Final+Test+Study+Notes

=Final Test Study Notes=

Week 1 & 2 - What is Interactive Design?
- Interactions design is about developing interactive products that are easy, effective and enjoyable to use from the users’ perspective - Products may work effectively from an engineering perspective but it is often at the expense of how the system will be used by real people - The aim of interaction design is to bring usability into the design process
 * 1.1 Introduction**

- A central concern of interaction design is to develop interactive products that are easy to learn and use. - By comparing good and bad designs we can begin to understand what it means for something to be usable or not. - Example: Hotel Answering Machine vs. Marble Answering Machine o Hotel: frustrating, confusing, inefficient, and difficult to use o Marble: Uses familiar physical objects that indicate visually at a glance how many messages have been left, it is aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to use, it is a simple but elegant design - The marble answering machine was designed by Durrell Bishop - Designing usable interactive products requires considering: o Who is going to be using them o Where are they going to be used o The kind of activities people are doing when interacting with the products - Several ways to optimize the users interactions with a system, environment or product, so that they match user activities are: o Taking into account what people are good and bad at o Considering what might help people with the way they currently do things o Linking through what might provide quality user experiences o Listening to what people want and getting them involved in the design o Using “tried and tested” user-based techniques during the design process
 * 1.2 Good and poor design**

- Interaction design: Designing interactive products to support people in their everyday and working lives - Furthermore it is about creating user experiences that enhance and extend the way people work, communicate and interact. - Interaction design is related to software engineering in the same way as architecture is related to civil engineering. - In order for interaction to design to succeed many disciplines need to be involved. Ex. Psychologists and Sociologists - In the late 70s and early 80s one of the biggest challenges at that time was to develop computers that could be accessible and usable by ordinary people instead of justs engineers. To make this possible, computer scientists and psychologists became involved in designing user interfaces (they developed BASIC programming and Prolog). - One major problem that arises when teams of individuals with different skills are formed is that everyone might see certain things in their own perspective. - In today’s world interaction design is big business. Ex. Website consultants
 * 1.3 What is Interaction Design?**

- The process of interaction design involves 4 basic activities: 1. Identifying needs and establishing requirements 2. Developing alternative designs that meet those requirements 3. Building an interactive version of the design so that it can be communicated and assessed 4. Evaluating what is being built throughout the process - Evaluation is a very important process and is very much built at the heart of interaction design. It focuses on making sure that the product is usable. - Involving users in the evaluations is very important - There are 3 key characteristics of the interaction design process: 1. Users should be involved throughout the development of the project 2. Specific usability and user experience goals should be identified, clearly documented, and agreed upon at the beginning of the project 3. Iteration through the four activities is inevitable
 * 1.4 What is involved in the process of interaction design?**

- The usability of a product is very important - Usability is regarded as to ensuring that the product is easy to learn, effective to use, and enjoyable from the users perspective. - Usability can be broken down into 6 goals: 1. Effectiveness – refers to how good a system is doing at what it is supposed to do. 2. Efficiency – refers to the way a system supports users in carrying out their tasks. 3. Safety – refers to protecting the user from dangerous conditions and undesirable situations. 4. Utility – refers to the extent to which the system provides the right kind of functionality so that users can do what they need or want to do. 5. Learnability – refers to how easy a system is to learn to use. 6. Memorability – refers to how easy a system is to remember how to use, once learned. - Some user experience goals deal with creating systems that are: o Satisfying o Enjoyable o Fun o Entertaining o Helpful o Motivating o Aesthetically pleasing o Supportive of creativity o Rewarding o Emotionally fulfilling - User experience goals deal with what the interaction with the system feels like to the users
 * 1.5 The goals of interaction design**

- A good way of conceptualizing usability is in terms of design principles - Design principles are derived from a mix of theory based knowledge, experience, and common sense - They are suggestions to the designers, the do’s and don’ts of interaction design - The most common design principles are: 1. Visibility – The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do next. 2. Feedback – It is the sending back of information about what action has been done and what has been accomplished. It can provide visibility. 3. Constraints – Determining ways of restricting the kind of user interaction that can take place at a given moment. 4. Mapping – The relationship between controls and their effects in the world. Ex. Up Down Left Right keys 5. Consistency – Refers to designing interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for achieving similar tasks. 6. Affordance (to give a clue) – is a term used to refer to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it. The more affordable the more obvious is the way in which a user should interact with the product. - Another form of guidance is usability principles. - They are similar to design principles, but they tend to be more perspective. They are used as a the basis for evaluating prototypes and existing systems. - Here are the main usability principles: 1. Visibility of system status – keep users informed about what is going on 2. Match between system and the real world – speak the users language 3. Use control and freedom – provide ways of allowing users to easily escape from places they unexpectedly find themselves 4. Consistency and standards – avoid making users wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing 5. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors – use plain language to describe the nature of a problem and suggest a way of solving it 6. Error prevention – where possible prevent errors occurring in the first place 7. Recognition rather than recall – make objects, actions, and options visible 8. Flexibility and efficiency of use – provide accelerators that are invisible to novice users, but allow more experienced users to carry out tasks more quickly 9. Aesthetic and minimalist design – avoid using information that is irrelevant or rarely needed 10. Help and documentation – provide information that can be easily searched and provides help in a set of concrete steps that can easily be followed
 * 1.6 More on usability: design and usability principles**

