interaction design method-interview

ASSIGNMENT 1 | The Meaning of ComfortI 543 Interaction Design Method | Melissa Tang

CONTENTS

CONTENTS Page

What is comfort? 1

What is the result of the interview? 2

What do we sythesize from research? 3

What would the design guidence be? 4

I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang 1

COMFORT ?What is

“Comfort” is quite a subjective thing. It has different meaning to different people. Though comfort is a universal phenomenon, people experience and feel it differently.

To study the notion of comfort, I conducted an interview.

Basic Infomation:

The interview is held in Jan.26, 2014 in my room. I interviewed four subjects in total. My familiarity with people I already know will influence my interpretation of what they have to say. So I chose four people I don’t know. They were all friends of my friend.

The interview is a face to face interview. It is semi-structured. I used my phone to record the video. At the same time, I took some notes.

Questions:

I asked two open-ended questions: 1. Please describe a recent incident make you feel comfortable.2. How do you define comfort?

Except the open questions I asked, I asked some of them about what make a comfortable physical environment. Because I want to get some potential design implication for future technology.

.

“Comfort” is quite a subjective thing. It has different meaning to different people. Though comfort is a universal phenomenon, people experience and feel it differently.

To study the notion of comfort, I conducted an interview.

Basic Infomation:

The interview is held in Jan.26, 2014 in my room. I interviewed four subjects in total. My familiarity with people I already know will influence my interpretation of what they have to say. So I chose four people I don’t know. They were all friends of my friend.

The interview is a face to face interview. It is semi-structured. I used my phone to record the video. At the same time, I took some notes.

Questions:

I asked two open-ended questions: 1. Please describe a recent incident make you feel comfortable.2. How do you define comfort?

Except the open questions I asked, I asked some of them about what make a comfortable physical environment. Because I want to get some potential design implication for future technology.

.

What is the

of the interview?Result

Subject Definition of Comfort Most Recent Comfortable Experience

Subject #1

Male, 21,

Student

Completely be myself, not worry about

hurting other’s feeling, making others

angry.

It is Christmas, we got together in my grandma’s

house. They had lot of decoration. I had a good time

with my family. I can totally be myself. I don’t have to

be worried that I would make somebody angry. Be-

cause I’m surrounded with people I know.

Subject #2

Female, 23,

Student

Warmth. Happiness, hard questions.

Happiness. Feel at ease. Ex, my favor-

ite place is the place I work. It’s a horse

barn. I worked with horse everyday.

They are places that I feel like home.

It’s my birthday. I choose to be at home, be very lazy,

eat lots of food and pet my cat.

Subject #3

Male, 21,

Student

Be in a Place that I feel at ease. Ex, being

at my bedroom is comfortable. Home

in indy where I grow up is a comfort-

able place. In physical meaning, it’s like

couches, light noise, etc. Maybe I want a

house hold AI does whatever I want to

do, like cooking and washing clothes.

I like good food, good accompany, good people

around. As like I visit Bloomington, I spend time with

my family, and friends.

A comfortable environment for me is like soft noise,

nice place to sit, being warm and comfortable lighting.

Subject #4

Female, 23,

Employee

Comfort for me means low stress level,

no drama. Like being in my house is very

low stress. I’m a shy person. I don’t like

go out often.

Come down here to see my friend Kendra. We get

along well with each other. We know each other well

and every time I’m around her. It’s nice!

I’m comfortable with my work. It is a chill job. I work at

a bagel shop. It’s a small store. Everybody work there

are very close, it’s like a family.

2I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang


What do we

from research?Learn

When I asked questions about comfort, people always link comfort with certain emotional responses. They feel comfort-able when they’re spending time with people they love, like families and friends. For example, one subject mentioned he feels comfortable when he is around his friends and family. Be-cause he can completely be himself and doesn’t worry about other’s feelings.

Except the open questions I asked, I asked some of them about what makes a comfortable physical environment. Because I want to get some potential design implication for future tech-nology. Most answers mentioned warmth. Maybe because it’s a cold day and people all want to stay warm place.

LOW STRESS

ACCOMPANIED

RELAXED ENVIRONMENT

So I can conclude that people feel comfortable when they’re accompanied, with low stress, stay in a comfortable place (like “light-noise, good sitting, and warm place”).


What would the

be?Design GuidanceFrom the analysis of the interview, we know people feel comfortable when they are not stressed and stay in a re-

laxed environment and accompanied by people they know.

According to the Maslows’ hierarchy of need, comfort to them belongs to physiological, safety and belonging needs, which can be met by improving the exterior factors.

When it applies to the Internet of things, my interpretation of “Low stress“ is that new technology should be easy

to learn, easy to use and with less mistakes. First, we should avoid overwhelming infomation and simplify the mo-

bile part. For example, if we design a home monitor, we cannot use different applications to take charge of differ-

ent sensors. For instance, thermostat has one app, light has one app, wifi has one app...so many apps. The user

would be overwhelmed. It’s necessary to combine some functions of related sensors into one app. Second, the ro-

bustness of the system is very important, which means the system should be stable. When we design this system,

we should consider all the possible user cases to avoid potential user mistakes. In a word, if the system is buggy

and has overwhelming infomation, user would be stressed and unable to feel comfortable.

When it comes to “relaxed environment”, I think the system should be in conformance with users’ habit. That is

to say, we should balance usability and functionality of new product.

We can also do something related to “accompanied“ in the Internet of things. More social networks can be added

to the design of system.