Brian+Nzomo


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Tutorial Week 1**

The unusual business model used by Apple to develop the IPod is using different companies to design different parts and functionalities of the iPod .Apple has always been secretive when it comes to publicly declaring design details of its products. According to the article ‘**Inside the Apple iPod Design Triumph’** the Apple IPod was actually designed by other companies and not Apple itself. According to the article, Apple is just borrowing ideas from experienced companies. For example, IPod used a design created by PortalPlayer of Santa Clara, Calif which is famously known for developing a base platform for a variety of audio systems including portable music devices. According to industry sources, Apple picked PortalPlayer because of its expertise when it comes to producing high quality sound devices. Apple also used Portelligent which is a f irm providing product and technology intelligence for consumer electronics companies. Apple IPod also uses an MP3 decoder and controller chip from PortalPlayer, a Wolfson Microelectronics Ltd. stereo digital-to-analog converter, a flash memory chip from Sharp Electronics Corp., a Texas Instruments 1394 firewire interface controller, and a power management and battery charging IC from Linear Technologies Inc.
 * Question: Describe the unusual business model used in the iPod's fabrication as developed by Apple.**

What distinguishes the work of both people in relation to the products designed by Apple is the obsessive attention to details that are often overlooked, like cables and power adaptors. New materials that are being used that are enabling different designs are like the Polymer which is used to create composites to meet very specific functional goals and requirements. The use of plastic when it comes to designing has been taken to a whole new level. For example, one process is moulding different plastics together or co-moulding plastic to metal (a process called Twin shooting materials) gives us a range of functional and formal opportunities that really didn’t exist before. The iPod is made from twin-shot plastic with no fasteners and no battery doors enabling us to create a design which was dense completely sealed. Another process is metal forming especially using new methods to join metals with advanced adhesives and laser welding.
 * Question: What distinguishes the work of the team of Jobs and Ive in relation to products designed by Apple? What new materials are enabling different design?**


 * Question: Describe the importance of Apple's design team. Are other companies trying to compete with Apple by creating their own design teams?**
 * Apples design team starts at the top with a** chief designer and powerful boss namely Johnathan Ive and Steve Jobs who ensure the smooth running of Apples projects. Ive invests his design dollars in state-of-the-art prototyping equipment, not large numbers of people. Ive uses alot of prototypes in his design process which help in visualising a new device or item before its actually made and pays keen intrest in secrecy.many of Apples employees are not allowed in the design room. Apples working atmosphere is that of an informal one going from the loud music that plays in the design room to the way Ive, Jobs and many of the people who work at Apple are said to dress. Apple works closely with its collegues for example its marketers, and even companies in Asia that manufacture the devices themselves. Through Apples unique design team, companies are not trying to compete with it(Apples design team) but rather it gives other companies hope.


 * Tutorial Week 2:**


 * List the three definitions of 'ergonomics'.**
 * According to ‘http://www.ergonomics4schools.com/lzone/ergonomics.htm’ the three definitions of ergonomics are:**
 * Physical ergonomics:** **This is concerned with the** human anatomical, anthropometric, physiological and biomechanical characteristics as they relate to physical activity. It is also concerned with how the physical environment around you might affect your performance
 * Cognitive ergonomics**: This is concerned with mental processes such as perception, memory, as they affect the relations and communication among people and other elements of a system.
 * Organisational ergonomics** This is concerned ‘with the optimisation of sociotechnical systems, including their organisational structures, policies, and processes.’ (Sinclair and Worthy, 2004)


 * Read each of the task analyses and case studies at** [|**http://www.ergonomics.org.au/ergonomics/case_studies.html#case6**]**. Choose one of the case studies, and add an additional recommendation to one of them in step two as 'advice'.**

Additional recommendation: Due to the spillage of unpackaged products which at times end up spilling on the floor,its advisable to change the flooring of that area to ensure that even though it is wet,the likelihood of people slipping and falling is still low,for example making that area rough. An easier option would be frequent cleaning of the unloading area or ensuring that pedestrians don’t pass where the food products are unpacked,but also the unloaders have to be put into consideration as they will still be walking around that area,and therefore changing the flooring to a rough one would be the best option.
 * Issue**: A shopping centre was reviewing the safe access for customers from the car park and within the centre itself, being concerned after a few ‘near-miss’ incidents relating to pedestrian safety and slips, trips and falls within the complex.

