Interaction Design ISB36403 Design for Different Needs PDF

Interaction Design ISB36403 Designing for Different Needs  Outline Learnability and Help Customizability Localization and Globalization Accessibility  Introduction Personas and scenarios help us focus our design efforts on the goals, behav...

Interaction Design ISB36403 Designing for Different Needs  Outline Learnability and Help Customizability Localization and Globalization Accessibility  Introduction Personas and scenarios help us focus our design efforts on the goals, behaviors, needs, and mental models of real users. Some consistent and generalizable patterns of user needs should inform how our products are designed. This lecture explores some strategies for serving these well-known needs:  Learnability and help  Customizability  Localization and globalization  Accessibility  1. Learnability and Help It is important to helping users with different levels of experience to understand and learn an interface. Two concepts are particularly useful:  Command modalities  Working sets If insufficient, online help is the fallback option.  1. Learnability and Help Command Modalities  Pedagogic, immediate, and invisible commands  Information in the world vs. information in the head  Memorization vectors Working sets Contextual help and assistive interfaces  Guided tours and overlays  Galleries and templates  Input and content area hints  Pros and cons of wizards  ToolTips and ToolTip overlay  Command Modalities User interfaces are means for users to enter data and issue commands to the computer. Data entry is generally fairly straightforward:  dictating to a speech recognition algorithm, typing into an empty page or text field, using a finger or stylus to draw, clicking and dragging objects, or picking a value from a menu or similar widget Commands that activate functions are a bit more difficult to learn  since users need to figure out both what commands are available and how they are to be used.  Command Modalities Command modalities are the distinct techniques for allowing users to issue these instructions to the application.  E.g:direct-manipulation handles, drop-down and pop-up menu items, toolbar controls, and keyboard accelerators. Considerate user interfaces provide multiple command modalities for critical functions:  menu items, toolbar items, keyboard accelerators, gestures, or direct-manipulation controls,… Each with the parallel capability to invoke a single, particular command.  Command modalities This redundancy enables users with different skill sets and aptitudes to direct the application according to their abilities and inclinations. Mobile apps have less capacity for multiple modalities, but the tradeoff is that there is usually fewer interface elements to search when looking for a particular function.  Pedagogic, immediate, and invisible commands Pedagogic modality: commands that teach their behavior using inspection.  Dialog boxes, command menus,… Immediate modality controls have an immediate effect on data (or its presentation) without any intermediary.  drag handles, sliders, pushbuttons,… Invisible modality: commands that are not visible in the visual interface. The interface offers little or no visual indication that they exist.  Keyboard accelerators, gestures,… Pedagogic, immediate, and invisible commands Pedagogic, immediate, and invisible commands  Information in the world versus information in the head Information in the world: situations in which insufficient information is available in an environment or interface to accomplish something. Information in your head: knowledge that you have learned or memorized. Information in your head Information in the world Which: Faster Slower  Pedagogic Easier to use Bulky & Heavy  Immediate Must ensure that you learn it No need to worry about learning them  Invisible Must ensure that you don’t No need to worry about forget it forgetting them Less dependable very dependable  Memorization vectors New User  Intermediate User  Expert User Pedagogic  Immediate  Invisible To make an easy to use software, we must satisfy this natural and appropriate user desire. The solution consists of two components:  provideimmediate (or invisible) commands in addition to the pedagogic ones.  Memorization vectors Several ways to provide memorization vectors:  mention it in the user documentation (Least effective)  mention it in the app’s online help system (still ineffective)  integrate it directly into the main interface (better) A typical Windows application has two sets of immediate, keyboard-based commands: mnemonics and accelerators. Mac applications usually don’t support mnemonics, but they often do have accelerator and palette or toolbar icon mappings. Most reasonably intelligent people will comprehend the accelerator connection without any help. Memorization vectors  Working sets We all learn by repetition. A working set is the set of features memorized by continuous intermediate users.  In Excel, for example, almost every user will enter formulas, specify fonts and labels, and print pages. But Sally’s working set might include drawing graphs, whereas Elliot’s working set might include linking spreadsheets. Minimal working set can be determined via usage analytics and/or Goal-Directed Design using scenarios. Commands in working set need to be quick  Contextual help and assistive interfaces The best application help provides assistance when and where in the interface it is needed, without the user’s needing to break his or her flow. Some examples:  Guided tours and overlays  Galleries and templates  Input and content area hints  Pros and cons of wizards  ToolTips and ToolTip overlay  Guided tours and overlays Guided tours provide the needed introduction to features and interface behaviors through a sequential set of screens or cards, each of which contains brief text and images.  launch automatically the first time an app is run, and sometimes when a new version of an app Overlay is a transparent sheet laid over the interface on which arrows and descriptive text are embedded.  Best suited to relatively simple apps whose functions are not pedagogically evident. Guided tours Overlays Overlays Galleries and templates Input and content area hints  Pros and cons of wizards Wizards: invented by Microsoft that rapidly gained popularity among developers and user-interface designers. A wizard attempts to guarantee success in using a feature by stepping users through a series of steps.  ToolTips and ToolTip overlay ToolTips and ToolTip overlay  Traditional online help A complex application with many features and functions should come with a reference document. Many users will turn to a general internet search engine to find an answer, and you need to make sure your answer is out there as the definitive one.  Full-textsearch versus indexing  overview descriptions  In-app user guides Traditional online help  2. Customizability Interaction designers often face the conundrum of whether to make their products user-customizable.  Personalization  Configuration  Idiosyncratically modal behavior  3. Localization & Globalization Localization refers to translating an application for a particular language and culture. Globalization refers to making an application as universal as possible across many languages and cultures.  3. Localization & Globalization The words and phrases in some languages tend to be longer than in others. Words in some languages, Asian languages in particular, can be difficult to sort alphabetically. Ordering of day-month-year and the use of 12- or 24-hour notation for time vary from country to country. Decimal points in numbers and currency are represented differently. Some countries use week numbers Some countries use calendars other than the  4. Accessibility The World Health Organization estimates that 750 million people worldwide have some kind of disability. accessibility is an area within interaction design—and user experience in general— that is frequently overlooked. Disabled users are often underserved by technology products.  Goals of Accessibility Users can perceive and understand all instructions, information, and feedback. Users can perceive, understand, and easily manipulate any controls and inputs. Users can navigate easily, and always be aware of where there are in an interface and navigational structure.  Accessibility personas During the research and modeling phase of your design, as part of your accessibility strategy, you might want to consider creating an accessibility persona. the ideal method of creating this persona would be to interview users or potential users of your product who have disabilities that would affect their use of the product. If this isn’t possible, you can still create a provisional persona  Accessibility guidelines Leverage OS accessibility tools and guidelines. Don’t override user-selected system settings. Enable standard keyboard access methods. Incorporate display options for those with limited vision. Provide visual-only and audible-only output. Don’t flash, flicker, or blink visual elements. Use simple, clear, brief language. Use response times that support all users. Keep layouts and task flows consistent. Q&A  Next Session Practice in: JustInMind