Chapter+1+-+Summary

toc

=Chapter 1: What is interaction design?=

1.1 Introduction

 * 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

1.2 Good and Poor Design
//Example//: Hotel Answering Machine vs. Marble Answering Machine >>
 * 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.
 * Hotel: frustrating, confusing, inefficient, and difficult to use
 * 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:
 * Who is going to be using them
 * Where are they going to be used
 * 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:
 * Taking into account what people are good and bad at
 * Considering what might help people with the way they currently do things
 * Linking through what might provide quality user experiences
 * Listening to what people want and getting them involved in the design
 * Using “tried and tested” user-based techniques during the design process

1.3 What is Interaction 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 just 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

1.4 What is Involved in the Process of 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

1.5 The Goals 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 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 mix 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.
 * **User Experience Goals:**
 * Satisfying
 * Enjoyable
 * Fun
 * Entertaining
 * Helpful
 * Motivating
 * Aesthetically pleasing
 * Supportive of creativity
 * Rewarding
 * Emotionally fulfilling
 * Usability vs.User experience goals: one deals with objective evaluation of the system while the other deals with subjective experience.
 * Aesthetics bias: things may appear well designed --> usually perceived to be functional and easy to use.

1.6 More on Usability: Design and Usability Principles
> >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >>
 * Common Design Principles:
 * 1) **Visibility** – The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do next. e.g. no hidden functions, easy to find functions
 * 2) **Feedback**– It is the sending back of information about what action has been done and what has been accomplished. It can provide visibility. e.g. feedback dialogues whenever users make a selection.
 * 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. e.g. "cut" symbol in Word is the same as in Excel or PowerPoint.
 * 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 is the system, the more obvious is the way in which a user should interact with the product. e.g. the "cut" symbol looks like a scissor, which suggests the general knowledge of "cutting" something.
 * Main Usability Principles:
 * 1) **Visibility of system status** – keep users informed about what is going on e.g. whenever downloading something, the system would inform users of the status (% downloaded, what file is being downloaded)
 * 1) **Match between system and the real world**– speak the users language
 * 1) **Use control and freedom** – provide ways of allowing users to easily escape from places they unexpectedly find themselves e.g. in a website, that might be having navigation control panel appear on all pages.
 * 1) **Consistency and standards** – avoid making users wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing e.g. "Copy" should only mean the action of copying in Word, not anything else
 * 1) **Help users recognize, diagnose, and recoverfrom errors** – use plain language to describe the nature of a problem and suggest a way of solving it
 * 2) **Error prevention** – where possible, prevent errors occurring in the first place e.g. whenever users making important decisions, the system should play an alert sound and have the user confirm the action twice.
 * 1) **Recognition rather than recall** – make objects, actions, and options visible e.g. all functions should accessible from the dropdown menu.
 * 1) **Flexibility and efficiency of use** –provide accelerators that are invisible to novice users, but allow more experienced users to carry out tasks more quickly e.g. when downloading a software, users should be able to choose between light and custom versions.
 * 1) **Aesthetic and minimalist design** – avoid using information that is irrelevant or rarely needed
 * 1) **Help and documentation** – provide information that can be easily searched and provides help in a set of concrete steps that can easily be followed.
 * Design Principles vs. Usability Principles: One concerns with the "dos" and "don'ts" of system design (suggestions to the designer) while the other are used as a the basis for evaluating prototypes and existing systems.