**Aeron Chair:** http://www.ultimatebackstore.com/product-exec/product_id/44/?hs340=leftnav_aeron_chair
 * Find an example of a product which is ergonomically sound, and add a link to an article about this product.**

=** The country I chose was Kenya and the product under discussion is the ** Kenya Ceramic Jiko which is a portable charcoal stove. = Five characteristics of this product design are: 1) Easy to use: All you have to do is put charcoal into the stove and light it up 2) Environment friendly: According to the website, the charcoal stove can reduce fuel consumption by 30-50% which means that less charcoal will be used. 3) Easy access to users: The charcoal stove is easily accessible to its users. From the website, it’s said that ‘The stove is now used in over 50% of all urban homes and 16% of rural homes in Kenya and is spreading to neighbouring African countries.’ 4) Easy to make: One does not need to have high levels of expertise to make a charcoal stove. In fact among the people who make the charcoal stove are craftsmen and local women’s organizations 5) Cheap: The charcoal stove is quite inexpensive and therefore even low income families can afford it.
 * Tutorial week 3:**
 * Tutorial Question:**
 * Choose a country on the web site's map, and read through the description of the products designed for that country.**
 * List five characteristics of socially responsible product design.**


 * Tutorial Week 4**:

According to Annie Leonard, the materials economy consists of Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal of stuff. From a first glance, this looks like the perfect system but it’s actually s system in crisis because it’s a ‘linear system and we are a finite planet’’ as Annie Leonard puts it. Every step of the materials economy is interacting with the real world. Some blanks which are missing from the materials economy is People who live and work all along the system like the government and corporations which are bigger than governments. The first part of the materials economy is Extraction. This is the natural exploitation of resources. As a result of exploitation, a third of the earth’s natural resource is already used. As Annie Leonard puts it, ‘if everyone consumed at the rate the US is consuming stuff, we would need three to five planets. Due to high consumption, the US obtains its raw materials from the third world. Production is the second part of the materials economy is Production. In production, energy is used to mix toxic chemicals with the natural resources to make toxic contaminated products. There are 100000 chemicals used today. As long as we keep putting toxic chemicals in the products, we are going to end up with toxic chemicals in our households. The food at the top of the food chain with the highest level of contaminants is breast milk which means that we are contaminating the smallest people in our society. The people who bear the brunt of these toxic chemicals are the factory workers who include women of reproductive age who are mostly from the third world. Some people come from rural areas to work in these industries. Most of the toxins leave the industries as pollution, like air, water and noise pollution. Therefore the US moved its industries to the third world which did not help much since the pollution, especially air pollution is blown right back to the US by wind currents.
 * Write three paragraphs on how Annie Leonard defines the system of the 'materials economy' and describe its interactions.**

The third component of the materials economy is distribution. When the toxic products leave the industries, they are sold in stores as fast as possible by keeping the prices as low as possible. This is made possible by not paying the workers as much and by skipping health insurance from time to time. A process known as externalizing the cost is used, i.e. the real cost of producing the goods aren’t captured in the price. Annie Leonard gives the example of the radio she bought which cost $4.99. She went on to explain that this $4.99 does not reflect the amount of money that went into making the radio. She adds that the people who paid for the radio were the people in the third world who paid with their loss of natural resources, factory workers who paid with the loss of clean air, health risks, etc, lowly paid store workers, etc. Consumption is the fourth part of the materials economy. Consumption is our primary identity; we are a nation of consumers. 99% of the stuff we process though is trashed within 6 months. The average American consumes twice what they used to consume 50 years ago. After World War 2, corporations looked for ways to boost the economy. Retailing analyst Victor Lebeau came up with a solution for the whole system. He said ‘ Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate. Two of the strategies used to ensure this is: Planned obsolence: This is designed for the dump. Materials are made in such a way that they have a short life span so that they are easily replaced Perceived Obsolence: This is where a perfectly working material is thrown away and replaced. Producers make the same material but change it slightly so that if seen with the old material, this shows that the person hasn’t contributed to the ‘golden arrow’.

