Interaction Design John Kelleher

Interaction Design “Designing interactive products to support people in their everyday and working lives” Software Engineering: Production of software solutions for given applications. Analogous to architect and civil engineer

Interdisciplinary Fields Design Practices Design Skills Set Interaction Design Academic Disciplines Ergonomics Psychology/ Cognitive Science Informatics Engineering Computer Science/ Software Engineering Social Sciences (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology) Human Factors (HF) Cognitive Engineering Cognitive Ergonomics Graphic Design Product Design Industrial Design Film Industry Information Systems CSCW

Interaction Design Process 1.Identify needs and establish requirements 2.Develop alternative designs that meet those requirements 3.Build interactive versions of the designs so that they can be communicated and assessed 4.Evaluate what is being built throughout the process 

Goals of Interaction Design Usability goals (usability criteria) Effectiveness Efficiency Safety Utility Learnability Memorability User experience goals Extending set of concerns 

Design and usability principles A way of conceptualising usability do’s and don’ts of interaction design Serve to explain and ‘drive’ design Not algorithmic

Design Principles (1/3) Visibility Difficult for user to know choices E.g. voice mail vs. answering machine E.g. modern telephones Feedback Exploit modalities E.g. graphic handles Constraints Limiting choices E.g. “Training wheels” (Carroll) Physical, logical and cultural constraints (and idioms)  Example

Design Principles (2/3) Mapping Relationship between controls and their effects E.g. choosing fonts, slide transitions Consistency Important as no. features explodes (E.g. Word) Internal consistency vs. external consistency E.g. locking permissions for a file. Inconsistency trade-off (Grudin ‘knife’ example) 

Natural Mappings

Mappings

Design Principles (3/3) Affordance The real and perceived fundamental properties of the object that determine how it could possibly be used (Norman) E.g. mouse button, chair, cup handle. Opposite of constraints Virtual environment of screen necessitates high fidelity of represented object E.g. 3D-style buttons E.g. Leitz Pravodit projector

Examples of Bad Design

Examples of Good Design

Usability Heuristics Design principles in praxis Require interpretation in design context Require past experience More on this later

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