Module 3 Designs of Human-Computer Interaction PDF

1 MODULE 3 DESIGNS OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Lesson 1 Design Guidelines, Rules and Principles Lesson 2 Evaluation Methods Lesson 3 Participatory Design Lesson 4 System Interactive Desi...

1 MODULE 3 DESIGNS OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Lesson 1 Design Guidelines, Rules and Principles Lesson 2 Evaluation Methods Lesson 3 Participatory Design Lesson 4 System Interactive Design Patterns Module 3  2 MODULE 3 DESIGN OF HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION INTRODUCTION This unit offers guidelines for design of user interface software in six functional areas: data entry, data display, sequence control, user guidance, data transmission, and data protection. The guidelines are proposed here as a potential tool for designers of user interface software. Guidelines can help establish rules for coordinating individual design contributions; can help to make design decisions just once rather than leaving them to be made repeatedly by individual designers. It can also help to define detailed design requirements and to evaluate user interface software in comparison with those requirements. The design of user interface software will often involve a considerable investment of time and effort. Design guidelines can help ensure the value of that investment. OBJECTIVES By the end of this unit, you should be able to: 1. Select design guidelines; 2. Know how to monitor guidelines and carry out prototype tests; 3. Understand the concept of translating selected guidelines into design rules; 4. Know the importance of documenting design rules; 5. Explain various types of design rules; 6. Know how to use design rules; and 7. Learn some design principles. DIRECTIONS There are four lessons in this module. Read and understand the lessons carefully then answer the exercises/activities to assess how much you have benefitted from it. Work on the exercises carefully and submit your output through online platforms or to College of Computer Science office. In terms of difficulty in understanding the lessons, you can discuss this with your instructor. Good luck and enjoy learning! Module 3  3 Lesson 1 Design Guidelines, Rules and Principles DESIGN GUIDELINES Guidelines are more suggestive and general. There are two types of guidelines, they are: a. Abstract guidelines or principles that are applicable during early design life cycle activities; and b. Detailed guidelines otherwise called style guides that are applicable during the later system life cycle activities. Understanding justification for guidelines aids in resolving conflicts identify stakeholders — not just the users. Selection of Design Guidelines Not all the guidelines can be applied in designing any system. For any system application, some of the guidelines will be relevant and some will not. Design guidelines must be generally worded so that they might apply to many different system applications. Thus, generally worded guidelines must be translated into specific design rules before they can be applied. The process of selecting relevant guidelines for application and translating them into specific design rules is referred to here as "tailoring". Who will do these guidelines tailoring? It should be the joint responsibility of system analysts and human factors specialists assessing design requirements, of software designers assessing feasibility, and of their managers. It may also be helpful to include representatives of the intended system users in this process, to ensure that proposed design features will meet operational requirements. Once all relevant guidelines have been identified, a designer must review them and decide which ones to apply. There are two reasons why a designer might not wish to apply all relevant guidelines. First, for any given application, some guidelines may conflict, and the designer must therefore choose which are more important. Second, budgetary and time restrictions may force the designer to apply only the most important guidelines -- those that promise to have the greatest effect on system usability. Module 3  4 Expertise Experience versus Guidelines Guidelines cannot take the place of expertise experience. Without any guidelines, an experienced designer, skilled in the art, could do well. Even with guidelines, a novice designer can perform poorly. Few designers will have the patience to read a whole book of rules. Expert design consultants cannot, or at least not entirely, be replaced by guidelines. A design expert would know more about a particular subject than the guidelines will cover. An expert will know what questions to ask and how to respond to many of them. An expert would be able to adjust broad guidelines to the unique requirements of a given system design application. Moreover, in terms of organizational criteria, an expert would know how to balance the conflicting demands of various guidelines. Monitoring Guidelines and Prototype Testing Before the practical design of user interface software, guideline tailoring must take place early in the design process for optimal effectiveness. Designers must have a detailed understanding of role specifications and consumer characteristics in order to customize guidelines. As a result, task analysis is a requirement for tailoring guidelines. The implementation of guidelines will result in a user interface software design that may provide a number of useful recommendations. Also the most careful design, however, would involve user testing to validate the value of good features and to discover any flaws that might have gone unnoticed. As a result, concept testing must come first, followed by potential redesign and operational testing. Indeed, testing is so essential for ensuring good design that some experts advocate early creation of an operational prototype to evaluate interface design concepts interactively with users, with iterative design changes to discover what works best. However, prototyping