Interaction Design Basics

Understanding Interaction Design

• Interaction design starts with understanding the user's needs and existing tools.
• It's essential to define the problem space before jumping into designing a solution.
• Problem space: A process to understand and define a problem before designing a solution.
• Don't confuse it with the physical space where the technology will be used.
• Early stage reflection is important for understanding design.
• A project manager, software engineer, and designers should work together to define the problem space.

Problem Space Framework

• Key questions to guide problem space definition:
  • What are the problems with the existing product or user experience?
  • Why are they considered problems?
  • How might the proposed design ideas address these problems?
  • If designing a new user experience, how do the design ideas support, change, or extend existing ways of doing things?

Assumptions and Claims

• An assumption is something taken for granted without testing.
• A claim is a statement about something that's still open to question.
• It's beneficial to identify and understand these early in the process.

Example - Class Activity

• Children's level of physical inactivity and obesity is high.
• Exergaming, using active console video games, could be a solution.

Example 2 - Class Activity

• Technology affects user experience.
• Watching TV in the 1970s/80s had a different user experience than today.
• It's essential to consider how technology changes the problem space.

Conceptualising the Design Space

• The design team should conceptualise the design space, articulating a proposed solution as a conceptual model.
• Benefits of conceptualising:
  • Orientation: Helps ask specific questions about how the conceptual model will be understood by users.
  • Open-Mindedness: Allows the team to explore various ideas to address the problem.
  • Common Ground: Establishes common terms, reducing misunderstandings and confusion.

Conceptual Models

• Models simplify descriptions of systems or processes.
• A conceptual model describes how a system is organised and operates.
• It outlines what people can do with a product and the concepts needed to interact with it.

Components of a Conceptual Model

• Metaphors and Analogies: Used to convey how a product is used and its purpose.
• Concepts: Expose users to task-domain objects and their attributes, including operations on those objects.
• Relationships: Define how concepts are related, e.g., a folder contains files.
• Mappings: Establish connections between concepts and the user experience.

Issues with Metaphors

• They can break conventional rules.
• They can constrain designers' thinking.
• They can limit understanding of the system.
• Designers might use bad examples from previous designs.

Interaction Types

• Instructing: Issuing commands and choosing options (e.g., typing, selecting from menus).
• Conversing: Interacting with a system as if having a conversation (e.g., speaking or typing questions).
• Manipulating: Interacting with virtual or physical objects by manipulating them (e.g., opening, holding, closing).
• Exploring: Moving through virtual or physical environments and interacting with objects.
• Responding: The system initiates the interaction, and the user responds (e.g., being alerted to points of interest).