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In the course of the iterative process of designing and implementing our interface, we principally learned the skill of self-critique. At all stages, of the design process, we had to analyse analyze our own designs and find room for improvement.
The very first task of coming up with several potential designs for our implementation proved to be the most difficult but turned out to be the task that influenced our design the most. Having to come up with 4 different designs made us consider many different approaches by which we could lay out the MITJobs interface. This process was particularly instrumental because when we selected one of the designs We initially made the mistake of making 2 out of 3 designs be conceptually similar, and our TA, Vijay, pointed this mistake. He encouraged us to develop a design with an approach that was conceptually very different; we brainstormed a design that was focused on locations of jobs and internships and identified ways of displaying information centered around location (using maps).
When we started paper prototyping, we realized that coming up with designs was particularly instrumental because when we selected one of the designs to work with, we realized that most of the to work with, we realized that most of the improvements we thought of could be attained by incorporating various parts of the alternate designs that we had come up with.alternate designs that we had come up with.
Through the 3 phases of testing (paper prototype testing, heuristic evaluation and final user testing), we also learned that actual user reviews can expose completely unforeseen potential problems in mostly the layout of a user interface. We, as designers, believe we have designed an interface, which is learnable, efficient, visible, error-preventive and yet simple, and that we have considered all alternative choices. However, the We also learned that actual user reviews can expose completely unforeseen potential problems in mostly the layout of a user interface. The reviews we received from our evaluators were broad but starkly incisive; ranging from layout issues, to buttons being too big and inter-tab consistency mishaps. Refining our interface at every step thus helped us learn the user centered design process, and also develop a usable interface.
The process of building the feedback and the interactions between different parts of the website was the most difficult, and decisions about the interface during the paper prototyping phase influenced and changed a lot how the different parts of the website interacted with each other. Hence it is clear for us that the first stages of development of a product play a big role on what a product may become and, therefore, should be considered as a very important part of software development.
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