Lesson02

The Process of Interaction Design

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 2
1. Introduction
Design is a practical and creative activity with the aim of developing
a product that helps its users achieve their goals. In previous
chapters, we looked at different kinds of interactive products,
issues that need to be taken into account when doing interaction
design, some of the theoretical bases for the field, and techniques
for gathering and analyzing data to understand users’ goals. In this
chapter we start to explore how we can design and build
interactive products.
We defined interaction design as being concerned with ‘designing
interactive products to support the way people communicate and
interact in their everyday and working lives.’ But how do you go
about doing this? Developing a product must begin with gaining
some understanding of what is required of it, but where do these
requirements come from? Whom do you ask about them? 12/01/24
http://fpt.edu.vn 3
Underlying good interaction design is the philosophy of
user-centered design, i.e. involving users throughout
development, but who are the users? Will they know
what they want or need even if we can find them to ask?
For an innovative product, users are unlikely to be able to
envision what is possible, so where do these ideas come
from? In this chapter, we raise and answer these kinds of
questions, discuss usercentered design, and revisit the
four basic activities of the interaction design process that
were introduced in Chapter 1. We also introduce a
lifecycle model of interaction design that captures these
activities
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 4
2. What is Involved in Interaction Design?
The previous chapters have introduced you to many
exciting ideas, approaches, theories, and opinions
about interaction design, but what does it mean to
actually do interaction design? The following activity
is intended to start you thinking about this by asking
you to produce an initial design for an interactive
product

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 5
2. What Is Involved in Interaction Design?
Interaction design has specific activities focused on
discovering requirements for the product, designing
something to fulfill those requirements, and producing
prototypes that are then evaluated. In addition,
interaction design focuses attention on users and their
goals.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 6
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 7
For example, the artifact’s use and target domain are investigated by taking a
user-centered approach to development, users’ opinions and reactions to early
designs are sought, and users are involved appropriately in the development
process itself. This means that users’ concerns direct the development rather
than just technical concerns. Design is also about trade-offs—about balancing
conflicting requirements. One common form of trade-off when developing a
system to offer advice, for example, is deciding how much choice will be given to
the user and how much direction the system should offer. Often, the division will
depend on the purpose of the system, for example, whether it is for playing music
tracks or for controlling traffic flow. Getting the balance right requires experience,
but it also requires the development and evaluation of alternative solutions

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 8
Generating alternatives is a key principle in most design
disciplines and one that is also central to interaction design.
Linus Pauling, twice a Nobel Prize winner, once said, “The best
way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.” Generating lots of
ideas is not necessarily hard, but choosing which of them to
pursue is more difficult. For example, Tom Kelley (2016)
describes seven secrets for successful brainstorms, including
sharpening the focus (having a well-honed problem statement),
having playful rules (to encourage ideas), and getting physical
(using visual props).

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 9
Involving users and others in the design process means that the
designs and potential solutions will need to be communicated to
people other than the original designer. This requires the design to be
captured and expressed in a form that allows review, revision, and
improvement. There are many ways of doing this, one of the simplest
being to produce a series of sketches. Other common approaches are
to write a description in natural language, to draw a series of
diagrams, and to build a prototype, that is, a limited version of the
final product. A combination of these techniques is likely to be the
most effective. When users are involved, capturing and expressing a
design in a suitable format is especially important since they are
unlikely to understand jargon or specialist notations. In fact, a form
with which users can interact is most effective, so building prototypes
is an extremely powerful approach.
Readmore Wiley.Interaction.Design.Beyond.Human-Computer.Interaction.5th.Edition page 41

