSW Department of Health.
The Book App: This book is a HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript prototype developed with Sencha Touch. It has been developed primarily for the iPad, however, it should also work on all desktops. It has not been tested on phones, non-iOS tablets or retina displays so it needs further development before release, like most prototypes.
This books purpose is to be readable and easy to navigate. The color platelet was chosen to keep a clean, professional appearance. The total size of the app is 10.6 MB.
Web Interface Prototypes
Responsive Web Design: This website (reecegeorge.com) is an example of responsive design. askreece.com is a responsive blog built using Wordpress and Twitter Bootstrap. My resume' page is a experimental one-page responsive design using Google maps.
HTML, CSS & JavaScript: The pazspace.com website was completed two years ago. It is a fully working website that started as a one page prototype experiment. Here are some elegant type face for website designs that utilize fonts from Google's free fonts directory and CSS. Here are examples of how to use gmaps.js to produce Google maps without extensive documentation or large amounts of code. Here is a collection of CSS buttons using minimal markup.
Indigenous Australian web concepts: The first example is a one-page web prototype targeting Indigenous Australians. This interface and the mobile site was inspired while working with the Wollotuka community. All dotwork has been done by hand using Adobe Illustrator. Another prototype inspired by Indigenous Australian culture is the virtual tour interface of Uluru. The radiatewarmth.com site is a 'parked domain' concept. Graphics for this site were hand-painted on an iPad.
Games: When researching the Wollotuka project, it emerged that participants wanted to portray a fun image on the web. In general, the sense of informality and fun associated with the Wollotuka community were considered more important than the reinforcement of serious reputation. For this reason, two games were developed; the rooshoot game and the memory match game.
Methodology
In general, the process I adopt is a modified usability approach, that involves users in an iterative design process. Users are required to test the design for its appropriateness and suggest possible design solutions. User feedback is used to make key decisions in each design. Involving users in the process as much as possible aids significantly in satisfying the UX design requirements.
While each project is unique, the design process is generally divided into three phases.
Phase 1. The initial phase is intended to gain an understanding of both the target audience and more general cultural design issues and to collect the initial expectations of the target user. These requirements are used in the next phase to develop general themes for the application.
Phase 2. The second, iterative phase is where the main design work takes place. An iterative prototype incorporating the key design features is developed for use as a prop in one-on-one interviews with participants. The feedback from these interviews informs further design work until completion.
Phase 3. Deployment includes the effective transition of the application to the client. It includes the communication of rationale, requirements, intent and details of the design to appropriate stakeholders and staff.
It is essential for the UX professional to understand user perspectives, using focus groups and/or one-on-one interviews. Regardless of the time consuming nature of this approach, there does not appear to be any substitute for time spent in front of a computer screen, gathering user’s thoughts on an evolving interface solution.
References
Arnowitz, J, Arent, M, & Berger, N 2007, Effective Prototyping for Software Makers, Elsevier, San Francisco.
Dix, A, Finlay, J, Abowd, G & Beale, R 2004, Human-Computer Interaction, Prentice Hall, England.