What is Interaction Design?

What is interaction design?

• Designing interactive products to

support people in their everyday
and working lives
– Sharp, Rogers and Preece (2002)

• The design of spaces for human

communication and interaction
– Winograd (1997)
 Goals of interaction design

• Develop usable products

– Usability means easy to learn,
effective to use and provide an
enjoyable experience
• Involve users in the design process
Example of bad and good design
– Elevator controls and labels on the bottom
row all look the same, so it is easy to push
a label by mistake instead of a control
button

– People do not make same mistake for the

labels and buttons on the top row. Why
not?
From: www.baddesigns.com
Why is this vending machine
so bad?
• Need to push
button first to
activate reader
• Normally insert
bill first before
making selection
• Contravenes well
known convention
From: www.baddesigns.com
 What to design
• Need to take into account:
– Who the users are
– What activities are being carried out
– Where the interaction is taking place

• Need to optimise the interactions users

have with a product
– Such that they match the users activities
and needs
Understanding users’ needs
– Need to take into account what
people are good and bad at

– Consider what might help people in

the way they currently do things

– Listen to what people want and get

them involved

– Use tried and tested user-based

methods
 Activity

• How does making a call differ

when using a:
– Cell phone
– Public phone box?
• Consider the kinds of user, type of
activity and context of use
What is an interface?

?
 Evolution of HCI ‘interfaces’
• 50s - Interface at the hardware level for
engineers - switch panels
• 60-70s - interface at the programming level -
COBOL, FORTRAN
• 70-90s - Interface at the terminal level -
command languages
• 80s - Interface at the interaction dialogue
level - GUIs, multimedia
• 90s - Interface at the work setting -
networked systems, groupware
• 00s - Interface becomes pervasive
– RF tags, Bluetooth technology, mobile
devices, consumer electronics, interactive
screens, embedded technology
From HCI to Interaction Design
• Human-computer interaction (HCI) is:
“concerned with the design, evaluation and
implementation of interactive computing systems for
human use and with the study of major phenomena
surrounding them” (ACM SIGCHI, 1992, p.6)

• Interaction design (ID) is:

“the design of spaces for human communication and
interaction”
– Winograd (1997)

• Increasingly, more application areas, more technologies

and more issues to consider when designing ‘interfaces’
 Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields
Academic
disciplines
Design practices
(e.g. computer
(e.g. graphic design)
science,
psychology)
Interaction
Design

Interdisciplinary fields
(e.g HCI, CSCW)
Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields
• Academic disciplines contributing
to ID:
– Psychology
– Social Sciences
– Computing Sciences
– Engineering
– Ergonomics
– Informatics
Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields
• Design practices contributing to
ID:
– Graphic design
– Product design
– Artist-design
– Industrial design
– Film industry
Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields

• Interdisciplinary fields that ‘do’

interaction design:

– HCI
– Human Factors
– Cognitive Engineering
– Cognitive Ergonomics
– Computer Supported Co-operative Work
– Information Systems
 How easy is it to work in
multidisciplinary teams?

• More people involved in doing

interaction design the more ideas and
designs generated…but…

• The more difficult it can be to

communicate and progress forwards the
designs being created
Interaction design in business
• Increasing number of ID consultancies, examples of well
known ones include:
– Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter the
age of the consumer, designing human-centered
products and services”
– Swim: “provides a wide range of design services, in
each case targeted to address the product
development needs at hand”
– IDEO: “creates products, services and environments
for companies pioneering new ways to provide value
to their customers”
 What do professionals do in the
ID business?
• interaction designers - people involved in the design
of all the interactive aspects of a product

• usability engineers - people who focus on evaluating

products, using usability methods and principles

• web designers - people who develop and create the

visual design of websites, such as layouts

• information architects - people who come up with

ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products

• user experience designers - people who do all the

above but who may also carry out field studies to inform
the design of products
What is involved in the process
of interaction design

• Identify needs and establish

requirements
• Develop alternative designs
• Build interactive prototypes that can be
communicated and assessed
• Evaluate what is being built throughout
the process
 Core characteristics of
interaction design
• users should be involved through the
development of the project
• specific usability and user experience
goals need to be identified, clearly
documented and agreed at the
beginning of the project
• iteration is needed through the core
activities
 Usability goals

• Effective to use
• Efficient to use
• Safe to use
• Have good utility
• Easy to learn
• Easy to remember how to use
 Activity on usability
• How long should it take and how
long does it actually take to:
– use a VCR to play a video?
– use a VCR to pre-record two
programs?
– use an authoring tool to create a
website?
 User experience goals
– Satisfying - rewarding
– Fun - support creativity
– Enjoyable - emotionally fulfilling
– Entertaining …and more
– Helpful
– Motivating
– Aesthetically pleasing
– Motivating
Usability and user experience
goals
• How do usability goals differ from user
experience goals?
• Are there trade-offs between the two
kinds of goals?
– e.g. can a product be both fun and safe?

