Should we use a User-Centered Design approach for online education tools?
UCD in Online Education ToolsDownload
Creating technologies can be difficult and challenging, especially when their goal is to be useful and serve people’s needs. Almost everything nowadays, go online, from shopping to learning, and the creation of useful online technologies seems more crucial than ever. One of the ways to design and build technologies is to adopt a User-Centered Design approach. The term User-Centered Design (UCD) became popular after the publication of User-Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction by Norman and Draper in 1986.
What is UCD exactly?
Abras, Maloney-Krichmar and Preece (2004) simply define UCD as “a broad term to describe design processes in which end-users influence how a design takes shape” (p. 1). UCD has as its main goal the end product or service to provide the best experience to the user. To succeed that, the fundamental concept is to involve users to all the stages of the design process...
Social Media and Motherhood - What does it mean to new Greek mothers to be members of online mother communities?
In today’s digital age, social media have become a central part in the way people communicate and interact, on such a scale, that gradually online communities are formulated when users share same characteristics or interests. One online community that has been created is the mother online community.
To date, research has been done on the reasons and the meanings of mothers being a member in relevant to motherhood online groups worldwide. However, far too little attention has been paid to what does it mean to new Greek mothers particularly to be members of online mother communities. Thus, this paper aims to gain a deeper understanding of Greek mothers’ needs and motivations.
I argue that for a Greek mother being a member of online communities relevant to motherhood, it satisfies needs such as social support, extent their sociality by creating friendships, construct the mother...
A first recap!
The first period of our master is almost done. Time can fly. During this period, we had to follow two courses, Transformations in Digital Cultures and Real Virtualities. The first course provided an introduction to the digital world, such as digital cultures, digital sociology, social media and user practices, using Digital Ethnography and Qualitative Interviewing as research methods. The second focused on the changing relationship between the “real” and the “virtual”, by introducing us to phenomenology as a philosophical study and research approach.
Both courses had fascinating, qualitative research methods, but the one I enjoyed most was the qualitative interview and its analysis. It is always amazing to talk to people and try to get into their lives and thought as a way to contribute to something bigger. I found myself enjoying Transformations in Digital Cultures, and more specifically the fact that offered a holistic view about what is social in digital media and the variety of forms...
