City by William Whyte

1. The author's key points in this chapter is that there are guidelines to design of spaces. For example, A good space should fulfill the customer's demands. Supply creates demands. The best used places should have women because women sensitive to annoyance. People tend to sit where there are places to sit. Sitting guidelines are needed for height, distance, length, and space. Chairs have mobility. It gives people the sense of choice and freedom to move it around. The amount of seating in the plaza is also very important.

2. Urban space designs and consumer product designs are all people centered. Both designs have to focused on people and how the people interact with the space and product. The difference is that urban space designs focus more on attracting people to certain areas.

3. Analyzing the public space:

• Is there are lot of women?
• Location
• is the place bigger than 3 blocks?
• Is there a sense of enclosure?
• Amount of seating?
• Are the seating heights 17-18 inches?
• Plazas are sunken? (no more than 3 feet)
• Are there benches? (length requirement)
• Are there movable chairs?
  

Downtown Kalamazoo

1. Downtown Kalamazoo is very outdated. The atmosphere is very quiet and clean. The road have brick pavers. The street looks shabby and the roads are narrow. Past the Radisson hotel the design is different. There are no road traffic and no roads for cars. The gallery benches arranged in square surrounded by trees. The benches are facing the restaurants. I like the location of Downtown Kalamazoo, it is in the safe central area. However, I dislike the lack of varieties in the store. The stores are marketed to middle class age people.

Some appealing stores I found are climb kzoo, and gift shop. Some unappealing stores I found are uninviting Botiques, and resturants. I dislike the strong mismatch of retailors. The library, church, Radisson Hotel, banks, theatre and museums attract people to the area.

Stores around the area are galleries, tailoring, retail, coffee, optical, and unappealing vacancy. There is a Burnharm and Flower Financial building that has a glass wall that reflects all the stores across from it, it is a attraction. Also the route brings people to the kalamazoo airport.

2.

• Since there are so many vacancy, government should loan stores to open more retail stores for the college students. Book stores, popular retail clothing store, and cafes should be built in the kalamazoo mall because there are the Kalamazoo college and WMU students.
• Put more signs in Burdicks Street. I had to ask a woman where Bucdicks street was, when I was on the street already. There are not enough street signs.
• Do not place restaurants next to clothing stores. I saw many restaurants and clothing located next to each other.

3. "Clothing stores, for example, should never be located next to restaurants. For some reason, the smell of food hurts clothing sales."-Robert Gibbs

It relates because Kalamazoo Downtown have restaurants and retail stores mix together. They should separate the stores and restaurants, it is one of the basic rules.

What Main St. Can Learn From the Mall by Steven Lagerfeld

1. Criteria to evaluate Main St.

• location of benches: too many loiters and attractive teenagers sitting on the benches will scare off shoppers.
  
• location of stores: Are the restaurants next to the retail stores?
• color of trash cans and newspaper.
• are shop windows and signs visible?
• Any distractions such as Victorian street lamps, the expensive trash cans, and granite paving stones.
• The texture of the side walk. Will they be too hard to clean?
• Are there enough securities to make the shoppers feel safe.
  
• Are the sidewalks grimy?
• Is there a left turn rule?
• Is Main st. a vital city street?
• Does Main St. have variety of stores?

2. I do not think Main Street should be a mall because strip shopping centers, suburban market, big box retailers and power centers are dominating malls. It just proves that the idea of a small town shopping center works. People want change, something that malls cannot offer because their stores all the same chain stores. Besides that, people enjoy a nice walk while shopping for merchandise. However, Main St. should follow the trends and designs that malls used to turn small downtown into a shopping machine.

3. Checklist

1. left turn rule
2. location of benches, trees, and trash cans placed in the right places
3. does the town have at least 200000 sq ft of retail space.
4. main-main intersection
5. impression of parking lot

I find the left turn rule and the first impression of parking lot most important.

Retail Analysis

1. I observed a store called Gazelle Sports located in Downtown. They market to young adults interested in brands and middle aged people who play sports.

2.
a. The store entrance is very plain, it had a few banners with name of the store and some clothes hanging outside the glass window.

b. Gazelle Sports play old type of music. Their music is not loud.

c. The merchandises are displayed in hangers, separated by brands.

d. The floors are carpeted in dark gray colors.

e. They have yellow signs of brands of clothing (Nike, North Face, Adidas).

f. In the cashier area, there is a huge yellow sign with quotes about shopping in Gazelle right on top of the counter.