• How easy is it to measure usability

versus user experience goals?
 Design principles
• Generalizable 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
• This is a control panel for an
elevator.
• How does it work?
• Push a button for the floor you
want?

• Nothing happens. Push any

other button? Still nothing.
From: What do you need to do?
www.baddesigns.com

It is not visible as to what to do!

 Visibility
…you need to insert your room card in the slot by the
buttons to get the elevator to work!

How would you make this action more visible?

• make the card reader more obvious

• provide an auditory message, that says what to do
(which language?)
• provide a big label next to the card reader that
flashes when someone enters

• make relevant parts visible

• make what has to be done obvious
 Feedback
• Sending information back to the user
about what has been done
• Includes sound, highlighting, animation
and combinations of these

– e.g. when screen button clicked on provides

sound or red highlight feedback:
“ccclichhk”
 Constraints
• Restricting the possible actions that can
be performed
• Helps prevent user from selecting
incorrect options
• Three main types (Norman, 1999)
– physical
– cultural
– logical
 Physical constraints
• Refer to the way physical objects
restrict the movement of things
– E.g. only one way you can insert a key into
a lock
• How many ways can you insert a CD or
DVD disk into a computer?
• How physically constraining is this
action?
• How does it differ from the insertion of
a floppy disk into a computer?
 Logical constraints
• Exploits people’s everyday common
sense reasoning about the way the
world works

• An example is they logical relationship

between physical layout of a device and
the way it works as the next slide
illustrates
Logical or ambiguous design?
• Where do you plug
the mouse?

• Where do you plug

the keyboard?

• top or bottom
connector?

• Do the color coded

icons help?
From: www.baddesigns.com
 How to design them more
logically
(i) A provides direct
adjacent mapping
between icon and
connector

(ii) B provides color

coding to
associate the
connectors with
the labels
From: www.baddesigns.com
 Cultural constraints

• Learned arbitrary conventions

like red triangles for warning

• Can be universal or culturally

specific
Which are universal and which
are culturally-specific?
 Mapping

• Relationship between controls and

their movements and the results
in the world
• Why is this a poor mapping of
control buttons?
 Mapping
• Why is this a better mapping?

• The control buttons are mapped better

onto the sequence of actions of fast
rewind, rewind, play and fast forward
 Activity on mappings
– Which controls go with which rings
(burners)?

A B C D
Why is this a better design?
 Consistency
• Design interfaces to have similar
operations and use similar elements for
similar tasks
• For example:
– always use ctrl key plus first initial of the
command for an operation – ctrl+C, ctrl+S,
ctrl+O
• Main benefit is consistent interfaces are
easier to learn and use
 When consistency breaks
down
• What happens if there is more than one
command starting with the same letter?
– e.g. save, spelling, select, style
• Have to find other initials or
combinations of keys, thereby breaking
the consistency rule
– E.g. ctrl+S, ctrl+Sp, ctrl+shift+L
• Increases learning burden on user,
making them more prone to errors
 Internal and external
consistency
• Internal consistency refers to designing
operations to behave the same within an
application
– Difficult to achieve with complex interfaces
• External consistency refers to designing
operations, interfaces, etc., to be the
same across applications and devices
– Very rarely the case, based on different
designer’s preference
 Keypad numbers layout

• A case of external inconsistency

(a) phones, remote controls (b) calculators, computer keypads

1 2 3 7 8 9
4 5 6 4 5 6
7 8 9 1 2 3
0 0
 Affordances: to give a clue
• 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 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
 What does ‘affordance’ have to
offer interaction design?
• 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 conceptualised as
‘perceived’ affordances
– Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between
action and effect at the interface
– Some mappings are better than others
 Activity
– Physical affordances:
How do the following physical objects
afford? Are they obvious?
 Activity
– Virtual affordances
How do the following screen objects
afford?
What if you were a novice user?
Would you know what to do with them?
 Usability principles

• Similar to design principles, except

more prescriptive
• Used mainly as the basis for
evaluating systems
• Provide a framework for heuristic
evaluation
Usability principles (Nielsen 2001)

• Visibility of system status

• Match between system and the real world
• User control and freedom
• Consistency and standards
• Help users recognize, diagnose and recover
from errors
• Error prevention
• Recognition rather than recall
• Flexibility and efficiency of use
• Aesthetic and minimalist design
• Help and documentation
 Key points
• ID is concerned with designing
interactive products to support people
in their everyday and working lives
• ID is multidisciplinary, involving many
inputs from wide-reaching disciplines
and fields
• ID is big business even after the
dot.com crash!
 Key points
• ID involves taking into account a
number of interdependent factors
including context of use, type of task
and kind of user
• Need to strive for usability and user
experience goals
• Design and usability principles are
useful heuristics for analyzing and
evaluating interactive products