Assignment 5 — Final Project proposal

Stefano Lentini

Interface Design
Prof Sandra Villarreal
Final project Proposal

Sony Ericsson W350i Interface redesign

For my final project I would like to redesign the interface for the Sony Ericsson W350i mobile phone model I have previously tested and analyzed for both the user-scenario creation, the usability test and the paper prototyping activity. I feel that the opportunity to redesign the phone's interface correcting the flaws highlighted from these tests, would be the natural follow-up and a proper final conclusion for my device's analysis. 

According to both the usability test and the lo-fi prototyping experience activity this phone showed to have both ergonomics and visual weaknesses. While I won't be able to redesign the actual physical imperfections because beyond my field of expertise, I would like to focus my attention on the interface itself which I believe it could be effectively improved and refined by taking into consideration the observations gathered from the prior mentioned tests.

The entire system seemed to lack a sensible mapping of buttons, resulting in confusing and frustrating first time users interacting with the phone. The device presented also a difficult navigation hard to read and slowed down by too many steps and amount of options for each menu to choose, which in most cases are not needed or used at all by the user. Removing useless information and options cluttering menus, improving device's icon system design, rethinking and implementing the visual organization of the elements and the font size on the screen as well as redesigning the placement of buttons and other interface components in a more intuitive location are parts of the redesign project which I believe would increasingly improve device's functionality and give back to it a more natural and intuitive usability