Discussion 5 User and User and Interface

On Tuesday, Tong and I hold a discussion about “user and user interface”. At first, thanks to our Gabriela’s direction during the discussion. Sorry to that I have a bad guiding.

In discussion, the thing I like best is the development of Microsoft Word. I think this is a very good doucument to demonstrate the improvement and role of interface. As we discuss, a good interface can bring convience to users and make things effective and efficient. However, excessive features also bring some trouble things, such as direction words of these may be confuse users and sometimes users can not identify which choice is what they want and try several times. Furthermore, some features are in the sub-menu, which makes it more difficult for users to interaction.

Secondly, in my opinion, some features should be used in different ways in different countries or cultures. For example, when I came Ireland I found the function “AutoCorrect” that is best for me now. When users have mistake of spelling or grammar it will have a green or red curve to remind users “You make a mistake”, which is useful for people whose mother language is not English. However, this function plays fewer roles because there is not spelling problem in Chinese and the grammar is not as complex as English. So this function may change into another one that is suit for Chinese in China or other languages in other countries.

These two points are I want to add.

Thanks to Gabriela’s help again.

Discussion 4: User generated content, Modding & Gaming communities

In this discussion, I noticed a conflict between traditional forms of media and new forms of media. Both of them have their own advantages that are good for users and disadvantages that are not good for users.

With development of technology, Internet is becoming more and more popular that may influence traditional form of media. At beginning of this century, some people said: “newspaper is dying”, which can show traditional form of media had a bad future. However, in my opinion, participation of new forms of media do not limit the traditional ones but also support them and make the both forms prosperous together. For example, in China, TV is one of the biggest entertainments. There is a popular TV program that is about how to make up for girls. This program is performed both on TV (traditional form) and on a website (new form). The program video online is very suit for people who do not have time to watch this program on time. The producer of this program also publishes corresponding magazines (traditional form). The magazine has a huge circulation because of influence of this programm on TV and online. Some audiences often ask some questions in feedback bar in video online and the program answers questions on TV or in magazines.

I think that is a good integration of muliti-media. New form not only support the old two ones but also enrich media form, which can meet all kinds of users’ need.