is not a substitute for careful design. Prototyping will permit rapid changes to a proposed interface; however, prototyping may not result in an usable final design unless the initial design is relatively good. In the context of the overall system development process, guidelines implementation would not inherently save time in user interface design, and can even add to it, at least in the early stages of defining design rules. However, the use of guidelines can contribute in the development of a better user interface. In the context of the overall system development process, guidelines implementation would not inherently save time in user interface design, and can even add to it, at least in the early Module 3  5 stages of defining design rules. The use of guidelines, on the other hand, will contribute in the development of a better user interface. Translation of Selected Guidelines into Design Rules Guidelines are written in general terms since they are meant to be used on a number of systems. A guideline must be translated into concrete design rules before it can be used. For instance, a guideline which states that displays should be consistently formatted might be translated into design rules that specify where various display features should appear, such as the display title, prompts and other user guidance, error messages, command entries, etc. Any rule can be translated in a variety of ways. A design rule which states that display titles should be bolded and entered in the top line of the display may be interpreted from a guideline which states that each display should be uniquely identified. It could also be converted into a style law that display titles will be capitalized in the display's upper left corner. What if guidance were provided to interface designers directly rather than being translated into design rules? If designers do not settle on design rules as a group, each designer will make their own decisions when implementing guidelines. The end result would almost certainly be a design that is inconsistent. Design Rules Types of Design Rules Rules based on principles. These comprise abstract design rules, rules based on low authority, and those based on high generality. Rules based on standards. These are specific design rules from high authority but with limited application. Rules derived from guidelines. These are rules with a lower level of authority, but they have a broader scope. Documentation, Implementation and Evaluation of Design Rules After design rules have been specified for each selected guideline, those rules should be documented for reference by software designers and others involved in system development. The design process will be supported by the documentation of agreed- Module 3  6 upon guidelines, which will be subject to periodic review and revision as needed. For a given application, documented rules may then be implemented consistently. Rules defined for one application can be adapted for use in other applications with minimal modifications. During the design process, it is possible that a specific design rule may be found to be ineffective. Therefore, certain methods for dealing with exceptions must be available. If a design rule is not suitable for a specific display, the one in responsible for making those decisions may make an exception. However, if a design rule cannot be enforced due to other design restrictions, all designers for that system must be notified, and another design rule may need to be substituted. Finally, after the design is complete, it must be evaluated to the initial design specifications to ensure that all design guidelines were followed. It may be helpful to assign different weights to the various rules to facilitate in the exception and evaluation processes, indicating which are more important than others. Such weighting will help resolve the trade-offs that are an inevitable part of the design process. Using Design Rules Since design rules suggest how to improve usability, they can vary in generality and authority, so there are a variety of guidelines in order to ensure consistent implementation. The following are some of the current standards: The standards set by national or international bodies to ensure compliance by a large community of designers. These standards require sound underlying theory particularly on this slowly changing technology. Hardware standards: These are more common than software standards. They are of high authority and low level of detail ISO 9241 standards that define usability as the effectiveness, the efficiency and the satisfaction with which users accomplish tasks "Broad brush" design rules 7 4 Useful check list for good design Better design using these than using nothing! Different collections – Nielsen's 10 Heuristics – Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rules – Norman's 7 Principles Module 3  7 There are Golden rules and heuristics governing designs. These are regarded as "Broad brush" design rules that provide a useful check list for good design. A better design is achieved using these than using nothing! The different collections include: the Nielsen's 10 Heuristics rules, the Shneiderman's 8 Golden Rules and the Norman's 7 Principles. The Shneiderman's 8 Golden Design Rules 1. Strive for consistency 2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts 3. Offer informative feedback 4. Design dialogs to yield closure 5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling 6. Permit easy reversal of actions 7. Support internal locus of control 8. Reduce short-term memory load Design Principles The Norman's 7 Design Principles 1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head. 2. Simplify the structure of tasks. 3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation. 4. Get the mappings right. 5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial. 6. Design for error. 