After I read through the chapters and wrote down my notes, I had a discussion with my group, and realized the chapters are not the same in the 2006 edition of the book which I have. I hope it does not matter too much, as there were still a lot of good information.
I found quite a lot of interesting concepts readnig thorough these chapters, although not too many that are applicable for our project. The real-world examples made the concepts easier to grasp, and almost all of them were quite interesting, such as Gmail with Google talk where engineers made a proof-of-concept, while designers made sketches and mockups changing the by engineers created modal interaction, into a less obstructive one. The case study also related back to what was previously discussed about visual design in the chapter, such as having new chat messages pop up in high contrast for higher awareness of the user.
Something I never thought about is that the "save-button" in almost all applications are shown as a floppy disc, although younger people today probably don't even know what a floppy disc is, it's hard to think of a symbol which could replace this.
Reading about ambient devices, and the example of a parking structure where the outside of the building indicates how full it is inspired me to try and incorporate something like this in our own design project, maybe in some way we could have the floor / walls of our "Circular sound room" to guide users.
The examples regarding the BBC website and Amazon really showed how multitasking could be done well. On the BBC site, pages you visit more frequently gradually shows a darker blue color, which makes the website easier to navigate. And Amazon with their functionality of "People who bought this also bought.." and "What did users ultimatley buy after viewing this product?".
"BBCi and Amazon made completing tasks in the future easier and more
interesting for users, and that's something worth designing. Note, too, that
users don't have to set preferences or tell either of these sites what they are
interested in doing. The sites learn this from behaviors their users are already
engaged in. The onus isn't on users to customize their experiences; the sites
themselves are smart enough to do it. They multitask."
from Designing for Interaction, on Multitasking
The author also brought up that these changes work so well because they are subtle. Microsoft's Clippy from the earlier Word versions is a great example of unsubtle multitasking. I don't think I've ever heard anyone praise the functionallity of Clippy.
Question: Is there some way to make our project idea adaptive, or make use of multitasking?
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