Week 3 @ KSU's UXD Program

This week I discovered a lot of interesting facts that I had either not known or was completely wrong on. The new interesting facts were around memory and how fleeting it is with people, especially while multi-tasking which seems to be the norm in today's corporate environment. To sum up my biggest take aways on memory they are (1) working memory is scarce and should not be heavily used by the user if you want to create a positive experience, also (2) long term memory is much more fluid and associative as opposed to static and structured than I had realized. The long term memory test in the reading that switched town with city was eye opening for me because I thought for sure I had gotten that right. It was a clear example of how I associate a large populated civilization with "city" and "town" which makes them interchangeable in my memory.

I was completely wrong on videos and modals, I thought they were great, especially for tutorials before listening to the presentation. It now seems so obvious, you must put the user in the context of what they are learning and being interactive is such a huge part of that. In the past, I have learned coding in CodeAcademy and thought how fun it was.... and somewhat addicting. Now I know it's because it uses gamification to use people's natural competitiveness and interactive tutorials to make learning something difficult, completely enjoyable.