7. When all else fails, standardize. Design Principles Formulated to Support Usability Principle of Learnability. This is the ease with which new users can begin effective interaction and achieve maximal performance. The Principles of Learnability are broken down into: Predictability. This is determining effect of future actions based on past interaction history and its operation visibility. Synthesizability. This is assessing the effect of past actions, its immediate and its eventual honesty. Module 3  8 Familiarity. This is how prior knowledge applies to new system and how easy one can guess its affordance. Generalizability. This is extending specific interaction knowledge to new situations Consistency: This concerns the likeness in input and output behaviour arising from similar situations or task objectives. Principle of Flexibility. These are the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange information. Principles of flexibility comprise: Dialogue initiative. This is the freedom from system imposed constraints on input dialogue and it compares the system against the user pre-emptiveness. Multithreading. This is expressing the ability of the system to support user interaction for more than one task at a time. It also looks at the concurrent and interleaving multimodality. Task migratability. This is passing responsibility for task execution between user and system. Substitutivity. This allows equivalent values of input and output to be substituted for each other. It compares representation multiplicity and equal opportunity. Customizability. This is the modifiability and adaptability of the user interface by user or the modifiability and adaptivity of the user interface by the system. Principle of Robustness. This is the level of support provided the user in determining successful achievement and assessment of goal-directed behaviour. Principles of robustness are made up of: Observability. This is the ability of the user to evaluate the internal state of the system from its perceivable representation. It considers the browsability, the defaults, the reachability, the persistence , and the operation visibility. Recoverability. This concerns the ability of the user to take corrective action once an error has been recognized. It looks at the reachability, the forward and backward recovery and the commensurate effort. Responsiveness. This is how the user perceives the rate of communication with the system and how stable is the response. Task conformance: This explains the degree to Module 3  9 which system services support all of the user's tasks, the task completeness and its adequacy. REMEMBER! The goal of interaction design is to design for maximum usability. Design rules comprise the principles of usability which look at the general understanding of the design, the standards and guidelines which set the direction for design, and the design patterns that capture and reuse design knowledge. In designing computer-based information systems, special attention must be given to software supporting the user interface. Select three (3) questions and provide a comprehensive answer. Answers will be uploaded in your Google classroom. 1. Identify those responsible for selecting relevant guidelines for application and translation into design rules. Indicate specific area of responsibility for each professional. 2. Why is it necessary to translate selected guidelines into design rules? 3. What are the advantages derivable from documenting design rules, why is the evaluation of the design necessary? 4. When is it most appropriate to monitor design guidelines and carry out prototype testing and why? 5. Distinguish between rules based on principles, those based on standards and those derived from guidelines. 6. What are those design principles formulated to support usability? 7. Mention any 6 of the Shneiderman's 8 Golden rules that govern interactive designs. Module 3  10 Lesson 2 EVALUATION METHODS Evaluation tests usability and functionality of system and can be carried out in the laboratory, in the field and/or in collaboration with users. The evaluation technique which covers both design and implementation should be considered at all stages in the design life cycle. The goals of evaluation are to assess extent of system functionality, to assess effect of interface on user, and to identify specific problems from design and implementation. Evaluation Techniques The Evaluation Design Techniques include: The Cognitive Walkthrough The Heuristic Evaluation The Review-based evaluation User Participation The Cognitive Walkthrough This technique was proposed by Polson et al. It evaluates design on how well it supports user in learning task and is usually performed by expert in cognitive psychology. The design expert 'walks through' the design to identify potential problems using psychological principles with forms used to guide the analysis. For each task, the walkthrough considers what impact the interaction will have on the user, the cognitive processes required and the learning problems that may occur. The analysis focuses on goals and knowledge to establish whether the design leads the user to generate the correct goals. The Heuristic Evaluation This was proposed by Nielsen and Molich. Here, usability criteria (heuristics) are identified; the designs are examined by experts to see if these are violated. Examples of heuristics include: Testing whether the system behaviour is predictable Testing whether the system behaviour is consistent Testing whether a feedback is provided Heuristic evaluation 'debugs' design. Module 3  11 Review-based evaluation This evaluation reviews results from the literature that are used to support or refute parts of the design. However, care is needed to ensure the results are transferable to new design. It is a model-based evaluation which in addition encompasses cognitive models that can be used to filter design options. An example is the GOMS prediction of user performance. The design rationale can also provide useful evaluation information. Evaluating through user Participation Evaluation