Usability - short exercise to establish usabilty of amazon wishlist function

Usability

Wishlist on Amazon

What is it?
A wishlist is a personalised list of items that you would like to own from the amazon.co.uk websitr, you can send this list to friends, family, colleagues etc who can look at it and maybe (but unlikely) buy something for you from it.

Interface itself is to allow browsing for specific items you desire add them to a list and enable sending that list to other people

Points about the website:

Amazon in general -

Interface is more geared towards advertising and selling thana clean user experience, if it was designed with purely the user in mind it could be designed in a 'google' way, wheer you simply search for what you want with out all the other info you get. There could be a seperate page for 'window shopping'

From a design point of view there is a lack of structure to the site.

Pages go on for ever - long scroll size

site is not consistent - buttons, layout constantly changes


wishlist in particular -

still based on advertsing and selling - not a clear search function - no clear instructions

search function is the most important aspect of wishlist - no mention of it in the instructions and there is no searchlist dedicated to the wishlist

- instructions also are not clear - once you click on an item - instructions go away - all the buttons changes - so the instructions don't even work.

the page layout changes when going from the wishlist index - completely new - could be very

in terms of how the wish list works it is quite clear - tick box - add to wishlist... but how do ifind the items that i want? - BUT this relies on you not using search - surely you would

There is so many ways of 'adding to a wishlist' - really not consistent

you have to be a registered user to use the wishlist - but these instructions are quite clear - i.e. no selling involved. and sends you back to the original page you were on.

to get clear instructions you have to got to 'help function' - but you will have to get very lost to do this

bad thing is that you can't logout easily - you have to work out that "if you are not.... click here" means log out - this is very different to the generic command of "log out" often in top right-hand corner - not centre of page

customers you for this also shopped for... really annoying anyway - but especially annoying on the wishlist function - surely the concept of it suggests you know what you want

so many steps required to actually make a wishlist - this surely could be made


Recommendations

After search - the add to wishlist button should always be available - and always be consistent - dedicated search function for wish list

When you search for a book you should be presented with just that result not a whole load of other 'recommendations'

The layout of the product page should be consistent



Order of Presentation

Homepage
So first after typing amazon.co.uk or searching for amazon we arrive at the homepage - so where is this wishlist function i've heard about?

Wishlist - main index page
After finding the wishlist button I am transported to this page - I see a list of random items, what i assume are best sellers or new releases and some instructions

Search results page
After locating a search function i search for one the titles i wish to add to my... wish list

Product page
so i've worked out which is the product i want - i click on that item - i'm presented with this page

sign in / register
ok so i've added this product to a wish list... now i have to sign in...

Wishlist page..

ok so now i've signed or registered and i'm being presented with a page of around 40 products... i thought i only added a book?! is this my wish list?

ok so heres my wishlist, what do i do now?

Locative Media - Background Research

We have been given or first group assignment - Locative Media - Interaction in 'real Space'. The following our some notes and extracts which will hopefully help me to conceptualise an idea.

A definition:

Locative media' denotes in artistic and cultural practice that which has become a nominator for site-specific, context-aware, and often participatory platforms exploring the possibilities of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies. Context is crucial in that locative media pertains to the point of spatio-temporal ‘capture’, 'dissemination', or some point in between [1]. Locative media, as a hybrid and still emerging media culture and research field, includes a rich spectrum of activities: collaborative mapping, open technology experimentation, tactical/surveillance critique, urban gameplay and subjective storytelling.

A good resource: http://del.icio.us/alcetkovic/locative-media

Good research paper on locative media: http://www.spatialturn.de/Abstracts/Bastajian_Strauven.pdf

What locative media can do: Considering geographical space to be a canvas that allows
the inscription of personal narratives, desires, and memories,
offers a powerful instrument for communities to (co-)author
their environment and to collectively organize and share
such subjective experiences.

The term “locative media”1 refers to every information about the
physical location as well as other contextual cues. The most
commonly used context of mobile systems is the location of the user
since it is easy to determine and it could be meaningful to use it in
order to adapt the behavior of a mobile application. Academics (Schmidt
et al., 1998) proposes a wider definition of location awareness. They
structure the concept of context by defining a hierarchically
organized model in which they distinguish two categories according to
the level of abstraction : physical environment and human factors. At
the lowest level, the physical environment refers to all the physical
variables like location (absolute or relative) as well as conditions (e.g.
light, temperature) or infrastructure (surrounding resources for
communication, computation, task performance). At the higher level,
human factor related context is structured into : information about
the user (emotional state, knowledge of habits, ...), the user’s social
environment (co-location of others, social interaction, group
dynamics,...) and the user’s tasks (spontaneous activity, engaged
tasks, general goals, ...). In this paper, we will refer to the lowest level
of this model (the physical environment) by the concept of location
awareness.

I think for this project it is important to focus on the secondary aspects of interactivity such as with the suers social environment or the users tasks.

I also think it's important to think of the concept of linearity or at least circular linearity

Idea1!: A series of audio clips that challenges the listener to do something out of the ordinary, there may be ten to a tape, this could possibly be like done in a one a day format. Examples may be: speak to a stranger, learn something about the room you are in

week1 - first few days

so... fiest few days, first three lectures. been very interesting so far. I discovered i love rhetoric.

Really i have been interested in differerences... what interaction is and how it differs from communication. difference between territory and a map.

What is a name?

Perception