User-Centered Visual Design: Views from Four Perspectives Michael Schmidt, Director The University of Memphis Center for Multimedia Art Member, Palliative & End of Life Care Program St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Views from Four Perspectives: Tactical - formal means for constructing visual artifacts Strategic - rhetorical means for conveying visual concepts Transformative - experiential means for greater user-centered insight Contextual - systemic means for framing, organizing, and sustaining a continuum of experiences, messages, and artifacts

Postscript: Aesthetics

Tactical View: Artifact

Closure

Continuation

Centers and edges--how the eye structures form into pattern and patterns into larger structures.

Hierarchy: alignment, proximity, contrast (of scale, proximity, weight), variety and harmony.

Piet Zwart 1924

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy 1925

1922 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Untitled Construction 1922 Tempera and collage on panel Galerie Dr. I. Schlégl, Zurich Laszlo Moholy-Nagy 1922

1925 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Possibilities seemed limitless . . . While the human brain seemed hard-wired for this innately logical language of vision. 1925 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Modern Joost Schmidt 1923

Rational Jan Tschichold

Progressive El Lissitsky 1917

Endless permutations Ladislav Sutnar 1950

Part of consumer/popular culture McCall’s, August 1959 Otto Storch

Saul Bass Ivan Chermayeff Paul Rand Yusaku Kamekura Raymond Loewy Part of our corporate culture Saul Bass Ivan Chermayeff Paul Rand Yusaku Kamekura Raymond Loewy

Part of our information culture Massimo Vignelli c. 1980

Information as art; art as communication of information--but all forming a rational hierarchy. Willi Kunz

Form can be illustrative (literal) but also expressive of the intangible (music) Rosemarie Tissi 1996

environmental Bruno Manguzzi 1992

Or just light and color Neville Brody 1999

Josef Muller-Brockman

User-centered tactics? Does this constitute a user-centered approach?

* don't use more than 4 different font sizes per screen * use serif or sans serif fonts appropriately as the visual task situation demands * don't use all uppercase letters - use an uppercase/lowercase mix * don't overuse audio or video * don't use more than 4 different colors on a screen * don't use blue for text (hard to read), blue is a good background color * don't put red text on a blue background * use high contrast color combinations * use colors consistently * use only 2 levels of intensity on a single screen * Use underlining, bold, inverse video or other markers sparingly * on text screens don't use more than 3 fonts on a single screen No. Insufficient by itself. And existing heuristics (Neilsen) deal very little with visual design. What heuristics do exist amount to a prosaic list of do’s and don’ts. (From Cornell University Ergonomics Web) http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/ahtutorials/interface.html

Strategic View: Concept

Thus far we’ve addressed the formal, or compositional techniques of design. Here we begin to address the rhetorical techniques of design. This UI for The Urban Child Institute employs juxtaposition, showing the empirical proof of benefit brought about by successful parenting of newborns.

Visual Concept: a plan for generating intellectual and emotional responses by combining verbal and visual content—formally and rhetorically—in a manner that exploits both the advantages and the limitations of the chosen medium.

Here color--a constituent element of the chosen medium--serves a key role in executing the visual concept (or plan).

A more direct example. Visual concept is also brand strategy

User-centered strategy: How will these concepts resonate with the participants? With access to users: Website for TUCI: they help create the concepts by informing the process from the beginning: functional requirements, content priorities, even the look and feel. Conducting surveys, interviews, and observations.

Without access to users: evaluative techniques from the emerging advocacy evaluation field. (Summative as opposed to formative evaluation--conventional forms of eval as opposed to usability engineering techniques.)

With limited, tightly controlled access to users: augment interviews or focus groups with SMEs and contextual obs (sit in on rounds)

Transformative View: Experience

Legacy bldg and advance care planning Suffering with the sufferer (really suffering for one’s art!) From Wikipedia: Patient is derived from the Latin word patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb pati, meaning "one who endures" or "one who suffers".

Contextual View: Systems

Comprehensive care plan Individualized Care Planning Understanding the illness experience Sharing relevant information Step 1: Relationship Needs assessment Step 2: Negotiation Prognosis Expressing goals Treatment options Step 3: Plan Establishing a life plan Medical plan Comprehensive care plan

Comprehensive care plan Individualized Care Planning Understanding the illness experience Sharing relevant information Step 1: Relationship Needs assessment Step 2: Negotiation Prognosis Expressing goals Treatment options Step 3: Plan Establishing a life plan Medical plan Comprehensive care plan

Postscript: Aesthetics Aesthetics pervades everything discussed

Michael Schmidt, Director The University of Memphis Center for Multimedia Art Member, Palliative & End of Life Care Program St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital