Pleasure in account creation.

Despite my background as an artist and graphic designer sometimes I forget about the importance of the pleasurable aspects of the user experience. I feel like the biggest hurdle is to make the interaction "suck less" to be easier and more intuitive, providing sign posts and cues. Obviously I know there is more to the experience than just that, there is what if FEELS like to use it. Part of that feeling could be pleasure. Not just seamless, not frustrating, but actually pleasurable.*

But recently I was reminded of the importance of this, while signing up for grooveshark. The sign up processes for a new site or service is something we are faced with everyday. It can be simple, and just work, fading into the background. It can also be annoying, frustrating, or just not as smooth as it should be. But it can also be a joy, a pleasure.

In this case signing up for grooveshark was easy and a pleasant little blip in my day. They nailed making the process smooth, not feel too invasive or too lengthy. To top it off I was amused and pleased by it. I was left feeling respected and like grooveshark was FUN to use, before I even used it for the first time.

Uploaded with Skitch!

* This is probably because getting past frustrating, difficult can be such a slog. Getting the changes made to make it not harder than it has to be has to be first step for me.... just not the last!

early thoughts on self-reporting

I am part way through my first 24 hours doing some self-reporting of my stress levels for a class project. We are planing to design a personal informatics tool to help you track and visualize stress levels along with geomapping. The goal being understanding how/where/what might trigger stress and also the things which help reduce it.

Stage 1 - track data anyway you can.

using google latitude on my phone for location and self-reporting for stress.

I note a time, where I am/doing, and give my stress a number on a 10 point scale.

Self-reporting at times you choose leaves lots of room for self-selecting bias. When I notice I am stressed I grab my notebook, but not the times I am stressed and actively DOING something, but only later as I am seething and free. So far I am seeing mostly downsides to this particular measure, so much of the data which might be useful is just missing. Though I think there is something interesting about my own perception of the stress (ei using my own report of the level versus a physiological reading).

hopefully more thoughts and cool updates on our project to come!