could be carried out in two ways; 1. through laboratory studies and 2. through the field studies Laboratory studies Laboratory studies are appropriate if system location is dangerous or impractical for constrained single user systems to allow controlled manipulation of use. The advantages of carrying out laboratory studies are appropriate specialist equipment available and are utilised in an uninterrupted environment. Disadvantages could be lack of context and difficulty in observing several users cooperating. Field Studies approach This approach is appropriate where context is crucial for longitudinal studies The advantages are that studies are carried out in a natural environment where context of evaluation is retained. Though observation may alter such context. Advantageously, longitudinal studies are also possible. Obvious disadvantages are that there could be distractions and noise particularly in which the location of the field is within a public place. Evaluating Implementations To evaluate implementations, the evaluator uses artifacts such as simulation, prototypes and the full implementation. Module 3  12 Experimental evaluation This is a controlled evaluation of specific aspects of interactive behavior. Here the evaluator chooses the hypothesis to be tested with several experimental conditions considered different only in the value of some controlled variable. The changes in behavioral measure are attributed to the different conditions. Experimental evaluation factors The following experimental factors are given consideration: Subjects. This identifies who the representative is, and the measure of the sufficient sample for the experiment. Variables. These are the things to modify and measure. Hypothesis. This considers what you would like to show. Experimental design. This looks at how you are going to do it Variables experimental factors There are two variables; Independent variable (IV) and Dependent variable (DV) The independent variable characteristics are changed to produce different conditions. Examples of the characteristics include the interface style and number of menu items. The dependent variable (DV) characteristics are those measured in the experiment. Examples of such characteristics include the time taken and number of errors. Hypothesis experimental factor This is a prediction of outcome framed in terms of IV and DV. For example, "error rate will increase as font size decreases". For example, if the null hypothesis states that there is no difference between conditions, our aim is to disprove this e.g. A null hypothesis may be stated that there is "no change with font size", so we disprove. Experimental design factors Within groups design: Here each subject performs experiment under each condition. The advantage here is that transfer of learning is made possible. It is also less costly and less likely to suffer from user variation. Between groups design: Each subject Module 3  13 here performs under only one condition hence there is no transfer of learning. Also, more users are required and variation can bias results. Analysis of data It is necessary that before you start to do any statistics, you have to look at the data and you have to save the original data. The choice of statistical technique depends on type of data and the information required. Type of data. This could either be discrete, that is, comprising finite number of values or continuous, comprising any value. Types of Test Parametric test. This assumes a normal distribution and it is robust and powerful. Non-parametric test. This does not assume a normal distribution. It is less powerful but more reliable Contingency table test. This classifies data by discrete attributes. It counts number of data items in each group. The information required is to establish whether there is a difference and how big the difference is. It also seeks to establish how accurate the estimate is. However, parametric and non-parametric tests are used to mainly establish whether there is a difference. Experimental studies on groups These are more difficult than single-user experiments. These studies identify problems associated with subject groups, choice of task, the data gathering, and the analysis of the data gathered. Some of the problems identified with subject groups are: The larger the number of subjects the more expensive the experimental design becomes. It also takes a longer time to 'settle down'. It creates an even more variation that makes it difficult to adhere to timetable. Therefore, only three or four groups are recommended. The tasks involved in experimental studies on groups are the needs to encourage cooperation among the groups through the use of multiple channels. The options that may be adopted are: Creative task such as writing a short report on a particular experiment Decision games such as desert survival task games modelling a decision phenomenon Control task such as demonstrated in a particular firm. Module 3  14 The Data gathering and Analysis Processes This can be done using several video cameras with direct logging of application data. The problems with data gathering are synchronization of data and the sheer volume of data required. The one solution to this is to record from each perspective. Analysis of data Because of the vast variation between groups Carry out experiments within groups Conduct a micro-analysis such as gaps in speech. Conduct anecdotal and qualitative analysis and look at interactions between group and media. Realize that controlled experiments may 'waste' resources! Field studies In field studies, experiments are dominated by group formation but are more realistic because: There is a distributed cognition with the work studied in context. The real action is a situated action having both the physical and social environment being crucial. Contrast: Psychology — controlled experiment Sociology and anthropology - comprises open study and rich data Observational Methods These involve the following: Think