The fist day started off well, there was some very interesting people in the class.
The fist activity that Corrine set us was both in teams and individually to go to the toilet. while this sounds un-remarkable and relatively simple she complicated matters by setting restrictions. mine was to only use one hand. this i thought would be relatively simple. At first it was doors can be opened one handed as can many other objects. the real problem come when trying to undue and do up my trousers. On top of this I realised that you need two hands to work the soap dispenser. the point that Corrine was trying to make is two-fold. without actually experiencing the event or product ourselves it is hard to know what the problems we will need to over come will be. Secondly in all design briefs there will be restrictions set on us by the customer (user) that we will need to over come. i very much enjoyed writing on the tables. i really need to get one for my self though i suspect it would just end up with cartoons and no work drawn on it.
The second part was using Corrine’s Activity series model to asses a shop in my case that was Argos.
This i thought would be relatively simple. Argos even gives you a very clear line of events which i have written below
1.pick
2.pay
3.wait
4.collect
i selected pay. i observed the ranged emotions. people where looking worried (could they afford it), bored (well the music being piped in was so dull) or chatting with a friend. all quite straight forward. then i encountered a problem there was actually two ways to pay by till or by self service. the emotions on the self service differed a lot from the standard customer service operated system. People looked confused or where in a huge hurry. then i noticed on top of this you could also buy things of a shelf in the que which totally negated the whole events time line.
think over this i think it is a good example of Argos responding and changing to meet the user. the impulse buys (they actually labeled it this) was in some way an attempt to relieve the bordem of the wait (and make more money), while the self-service was to cut down the ques.
i have to say be actually observing and going through the motions i learnt a lot more than I f I and simply sat and discussed it.
Finally Corrine’s comment that there can be no service with out i product is probably correct but i am going to find the exception for the rule.
Conchango: 
Elmwood: 
