HCI Bad & Good Design Observation

This is a real observation for one of designed that is used in our real life by some users. 

     People might leave their country for several reasons to settles in another one. While that happened sometimes they want to keep watching the TV Channels that they used to watch when they were still in their homeland. Here where this device that’s called Zaaptv comes into play. It allows the user to access other channels that get featured in different specific countries. The main task for this device is to allow you watch those different TV Channels whenever you want and it’s  simple to switch between them. But what makes it hard is the designed system that’s responsible for its functionality and respond to user input. If the users intend to keep watching those channels, it requires a subscription and that system is not designed to do that job for the user as well as not designed to save changes that made by users.

     To show these indicated hard uses above, and observation to the user have been done and also to evaluate the uses of this device. Watching the interaction that being done between the user and the device is the best observation we can do to figure how this device function. The user uses a remote control to connect and disconnect the device from sending the channel to the TV. It also used for switching between different TV Channels and creating a list of user favorite ones that he watches frequently. But in order to open the device for use, the user needs to walk physically and open or close the power button before even using that remote. 

     After setting the favorite list by the user, the list seems to disappear every time the system of the device updates itself automatically. So user had to search for those favorite channels and make the list again. Also after every update been done, it seems that some of those TV Channels disappear from the device and sometimes it comes back again after the following update that been made by the device. Meanwhile, when the user tried to switch the internet to be accessed by wifi instead of ethernet, the device seemed to be lagging a lot, and most of the times the TV Channels don’t work at all. 

     Moreover, when the user had to access the channels after the subscription expires, the device seemed not to have the functionality where the subscription could be purchased manually by remote. The user had to go to the website and purchase the subscription as well as waiting for the code after that to access the device again. Even after getting the code, the device only worked for one day and then it stops showing channels anymore. After talking to customer service, the user got another code, and the same thing happened again multiple times. Now even the customer service stopped responding to email regarding the issue.

     After observing the user interaction with the device, a lot of difficulties have been discovered. It would have been better if the device can be opened just by using the remote. But the user has to go walk to open or close the device completely from electricity. Also, it doesn’t look like the system is designed to save changes that a holder of the account might do inside the device. With each update, those changes been done in the device get deleted and the user had to repeat doing his changes again with every new update. Furthermore, it’s a difficult job for the user to go online and get a code for a subscription that can’t be guaranteed to work as it intended to do so. If the device had an option to do it directly from the device it would have been much easier to handle access to channels with having to wait for the code in order to reactivate membership.

     According to Don Norman “Mapping is an important concept in the design and layout of controls and displays.”(p 40) Looking at the way this device function, for the first glance it seems that it’s a big help to the users to control it from far away. But, it’s not completely controlled with remote, sometimes it doesn’t work and the user has to go move around in order for the device to catch the signal. Therefore that mapping principle Norman talked about has some lacking on this device. Even though it's designed to help users control it comfortably it’s still lacking some signal issues. Other than that, it was easy to control the device most of the time and changing from a channel into another. 

     The Internet is another issue where it seems that only ethernet would make Zaaptv work properly. While there are multiple options in order to connect this device to the internet, that was the only way for it to connect with no lagging. So it really pushes the user to place it beside the router to link it with an ethernet cable. Those all were feedback that I have got after observing and asking the user about her experience with the device. Feedback is another principle Norman talked about in his book “The Design of Everyday Things” was he defined it as “communicating the results of an actions.” (p 42) Those feedbacks was very helpful to combine it with the observation process to get a clear picture of the functionality of this device.

Reference:

D. A. Norman, The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2013.

Thank you for reading :)