What is interaction design? Eileen Kraemer CSCI 4800/6800 University of Georgia.

What is interaction design?

Eileen KraemerCSCI 4800/6800University of Georgia

Problem:

Many products that people interact with have not been designed with the user in mind.

Result:Users fail to accomplish task or achieve

less-than-optimal resultTask requires more time and resources than

necessary

Bad design

Good examples of bad design at:http://www.baddesigns.com

Goals of interaction design

To design products that are easy, effective, and enjoyable to use.

Good interaction design …

Produces products that are:Easy to learnEffective to useProvide an enjoyable user experience

Questions to ask when designing interactive products:

Who is going to be using them?Where are they going to be used?What kinds of activities will users

perform when interacting with the product?

Preparing yourself to produce “good” interaction designs:

study literature on “principles of good design” study literature on ranges of user abilities –

perceptual, cognitive, etc. learn techniques for measuring such abilities

learn techniques for needs analysis, requirements analysis, task analysis, implementation, evaluation

learn techniques for “user-centered design” learn techniques for creating/managing multi-

disciplinary teams

Overlaps w/ other disciplines

Software engineering focus is on production of the software

artifactInteraction design

focus is on the user experienceAnalogy:

civil engineering vs. architecture

Other disciplines, cont’d.

Academic DisciplinesDesign PracticesInterdisciplinary Fields

Academic Disciplines related to Interaction Design

ErgonomicsPsychology/Cognitive ScienceInformatics

The study of the application of computer and statistical techniques to the management of information

EngineeringComputer Science/Software EngineeringSocial Sciences

Sociology, Anthropology

Brief History of Interaction Design

Early on: by engineers, for engineers switches, dials

Later (70s, early 80s) VDUs (monitors), personal workstations non-engineer users high-level programming languages psychologists explore human capabilities re:

computer-based tasks WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) GUI

research

Brief History of Interaction Design

Mid-80snew technologies:

speech recognition, multimedia, info viz, VR focus on education, training

interactive learning environments, educational software, training simulators

educational technologists, developmental psychologists, training experts become involved

Brief History of Interaction Design

1990s:Technology advances:

networking, mobile computing, IR sensing “ubiquitous computing”single user focus -> multi-user focus

Brief History of Interaction Design

2000s:Technology advances:

RF-tags, large interactive screens, information appliances

For now, focus is back on engineers, who need to create middleware that allows various HW devices to easily communicate with one another

Also on “seamless” integration of computing into everyday tasks

The Interaction Design Process

Identify needs / establish requirements users must be involved establish specific usability and user experience

goals Develop alternative designs that meet those

requirements Build interactive versions (prototypes) for evaluation Evaluate the prototypes

based on the established usability and user experience goals

... repeat

Goals of interaction design

Usability goals: effectiveness

does the system do what its supposed to do? efficiency

related to productivity of experienced user safety

are users protected from “dangerous” or undesirable situations? utility

does the system provide the right kind of functionality to permit users to do what they need/want to do?

learnability How easy is it/how long does it take a) to get started w/ basic tasks, b) to

learn wider range of needed operations? memorability

Once learned, how easy is it to remember how to use system? Usability criteria:

% of users able to successfully perform task(on first try, after training, after elapsed time) time to complete a task, time to learn a task, number of errors in completing a task.

Goals of interaction design

User experience goals deal less with “productivity” type tasks; focus is more on

entertainment, education, home use, etc. satisfying enjoyable fun entertaining helpful motivating aesthetically pleasing supportive of creativity rewarding emotionally fulfilling

subjective measures of user satisfaction, relative subject duration See: Ben Bederson’s talk on “Interfaces for Staying in the Flow” at :

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/talks See paper that introduces notion of relative subjective duration

Design principles - Sources

Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday

things , and some chapters from this new book Prologue: The Three Teapots Attractive Things Work Better Epilogue: We Are All Designers

Tog’s (Bruce Tognazzini’s) First Principles of Interaction Design

Design Principles from The Design of Everyday Things

visibility (and placement) Functions that are out of sight are difficult to find, know how to

use Positioning of controls can indicate or obscure their function

Feedback Info back to user on success of tasks, state of system

Constraints Restricting the kind of user interaction currently available

Mapping The relationship between contorl and their effects

Consistency Similar tasks controlled by similar operations and elements

Affordance An attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it.

Heuristics and Usability Principles

(Nielsen 2001) 1. Visibility of system status2. Match between system and the real world3. user control and freedom4. consistency and standards5. help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from

errors6. error prevention7. recognition vs. recall8. flexibility and efficiency of use9. aesthetic and minimalist design10. help and documentation

Next ….

Design principles and heuristics, specifically for working with Java and the Swing components.