Four Pleasure

Subject: Candy, 32, senior designer at a local advertising firm.

Candy has been working in this line for close to 10 years. Despite her good grades at the A' levels, she decided to attend design school instead of university; she thought university was a waste of her time, which she should spend pursuing her true interests.

She is confident both in character and in the work she does. Her creations are daring and avant-garde, well-liked by her company's clients. For that she is highly recognised by her superiors and that is reflected in her position and monthly salary.

Candy is currently single. She has had a few relationships in the past but believes it is not essential to her life. She is happy to be single, hangs out with her close friends for movie dates and afternoon tea breaks whenever possible, plus the occasional shopping sprees (not forgetting the weekly pedicure and body massage sessions). She cherishes the independence of her current lifestyle, and lavishes herself with expensive, flashy designer accessories from upmarket brands.

She attends hip hop dance lessons every week. She enjoys grooving to the beat, and appreciates the dance lesson to be a way of keeping her body, heart and mind young always; she believes this is very important for her work.

Candy lives alone in a rented condominium apartment. She loves the style and decor of her apartment, having spent quite abit of money to decorate the place with beautiful display accessories. She often visits her parents who lives in Kovan where she grew up. Her parents are proud of their independent and capable daughter who can achieve what the couldn't. Relatives and friends alike all admire her for her independence and her carefree, uptown lifestyle. Candy is proud of what she has achieved and of her successful-career-woman image. She believes that if she puts her mind to it, she can achieve much more.

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Physio-pleasure: Hip-hop dance classes which are physically demanding balances Candy's lack of physical exertion due to constraints of her work --> need
Pedicure and body massage sessions that rejuvenates her spirits --> appreciation and need

Socio-pleasure: Tea-sessions and movie dates with friends helps reinforce her relationship with her close friends, arising from a need to belong --> need
Being admired for her achievements and lifestyle, and all her expensive accessories --> appreciation

Psycho-pleasure: Candy enjoys her work tremendously. It is a creative outlet for her mind and it defines her importance in the society --> need
She likes to decorate her place and takes pride in it --> need and appreaciation

Ideo-pleasure: Being an independent woman in a male-dominated society is very important for Candy. She wants to prove her worth to everyone else --> need
She wants to achieve ever greater heights and be the envy of every man, woman and child in (at least) Singapore --> appreciation
She believes in her own brand of style and wants to be recognised for it through her choice of clothing, craftsmanship and brands --> need to portray envious image of herself

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Candy's phone is a personal tool to her, therefore it must portray her character and conform to her ideologies of beauty. Her handphone must be of a recognised brand, be avant-grade in its design, and reflect her status as an independent career woman (and therefore it must at least look expensive). In short, the phone must complement her urban tastes and sophisticated lifestyle.

Candy's work is very important to her, and she needs to communicate frequently with clients and source for information. Thus her handphone must possess relevant applications and technologies for this purpose (preferably 3G). As she is quite in love with herself, Candy's phone must have decent camera functions (to take pictures of herself and for her work).



Product closest to expectations: NTTDoCoMo handphone. Expensive. 3G enabled. Strong communications and camera functions. Sleek, stylish and advanced design. Hard colors and reflective surfaces confers upon it a masculine yet refined look, describing our independent yet cultured subject. Too bad its not available in Singapore.

Toys for pleasure

Who says toys are for kids? I, for one, am never sick of toys, nor do i feel too old to own some. Here are some toys that boys and men alike won't ever grow out of.

Before that, i should state the purpose of this entry: to find products that roughly fall under 3 attributes of emotion, namely visceral, behavioural and reflective attributes. My chosen category is toys, and i'll be using the Spawn, Gundam, Transformers series as examples.

SPAWN

Visceral: Stunning impact of artwork. Detailed crafting and colouring makes it an eye candy (to me at least). Sure-fire attention grabber.