Aloud Cooperative evaluation Protocol analysis Automated analysis Post-task walkthroughs Module 3  15 Think Aloud Method The user observed performing task as he is asked to describe what he is doing and why, what he thinks is happening etc. The advantages of this method are: It is simple and requires little expertise It can provide useful insight It can show how system is actually in use The disadvantages are:- It is subjective and selective The act of describing may alter task performance. Cooperative Evaluation Method This is a variation on think aloud. The user collaborates in evaluation such that both the user and the evaluator can ask each other questions throughout. Additional advantages are: It is less constrained and easier to use. The user is encouraged to criticize the system. Clarification is possible between the user and collaborator. Protocol Analysis Method This requires paper and pencil; it is therefore cheap and limited to writing speed. It uses audio that is good for think aloud but difficult to match with other protocols. It uses video that enables an accurate and realistic analysis but needs special equipment. It is obtrusive. Other analysis tools involve computer logging that is automatic and unobtrusive in which large amounts of data may be difficult to analyze It requires a user notebook that is coarse and subjective, providing useful insights and good for longitudinal studies. However, mixed use of these tools is carried out in practice. The audio or video transcription is difficult and requires skill. Some automatic support tools are similarly available. Automated Analysis This is a workplace project involving a post task walkthrough where the user reacts on action after the event. It is used to fill in intention. Advantages The analyst has time to focus on relevant incidents It helps avoid excessive interruption of task Disadvantages There is a lack of freshness There may be post-hoc interpretation of events. Module 3  16 Post-task Walkthroughs Here transcript is played back to participant for comment. The advantages are that the response to transcript playback is immediate and is fresh in mind. The evaluator has time to identify questions and hence useful to identify reasons for actions and alternatives considered. It is mostly necessary in cases where think aloud is not possible. Query Techniques Query technique comprises Interviews and Questionnaires Interviews The analyst questions the user on one-to -one basis and is usually based on prepared questions. The interviews are informal, subjective, and relatively cheap to conduct. The advantages are: It can be varied to suit context. Issues can be explored more fully It can elicit user views and identify unanticipated problems. The disadvantages are that it is very subjective and time consuming. Questionnaires In this method, set of fixed questions are given to users. The advantages are that it is quick and reaches large user group. It can be analyzed more rigorously. The disadvantages are It is less flexible and less probing There is a need for a careful design on what information is required and how answers are to be analyzed. Styles of question are: general, open-ended, scalar, multi-choice, and ranked. Physiological methods These comprise Eye tracking and Physiological measurement. Eye tracking With this method, the head or desk mounted equipment tracks the position of the eye. The eye movement reflects the amount of cognitive processing a display requires. Measurements include: Fixations. Here, the eye maintains a stable position. The number and duration of measurements indicate level of difficulty with display. Module 3  17 Saccades. In this case, there is a rapid eye movement from one point of interest to another. Scan paths. This involves moving straight to a target with a short fixation at the target being optimal. Physiological measurements In physiological measurement, the emotional response is linked to physical changes which may help determine a user's reaction to an interface. The measurements include: Heart activity, including blood pressure, volume, and pulse. Activity of sweat glands such as in Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) Electrical activity in muscle called electromyogram (EMG). Electrical activities in brain are called electroencephalogram (EEG) However, some difficulties are always experienced in interpreting these physiological responses; therefore, more research is required in this area. REMEMBER! Guides towards choosing an evaluation method comprise: Commencement of evaluation process Design versus Implementation Style of evaluation Laboratory versus Field Nature of evaluation Subjective versus Objective Type of measures Qualitative versus Quantitative Level of information High level versus Low level Level of interference Obtrusive versus Unobtrusive Resources available Time, Subjects, Equipment and Expertise Module 3  18 Lesson 3 Participatory Design Participatory design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve the end users in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable. In participatory design, end-users are invited to cooperate with researchers and developers during a system interaction design process. They participate during several stages of the design process such as in the initial exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem and to focus ideas for solution. During development, they help evaluate proposed solutions. Participatory design can be seen as a move of end-users into the world of researchers and developers, while a move of researchers and developers into the world of end-users is known as empathic design. This unit looks at both as necessarily participatory design. Major Concepts of Participatory Design User-design versus User-centered design: There is a very significant differentiation between user-design and User-centered design. There is an emancipatory theoretical foundation and systems theory bedrock on which user- design is founded. In