Module 1 - HCI and Interaction Design - Lecture

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A central concern of interaction design is to develop
interactive products that are usable. By this we mean
products that are generally easy to learn, effective to use,
and provide an enjoyable user experience. A good place to
start thinking about how to design usable interactive
products is to compare examples of well-designed and
poorly designed ones

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How does the marble answering machine differ from the
voice-mail system?
• It uses familiar physical objects that indicate visually at a
glance how many messages have
been left.
• It is aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to use.
• It requires only one-step actions to perform core tasks.
• It is a simple but elegant design.
• It offers less functionality and allows anyone to listen to any
of the messages

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Much effort and thought went into the design of the classic
TiVo remote control with the user in mind.

• TiVo is a digital video recorder that was originally


developed to enable the viewer to record TV shows.
• The remote control was designed with large buttons that
were clearly labeled and logically arranged, making them
easy to locate and use in conjunction with the menu
interface that appeared on the TV screen.
• In terms of its physical form, the remote device was
designed to fit into the palm of a hand, having a peanut
shape. It also has a playful look and feel about it: colorful
buttons and cartoon icons are used that are distinctive,
making it easy to identify them.

How was it possible to create such a usable and appealing

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remote device where so many others have failed? The
answer is simple: TiVo invested the time and effort to
follow a usercentered design process. Specifically, TiVo’s
director of product design at the time involved potential
users in the design process, getting their feedback on
everything from the feel of the device in the hand to
where best to place the batteries, making them easy to
replace but not prone to falling out.

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Designing interactive products requires considering who is
going to be using them, how they are going to be used,
and where they are going to be used. Another key
concern is to understand the kind of activities people are
doing when interacting with these products. The
appropriateness of different kinds of interfaces and
arrangements of input and output devices depends on
what kinds of activities are to be supported. For example,
if the activity is to enable people to bank online, then an
interface that is secure, trustworthy, and easy to navigate
is essential. In addition, an interface that allows the user
to find out information about new services offered by the
bank without it being intrusive would be useful.

What is User Centered Design?


User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process

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in which designers focus on the users and their needs in
each phase of the design process. In UCD, design teams
involve users throughout the design process via a variety
of research and design techniques, to create highly
usable and accessible products for them.
(https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-
centered-design)

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It is about creating user experiences that enhance and augment the way people
work, communicate, and interact.

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These are the different disciplines

Academic disciplines contributing to ID:


Psychology
Social Sciences
Computing Sciences
Engineering
Ergonomics
Informatics

Design practices contributing to ID:


Graphic design
Product design
Artist-design
Industrial design
Film industry

Design practices contributing to ID:


Graphic design
Product design
Artist-design

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Industrial design
Film industry

Working in Multidisciplinary Teams


Many people from different backgrounds involved
Different perspectives and ways of seeing
and talking about things

Benefits
More ideas and designs generated
Disadvantages
Difficult to communicate and progress forward the designs being create

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User Experience means how a product behaves and is used by people in the real
world.

The way people feel about it and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it,
looking at it, holding it, and opening or closing it

“Every product that is used by someone has a user experience: newspapers,


ketchup bottles, reclining armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2010)

“All aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its
products. (Nielsen and Norman, 2014)

And remember, you cannot design a user experience−you only can design for a
user experience.

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The sleek appearance of the iPod music, its simplicity of use, its elegance in style,
its distinct family of rainbow colors, a novel interaction style that many
people discovered was a sheer pleasure to learn and use, and the catchy
naming of its product and content (iTunes, iPod), among many other design
features, led to it becoming one of the greatest products of its kind and a
must-have fashion item for teenagers, students, and adults alike. While there
were many competing players on the market at the time—some with more
powerful functionality, others that were cheaper and easier to use, or still
others with bigger screens, more memory, and so forth—the quality of the
overall user experience paled in comparison to that provided by the iPod.

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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 (for example, teenagers are very different
to grown-ups)
Identify any incorrect assumptions they may have about particular user groups.
(for example, not all old people want or need big fonts)
Be aware of both people’s sensitivities and their capabilities

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Accessibility refers to the extent to which an interactive product is accessible by
as many people as possible. Companies like Google and Apple provide tools
for their developers to promote this. The focus is on people with disabilities.
For example, Android OS provides a range of tools for those with disabilities,
such as hearing aid compatibility to a built-in screen reader, while Apple
VoiceOver lets the user know what’s happening on its devices, so they can
easily navigate and even know who is in a selfie just taken, by listening to the
phone.

