Chapter 1:

What is interaction design?

 HCI Definition

“Human-computer interaction is a discipline

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 Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction

 HCI Definition

“HCI (human-computer
interaction) is the study of how
people interact with computers
and to what extent computers
are or are not developed for
successful interaction with
human beings”
 Human-Computer Interaction

• Human
– the end-user of a program
– the others in the organization
• Computer
– The machine the program runs on
– Often split between clients and servers
• Interaction
– the user tells the computer what they want
– the computer communicates results
Human-Computer Interaction

Task
Organization and
Social Issues

Design

Technology Humans
 These Factors Influence Each
Other & Design

• Now that mice are included with most computers, applications

assume a mouse will be used as a the pointing device”

Task
Organization and
Social Issues

Design

Technology Humans
 Factors Influence

• “People change their knowledge as they perform, i.e., they learn”

Task
Organization and
Social Issues

Design

Technology Humans
 User Interfaces (UIs)

• Part of application that allows users

– to interact with computer

– to carry out their task

• HCI = design, prototyping, evaluation, &

implementation of UIs
 Why Study User Interfaces?
• Major part of work for “real” programs
– approximately 50%
• You will work on “real” software
– intended for users other than yourself
• Bad user interfaces cost
• User interfaces hard to get right
– people are unpredictable
 Bad User Interfaces
Hard to tell the difference between the two icons and names
 Who builds UIs?
• A team of specialists (ideally)
– graphic designers
– interaction / interface designers
– technical writers
– Marketers
– test engineers
– software engineers
– users
Topics in HCI
 Bad designs
– 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
Good design
• Marble answering
machine (Bishop, 1995)
• Based on how everyday
objects behave
• Easy, intuitive and a
pleasure to use
• Only requires one-step
actions to perform core
tasks
Good and bad design
• What is wrong with the
Apex remote?
• Why is the TiVo remote so
much better designed?
– Peanut shaped to fit in
hand
– Logical layout and color-
coded, distinctive buttons
– Easy to locate buttons
 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 optimize the interactions users have with a product

– So 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
– Think through what might provide quality user
experiences

– Listen to what people want and get them involved

– Use tried and tested user-centered 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 interaction design?
• Designing interactive products to support the way people
communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives
– Sharp, Rogers and Preece (2007)

• 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
 Which kind of design?
• Number of other terms used emphasizing what is being
designed, e.g.,
– user interface design, software design, user-centered design, product
design, web design, experience design (UX)
• Interaction design is the umbrella term covering all of these
aspects
– fundamental to all disciplines, fields, and approaches concerned with
researching and designing computer-based systems for people
HCI and interaction design
 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
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 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”
– Cooper: ”From research and product to goal-related design”
– 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 (UX) - people who do all the above but who may
also carry out field studies to inform the design of products
 The User Experience
• 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, 2003)
• Cannot design a user experience, only design for a
user experience
 Why was the iPod user experience
such a success?
iPod

Which iPod are You?

 What is involved in the process of
interaction design

• Identifying needs and establishing requirements for the user

experience
• Developing alternative designs to meet these
• Building interactive prototypes that can be communicated
and assessed
• Evaluating what is being built throughout the process and
the user experience it offers
 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
 Why go to this length?
• 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 from 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
Are cultural differences important?
• 5/21/1960 versus 21/5/1960?
– Which should be used for international services and online
forms?

• Why is it that certain products, like the iPod, are

universally accepted by people from all parts of the
world whereas websites are reacted to differently by
people from different cultures?
 Anna, IKEA online sales agent
• Designed to be
different for UK and US
customers
• What are the differences
and which is which?
• What should Anna’s
appearance be like
for other countries,
like India, South Africa,
or China?
 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:
– Using a DVD to play a movie?
– Use a DVD to pre-record two programs?
– Using a web browser tool to create a website?
 User experience goals
• satisfying • aesthetically pleasing
• enjoyable • supportive of creativity
• engaging • supportive of creativity
• pleasurable • rewarding
• exciting • fun
• entertaining • provocative
• helpful • surprising
• motivating • enhancing sociability
• emotionally fulfilling • challenging

• boring • annoying
• frustrating • cutesy
Usability and user experience goals
• Selecting terms to convey a person’s feelings, emotions, etc.,
can help designers understand the multifaceted nature of the
user experience

• 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. What do you need to do?

It is not visible as to what to do!

From: www.baddesigns.com
 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
What do I do if I am wearing black?
• Invisible automatic
controls can make it
more difficult
to use
 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
• Physical objects can be designed to constrain things
– e.g. only one way you can insert a key into a lock
 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
 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 then 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
 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 conceptualized 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
• Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive
products to support the way people communicate and
interact in their everyday and working lives
• 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
 Assignment
• One of the main design principles which Nielsen
has proselytized, especially for website design, is
simplicity. He proposes that designers go through
all of their design elements and remove them
one by one. If a design works just as well without
an element, then remove it. Do you think this is a
good design principle?
• If you have your own website, try doing this and
seeing what happens. At what point does the
interaction break down?
 Assignment
• Find a handheld device (e.g. remote control, handheld computer, or cell phone)
and examine how it has been designed, paying particular attention to how the user
is meant to interact with it.
From your first impressions, write down what first comes to mind as to what is good
and bad about the way the device works. Then list
(i) its functionality
(ii) the range of tasks a typical user would want to do using it. Is the functionality
greater, equal, or less than what the user wants to do

12/31/21