Chapter 1:

What is interaction design?

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 onestep 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 computerbased 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 create

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

QuickTime and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

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?

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 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 peoples 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 Annas
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?
QuickTime and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

User experience goals

satisfying
enjoyable
engaging
pleasurable
exciting
entertaining
helpful
motivating
emotionally fulfilling

aesthetically pleasing
supportive of creativity
supportive of creativity
rewarding
fun
provocative
surprising
enhancing sociability
challenging

boring
frustrating

annoying
cutsey

Usability and user experience

goals
Selecting terms to convey a persons 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 dos and donts 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?
From:
www.baddesigns.comIt

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

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
designers preference

Keypad numbers layout

A case of external inconsistency
(a) phones, remote controls

(b) calculators, computer keypads

1
4

2
5

3
6

1
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 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