Interaction Design 9-12-2012 Overview of Interaction Design - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Interaction Design 9-12-2012

 Overview of Interaction Design

Understanding the Problem Space

• Conceptualizing the Design Space

HW#2 posted, due Wednesday 9/19 Activity#3 due Monday, 9/24/12

 Select your presentation topic

PR#1 posted, due Monday, 10/08

• 1. Identifying needs and establishing

requirements for the user experience

• 2. Developing alternative designs to meet

these

• 3. Building interactive prototypes that can be

communicated and assessed

• 4. Evaluating what is being built throughout

the process and the user experience it

• ffers

 Different categories of user:

 those who interact directly with the product  those who manage direct users  those who make the purchasing decision  those who use competitor’s products

 Users have different capabilities

 size of hands may affect the size and positioning of

input buttons

 motor abilities may affect the suitability of certain

input and output devices

 height if designing a physical kiosk  strength - a child’s toy may require little strength to

• perate, but greater strength to change batteries

 disabilities(e.g. sight, hearing, dexterity)

What are ‘needs’?

 Users rarely know what is possible  Users can’t tell you what they ‘need’ to help them achieve their goals  Instead, look at existing tasks:

 their context  what information do they require?  who collaborates to achieve the task?  why is the task achieved the way it is?

 Envisioned tasks:

 can be rooted in existing behavior  can be described as future scenarios

 People stick to what they know works  But considering alternatives is important to ‘break out of the box’  Designers are trained to consider alternatives, software people generally are not  How do you generate alternatives?

 ‘Flair and creativity’: research and synthesis  Seek inspiration: look at similar products or look

at very different products

 Evaluation with users and with peers, e.g. prototypes  Technical feasibility: some not possible  Quality thresholds: Usability goals lead to usability criteria set early on and check regularly

 safety: how safe?  utility: which functions are superfluous?  effectiveness: appropriate support? task

coverage, information available

 efficiency: performance measurements

 What do you want to create?  What are your assumptions?  What are your claims?  Will it achieve what you hope it will? If so, how?

 Users most of the time are different from developers  Users most of the time are different from their managers  Ensure understanding of users’ needs and goals by involving users in development process  Users are experts at being themselves

 Makes users aware of expectations  Ensure technology is not misrepresented  Less likely users will be disappointed by technology  Helps users understand why technology is the way it is  Sense of ownership  Buy-in

 Are there problems with an existing product

• r user experience?

 Why do you think there are problems?  How do you think your proposed design ideas might overcome these?  When designing for a new user experience how will the proposed design extend or change current ways of doing things?

 What do you think were the main assumptions made by developers of online photo sharing and management applications, like Flickr?

 Assumptions

Able to capitalize on the hugely successful

phenomenon of blogging

Just as people like to blog so will they want to

share with the rest of the world their photo collections and get comments back

People like to share their photos with the rest

• f the world

 A claim

From Flickr’s website (2005): “is almost

certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world”

 Having a good understanding of the problem space can help inform the design space

e.g., what kind of interface, behavior,

functionality to provide

 But before deciding upon these it is important to develop a conceptual model

 “The most important thing to design is the user’s conceptual model. Everything else should be subordinated to making that model clear, obvious, and

• substantial. That is almost exactly the
• pposite of how most software is

designed” – David Liddle, 1996, p. 17  envision the proposed product based on users’ needs and identified requirements (iterative testing with users)

 Need to first think about how the system will appear to users (i.e. how they will understand it)  A conceptual model is: “a high-level description of how a system is

• rganized and operates.” (Johnson and

Henderson, 2002, p. 26)

 Not a description of the user interface but a structure outlining the concepts and the relationships between them  Why not start with the nuts and bolts of design?

 Architects and interior designers would not

think about which color curtains to have before deciding where the windows will be placed in a new building

 Enables “designers to straighten out their

thinking before they start laying out their widgets” (p. 28)

 Orient themselves towards asking questions about how the conceptual model will be understood by users  Not to become narrowly focused early on  Establish a set of common terms they all understand and agree upon  Reduce the chance of misunderstandings and confusion arising later on

 Once a set of possible ways of interacting with the system or device has been identified, design of a conceptual model needs to be thought through with concrete solutions: behavior of the interface, interaction styles, look & feel, etc.  Another way of designing a conceptual model is to select an interface metaphor.  What is a metaphor?

Cooper  implementation-centric interface – based

• n understanding how things work

 metaphoric interface – based on intuiting how things work  idiomatic interface – based on learning how to accomplish things Axiom: “All idioms must be learned; good idioms need to be learned only once.”

 Major metaphors and analogies that are used to convey how to understand what a product is for and how to use it for an activity.  Concepts that users are exposed to through the product  The relationships between the concepts

 e.g., one object contains another

 The mappings between the concepts and the user experience the product is designed to support

 Designed to be similar to a physical entity but also has own properties

 e.g. desktop metaphor, search engine

 Exploit user’s familiar knowledge, helping them to understand ‘the unfamiliar’  Conjures up the essence of the unfamiliar activity, enabling users to leverage of this to understand more aspects of the unfamiliar functionality  People find it easier to learn and talk about what they are doing at the computer interface in terms familiar to them