user-centered design, users are taken as centers in the design process, consulting with users heavily, but not allowing users to make the decisions, nor empowering users with the tools that the experts use. For example, most of the internet documentation and information content are user- designed. Users are given the necessary tools to make their own entries. While users are allowed to propose changes or have input on the design, a smaller and more specialized group decide about features and system design. Ethnography and Participatory Design In participatory design, workers enter into design context while in ethnography (as used for design), the designer enters into work context. Both make workers feel valued in design and encourages workers to 'own' the products. The user is an active member of the design team. Participatory design in software development This is the user involvement in design, with more emphasis on the involvement of a broad population of users rather than a small number of user representatives. Many groups and projects apply participatory design research methods on a regular basis, and, hence, are part of the development and appropriation of the methods, as well as of disseminating the methods to industrial practice. Distributed participatory design Distributed Participatory design (DPD) is a design approach and philosophy that supports the direct participation of users and other stakeholders in system interaction analysis and design work. Nowadays design teams most often are Module 3  19 distributed, which stress a need for support and knowledge gathered from design of distributed systems. Distributed Participatory design aims to facilitate understanding between different stakeholders in distributed design teams by giving each the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities. Ethics The ethics involve a participatory socio-technical approach devised by Mumford. It states that the system development is about managing change and that non-participants are more likely to be dissatisfied. There are three levels of participation: consultative, representative, and consensus. Design groups including stakeholder representatives make design decisions and job satisfaction is the key to solution. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTICIPATORY DESIGN Participatory design is context and work oriented rather than system oriented. It is collaborative and iterative. Hence the unit focuses on participatory practices that share these attributes, including: (a) site-selection of PD work; (b) workshops; (c) story collecting and story telling through text, photography, and drama; (d) games for analysis and design; (e) the correlation of descriptive and functional prototypes and (f) brainstorming, pencil and paper exercises. Participatory design (PD) is a set of theories, practices, and studies related to end users as full participants in activities leading to software and hardware computer products and computer based activities The field is extraordinarily diverse, drawing on fields such as: (a) user-centered design, (b) graphic design, (c) software engineering, (d) architecture, (e) public policy, (f) psychology, (g) anthropology, (h) sociology, (i) labor studies, (j) communication studies, and (k) political science. Module 3  20 Researchers and practitioners are brought together—but are not necessarily brought into unity—by a pervasive concern for the knowledge, voices, and rights of end users, often within the context of software design and development, or of other institutional settings (e.g., workers in companies, corporations, universities, hospitals, and governments). This unit primarily addresses methods, techniques, and practices in participatory design, with modest anchoring of those practices in theory with the involvement of software professionals and the end users. HYBRIDITY AND THE THIRD SPACE CONCEPTS OF PARTICIPATORY DESIGN This is concerned with participatory methods that occur in the hybrid space between software professionals and end users. Why is this hybrid space important? An influential argument was made that the border or boundary region between two domains, or two spaces, is often a region of overlap or hybridism— that is a "third space" that contains an unpredictable and changing combination of attributes of each of the two bordering spaces. In such a hybrid space, enhanced knowledge exchange is possible, precisely because of those questions, challenges, reinterpretations, and renegotiations. These dialogues across differences and within differences— are stronger when engaged in by groups, emphasizing not only a shift from assumptions to reflections, but also from individuals to collectives. Guides and Expectations of Hybridism or Third Space Concept There is an overlap between two or more different regions or fields (in betweenness) It is not "owned" by any reference field but partaking of selected attributes is done in reference fields. Potential site of conflicts exist between or among reference fields, hence questioning and challenging of assumptions are unavoidable Mutual learning and synthesis of new ideas are core benefits when agreed working language among the participants is ensured. When working assumptions and dynamics are ensured, understandings, relationships and collective actions emerge while dialogues across and within different disciplines exist. Considerations in the design process: What is considered to be data are posers. The rules of evidence may become challenges to overcome How are the conclusions drawn become issues to be resolved. Reduced emphasis on authority and increased emphasis on interpretation are norms Reduced emphasis on individualism and increased emphasis on Collectivism result in Heterogeneity. Module 3  21 Organizations comprise multiple constituencies each with their own professional identities and views of others. By contrast, the methods allow for the creation of new perspectives and new locations, and they acknowledge the possibility that each participant can make different choices at different moments about where to locate his or her perspective, standpoint, and thus, accountability. There is a need for "a new set of skills and competencies that go beyond technical design skills to create conditions that encourage a collaborative design process and active reflection for working with groups. These push on the traditional boundaries between the users and designers". A large part of the design process, especially in large-scale projects and organizations involving several actors, is not dedicated to analytical work to achieve a solution but mostly to efforts at reconciling conflicting [conceptual] frames or at translating one frame into another. Much work of the designer is concerned with defining collectively what the relevant problem is and how to evaluate such problem. