Chapter 1

• Need to take into account:

  • Who the users are
  • What activities are being carried out
  • Where the interaction is taking place
• So that they match the users’ activities and needs

  Need to optimize the interactions users have with a product
• • Need to take into account what people are good and bad at
  • Consider what might help people in the way they currently do things
  • Think through what might provide quality user experiences
  • Listen to what people want and get them involved Use tried and tested user-centered methods

  Understanding Users Needs
• • Designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives (Sharp, Rogers and Preece (2007))
  • The design of spaces for human communication and interaction (Winograd (1997)) 


  Interaction Design
• • Develop usable products
  • Usability means easy to learn, effective to use and provide an enjoyable experience
  • Involve users in the design process


  Goals of interaction Design
• • Number of other terms used emphasizing what is being designed, e.g.,
  • Interaction design is the umbrella term covering all of these aspects


  Which kind of design
• Academic disciplines contributing to ID:

  • Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Computing Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Ergonomics
  • Informatics
• Design practices contributing to ID:

  • Graphic design
  • Product design
  • Artist-design
  • Industrial design
  • Film industry
• Interdisciplinary fields that ‘do’ interaction design:

  • HCI
  • Human Factors
  • Cognitive Engineering
  • Cognitive Ergonomics
  • Computer Supported Co-operative Work
  • Information Systems
• • Many people from different backgrounds involved
  • Different perspectives and ways of seeing and talking about things

  Working in Multidisciplinary teams
• Increasing number of ID consultancies, examples of well known ones include:

  • Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter the age of the consumer, designing human-centered products and services”
  • Cooper: ”From research and product to goal-related design”
  • Swim: “provides a wide range of design services, in each case targeted to address the product development needs at hand”
  • IDEO: “creates products, services and environments for companies pioneering new ways to provide value to their customers”
• People involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product

  Interaction Designers
• people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles

  Usability Engineers
• people who develop and create the visual design of websites, such as layouts

  Web Designers
• people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products

  Information Architects
• people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products

  User Experience Designers (UX)
• • How a product behaves and is used by people in the real world.
  • The way people feel about it and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it, holding it, and opening or closing it.
  • “every product that is used by someone has a user experience: newspapers, ketchup bottles, reclining armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2003)

  The User Experience
• What is involved in the process of interaction design

  • Identifying needs and establishing requirements for the user experience
  • Developing alternative designs to meet these
  • Building interactive prototypes that can be communicated and assessed
  • Evaluating what is being built throughout the process and the user experience it offers
• Core characteristics of interaction design

  • Users should be involved through the development of the project
  • Specific usability and user experience goals need to be identified, clearly documented and agreed at the beginning of the project
  • Iteration is needed through the core activities
• Usability goals

  • Effective to use
  • Efficient to use
  • Safe to use
  • Have good utility
  • Easy to learn
  • Easy to remember how to use
• Design Principles

  • Generalizable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design
  • The do’s and don’ts of interaction design
  • What to provide and what not to provide at the interface
  • Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common-sense
• • Sending information back to the user about what has been done
  • Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these

  Feedback
• • Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
  • Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
  • Physical objects can be designed to constrain things

  Constraints
• • Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
  • Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use

  Consistency
• Increases learning burden on user, making them more prone to errors

  When Consistency Breaks Down
• Internal consistency refers to designing operations to behave the same within an application
• External consistency refers to designing operations, interfaces, etc., to be the same across applications and devices
• A case of external inconsistency

  Keypad Numbers
• • Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
  • Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday objects
  • Since has been much popularised in interaction design to discuss how to design interface objects

  Affordances: To give a clue
• Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical objects
• Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
• Usability Principles

  • Similar to design principles, except more prescriptive
  • Used mainly as the basis for evaluating systems
  • Provide a framework for heuristic evaluation
• Usability principles (Nielsen 2001)

  • Visibility of system status
  • Match between system and the real world
  • User control and freedom
  • Consistency and standards
  • Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
  • Error prevention
  • Recognition rather than recall
  • Flexibility and efficiency of use
  • Aesthetic and minimalist design
  • Help and documentation
• • Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives
  • It is concerned with how to create quality user experiences
  • It requires taking into account a number of interdependent factors, including context of use, type of activities, cultural differences, and user groups
  • It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disciplines and fields

  Key Points