When UX Fails: The Multiply Case

Last year, when Multiply decided to leave the social world by closing down its social network platform, I wrote an article outlining what I observed about Multiply. I was actually a casual user, and since I began with UX it’s one of my favorite destinations for observing Indonesian Web 2.0 users.

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[Guest Post] UX: Perkenalan

Editor’s Note: Ini merupakan bagian seri tulisan tentang User Experience (UX) yang merupakan suatu bagian penting pengenalan suatu produk ke pengguna. Berikut dijelaskan apa itu UX dan pentingnya penerapan UX dalam suatu prototipe, produk ataupun aplikasi.

UX (User Experience) adalah sebuah bidang baru yang berangkat dari hubungan manusia dengan teknologi. Awalnya, hubungan antara manusia dan komputer dipelajari melalui bidang HCI (Human Computer Interaction). Ahli HCI mempelajari kemampuan komputer (pada umumnya: produk teknologi) dalam berinteraksi dengan manusia, sedangkan unsur kemampuan manusia dipelajari oleh para ahli bidang Psikologi Kognitif, maupun para ahli bidang Human Factors, yang berangkat dari bidang Teknik Industri.

Bidang-bidang ini bercampur menjadi suatu bidang baru bernama Interaction Design (IxD), di mana interaksi antara manusia dan teknologi didefinisikan dalam desain sebelum diimplementasikan. Ilmu desain inilah yang menekankan pentingnya suatu sistem diujicobakan terlebih dahulu dengan calon pengguna mulai dari bentuk yang sederhana (low fidelity prototype). Hasil interaksi para calon pengguna dengan prototipe inilah yang dijadikan masukan untuk mengembangkan sistem lebih lanjut sampai ke bentuk jadi (working prototype). Proses evaluasi dengan calon pengguna ini bisa berkali-kali (iteratif), sampai diperoleh desain yang paling cocok untuk pengguna.

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[Guest Post] UX: Introduction

Editor’s Note: This is part of series about User Experience (UX) which is essential part of product introduction to its user. Here the writer tries to explain what is UX all about and the importance of UX for a prototype, product or application.

UX (User Experience) is a new field that emerged from the relationship between human and technology. In the beginning, this relationship was studied under the name HCI (Human Computer Interaction). HCI experts study the ability of computers (general: technology products) in interacting with human, while the human ability is studied by Cognitive Psychology experts, also Human Factors experts coming from Industrial Engineering field.

These fields of knowledge combine into a new field called Interaction Design (IxD), where interaction between human and technology is defined in a design before the product is implemented. The Design knowledge emphasizes the importance of a system to be tested with expected users from its simple form (low fidelity prototype). The result of interaction between test-users and the prototype is taken into account for the purpose of developing the system further up to the final form (working prototype). The evaluation process with expected users can be performed several times (iterative) until an appropriate design is decided.

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