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN IN HCI SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Participatory design desires to bridge the gap between two spaces—the world of the software professionals, and the world of the end users. Each world has its own knowledge, practices and welldefined boundaries. Movement from one world to the other is known to be difficult. This difficulty is manifested in our elaborate methods for requirements analysis, design, and evaluation—and in the 2 36 frequent failures to achieve products and services that meet users' needs and/or are successful in the marketplace. Traditional scientific practice in HCI has focused on instruments and interventions that can aid in transferring information between the users' world and the software world. Most of the traditional methods are relatively one-directional; for example, we analyze the requirements from the users, we deliver a system to the users, and we collect usability data from the users. While there are many specific practices for performing these operations, relatively few of them involve two-way discussions, and fewer still afford opportunities for the software professionals to be surprised—to learn something that we didn't know we needed to know. The PD tradition has, from the outset, emphasized mutuality and reciprocity—often in a hybrid space that enabled new relationships and understandings. "The mutual validation of diverse perspectives": Floyd (1987) analyzed software practices into two paradigms, which she termed product-oriented (focused on the computer artifact as an end in itself) and process- oriented (focused on the human work process, with the computer artifact as means to a human goal). In her advocacy of balancing these two paradigms, Floyd noted that the process-oriented paradigm required mutual learning among users and developers. Most of PD theories and practices require the combination of multiple perspectives—in part, because complex human problems require multiple disciplines (e.g., software expertise and work-domain expertise) for good solutions and in part because the workplace democratic tradition reminds us that all of the interested parties should have a voice in constructing solutions Module 3  22 methods suitable for a software professional's organization with concrete methods suitable for work with end users. Muller and colleagues elaborated on this taxonomic dimension by asking whose work domain serves as the basis for the method. At the abstract end of the continuum, the users have to enter the world of the software professionals in order to participate—e.g., rapid prototyping. At the concrete end of the continuum, the software professionals have to enter the world of the users in order to participate; for example, ethnography and end-user "design" by purchasing software for small companies "What about the practices that did not occur at the abstract or concrete end-points of the continuum? What about the practices in between?" These practices turn out to occur in an uncertain, ambiguous, overlapping disciplinary domain that does not "belong" to either the software professionals or the end users (e.g., these practices occur in neither the users' turf nor the software professionals' turf ). The practices in between the extremes are hybrid practices, and constitute the third space of participatory design. NEGOTIATION, SHARED CONSTRUCTION, AND COLLECTIVE DISCOVERY IN PD AND HCI This describes a diversity of participatory design techniques, methods, and practices that provide hybrid experiences or that operate in intermediate third spaces in HCI. Because the theme is hybridism, these descriptions are organized in terms, strategies, and moves that introduce novelty, ambiguity, and renewed awareness of possibilities, occurring at the margins of existing fields or disciplines. A storytelling method provides a space in which people negotiates the naming and defining of workplace activities. Site Selection One of the simplest parameters that can be manipulated to influence hybridism is the site of the work. There are two approaches to participatory design: (1) Bring the designers to the workplace or (2) Bring the workers to the design room at a site different from the work place. The selection of the site can be important in a discussion of participatory architectural practice. Work place site selection Being in a foreign environment and with other users, users will tend to take a more general view of things; however, when collaborating with users in their work context, users tend to feel more at ease as they are on their home ground—the designers are the visitors. Tools and environment are physically present and easy to refer to. This makes for a conversation grounded in concrete and specific work experiences. The idea was born to create a type of design event with activities in both environments and with two sets of resources to support design collaboration. New site selection In terms of hybridism, the selection of site can be a deliberate strategy to introduce new experiences and perspectives to one or more parties in the design process—a