Inclusiveness means being fair, open, and equal to everyone. Inclusive design is
an overarching approach where designers strive to make their products and
services accommodate the widest possible number of people. An example is
ensuring that smartphones are being designed for all and made available to
everyone—regardless of their disability, education, age, or income.

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Whether or not a person is considered to be disabled changes over time with age,
or as recovery from an accident progresses throughout their life. In addition,
the severity and impact of an impairment can vary over the course of a day or
in different environmental conditions. Disability can result because
technologies are often designed in such a way as to necessitate a certain type
of interaction that is impossible for someone with an impairment. Disability in
this context is viewed as the result of poor interaction design between a user
and the technology, not the impairment alone. Accessibility, on the other
hand, opens up experiences so that they are accessible to all. Technologies
that are now mainstream once started out as solutions to accessibility
challenges. For example, SMS was designed for hearing-impaired people
before it became a mainstream technology. Furthermore, designing for
accessibility inherently results in inclusive design for all.

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Accessibility can be achieved in two ways: first, through the inclusive design of
technology, and second, through the design of assistive technology. When
designing for accessibility, it is essential to understand the types of
impairments that can lead to disability as they come in many forms.

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Usability refers to ensuring that interactive products are easy to learn, effective to
use, and
enjoyable from the user’s perspective.

Effective to use (effectiveness)


Efficient to use (efficiency)
Safe to use (safety)
Having good utility (utility)
Easy to learn (learnability)
Easy to remember how to use (memorability

It involves optimizing the interactions people have with interactive products to


enable them to carry out their activities at work, at school, and in
their everyday lives.

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Many of these are subjective qualities and are concerned with how a system feels
to a user.

They differ from the more objective usability goals in that they are concerned
with how users experience an interactive product from their perspective,
rather than assessing how useful or productive a system is from its own
perspective. Whereas the terms used to describe usability goals comprise a
small distinct set, many more terms are used to describe the multifaceted
nature of the user experience.

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Design principles are used by interaction designers to aid their thinking when
designing for the user experience. These are generalizable abstractions
intended to orient designers toward thinking about different aspects of their
designs. A well-known example is feedback: Products should be designed to
provide adequate feedback to the users that informs them about what has
already been done so that they know what to do next in the interface.
Another one that is important is findability (Morville, 2005). This refers to the
degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate—be it
navigating a website, moving through a building, or finding the delete image
option on a digital camera.

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Feedback involves sending back information about what action has been done
and what has been accomplished, allowing the person to continue with the
activity. Various kinds of feedback are available for interaction design—audio,
tactile, verbal, visual, and combinations of these. Deciding which
combinations are appropriate for different types of activities and
interactivities is central. Using feedback in the right way can also provide the
necessary visibility for user interaction.

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The design concept of constraining refers to determining ways of restricting the
kinds of user interaction that can take place at a given moment.

There are various ways that this can be achieved. A common design practice in
graphical user interfaces is to deactivate certain menu options by shading
them gray, thereby restricting the user only to actions permissible at that
stage of the activity.

One of the advantages of this form of constraining is that it prevents the user
from selecting incorrect options and thereby reduces the chance of making a
mistake.

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This refers to designing interfaces to have similar operations and use similar
elements for achieving similar tasks. In particular, a consistent interface is one
that follows rules, such as using the same operation to select all objects. For
example, a consistent operation is using the same input action to highlight
any graphical object on the interface, such as always clicking the left mouse
button. Inconsistent interfaces, on the other hand, allow exceptions to a rule.
An example is where certain graphical objects (for example, email messages
presented in a table) can be highlighted only by using the right mouse button,
while all other operations are highlighted using the left mouse button. The
problem with this kind of inconsistency is that it is quite arbitrary, making it
difficult for users to remember and making its use more prone to mistakes.
One of the benefits of consistent interfaces, therefore, is that they are easier
to learn and use. Users have to learn only a single mode of operation that is
applicable to all objects.

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