Observation #1--- Shylia with her digital camera at 9:45 AM

Time & Place: 2006/9/17, M5 city bus, Manhattan, NY 10003, US

Intro:
We often find things or tools hard to use in our life, or using them awkwardly; Probably everyone has that kind of embarrassing experience (like those transparent glass of hotel lobby doors, are too clean to be noticed, and often bumped by incautious guests).

Things designed by manufacturer to serve people are sometimes not so considerate to fit in people's working behavior, custom, or even culture. In order to develop good physical interfaces, designer need to know how people use existing ones. By developing the habit of detailed observation of what people physically do when they use technologies, we can limit your assumptions before developing a serious design idea, and will help designers solidify their concept for user center design.

Observation Rule:
Observe people using electronic product without notifying them the observation in advance.


TARGET: Shilya with her digital camera


Process:
On a bus, a beautiful Sunday morning, Shilya took her small pocket type digital camera (Panasonic FX-07) out from her bag. She touch something (button maybe) on top of the camera, and then the screen on the back of camera glowed. She lifted the camera and started watching the screen, with her eyes shifting between the camera screen and the bus window (maybe it's not the window itself, instead, the scenery outside the bus, which I could not determine).

After she aimed a while without pressing the shooting button, she start to looking for something on her camera (might be a button or a switch). Finally she press something on the top of the machine, in the right corner (might be a button or something). She start shooting random people, and kept doing shooting till she left the bus.


Interview and Comment:

I did a small interview with Shilya after she finished the shooting procedure. For an assignment from school class, she has to write down things interesting that she saw on the bus tour, what inspired her and what she thought after the trip. She wanna record things she saw from a bus passenger view, and try to imagine what people see and how they feel while strangers surrounding, passengers come and go, different races travel in different paces.

In order to take photos quickly in an unstable situation, Shilya bought an new camera because she want to have the anti-shock function, which allows her to take photo quickly on a bus, subway, or any kind of vehicle. The new gadget is one of those famous anit-shock type of digital camera, which overcome the shaky hands problem result from slow shutter of average digital camera. When She pressed the "anti-shock" function button, the camera immediately actuated the function to prevent the photo influenced by the shaky bus or shaky hands.

Welcome! at 8:02 PM

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