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 10
3. Some Practical Issues
The discussion so far has highlighted some issues about the
practical application of usercentered design and the simple
lifecycle of interaction design introduced earlier.
These issues are listed here:
•Who are the users?
•What are the users’ needs?
•How to generate alternative designs
•How to choose among alternatives
•How to integrate interaction design activities with other
lifecycle models
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 11
Who are the users?
Identifying users may seem like a straightforward activity, but it
can be harder than you think. For example, Sha Zhao et al.
(2016) found a more diverse set of users for smartphones than
most manufacturers recognize. Based on an analysis of one
month’s smartphone app usage, they discovered 382 distinct
types of users, including Screen Checkers and Young Parents.
Charlie Wilson et al. (2015) found that little is understood about
who the users of smart homes in general are expected to be,
beyond those focused on health-related conditions.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 12
Who are the users?
In part, this is because many products nowadays are being
developed for use by large sections of the population, and so it
can be difficult to determine a clear description. Some products
(such as a system to schedule work shifts) have more
constrained user communities, for example a specific role (shop
assistant) within a particular industrial sector (retail). In this
case, there may be a range of users with different roles who
relate to the product in different ways. Examples are those who
manage direct users, those who receive outputs from the
system, those who test the system, those who make the
purchasing decision, and those who use competitive products
(Holzblatt and Jones, 1993)

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 13
Who are the users?
There is a surprisingly wide collection of people who all have a
stake in the development of a successful product. These people
are called stakeholders. Stakeholders are the individuals or
groups that can influence or be influenced by the success or
failure of a project. Alan Dix et al. (2004) observed that is
pertinent to a user-centered view of development: “It will
frequently be the case that the formal ‘client’ who orders the
system falls very low on the list of those affected. Be very wary
of changes which take power, influence or control from some
stakeholders without returning something tangible in its place.”

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 14
Who are the users?
The group of stakeholders for a particular product will be larger
than the group of users. It will include customers who pay for it;
users who interact with it; developers who design, build, and
maintain it; legislators who impose rules on the development
and operation of it; people who may lose their jobs because of its
introduction; and so on (Sharp et al., 1999).

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 15
Identifying the stakeholders for a project helps to decide who to
involve as users and to what degree, but identifying relevant
stakeholders can be tricky. Ian Alexander and Suzanne
Robertson (2004) suggest using an onion diagram to model
stakeholders and their involvement. This diagram shows
concentric circles of stakeholder zones with the product being
developed sitting in the middle. Soo Ling Lim and Anthony
Finkelstein (2012) developed a method called StakeRare and
supporting tool called StakeNet that relies on social networks
and collaborative filtering to identify and prioritize relevant
stakeholders.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 16
What Are the Users’ Needs?
If you had asked someone in the street in the late 1990s what
they needed, their answer probably wouldn’t have included a
smart TV, a ski jacket with an integrated smartphone, or a robot
pet. If you presented the same person with these possibilities
and asked whether they would buy them if they were available,
then the answer may have been more positive. Determining
what product to build is not simply a question of asking people
“What do you need?” and then supplying it, because people
don’t necessarily know what is possible. Suzanne and James
Robertson (2013) refer to “un-dreamed-of” needs, which are
those that users are unaware they might have.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 17
What Are the Users’ Needs?
Instead of asking users, this is approached by exploring the
problem space, investigating the users and their activities to see
what can be improved, or trying out ideas with potential users to
see whether the ideas are successful. In practice, a mixture of
these approaches is often taken—trying ideas in order to
discover requirements and decide what to build, but with
knowledge of the problem space, potential users, and their
activities.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 18
What Are the Users’ Needs?
If a product is a new invention, then identifying the users and
representative tasks for them may be harder. This is where in-the-wild
studies or rapid design sprints that provide authentic user feedback
on early ideas are valuable. Rather than imagining who might want to
use a product and what they might want to do with it, it’s more
effective to put it out there and find out—the results might be
surprising! It may be tempting for designers simply to design what
they would like to use them selves, but their ideas would not
necessarily coincide with those of the target user group, because they
have different experiences and expectations. Several practitioners
and commentators have observed that it’s an “eye-opening
experience” when developers or designers see a user struggling to
complete a task that seemed so clear to

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 19
What Are the Users’ Needs?
Focusing on people’s goals, usability goals and user experience
goals is a more promising approach to interaction design than
simply expecting stakeholders to be able to articulate the
requirements for a product.

