Chapter 1

What is interaction design?

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 Outline
• Explain the difference between good and bad
interaction design
• Describe what interaction design is and how it
relates to HCI and other fields
• Explain what is meant by User experience and
Usability
• Describe what and who is involved in the process
of interaction design
• Outline the different forms of guidance used in
interaction design

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 Good vs. Poor designs
• A good interaction design = interactive
products: usable: easy to learn, effective to use
and enjoyable

• How to design usable interactive products =

compare examples of well and poorly designed
products

• Identify and specify the weaknesses and

strengths of different interactive systems = to
understand the good and poor interaction design

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 Bad designs

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 Why is this website so bad?

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 Good vs. Poor designs

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 Good vs. Poor Web Designs
• Robin Williams. Web Design Features
http://www.ratz.com/features.html

• Jakob Nielsen. Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

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 Good and bad design
• What is wrong with
the remote on the
right?

• Why is the left one so

much better
designed?
– Peanut shaped to fit in
hand
– Logical layout and
color-coded, distinctive
buttons
– Easy to locate buttons
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 Good and bad design

This Sony’s”apple” Remote control allows users to perform

basic functions like changing channels, volume etc. with simple
motion gestures (see image below).
Once “apples” are placed on the bowl, the remote control is being
recharged.

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 Good or bad design?

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 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

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 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
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 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 (2011)

• The design of spaces for human

communication and interaction
– Winograd (1997)

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 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

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 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

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 HCI and interaction design

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 Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields

• Academic disciplines contributing to

ID:
– Psychology
– Social Sciences
– Computing Sciences
– Engineering
– Ergonomics
– Informatics

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 Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields

• Design practices contributing to ID:

– Graphic design
– Product design
– Artist-design
– Industrial design
– Film industry

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 Relationship between ID, HCI
and other fields
• Interdisciplinary fields in interaction
design:

– HCI
– Ubiquitous Computing
– Human Factors
– Cognitive Engineering
– Cognitive Ergonomics
– Computer Supported Co-operative Work
– Information Systems

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 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
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being create ©2011
 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

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 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
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 The iPhone

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 Why was the iPhone user
experience such a success?

• Quality user experience from the

start
• Simple, elegant, distinct brand,
pleasurable, must have fashion item,
catchy names, cool, etc.,

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 Smart phones interface designs

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 What exactly makes a smart
phone smart?
• Touch screen experience
• Navigating is based around swiping,
tapping and long pressing the screen.
• Work well with all or most of Google's
services (expect Gmail, Gtalk, and Google
Maps)
• Good customization
• Multiple home screen

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 What is involved in the process of
interaction design?

1. Establishing requirements
2. Developing alternatives
3. Prototyping
4. Evaluating

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 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

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 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 people’s sensitivities and
their capabilities

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 Are cultural differences
important?
• 5/21/2012 versus 21/5/2012?
– Which should be used for international services
and online forms?
• Why is it that certain products, like the
Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4 mini,
Motorola Razr I, HTC One, iPhones, Sony
Xperia Z, etc. are universally accepted by
people from all parts of the world whereas
websites are reacted to differently by
people from different cultures?
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 Usability goals
• Effective to use
• Efficient to use
• Safe to use
• Have good utility
• Easy to learn
• Easy to remember how to use

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 User experience goals
Desirable aspects
satisfying helpful fun
enjoyable motivating provocative
engaging challenging surprising
pleasurable enhancing sociability rewarding
exciting supporting creativity emotionally fulfilling
entertaining cognitively stimulating

Undesirable aspects
boring unpleasant
frustrating patronizing
making one feel guilty making one feel stupid
annoying cutesy
childish gimmicky

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 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

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 Visibility
• make relevant parts visible

• make what has to be done obvious

• The design should make all needed options and

materials for a given task visible without distracting
the user

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 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”

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 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

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 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
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 Consistency

• “Consistency is a fundamental design

principle for usable user interfaces.”
• Example
– On the Web, documents such as PDFs
open with a single click, but on the
desktop, they open with a double-click.
Is that inconsistent?

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 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

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 Consistency in design

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 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

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 Affordances: to give a clue
• Refers to an attribute of an object that allows
people to know how to use it
– a mouse button invites pushing,
– a door handle affords pulling
– scrollbars to afford moving up and down,
– icons to afford clicking on

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 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

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