Behavioural: Nothing much to it; it is meant to be used as a display. But it makes a good display for enthusiasts.
Reflective: portrays the self-image of the owner, reflects the owner's interests and character.

GUNDAM

Visceral: Beautiful designs that generally appeal to everyone.
Behavioural: Tremendous pleasure derived from construction of the model. Adjustable poses allows for many possibilities in usage (but mostly for display as well). Customizable look and feel of it creates different experiences everytime.
Reflective: Feel good factor derived upon completion of model (boosts confidence). Reflects certain qualities of owners (patience, eye for detail, etc).

TRANSFORMERS

Visceral: Not immediately liked by everyone. Looks like any other toy, but theres an enduring quality about it that won't fade away.
Behavioural: If you actually play with it (make it transform and stuff), you can still have a decent experience reliving the good old days when grades were the last thing on our minds.
Reflective: Vintage stuff man! Shows the owner's exquisite taste for truly valuable collectors' items.

Leaving my mark...

I was here..

我到此一游...

Griping in session

I'm supposed to find a badly designed product and here it is. No other product has made me so eager to bang my head against the screen of my laptop. As an undergraduate of the school of computing i've come across countless softwares that threaten to shorten life spans, but this product i'm about to gripe on really takes the cake.

I'm talking about Alias' Maya 6.5 (as if the version number really made a difference). This 3D software is well known in the field of computer graphics, and has been known to churn out some really fantastic (hollywood) stuff. Thus it scores high on delivering results. What really bothers users like me is the experience of mastering the software. Makes users feel like retards who can't tell keyboard from the mouse. Sure, new users look upon the product as the necessary choice where creating fabulous work is concerned. Most users would agree that Maya is a good tool for professional, quality-assured results. Show anyone completed works of Maya and it would be easy to draw praises and compliments. But what goes on behind the scenes is a horror story.



The user interface for Maya is highly intimidating for new users; one look will turn you to stone. Row after row of buttons and controls line the interface, half of which have names most beginners won't immediately understand (what the hell is IK?). Adding to that is the symbol for each button; totally unintuitive, and in any case its too damn small to even make out what it is. Even worse, for every button that you press, an options panel lined with (again) buttons, checkboxes, textboxes, and full of technical terms appear by the side, asking for inputs.

But the most frustrating aspect of Maya is not understanding the functions, for you can just ignore the irrelevant ones; you can die trying to adjust the view of the object under creation. Shift, alt, ctrl, left mouse, right mouse, middle mouse, mousewheel. Every damn finger is needed to control the interface. Press alt-left mouse to rotate view, alt-middle mouse to pan, shift-left mouse to select, .....Psycho-motor nightmare.

What users quickly learn from their first experiences with Maya is that the help section provided is very very important. Unfortunately, even with the help manuals repeated attempts of trial and error still has to be carried out before decent work begins to take shape. This all contributes to an extremely frustrating experience with the software. Head banging begins. If you are feeling extremely irritated reading up to this part of my post, its much worse dealing with Maya. Patience is the key. Most users would go through the same steep learning curve and infinite rounds of trial and error.

Naturally, this leads to the formation of a rather unfriendly impression of Maya to users. What Maya can deliver is truely awe-inspiring; what it takes to deliver is truely fear-inspiring. This product was not designed for the new and intermediate user in mind (as if experts were natural-born freaks). It goes for functionality without sufficient considerations for usability, and it leads to a really hellish experience trying to figure things out. Every new user would have to go through the same fiery trial of frustration and despair, and its not surprising how many aspiring 3D artists were turned off by this product. If any emotion can be evoked from the interaction, it can only border on pure bloody hatred for the designers of the software.

Where software tools are concerned, its very important to leave your users with a pleasant experience interacting with the software. A good experience handling the software gives the necessary confidence to scale greater heights, and it is this experience that separates the good softwares from the truly great softwares. Good softwares allow you to create fantastic work. Great softwares allow you to create fantastic work without biting your head off.