Readmore Wiley.Interaction.Design.Beyond.Human-Computer.Interaction.5th.Edition page 58

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 20
How to generate alternative designs
A common human tendency is to stick with something that we know works. We
recognize that a better solution may exist out there somewhere, but it is very
easy to accept this one because we know it works – it is ‘good enough.’ Settling
for a solution that is good enough is not necessarily bad, but it may be
undesirable because good alternatives may never be considered, and considering
alternative solutions is a crucial step in the process of design. But where do these
alternative ideas come from?

Readmore Wiley.Interaction.Design.Beyond.Human-Computer.Interaction.5th.Edition

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 21
One answer to this question is that they come from the individual designer's flair and creativity
(the genius design described in Box 9.1). Although it is certainly true that some people are able
to produce wonderfully inspired designs while others struggle to come up with any ideas at all,
very little in this world is completely new. For example, if you think of something commonly
believed to be an invention, such as the steam engine, this was in fact inspired by the
observation that the steam from a kettle boiling on the stove lifted the lid. Clearly there was an
amount of creativity and engineering involved in making the jump from a boiling kettle to a
steam engine, but the kettle provided the inspiration to translate experience gained in one
context into a set of principles that could be applied in another. Innovations usually arise through
cross-fertilization of ideas from different perspectives, individuals, and contexts; the evolution of
an existing product through use and observation; or straightforward copying of other, similar
products

Readmore Wiley.Interaction.Design.Beyond.Human-Computer.Interaction.5th.Edition

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 22
Cross-fertilization may result by discussing ideas with
other designers, while Buxton (2007) reports that
different perspectives from users generated original
ideas about alternative designs. As an example of
evolution, consider the word processor. The capabilities
of suites of office software have gradually increased from
the time they first appeared. Initially, a word processor
was just an electronic version of a typewriter, but
gradually other capabilities, including the spell-checker,
thesaurus, style sheets, graphical capabilities, and so on,
were added.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 23
Although creativity and invention are often wrapped in mystique,
we do understand something of the process and of how
creativity can be enhanced or inspired. We know, for instance,
that browsing a collection of designs will inspire designers to
consider alternative perspectives, and hence alternative
solutions. The field of case-based reasoning (Maher and Pu,
1997) emerged from the observation that designers solve new
problems by drawing on knowledge gained from solving previous
similar problems. As Schank (1982, p. 22) puts it, “An expert is
someone who gets reminded of just the right prior experience to
help him in processing his current experiences.” And while those
experiences may be the designer's own, they can equally well be
others’.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 24
Another approach to creativity has been taken by Maiden et al (2007a).
They have been running creativity workshops to generate innovative
requirements in an air traffic management (ATM) application domain. Their
idea is to introduce experts in different fields into the workshop, and then
invite stakeholders to identify analogies between their own field and this
new one. For example, they have invited an Indian textile expert, a
musician, a TV program scheduler, and a museum exhibit designer.
Although not all obviously analogical domains, they sparked creative ideas
for the air traffic management application. For example, participants
reported that one textile design was elegant, i.e. simple, beautiful, and
symmetrical. They then transferred these properties to a key area of the
ATM domain – that of aircraft conflict resolution. They explored the meaning
of elegance within this context, and realized that elegance is perceived
differently by different controllers. From this they generated the
requirement that the system should be able to accommodate different air
traffic controller styles during conflict resolution.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 25
A more pragmatic answer to this question, then, is that
alternatives come from seeking different perspectives and
looking at other designs. The process of inspiration and
creativity can be enhanced by prompting a designer's own
experience and studying others’ ideas and suggestions.
Deliberately seeking out suitable sources of inspiration is a
valuable step in any design process. These sources may be
very close to the intended new product, such as competitors’
products, or they may be earlier versions of similar systems,
or something completely different

