User experience Design
1. What is interactive design?
Interaction Design = art of defining the behaviour of products & systems that a user interacts with
- Facilitates interaction between user & system
- = designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their
everyday and working lives (Sharp, Rogers and Preece, 2011)
- = the design of spaces for human communication and interaction (Winograd, 1997)
- = the structure and behaviour of interactive systems. Interaction Designers strive to create
meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use, from
computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond (Interactive Design Association)
Characteristics of good design:
- Trustworthy - Responsive - Pleasurable
- Appropriate - Clever
- Smart - Playful
Take into account:
- Who are the users?
- What activities are being carried out?
- Where is the interaction taking place?
- Need to match the users’ activities & needs
Users’ needs:
- What are people good at?
- What might help them in how they currently do things?
- What might provide quality user experiences?
- What do people want?
- Get them involved
- Understanding them:
o Use tried & tested user-centered methods
o Discover hidden wants, needs & desires
▪ What people do and why
▪ interpretation
Goals interaction design:
- develop usable products (easy to learn, effective to use & enjoyable experience)
- involve users in the design process
- aim:
o reduce negative aspects (frustration, annoyance, …)
o enhance positive aspects (enjoyment, engagement, …)
o develop interactive products that are easy, effective & pleasurable to use (users’ perspective)
- hurdles:
o developers see user experience as an obstacle
o enterprise solutions dictating the user experience
o lack of budget
o lack of time
o too little too late
1
,User Experience:
- How a product behaves and is used by people in the real world
o the way people feel about it and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it,
holding it, and opening or closing it
o “every product that is used by someone has a user experience: newspapers, ketchup bottles,
reclining armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2003)
- Cannot design a user experience, only design for a user experience
Holistic experiences:
- Sensual (sensory engagement)
- Emotional (anger, joy, …)
- Compositional
- Spatio-temporal
Process of interaction design: Research & Design Cycle:
1. Establishing requirements
2. Developing alternatives
3. Prototyping
4. Evaluating
Characteristics of interaction design:
- User involvement in development
- Usability & user experience goals need to be identified, documented & agreed at the beginning
- Iteration needed through the core activities
Why? Help designers:
- understand how to design interactive products that fit with what people want, need and may desire
- appreciate that one size does not fit all (e.g., teenagers are very different to grown-ups)
- identify any incorrect assumptions they may have about particular user groups (e.g., not all old
people want or need big fonts)
- be aware of both people’s sensitivities and their capabilities
Cultural differences:
- date: d/m/y or m/d/y
- colour: different meanings in different countries
- currency / measurement conversion (pounds, kg, miles, km, EUR, USD, …)
- high-context low-context
Usability goals:
- Effective to use - Have good utility
- Efficient to use - Easy to learn
- Safe to use - Easy to remember how to use
Whitney Quesenberry’s 5 E’s of Usability:
- Effective
- Efficient
- Engaging
- Error Tolerant
- Easy to Learn
- Can help plan usability testing
2
,User experience Usability:
- User Experience = all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its
products
- Usability = a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use
= method for improving ease-of-use during the design process
User experience goals:
- Desirable aspects:
o satisfying o entertaining o supporting creativity o surprising
o enjoyable o emotionally fulfilling o cognitively o rewarding
o engaging o motivating stimulating o helpful
o pleasurable o challenging o fun
o exciting o enhancing sociability o provocative
- Undesirable aspects:
o boring o annoying o annoying
o frustrating o childish o childish
o making one o cutesy o unpleasant
feel stupid o gimmicky o patronizing
User aim: task completion
- assessment of user goals
- application of design principles to conceptual & physical designs
- evaluation of design alternatives
- selection and application of evaluation goals met
Design principles:
- Generalisable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design
- The do’s and don’ts of interaction design
- What to provide and what not to provide at the interface
- Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common sense
Visibility
- Problems arise when we can’t see how to use a device
- Hiding functions can be advantageous in UI design
- Make visible only when needed
Feedback
- Sending information back to the user about what has been done
- Needs to be immediate and synchronised with user action
- Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these
Constraints
- Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
- Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
- Physical objects can be designed to constrain things
Consistency
- Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
- Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use
- Apply the Principle of Least Astonishment
- Aesthetic, Functional, Internal, External
3
, - Inconsistency:
o Contradiction: same options have different results
o Irrecularity: different options to do the same thing
Affordances:
- Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
(e.g. a mouse button invites pushing, a door handle affords pulling)
- Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday objects
- Since it has been much popularised in interaction design to discuss how to design interface objects
(e.g. scrollbars to afford moving up and down, icons to afford clicking on)
- Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical objects
- Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
- Instead, interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’ affordances
o Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at the interface
o Some mappings are better than others
- Virtual affordances:
o Web links : convention of mapping between action & effect
o Tabbed dialogues
- Physical affordances:
o Door handles
o Cup holders
Usability principles
- Similar to design principles, except more prescriptive
- Used mainly as the basis for evaluating systems
- Provide a framework for heuristic evaluation
Key points:
- Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support the way people
communicate and interact in their everyday and working
- It is concerned with how to create quality user experiences
- It requires taking into account a number of interdependent factors, including context of use, type of
activities, cultural differences, and user groups
- It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disciplines and fields
2. The process of interaction design
A process
= a goal-directed problem solving activity informed by intended use, target domain, materials, cost,
and feasibility
= a creative activity
= a decision-making activity to balance trade-offs
= iterative (one step forward, two steps back) (knowledge path continually moving forward)
- 4 approaches:
o user centered design (the user is the expert!)
o activity centered design
o systems design
o genius design (not the best, designing for yourself)
4
1. What is interactive design?
Interaction Design = art of defining the behaviour of products & systems that a user interacts with
- Facilitates interaction between user & system
- = designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their
everyday and working lives (Sharp, Rogers and Preece, 2011)
- = the design of spaces for human communication and interaction (Winograd, 1997)
- = the structure and behaviour of interactive systems. Interaction Designers strive to create
meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use, from
computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond (Interactive Design Association)
Characteristics of good design:
- Trustworthy - Responsive - Pleasurable
- Appropriate - Clever
- Smart - Playful
Take into account:
- Who are the users?
