Interactive Design: Designing interactive products to support people in their everyday and working lives
The interactive design process:
Identifying needs and establishing requirements
Developing alternative designs that meet those requirements
Building interactive versions of the design that meet those requirements
Evaluating what is being built throughout the process
Professionals in Interactive Design
interaction designers - people involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product
usability engineers- people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles
web designers- people who develop and create the visual design of websites, such as layouts
information architects- people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products
user experience designers - people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products
Usability Goals vs User Experience (UX) Goals
Usability goals are concerned with meeting specific usability criteria (e.g. efficiency)
Primary Focus: Practical & Functional
Key Question: “Can the user do it?”
UX goals focus on the emotional and psychological aspects of the interaction
Primary Focus: Emotional & Psychological
Key Question: “How does the user feel?”
Usability Goals:
Effectiveness
Efficency
Safety
Utility
Learnability
Memorability
UX Goals:
Enjoyment
Fun
Motivation
Satisfaction
Emotinal engagement
Aesthitacally pleasing
Design Principles
Provide general guidelines that help interaction designers create effective, efficient, and satisfying systems
The 6 design principles
Visibility
Feedback
Sending information back to the user about what has been done
Constraints
Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
Three types:
Physical: Refer to the way physical objects restrict the movement of things
Logical: Exploits people’s everyday common sense reasoning about the way the world works
Cultural: Learned arbitrary conventions like red triangles for warning
Mapping
Relationship between controls and their movements and the results in the world
Consistency
Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
Two Types:
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
Affordance
Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
Usability Principles
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
Design vs Usability Principles
Design principles tend to be used mainly for informing a design
Usability Principles are mostly used as basis for evaluating prototypes and existing systems
Problem Space: refers to the set of issues, needs, goals, and constraints that motivate the development of a system
4 pillars of moving from the problem space to the design space
Translation: Converting user goals into specific functional requirements.
Identification: Pinpointing technical (hardware/software) and contextual (environment/social) limitations.
Exploration: Researching alternative interaction techniques and interface paradigms (e.g., touch vs. voice).
Alignment: Ensuring the solution supports real-world tasks efficiently rather than just looking good on paper.
Conceptual Model: A high-level description of how a system is organized and operates.
Can be divided to 4 types based on activity
Giving Instructions (Instructive)
Users instruct the system and tell it what to do
Good for repetitive kinds of actions
Conversing
Underlying model of having a conversation with another human
Useful for novices and technophobes
Manipulating and Navigating
Involves dragging, selecting, opening, closing and zooming actions on virtual objects
Exploit users’ knowledge of how they move and manipulate in the physical world
Novices can learn the basic functionality quickly and error messages are rarely needed
Exploring and Browsing
Similar to how people browse information with existing media (e.g. newspapers, magazines, libraries, pamphlets)
Information is structured to allow flexibility in way user is able to search for information
Conceptual models can be based on objects
e.g. spreadsheet analogous to ledger sheet
When to use each conceptual model?
Direct manipulation is good for ‘doing’ types of tasks, e.g. designing, drawing, flying, driving, sizing windows
Issuing instructions is good for repetitive tasks, e.g. spell-checking, file management
Having a conversation is good for children, computer-phobic, disabled users and specialized applications (e.g. phone services)
Hybrid conceptual models are often employed, where different ways of carrying out the same actions is supported at the interface - but can take longer to learn
Interface Metaphors: Interface designed to be similar to a physical entity but also has its own properties
It can be based on activity, object, or a combination of both
Exploit user’s familiar knowledge, helping them to understand ‘the unfamiliar’