The last part of the materials economy is disposal. As a result of the high consumption, there’s a high rate of disposal. Each person in the US produces about 4 and half pounds of garbage a day which is filled in landfills. This leads to pollution. Incinerators which are used to dispose garbage end up polluting the air. Recycling has also been a good method of disposing garbage but again, if not done properly it can end up polluting the environment. As a result of all this, ‘regulators’ have been put at each stage of the materials economy, for example, there are people lobbying for the conservation of trees, better working conditions, better garbage disposal practises are being implemented.


 * As part of 'Experience Prototyping', body storming has been developed as a method of enquiry for interactive design.** Research the definition of 'body storming', and write a paragraph describing its characteristics.


 * Body storming can be described as simulating an idea or activity to experience how the original idea would be.Before a body storming session, experimenter is first supposed to study the original idea or activity. The experimenter is then supposed to gather the tools required for the study, for example if the body storming session is on deafness, the experimenter will obtain a pair of noise cancelling headphones. Afterwards the experimenter is to go to the place where the activity is supposed to be taking place, for example if the session is on deafness, the place of activity would be anywhere be in a shopping mall a club, to see how as deaf person would interact with the public. Afterwards the experimenter will document is results and analyze them. Body storming is advantageous in the sense that it reduces the time and effort spent in researching and analyzing the actual idea or activity. **


 * Tutorial Week 5**
 * After viewing the video 'Part 1: Body storming Experiencing a Disability' at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyE5bDqaSwc** ** describe the information revealed to the researchers in the three different case studies for one paragraph each .**

This experiment was led by Dr. Jeff Bardzell with the help of the associate instructor Will Odom in part of the experiment; they are discussing how it is to experience blindness. The participant was made to wear a blindfold and walk around with a guiding stick. Since the participant could not use vision, she relied on her other senses to walk around, such as sound and touch. The participant had to get used to using Braille and relying on the guiding stick for movement.

In the second experiment, the participant was made to recite a telephone number while solving math problems. His tools were Nintendo DS. He would solve mathematical problems on the Nintendo while reciting a phone number. This became quite a problem as he was getting quite distracted and this made him get quite frustrated. As a result, his self esteem decreased.

In the third experiment, the participant was supposed to simulate chronic arthritis. He was made to put on wooden sticks on his hand and a glove was put on. Therefore he could not move his fingers. He was madder to perform small tasks like cutting items in the kitchen, and placing items on shelves. The participant did these activities quite slowly because he feared injuring himself. On top of that, he used more energy to perform the activities which made his body temperature increase. In the YouTube clip, a suggestion to help people with chronic arthritis is to install more gadgets which use speech recognition as it will greatly aid them in their day to day tasks.


 * __ Week 6: __**
 * Three Phases for the Adoption of a Technology **

In the interview with David Liddle at http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/DavidLiddle, he defines three stages for the adoption of a new technology.


 * What are his definitions for these three stages of adoption, and how did he apply them to his case study of a camera? Write one clear paragraph for each of his definitions, listing their attributes in relation to the development of the camera. Can you think of another consumer product which has undergone similar developments? Name it.**

In the interview, David Liddle discusses the stages a piece of technology undertakes. The first stage is what he refers to as the 'Enthusiast stage', it first starts as a hobby, when one is getting to know the piece of technology and getting acquainted with it and knowing how it works. This stage is for people who actually love and appreciate the particular technology and enjoy exploiting it so as to know more about it and its functions. The fact that it’s a new piece of technology, at first, it may be difficult to use, but for the enthusiast, this difficulty is what makes it fun to use. David Liddle relates this stage to the 35mm by saying how in the '50s astronaut used it and it did not require much prior knowledge for it to be used.

