Reflection on NM4210 classes

This module has made me aware that a good design is not simply giving the product a good appearance and satisfies the needs of everyone in a targeted market segment (I used to believe in that, trust me).

The process of designing a product emphasizes a lot on the perceptions and emotions of users as the ultimate goal of a good design lies with the level of pleasure user gets from using the product. These are things which we as consumers experience subconsciously but also often never realize them ourselves. However as a product designer, all these aspects are expected to be taken into consideration.

I have further learnt the importance for a designer to constantly interact with users of a product at the various stages of product development as experienced in my final group project. This is troublesome, but it is crucial to retrieve constructive feedbacks to understand on what should or should not be included in a design. The design should be user-centric in which it addresses the core needs of users and reduces their usage steps to the minimum. The methods we choose would depend largely on the type of product as well as our target users. Thus I feel there is no definite right method in data collection.

Adding to that, our lessons have also made me aware that we have to find out what is the core need of users. At times the core need of users on a product is not identifiable through means of interview or questionnaires. From what I have experienced from our final project, there should be a combination of methods in the problem defining process; as what users revealed important may not be the issue that is most influential to users’ experience with the product.

In overall, product development requires a thorough understanding of users’ through constant user participation as well as self-criticisms.