Week 3 - People, Activities, Context & Technologies

 * 2.1 Introduction**

• Activities establish requirements for technologies which in turn offer opportunities that change the nature of activities

• Domain – an area of study or a “sphere of activity”


 * 2.2 People**

Physical Differences: • Difference such as height, weight, physical abilities and so on can affect how accessible, how usable and how enjoyable using a technology will be for people in different contexts

Psychological Differences: • E.g. good spatial ability will allow someone to navigate through a website • Designers should design for people with poor ability by providing good signage and clear directions • Language differences are crucial to understanding and cultural differences affect how people interpret things • E.g. In Britain, ticks and crosses can both be used to show acceptance • The understanding and knowledge we possess of something is referred to as a “mental model” • Poor mental model = rote • Good mental model = understands

Usage Differences: • Novices and experts use technology in different ways with difference requirements • Designing for homo groups of people is totally different than designing for hetero groups • Websites have to cater to hetero groups


 * 2.3 Activities**

- There are many characteristics of activities that designers need to consider. - Designer should focus on the overall purpose of the activity:

Main features:

• Temporal aspects – how regular or infrequent activities are o Regular vs. infrequent activity – changing a battery/ making a call o Time as a pressure – amount of people using the subway at different times of the day o Continuous vs. discrete action – if people interrupted, the design needs to ensure they can resume o Response time – website taking too long to load (actions taking longer than 5 secs = BAD) • Cooperation – independent vs. dependent work • Complexity – defined vs. vague tasks • Safety-critical o Some tasks are mission critical – failure is not an option o Handling error and unintended consequence is important because you cannot predict the behavior of the user • The nature of the content • Task and mediation o Input methods o Data structures o Output methods o Feedback


 * 2.4 Contexts**

Activities always happen in a context, so there is no need to analyze the two together

3 Types of Contexts:

• Physical Context - the environment in which activities happen in o The sun shining on the ATM makes it unreadable • Social Context – the place in which an activity takes place is important • Organizational Context – circumstances under which activities happen o Internal conflict between individual and collective goals


 * 2.5 Technologies**

Things that perform various functions that typically contain a good deal of data, or information content.

• Input – how people enter data into the system securely and safely • Output – how to display results given the input • Communication – feedback/ informing user • Content – data in the system. Good content is accurate, up-to-date, relevant and well-presented


 * 2.7 Design Process**

Design process is a creative process that is concerned with bringing about something new.

Universal Elements of Design: • Users and their requirements – concerned with what the system has to do and has to be like • Conceptual design – designing a system in the abstract, concerning what information functions are needed for a system to achieve its purpose o One way to conceptualize the main features of a system is to use a “rich picture” aka. a web of diagrams connecting to each other o CATWOE – customers, actors, transformation, Weltanshcwang (system), environment o Must keep things abstract – what rather than how • Physical design – how things are going to look and work o Takes abstract designs and translates them into concrete designs o E.g. operational design, representational, style, and interaction design • Prototyping/envisionment – designs need to be visualized to clarify own ideas and allow people to evaluate them • Evaluation and testing • RCPD – requirements, conceptual design, prototyping/envisionment, physical design/evaluation

Week 4 - Principles of Design / Understanding Users
• Accessibility – inclusive/universal design principles to address exclusion o Varying ability is the norm, not the exception o Designs for people with disabilities work for others too o Personal user experience and usability is affected by design constraints and choices o **Principles of Universal Design** ♣ Equitable – does not disadvantage or stigmatize any group of users ♣ Flexible – accommodates a wide range of preferences and abilities ♣ Simple – easy to understand and use ♣ Perceptible – communicates necessary information effectively ♣ Tolerant – minimizes hazards and consequences of accidental actions ♣ Effortless – low physical effort ♣ Size and space – just right o Decision Tree - ♣ Stability – fixed or changing ♣ Incidents – common or rare ♣ Solutions – cheap or expensive ♣ Possible recommendations – recommended, mandatory or optional • Usability o Focus on users and tasks o Empirical measurement o Iterative design o Coevolution and mutual dependence • Acceptability – about fitting technologies into people’s lives, can only be understood in the context of use o Political – trust, organizational issues, who benefits, effects of networks o Convenience – easy, effortless o Cultural or social habits – violation of social norms or evolution of norms o Usefulness – relevance to activities in context o Economic – price points, changes in business model • Engagement – creation of bond, attachment (feeling of personal relationship), o Function of both aesthetics and usability ♣ Identity – authenticity and cohesion ♣ Adaptivity – change and personalization ♣ Narrative – not just product but story ♣ Immersion – feeling of wholeness, transportation elsewhere ♣ Flow – transitions between states clear, fluid, seamless
 * Principles of Design:**

People & their Actions: • Norman’s 7-step process • Essentially a cognitive model – humans as technological processes (taking inputs, processing, providing outputs) • Gulfs of evaluation and execution

Elements of Cognitive Psychology: • Memory (sensory, working and long-term) • Recall and recognition • Attention • Perception • Gestalt processing – emphasizes that measurement of the outcome of learning without considering mental processes that may have lead to it • Representation • Mental models • Action and persuasion

To be Continued by Vlado Mazic