- What activities are being carried out?
- Where is the interaction taking place?
- Need to match the users’ activities & needs
Users’ needs:
- What are people good at?
- What might help them in how they currently do things?
- What might provide quality user experiences?
- What do people want?
- Get them involved
- Understanding them:
o Use tried & tested user-centered methods
o Discover hidden wants, needs & desires
▪ What people do and why
▪ interpretation
Goals interaction design:
- develop usable products (easy to learn, effective to use & enjoyable experience)
- involve users in the design process
- aim:
o reduce negative aspects (frustration, annoyance, …)
o enhance positive aspects (enjoyment, engagement, …)
o develop interactive products that are easy, effective & pleasurable to use (users’ perspective)
- hurdles:
o developers see user experience as an obstacle
o enterprise solutions dictating the user experience
o lack of budget
o lack of time
o too little too late
1
,User Experience:
- How a product behaves and is used by people in the real world
o the way people feel about it and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it,
holding it, and opening or closing it
o “every product that is used by someone has a user experience: newspapers, ketchup bottles,
reclining armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2003)
- Cannot design a user experience, only design for a user experience
Holistic experiences:
- Sensual (sensory engagement)
- Emotional (anger, joy, …)
- Compositional
- Spatio-temporal
Process of interaction design: Research & Design Cycle:
1. Establishing requirements
2. Developing alternatives
3. Prototyping
4. Evaluating
Characteristics of interaction design:
- User involvement in development
- Usability & user experience goals need to be identified, documented & agreed at the beginning
- Iteration needed through the core activities
Why? Help designers:
- understand how to design interactive products that fit with what people want, need and may desire
- appreciate that one size does not fit all (e.g., teenagers are very different to grown-ups)
- identify any incorrect assumptions they may have about particular user groups (e.g., not all old
people want or need big fonts)
- be aware of both people’s sensitivities and their capabilities
Cultural differences:
- date: d/m/y or m/d/y
- colour: different meanings in different countries
- currency / measurement conversion (pounds, kg, miles, km, EUR, USD, …)
- high-context low-context
Usability goals:
- Effective to use - Have good utility
- Efficient to use - Easy to learn
- Safe to use - Easy to remember how to use
Whitney Quesenberry’s 5 E’s of Usability:
- Effective
- Efficient
- Engaging
- Error Tolerant
- Easy to Learn
- Can help plan usability testing
2
,User experience Usability:
- User Experience = all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its
products
- Usability = a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use
= method for improving ease-of-use during the design process
User experience goals:
- Desirable aspects:
o satisfying o entertaining o supporting creativity o surprising
o enjoyable o emotionally fulfilling o cognitively o rewarding
o engaging o motivating stimulating o helpful
o pleasurable o challenging o fun
o exciting o enhancing sociability o provocative
- Undesirable aspects:
o boring o annoying o annoying
o frustrating o childish o childish
o making one o cutesy o unpleasant
feel stupid o gimmicky o patronizing
User aim: task completion
- assessment of user goals
- application of design principles to conceptual & physical designs
- evaluation of design alternatives
- selection and application of evaluation goals met
Design principles:
- Generalisable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design
- The do’s and don’ts of interaction design
- What to provide and what not to provide at the interface
- Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common sense
Visibility
- Problems arise when we can’t see how to use a device
- Hiding functions can be advantageous in UI design
- Make visible only when needed
Feedback
- Sending information back to the user about what has been done
- Needs to be immediate and synchronised with user action
- Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these
Constraints
- Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
- Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
- Physical objects can be designed to constrain things
Consistency
- Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
- Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use
- Apply the Principle of Least Astonishment
- Aesthetic, Functional, Internal, External
3
, - Inconsistency:
o Contradiction: same options have different results
o Irrecularity: different options to do the same thing
Affordances:
- Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
(e.g. a mouse button invites pushing, a door handle affords pulling)
- Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday objects
- Since it has been much popularised in interaction design to discuss how to design interface objects
(e.g. scrollbars to afford moving up and down, icons to afford clicking on)
- Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical objects
- Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
- Instead, interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’ affordances
o Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at the interface
o Some mappings are better than others
- Virtual affordances:
o Web links : convention of mapping between action & effect
o Tabbed dialogues
- Physical affordances:
o Door handles
o Cup holders
Usability principles
- Similar to design principles, except more prescriptive
- Used mainly as the basis for evaluating systems
- Provide a framework for heuristic evaluation
Key points:
- Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support the way people
communicate and interact in their everyday and working
- It is concerned with how to create quality user experiences
- It requires taking into account a number of interdependent factors, including context of use, type of
activities, cultural differences, and user groups
- It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disciplines and fields
2. The process of interaction design
A process
= a goal-directed problem solving activity informed by intended use, target domain, materials, cost,
and feasibility
= a creative activity
= a decision-making activity to balance trade-offs
= iterative (one step forward, two steps back) (knowledge path continually moving forward)
- 4 approaches:
o user centered design (the user is the expert!)
o activity centered design
o systems design
o genius design (not the best, designing for yourself)
4