Once people gather interest in the piece of technology, they usually come up with ideas of how to use it and in what kind of environment. In the case of the 35mm camera, it went from being an expensive product to being used by professional photographers. The design of the 35mm camera then stabilized, that is, the features did not change drastically, for example the view finder was in one place, at the centre of the camera, the film was wound with the left hand and exposed by pushing a button at the top right hand side with the right index finger, and an image was focused in a particular way.

After the piece of technology has gathered enough volume, as in its well known around, the third stage for the adoption of a new technology is the price. The price should be practical for consumers to buy. It should be low enough for consumers to purchase it but high enough for the camera company to make a profit. In the case of the 35mm, it advanced in such a way that, important controls have now become automatic, for example, if it even has a film, the film speed will be automatic, setting the exposure and the flash will be automatic, in general, everything is done for you. This is greatly important as now basically anyone, no matter how little knowledge you have of the camera, can now use it.

According to David Liddle, the three users of the camera, namely the enthusiast, the business man and the consumer each have different expectations when it comes to the camera. The enthusiast wants the product to say, ' Explore me, look at my capabilities', the business man says, ' look at the productivity I can give you’, and the consumer says,' Look how I fit with your style.

A device that has undergone similar process is the IPod, right from the first IPod that had a ‘black and white’ display with lots of buttons to the recent IPod nano that’s slim and easy to use with a relatively good price and easy to use scroll wheel with few buttons.


 * Tutorial Week 7:**


 * Write a description of interaction architecture as defined by Mat Hunter at** http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/MatHunter and Rikako Sakai at http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/RikakoSakai **in relation to their work with Kodak in 1995.**
 * When Mat Hunter is discussing interaction agriculture, he starts of explaining how Kodak approached him in 1995 because they (Kodak) wanted to understand the future of digital cameras and photography. When analysing digital cameras, there are two main insights, digital cameras live within a product and serve ecology. George Eastman created Kodak by understanding that there is a box camera which works by pressing a button and the Kodak Company develops the film which was then a messy affair but is now a mass market consumer affair. Photography is said to be a means of self expression, recording information and a social enterprise. A camera was used to capture images and recently with the introduction of a digital camera, apart from it being used to capture images, it was used to review, delete, make a voice annotation, print or email the photographs that were taken. When it comes to information/ interaction architecture Hunter describes it as an extensive series of rules that would allow a whole series of cameras to be designed. So as to see how a digital camera would work, and its user acceptability, a user experience prototype was designed. This prototype was a big box with a security camera with cord connected to a Mac computer, after testing this prototype, 8 months later, Kodak took this prototype and made the DC210 digital camera out of it, which was one of Kodak’s best selling cameras.**
 * In the short clip, Kenji Hatori describes his part in developing the photostitch. He goes on to say how when making an image using photostitch, the user takes a picture of the image, which then remains on the left side of the camera display. The user then takes a picture of another image and matches it to the first image. Rikako Sakai designed** version 3 of the PhotoStitch software. While designing it, she encountered several problems, first of all there were too many images to stitch, and some images were not visible to the user. The biggest change was using the tab interface while using the photostitch instead of using the step by step process.

__**Tutorial Week 8**__


 * In three paragraphs, describe the role of Jan Chipchase in defining the role of cellphones in the developing world for Nokia, and the benefits of analyzing cellphone use and design in different cultures as part of their market expansion.**

Jan Chipcase is a ‘human behavior researcher for Nokia. His work was to travel to different countries to see how people used cellphones and report his findings to Nokia developers. There are several roles of cellphones in developing countries for example while Chipcase was in Mumbai, he noted that the cellphone was used by a man to efficiently run errands for his boss; he also occasionally called his wife who talked to him via a pay phone. Jan also noticed that this man carried his cellphone is a plastic bag to protect it and he hang it on the wall. When Jan was in Ghana, he noticed that people used the cellphone for directions. For example when he was meeting his interpreter in Nima, which is a busy market, he communicated with his interpreter via a cellphone.. Another role of cellphones as seen in China was that of the housekeeper who used her cellphone to allow customers to call and book her services, or the porter who spent his days outside department stores and construction sites looking for work but now with a cellphone he can go only where there are jobs.

