Exploring the Effects of Different Levels of Formality (Beautification) on the Design Process Louise Yeung (MSc student - Psychology) Supervisors: Dr Brenda Lobb, Dr Beryl Plimmer, Dr Beryl Plimmer, Dr Douglas Elliffe Dr Douglas Elliffe

Overview: Background Purpose of study Experimental Design Results Future research areas Questions..

Design research Design Activities –Sketching is important in design (Goel, 1990; Goldschmidt, 1991) especially in early stages in design process (Do, 2005; Lim, et al., 2004) –Transfer from paper prototypes (Sketches) to the computer BUT …

During Transfer... Clumsy Error-Prone Unproductive Inefficient….

Informal Sketch-based tools Increasing research and development –e.g. PDA, digital whiteboards… Inkit (on-going project since 2002) Increase of demand and usage by designers (Pomm & Werlen, 2004) Many advantages of sketch-base (informal) design tools: “Getting the best of two worlds” “Bridges the gap”

“ Beautification” Challenge = the need to “beautify” sketched content (Plimmer & Apperley, 2003; Plimmer & Grundy, 2005) Beautification = process of tidying a hand-drawn diagram (Sketch) into a more ‘formal looking’ diagram

Interaction difference… hand-drawn (informal) VS computer-rendered (formal) Research: more functional changes and comments if working with a hand-drawn diagram rather than a formal (computerized) diagram (Bailey and Konstan, 2003; Black, 1990; Goel, 1995; Plimmer and Apperley, 2002) What happens in between when a diagram is more or less formal? design decisions, cognition, perception?

Purpose of my study 1)To explore the different types and levels of beautification (formality) 2)To evaluate the effects of levels of beautification (formality) on how people interact with the design  Research question: Does the level of formality of a prototype design affect the number (and quality) of changes designers make during iterative design?

Method Participants: 14 female, 16 male Experiment design: within-subject design IV: Levels of formality - 5 Levels (5 conditions) Latin Square design to counterbalance S S S S S S S S S …etcS …etc S S S S S S S S S … etc S … etc ConditionsFormality levelMedium 1Low formality (totally hand-drawn)Paper (and pen) 2Low formality (totally hand-drawnTablet PC 3Medium lowTablet PC 4Medium highTablet PC 5High formality ([totally] computer-rendered)Tablet PC

5 conditions – 5 designs Given 5 equivalent designs of web (HTML) forms in terms of: –1) the purpose of the forms – requiring users to fill in personal information –2) order of elements in the design –3) the balance of types of element –4) the number of elements in each design (i.e. total of 58). –5) each design had 23 ‘mistakes’ (according to design guidelines) for participants to ‘correct’

Method Taxonomy of beautification Hand drawn form continuum  Computer-generated form VARIABLES Smoothness (objects, lines or characters) roughSmoothed, formal Size VariableExact, standardised Alignment, vertical InexactExact, standardised Alignment, horizontal InexactExact, standardised Spacing, vertical (between objects) irregular Exact, standardised Spacing, horizontal irregular Exact, standardised

(A ) (B ) (C )  Horizontal Alignment Vertical Alignment (A)(B) Snap to grid

(A)(B) (C)(D) Shape standardization

Fully Hand-Drawn 33.33% smoothed 66.66% smoothed Fully smoothed (Straight Lines)

Low formality Medium-low formality

Medium-high formality High formality

Dependent variable: Number of changes made (Total functional changes & Quality functional changes & expected functional changes) Preliminary results: –One-way repeated measures ANOVA –Significant Main effect (formality) –Significant Linear trend –Pair-wise comparisons showed some interesting differences: VS –Group differences: Design experience LOW formality (Tablet PC) LOW formality (Paper & pen) LOW formality (Tablet PC) HIGH formality (Tablet PC)

Mean Expected functional changes made across levels of formality

Mean Expected functional changes across Levels of Formality according to design experience: none/non-CS/SE & CS/SE

Future research Exploring more dimensions and levels of formality (i.e. aspects of beautification) –E.g. color (combination?), look-and-feel..etc Exploring the effects of beautification at different stages in the design process –e.g. early vs refinement –design-decisions At different levels of beautification: –Novice vs Expert designers –Individual vs group decision making in the design process at different stages –Evaluation of different levels of beautification for different groups of people e.g. ? –Pen and Paper VS Tablet PC

Implications Software development –Types of beautification at different stages Improvements in the design process –Increase in efficiency (motivation?) –More time for other design activities –Practical Real world situations e.g. client presentation - photoshop is commonly used. However, during early stages… Suggestions/Questions?

References Goldschmidt, G. (1991). The dialectics of sketching. Creativity Research Journal, 2(2), 123–143. Goel, V. (1995). Sketches of Thought. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA Lim, et al. (2004). A study of sketching behaviour to support free- form surface modelling from on-line sketching. Design Studies, 25(4), Do, Y.E. (2005). Design sketches and sketch design tools. Knowledge-Based Systems, 18(8), Plimmer, B. E., & Apperley, M. (2004). Interacting with Sketched Interface Designs: An evaluation study. Proceedings of SigChi, Vienna, Plimmer, B. E., & Grundy, J. (2005). Beautifying sketching-based design tool content: issues and experiences. Proceedings of AUIC2005, Newcastle. Pomm, C., & Werlen, S. (2004). Smooth Morphing of Handwritten Text, Proceedings of AVI 04, Gallipoli,