The Mood Board

John is a 75-year-old retired carpenter who still enjoys hikes in national parks and ridding his Harley-Davidson. He looks forward to the local club raffle and a catch up with the boys on a Thursday evening. He also enjoys playing bingo, listening to local radio and watching old western movies with his wife Jill. As he gets older and has to visit the hospital more often, he prefers quick and efficient health-care with simple, bold instructions and hospital signs. He aims to enjoy the rest of his life traveling a little and spending time with family, especially his grandchildren.

• Location: Hobart
• Toaster Usage: Unfortunately Johnny has never used a fancy new electric toaster
• Computer/Internet Usage: PC, Occasionally browses the Internet with the help of his grandchildren.
• Computer Skill: Novice user. Finds things too complicated on the computer to use. Has an email but doesn’t know how to use it properly.

images were sourced from google

Interactive Design

Interactive design or interaction design benefits many computer users through making the use of computers much easier. Computers have become a large key part in many peoples lives whether they are older or younger target audiences designs create the significant part in interaction with the computer. The graphical approach is less confronting and complicated areas are easier to handle. Interactive design is not only effective in computing it is also affecting most physical objects that also play the same role in making use much more effective and easier.

Good interactive designs are of types that allow users to use the product to reach their certain goal for example a car which has many complicated controls but we as users will only have the destination on our mind therefore not having to think too much on how to use the car.

Information/Instructional Design

Information design is a approach to how information is shown to a reader and how well the information is gathered by the reader. The design must also be accurate and easy to decipher rapidly so important information is not lost.

Instructional design in a different approach as it is to teach or educate users in step by step intentions which the users can follow easily. Instructional design must be for physical information on "how to" for users, give the users the ability to understand the information and be affective so the users wont find the information too confronting or confusing.

Information/Instructional
Both designs are seem very similar but the Instructional, hence the name is mainly aimed at teaching a user through effective tutorials and make the learning process as easy and effective as possible.

Instructional design

Instructional design examples are as follows:

User Manuals/Guides: User manuals are very good references when we buy something new weather it be a fridge or a toaster there are user guides for almost every product. The guides allow users to learn how to use their new product and what they will need to keep in mind. They have easy step by step instructions and graphics which is easy to read and look up for reference if there are any complications in the future.

Starting new emails with different providers is very easy and is given in an instructional step by step design that users can easily enter the required details and follow on to the next step for completion.

Self photo print stations is a very effective machine shows users "how to" print their photos without any confronting lessons. The machine displays an image as an example as well as the instructions to convey the next step the user will need to do, combined with a intuitive touch screen that is easy to point an push almost anyone can use the machine without any assistance.

Information design

Examples of information design:

Microsoft office PowerPoint has good tools that users find easy to use to create good presentations where there are already pre-made templates the users can choose from or make their own with simplicity. The information can be summed up in a few key points through using this software and is an engaging approach that both the user and audience find rewarding.

Electronic learning is also a well developed collection of learning tools available on many websites which educate users learning through the computer from many different topics which are well categorized and easy to use

Electronic banking is also a useful service provided from banks that allow users to go online banking to handle or transfer money or even just to check the account balance with effective online security for a customers peace of mind. Electronic banking is very basic and step by step procedures on how to handle money allows many different users to make use of the service.

Web 2.0

My definition:

Web 2.0 is a very flexible and versatile collection of internet applications and programs that allows users to have a voice and space in the massive web. Web 1.0 has less users because the information shared on the web are contributed from user generators which at that time is very low compared to users who access the published content which makes it a more "read-only web". Web 2.0 on the other hand consists of almost double of users generating their own information and data and sharing with other users making the web bigger and open intelligence therefore referred as the "read-write web". Web 2.0 seems to be an evolution from web 1.0 which now the services and applications can be well refined into 3 key types, interpersonal interaction, web services and software as a service.

Interpersonal interaction examples:

-Flickr
-Blogger
-Facebook
-Youtube
-Wikipeadia

Web services examples:

-White pages
-Whereis
-Google earth

software as a service examples:

-Google Docs
-Zoho
-Joice

Interpersonal interaction allows users to share media and data between users, they are also able to create their own site about themselves such as blogger where they can share their blogs. A large community of friends can be accessed through sites such as myspace and facebook where users can share photos and chat with other users on the other side of the web network. This is one of the highlights of the boom in web 2.0 where majority of web users will refer to these sites in many different ways.

Web services are applications that communicate with each other to access different data, for example whereis is a site that allows users to navigate to a given address but to have a more detailed visual of the destination users are also able to see the satelite images provided by google earth of the destination. Therefore the applications on the web users use sometimes accesses data from applications to enhance their data for the users.

Software service examples involve users interacting with the web applications for certain information such as the site Joice which users can have a virtual desktop containing their information anywhere just with having an internet connection their media can be shared easily.

Web 2.0 has definately given web users larger boundaries for almost any information and media with the versitle 2.0 sites.

Toast!

The following is a flowchart created to teach users step by step on how to use a toaster and make toast. The Instructions are as follows:

• Place the toaster on a hard, flat and stable surface
• Connect the toaster to the powerpoint
• Choose brown or white bread
• Put the two slices of bread in the toaster slots
• Choose light, medium or dark toast
• Change the dial accordingly
• Press down the lever and wait for the toaster to pop the toast out
• Let the toast cool down so it can be handled
• Remove toast from the toaster and choose the spread

All this information can be arranged to a chart which will allow the user to make more sense of the instructions.