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 26
Having said this, under some circumstances the scope to
consider alternative designs may be limited. Design is a process
of balancing constraints and constantly trading off one set of
requirements with another, and the constraints may be such that
there are very few viable alternatives available. For example, if
you are designing a software system to run under the Windows
operating system, then elements of the design will be prescribed
because you must conform to the Windows look and feel, and to
other constraints intended to make Windows programs
consistent for the user. If you are producing an upgrade to an
existing system, then you may want to keep the familiar
elements of it and retain basically the same user experience.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 27
How to choose among alternatives
Choosing among alternatives is about making design decisions: Will the
device use keyboard entry or a touch screen? Will the product provide an
automatic memory function or not? These decisions will be informed by the
information gathered about users and their tasks, and by the technical
feasibility of an idea. Broadly speaking, though, the decisions fall into two
categories: those that are about externally visible and measurable features,
and those that are about characteristics internal to the system that cannot
be observed or measured without dissecting it. For example, in a
photocopier, externally visible and measurable factors include the physical
size of the machine, the speed and quality of copying, the different sizes of
paper it can use, and so on. Underlying each of these factors are other
considerations that cannot be observed or studied without dissecting the
machine. For example, the choice of materials used in a photocopier may
depend on its friction rating and how much it deforms under certain
conditions.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 28
In an interactive product there are similar factors that are
externally visible and measurable and those that are
hidden from the users’ view. For example, exactly why it
takes 30 seconds for a web page to load, or why it takes
an hour for a cell phone text message to arrive, will be
influenced by technical decisions made when the web
page or cell phone software was constructed. From the
users’ viewpoint the important observation is the fact
that it does take 30 seconds to load or an hour to arrive.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 29
In interaction design, the way in which the users interact with the product is
considered the driving force behind the design and so we concentrate on
the externally visible and measurable behavior. Detailed internal workings
are still important to the extent that they affect external behavior or
features. One answer to the question posed above is that we choose
between alternative designs by letting users and stakeholders interact with
them and by discussing their experiences, preferences, and suggestions for
improvement. This is fundamental to a user-centered approach to
development. This in turn means that the designs must be available in a
form that can be reasonably evaluated with users, not in technical jargon or
notation that seems impenetrable to them. One form traditionally used for
communicating a design is documentation, e.g. a description of how
something will work or a diagram showing its components. The trouble is
that a static description cannot easily capture the dynamics of behavior,
and for an interactive product we need to communicate to the users what it
will be like to actually operate it.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 30
In many design disciplines, prototyping is used to overcome
potential client misunderstandings and to test the technical
feasibility of a suggested design and its production.
Prototyping involves producing a limited version of the
product with the purpose of answering specific questions
about the design's feasibility or appropriateness. Prototypes
give a better impression of the user experience than simple
descriptions, and there are different kinds of prototyping
that are suitable for different stages of development and for
eliciting different kinds of information.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 31
How to integrate interaction design activities with other lifecycle models
There are several lifecycle models associated with other disciplines that
contribute to interaction design (see Figure 1.4). Prominent among these
lifecycle models are those associated with software engineering. Discussion
about how best to integrate user-centered design and software engineering,
and how to raise awareness of user-centered techniques with software
engineers has been ongoing for several years, e.g. see Seffah et al (2005). The
latest, and some would argue the most promising, attempts at integration focus
on a relatively recent trend in software engineering, called agile software
development. Agile methods began to emerge in the late 1990s. The most well
known of these are eXtreme Programming (Beck and Andres, 2005), Crystal
(Cockburn, 2005), Scrum (Schwaber and Beedle, 2002), and Adaptive Software
Development (ASD) (Highsmith, 2000). Dynamic Systems Development Method
(DSDM) (DSDM, 2014), although established before the current agile
movement, also belongs to the agile family as it adheres to the agile manifesto
(reproduced below).

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 32
These methods differ, but they all stress the importance of
iteration, early and repeated user feedback, being able to
handle emergent requirements, and striking a good balance
between flexibility and structure. They also all emphasize
collaboration, face-to-face communication, streamlined
processes to avoid unnecessary activities, and the importance
of practice over process, i.e. of getting work done.

Readmore: Human-Computer Interaction-Wiley page 480

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 33