Interaction Design Fundamentals

Course Information

• Course Title: INTERFACE DESIGN
• Course Code: ITD34003
• Year: 2023

Chapter 1: Introduction to Interface Design

• Topics of Discussion:
  • Introduction of Interface Design
  • Bad design vs. Good Design characteristics
  • Goal of Interaction Design
  • User experiences
  • User Characteristics of ID
  • User Experience Goals
  • Design Principles
  • Summary

Introduction

• Interaction design focuses on creating usable, effective, and enjoyable interactive products
• Supports how people communicate and interact in everyday and work life

What is User Interface (UI) Design?

• Anticipates user needs and ensures interface elements are easy to access, understand, and use
• Combines interaction design, visual design, and information architecture
• Creates interfaces for software and computerized devices, with a focus on looks and style
• Aims to create interfaces that users find easy to use and pleasurable
• Includes graphical interfaces and voice-controlled interfaces

Examples of Bad Design

• Depicts a screenshot of a poorly designed bulk rename utility
• Image is used to showcase bad design aspects

Goals of Interface Design

• Develop usable products (easy to learn, effective to use, and enjoyable)
• Involve users in the design process

Which kind of design?

• Interaction design is the umbrella term covering all aspects
• Includes user interface design, software design, user-centered design, product design, web design, and experience design (UX)
• Emphasizes the field's fundamental role in all disciplines and areas concerning computer-based systems for people

What is Interaction Design?

• Designing interactive products that support everyday communication and interactions in work and life
• Describes the design of spaces for human communication and interaction

HCI and Interaction Design

• Shows the relationships between academic disciplines (cognitive science, ergonomics, computing science, anthropology) and interaction design practices (graphic design, product design, industrial design, film industry)

Relationship between ID, HCI, and other fields

• Academic disciplines contributing to ID: psychology, social sciences, computing sciences, engineering, ergonomics, informatics
• Design practices contributing to ID: graphic design, product design, artist-design, industrial design, film industry

Working in Multidisciplinary Teams

• Multiple people with different backgrounds participate in ID projects
• Bringing different perspectives broadens ideas and designs
• Communication and collaboration can be challenging

Interaction Design in Business

• Includes consultancies such as Nielsen Norman Group, Cooper, and IDEO
• Aims to help companies design consumer-centered products and services

What do professionals in ID do?

• Interaction designers create the interactive aspects of products
• Usability engineers evaluate products using usability methods
• Web designers create the visual design of websites
• Information architects plan and structure interactive products
• UX designers focus on user experience aspects, including field studies

The User Experience

• Includes the ways people feel and interact with the product
• Emphasizes the emotional reaction to the product's functionality and appearance
• Details the holistic user experience, considering the interaction not only with the product or service but with the end-user

Defining User Experience

• How users perceive a product, such as whether a product is aesthetically pleasing (like a smartwatch)
• Involves the user's feelings and reaction towards the product usage
• Comprises pragmatic and hedonic elements, pertaining to simplicity and functionality (pragmatic) and evocativeness (hedonic)

Why was the iPod user experience successful?

• Simple, elegant design, distinct brand, and positive user experience features
• Pleasing sensory aspects contributed to success

Core characteristics of interaction design

• Users involvement throughout the development process
• Clear usability and user experience goals, documented and agreed upon
• Ongoing iteration during all core activities

Why?

• Help designers understand how to create products that meet people needs
• Important to consider individual differences in design
• Awareness of different sensitivities and capabilities

Accessibility and Inclusiveness

• Interactive products should be accessible as much as possible
• Focus includes people with disabilities
• Design encompassing diversity in terms of users' needs, backgrounds, and circumstances

Disabilities

• Disabilities are dynamic, changing with age or recovery from accidents or illness
• Vary in severity and impact
• Can result from the design of the technology in a way incompatible with users' impairments

Understanding Disability

• Classifies disabilities as sensory, physical, or cognitive impairment
• Definitions provide detailed descriptions of the specific types of disability
• Provides further categorizations of impairment

Being cool about disability

• Products should look desirable and fashionable

Cultural Differences

• Importance of recognizing cultural differences in design and adapting for diverse user groups
• Examines how certain products, like smartphones, are adopted worldwide despite user reactions to websites varying culturally

Usability and User Experience Goals

• Selecting appropriate terms to portray and understand the user's emotions
• Outlining differences between usability and user experience goals
• Considering ways to balance the fun and safe aspects of design

User experience goals

• Includes desirable aspects (satisfying, enjoyable, stimulating, rewarding), alongside undesirable aspects (boring, irritating, frustrating)
• These aspects should be recognized to create a comprehensive user experience

Design Principles

• Abstractions for understanding various design aspects
• Do's and don'ts of interaction design
• Specifies what should be provided and omitted

Feedback

• Sending information to the user about actions taken
• Includes sound, highlighting, animation, or their combinations

Constraints

• Restricts possible actions to prevent users from selecting incorrect options in an interface/form

Logical or Ambiguous design?

• Examines issues of logical and consistent design
• Questions regarding the placement of design components and color-coding

How to design them more logically?

• Explains how to make interface logic more apparent
• Shows practical examples of logical interface layouts

Consistency

• Design interfaces with similar elements for similar tasks, increasing ease of use and learning
• Provides examples like keyboard shortcuts

When consistency breaks down

• What happens if there are multiple components with the same name or function?
• Explains the negative implications

Internal and external consistency

• Internal consistency relates to design features behaving the same within one application
• External consistency is about consistency throughout different systems

Keypad numbers layout

• Discusses examples of external consistency issues when using a keypad (e.g., phones versus calculators)

Affordances

• Describes the clue-giving attribute in objects that indicate their functionality (e.g., handles, buttons)
• Aims to explain how this relates to interaction designs

What does "affordance" have to offer interaction design?

• Discusses how affordances differ in virtual vs. physical interfaces and what is more practical
• Discusses learning conventions about arbitrary mappings

Activity

• Provides exercises and examples for virtual interface design

Summary

• Interaction design aims to create supportive interactive products for everyday use
• Requires multidisciplinary considerations (context, user groups, types of activities) to realize the full user experience
• Design principles (feedback and simplicity) are helpful in design processes