Interaction Design Process Overview

The Design Process

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a design framework for developing solutions to problems by considering human perspectives in all steps of the problem-solving process.
• User experience (UX) is the process of planning how a person interacts with a product or service to ensure their needs are met, tasks are completed, and they experience use positively.
• A user interface (UI) is anything a user interacts with to use a digital product or service.

Interaction Design Process (IxD)

• Interaction design is a process used by designers to create user-centered solutions.
• The design process should be based on observing user needs and behavior and using those findings to inform the design solution.
• Interaction design principles can be applied to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Steps of the IxD Process

• Discovering user needs and wants: Observe and interview users to understand their needs.
• Analyzing user needs: Evaluate findings and synthesize the observations to establish a user profile.
• Designing potential solutions: Develop a design solution that addresses the user needs.
• Prototyping: Create a model of the potential solution and present it to the users.
• Implementing and deploying the solution: Implement and deploy the solution based on user feedback from the prototype and testing.

Four Basic Activities of Interaction Design

• Identifying needs and establishing requirements: Determine the user needs and identify requirements.
• Developing alternative designs: Create conceptual and physical designs for the solution.
• Building interactive versions of the designs: Build interactive versions of the designs to allow for user testing.
• Evaluating the designs: Evaluate the designs based on user feedback and testing.

Three Principles for User-Centered Approach

• Early focus on users and tasks: Understand users' behaviors, cognitive abilities, and attitudes and their specific tasks and goals. Incorporate user tasks and goals as the driving force behind the design process in order to meet their specific needs.

• Empirical measurement: Collect and analyze user feedback, reactions, and performance through simulations to understand their reactions to prototypes, and document specific usability and user experience goals for the product. Use this feedback to improve the design.

• Iterative design: Regularly test and revise the design based on user feedback. When testing reveals issues, they need to be fixed and the testing process repeated.

Example: Ecommerce Site

• Researching users' needs in order to determine the best approach for the design of an e-commerce site will involve researching their behaviors, goals, and decision-making when making purchasing decisions. Observe and interview users to discover what they look for and expect when browsing and interacting with the site.

This quiz focuses on the Interaction Design (IxD) process, highlighting the importance of human perspectives in design. It covers key concepts like Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), User Experience (UX), and User Interface (UI) within the design framework. Test your knowledge on the essential steps involved in creating user-centered solutions.