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Symposium Design for Usability 2009
The computer is back and the hands keep changing
The universal acceptable idea that could be used: people meeting
What was perhaps most remarkable about this first example is that these were architecture students, yet they chose a redesign a social network site.
race. This design then had to be adopted both to paper media and to a physical environment - yet these were computer science students.
Example two The second example similarly crossed disciplinary boundaries, as it involved computer science students (at the Free University example of Amsterdam) designing an identity for the CHI conference, 2005. As with the Facebook example, again this project involved something of a collision between North American cultural values and norms (70% of participants at the time were American), and European ones.
Example three This fluidity between different media emerged again in the final example, a Dutch Open University student design for a website and newsletter for IFIP TC13, which deals with human-computer interaction designs. The leaflet design that some developed contained many hypertext features, using ‘paths’ and ‘links’ to connect small screen-like boxes of text.
One student groups CHI proposal involved a shaking hands logo which was repeatedly remodelled. The hands were felt to be too male; then computers needed to be added. The winning proposal used shadowy ambiguous figures that were not recognisably male or female, or of any particular
But the client decided, rather surprisingly, to abandon the idea of the website and instead featured the leaflet in a single colour. Despite all the good design ideas, the client ended up with a plain leaflet. “It happens sometimes,” said Van der Veer. In conclusion, he stressed that usability is related to the