In Kerala (Southern India) fishermen use cellphones to call prospective buyers even before they got their catch to the shore. This increased their profits while the price of fish in the local markets decreased. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to patients to remind them to take their medicine. Another advantage of cellphones is that, according to research, for every 10mobile phones per 100 people, a countries GDP increases by 0.5%.In Kenya, people can now send anonymous questions inquiring about various diseases and illnesses like cancer, AIDS, etc at no charge. In Bangladesh, a telecommunications company, Grameen, was created to empower women by selling them relatively cheap cellphone kits so that they may be able to start their own businesses of providing telephone services and charging people a small commission. In Uganda, people are using prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money from place to place. There is also a similar kind of business in Kenya which goes by the name of M-Pesa. This form of mobile banking has also spread to South Africa (Wizzit) and the Philippines (GCash) which have started programs that allow customers to use their cellphones to buy stuff make payments or even withdraw money.

To analyze cellphone design, Nokia made a temporary design studio in several developing countries that allowed people to come and design a cellphone, and people designed the cellphones according to their needs, This was to help the Nokia designers find out what features people would like to see in their cellphones, for example the Liberian refugee who wanted a cellphone that had a landmine detector, or the people in Mumbai who sketched cellphones that could predict the weather or Muslims who wanted G.P.S devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Having a full featured cellphone lessens the need for having devices such as camcorders, address books MP3s or IPods and with the development of mobile banking, cellphones will soon replace wallets.

__**Tutorial Week 10**__
The Japanese Shinkansen train is one of Janine Benyus biomimetic principles. The train is designed like a bird for optimum functionality and ergonomics. The trains kingfisher like nose cone helps reduce environmental noise pollution as it reduces the sonic boom when the train is moving from a tunnel back to the open air. The train also has serrations that look like an owls feathers that reduce the noise generate by the trains pantographs-the device that connects the train to the overhead electrical wires. Another amazing product design is the solar enabled can that uses echo location to direct a visually handicapped person. This cane uses the same technology that bats use to navigate in the dark. This cane, on top of making navigation easier for a blind person, the sound produced is not harmful to the environment as it is not a high pitched sound. The bone furniture which was designed by Joris Laarman aims to mimic the structure of bones. In the link provided in the wikispace, ([]) the aluminium chair was designed by a software that mimics bone growth and formation. Even though the furniture is hollow, it is still strong,durable and lightweight. This design has gone further and is now used by companies like General Motors in designing cars.
 * Look over examples of her biomimetic principles applied to products in the slideshow located at [] and write a short, one paragraph synopsis for each of your three favourite product designs.**
 * The** High-Speed Train

__**Tutorial week 11**__
Web accessibility is the making of websites more user friendly by making it easy to use for both people with disabilities and those without.
 * 1. ****How would you describe web accessibility? **


 * 2. Who do you think benefits from accessible websites and how? ****
 * People with disabilities and those without disabilities are those who benefit from accessible websites. An example of an accessible website is **


 * 3. Do you think your website/blog should be accessible? Should all Canadian websites? ****
 * All websites should be accessible to all people whether they have disabilities or not. If this wasn’t the case, there would be an information imbalance. People with disabilities would have less access to information than people without disabilities. I also think that Canadian websites should be accessible as information is supposed to be for all. No discrimination. **


 * 4. What do you think is the biggest challenge of making a website accessible? ****
 * The biggest challenge in trying to make a website accessible is the cost of designing an accessible website, since it would be more costly and would longer to design **