CMPT 363 - Midterm

• Effective, efficient, safe, and easy to use/learn are usability goals
• To design something we must follow a process, solve a problem, be creative, be informed, be respectful, be responsible
• Engineering aims to make an envisionable outcome possible, is concerned with what can be done, and relies on well-established formulas
• Design aims to envision new possibilities, determines what outcomes should result, relies on process over formulas, and uses humans as central actors
• Design concerns the creation of something useful and usable while art does not bother with these concerns
• Interaction design create interactive products that are easy to use and understand
• Core activities involve analyzing user needs and requirements, developing or redesigning solutions, building interactive prototypes, and evaluation prototypes
• When designing we need to take into account the users, type of activities being done, and where interactions are taking place
• We need to optimize the interaction users have with products to match activities and needs
• Understanding user needs involves taking into account what people are good and bad at, and what might help people in the way they do things currently
• Design principles help generalize abstractions for designs, teaches dos and don'ts of interaction design, and provides a mix of theory and common sense for design
• Design heuristics are rule of thumbs for design which come from psychology and other domains
• Design heuristics can be used to do quick evaluations of prototypes to help find issues to fix
• To perform a heuristic evaluation (discount usability), ask usability experts to find problems against a set of design heuristics
• Nielsen suggests optimal amount of evaluators is 4-5 people
• Heuristic evaluation involves systematic inspection of system, multiple evaluators, going through interface several times, and supplying evaluators with scenarios of user tasks
• Classic design heuristics involve visibility of system status, match between system and real world, user control and freedom, consistency and standards, recognition rather than recall, error prevention, flexibility and efficiency, aesthetic and minimalist, helping users with errors, and help and documentation
• Visibility of system status involves keeping users informed and providing appropriate feedback
• Match between system and the real world involves terminology in user language, language from user perspective, common words rather than jargon, and error messages and feedback
• User control and freedom involves easy to abort, easy to undo, and easy to make changes
• Consistency and standards involve same commands always having same effect, locations for information, and following standards
• Internal consistency is consistency within a product or family of products which promotes simplicity to learn and use
• Internal consistency can be difficult to achieve with complex interfaces
• External consistency is designing operations and interfaces to be the same across applications and devices
• Recognition rather than recall involves making things visible to users so they do not need to rely on memory
• Short term memory = 7 +- 2 items (30sec to 2 mins)
• Error prevention involves constraints, auto fill in, confirmation, and avoiding modes
• Flexibility and efficiency of use involves having shortcuts, jumping directly to desired location, reusing previous information, and good default values
• Aesthetic and minimalist design involves good graphic design and color choice
• Color blindness is important to consider as 8% of males are affected. Don't rely on colors for improving readability or to design affordances in interface.
• Minimalist design involves identifying what is really needed, using concise language, and avoiding extraneous pictures and information
• Helping users recognize, diagnose, and recovering from errors involve helping users when they are confused, help users learn more about the system, using clear language, and constructively helping users solve problems
• Help and documentation notes that most people don't read documentation, iterative design of documentation are needed, and good quality writing
• Affordances are designing an object to have attributes that allow people to know how it is used
• Interfaces are virtual and don't have affordances like physical objects
• Interfaces are better conceptualized as perceived affordances
• Analytical evaluation is done through evaluation done with experts instead of end users which helps uncover key design issues before usability tests
• Types of analytical evaluation involve heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, and Fitts' law analysis
• Most popular method used in industry today to improve design is usability testing
• Usability testing helps identify how good a user interface is and gives a clear indication of how real users may act