3. The image the business is trying to sports can be fashionable. Their sporting clothes have different colors and styles that you cannot find in another store.

4. Customers found the various elements of the store's design intriguing. People there are very interested in the clothing and the bright signs that label what brand they are.

5. I find interesting that the colors of all the signs are green, and yellow. They try to promote nature and how by playing sports, you will be outside enjoying nature. Also, Gazelle placed all their men clothing in the right because of the invariant right principle. Gazelle did not want to confuse the male customers when the first thing they see is women clothing. The fitting room was located all the way in the back of the left corner. It took a lot of thing to look for it, therefore it manipulates customers to shop around their store longer. All the sports items are located in the back as well.

The Science of Shopping

1. Key points in this article are manipulation from retail stores by main techniques like invariant right, men and women's differences, typing, and butt brush theory. Stores learn to put important things in the right because people always look right when they enter stores. Retailers also understand that men and women are very different creatures when it comes to shopping. For example, women shop longer or have more patience than men. With this knowledge, men's clothing are always in front so they don't get confused with the wrong sex clothing. Another way stores get people to purchase items are the using the Typing method. Typing is a market research based on questionaires that predict the kind of products people buy. Typing is highly accurate. Stores also design enough space in aisle for women's product because according to the butt brush theory, women are very sensitive back there.

2. I feel I am very influenced by the store's design because I would not walk into a store if the outside if the store looks bad. I judge the store just from looking at the store's design. I am very influenced by store design because I always find myself buying items I don't really need but I end up buying it because of the marketing techniques that used on me.

3. List to analyze retail store
Decompression Zone
Butt Brush Theory
Men and Women's sales location
Right and Left Invariant
Location of the store (not near banks)
Downshift factor
The ratio of products brought for every customer
Image or the message

Isn't it Iconic? by Stacy King Gordon

1. Packaging is important when consumers buy products depending on their packaging design. When I chose to buy a bottle of shampoo, I was debating between two types of organic shampoos. A brand call Organix had an oval shaped with nice text and colors. The other brand called Giovanni had a slim rectangular shape made of clear plastic material. I decided to choose Organix because the packaging design was more appealing.

2. Animal crackers, Poland Spring, Tropicana Orange Juice, Capri Sun, Kool Aid, and McDonalds Happy Meal are examples of iconic packaging.

3. A usability issue is the durability of the product and the behavioral aspect of the packaging design. An example of good packaging from a usability perspective is the Coca Cola plastic bottle. These bottles can be recapped after opening to drink later. An example of a bad packaging is the Coca Cola cans because once you open it, you have to drink it all at once.

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design By Vincent Flanders

1. The reading relate to the concept of user-focused design that we have discussed in class because every important points Vincent Flanders involves the needs of the website viewers. For instance, Vincent explains that "Nobody cares about you and you web site", people only visit the website because they need information, need to make a donation, need entertainment and need too be part of the community. The concept of user-focused design often lead to bad web site designs or what the author call it, websites that suck. There are too many website designers that misuse flash, graphics, and JavaScript. People put unnecessary applications that make the readers confused and lost. The idea of concept of user focused design is very much similar to Norman's everyday things because the major point is that designers are too focused on themselves and not focused on the common people's needs.

2. There are many points in the article that I found important. For example, the less than four second rule states that it should only take the reader 4 seconds to figure you whole web site layout and how to use it. If they are still trying to figure it out after 4 seconds, then your web site is failure. Another point is having good navigation on the site. Navigation should be simple and easy to be seen and used on the web page. There should not be broken links or no links back to the homepage. The point I felt most important was whether or not the site has heroin content. As Flanders explained, if the site has addicting contents, it does not matter how bad the design is because people will see visit the site.

3. My list of design factors for a webpage would be Content, Visual Attractiveness, and Organization. The website's content serves the whole purpose of the site. It is ham in the hamburger. If the content is not good enough, everything else fails. The visual design or visceral should be important because the first thing that comes to the reader's mind when they enter the site is whether the site looks nice. Finally, the web page should be organized. The navigation keys should be easy to find and easy to access. The site's text can be readed and the background is not too flashy. An organized site allows the reader to figure out how to use the site within 4 seconds.