de- Module 3  23 centering move that can bring people into positions of ambiguity, renegotiation of assumptions, and increased exposure to heterogeneity. Site selection initially appears to be a matter of moving across the boundary between different work cultures, rather than living within the boundary. The use of common design practices across sites, however, makes those practices (and the membership of the design group) into a kind of movable third space. The practices and the group membership become stable features that persist across multiple sites. At the same time, the practices, and even the membership grow and evolve with exposure to new sites and new understandings. In these ways, the practices become an evolutionary embodiment of the knowledge of the learning of the group. Benefits of using new site: Improved learning and understanding. It is a move from"symmetry of ignorance" toward "symmetry of knowledge" as diverse parties educate one another through a "symmetry of learning"—and even a kind of "transformation" through exposure to new ideas.The selection of site can also lead to the strengthening of the voices that were comfortable at each site. Greater ownership. The procedures could strengthen the user involvement in their projects. There would also be increases in commitment and ownership of the evolving knowledge and design of the group. Workshops Workshops may serve as another alternative to other site selection. Workshops are usually held to help diverse parties ("interested parties" or "stakeholders") communicate and commit to shared goals, strategies, and outcomes (e.g., analyses, designs, and evaluations, as well as workplace-change objectives). Workshops are often held at sites that are in a sense neutral—they are not part of the software professionals' workplace, and they are not part of the workers' workplace. More importantly, workshops usually introduce novel procedures that are not part of conventional working practices. These novel procedures take people outside of their familiar knowledge and activities, and must be negotiated and collectively defined by the participants. Workshops are thus a kind of hybrid or third space, in which diverse parties communicate in a mutuality of unfamiliarity, and must create shared knowledge and even the procedures for developing those shared knowledge. The best-known workshop format in PD is the Future Workshop. A Future Workshop proceeds through three stages: (a) Critiquing the present, (b) Envisioning the future, and (c) Implementing, or moving from the present to the future. These three activities involve participants in new perspectives on their work, and help to develop new concepts and new initiatives. A number of workshops have focused on simple materials and informal diagrams, rather than on formal notations. The tools are simple diagrams or drawings with no special formalisms because staff members participating in the workshops, as well as those to whom the results are later presented, typically have no experience. Using technical descriptions, Module 3  24 a workshop is described as a family of "generative tools" of activities that are selectively combined into strategic design, under an overall conceptual strategy that combines market research ("what people say"), ethnography ("what people do"), and participatory design ("what people make"). The activities include the construction of collages focused on thinking (e.g., "how do you expect your work to change in the future?"), mapping (e.g., laying out an envisioned work area on paper), feeling ("use pictures and words to show a health-related experience in your past"), and story telling. A type of storyboarding workshop format is described as that in which people create narratives using photographs, putting them in sequences and in many cases altering (typically through the addition of speech bubbles to show what people were thinking or doing). The various workshop approaches have several commonalities. Each workshop brings together diverse participants to do common work, to produce common outcomes and to develop a plan of joint action They are thus opportunities that require mutual education, negotiation, creation of understanding, and development of shared commitments. Each workshop takes place in an atmosphere and often in a site that is not "native" to any of the participants. Thus, all of the participants are at a disadvantage of being outside of their own familiar settings, and they must work together to define their new circumstances and relationships. The combination of diverse voices leads to syntheses of perspectives and knowledge. Benefits. Advantages claimed for this type of hybridism include: Development of new concepts that have direct, practical value for product design Engagement of the interested parties ("stakeholders") in the process and outcome of the workshop. Combinations of different people's ideas into unified concepts. Production of artifacts that are the expected and useful "inputs" to the next stage of the development process. NARRATIVE STRUCTURES Stories and Story telling Stories and storytelling have played a major role in ethnographic work since before there was a field called "HCI". Stories have also had an important history in HCI. Stories in participatory work may function in at least three ways. First, they may be used as triggers for conversation, analysis, or feedback. Second, they may be told by end users as part of their contribution to the knowledge required for understanding product or service, opportunities, and for specifying what products or services should do. Third, they may be used by design teams to present their concept of what a designed service or product will do, how it will be used, and what changes will occur as a result. Hypermedia technologies can be utilized to enable communities tell their own stories with the intention that "plurality, dissent, and moral space can be preserved. Module 3  25 It enables multiple authors reuse community materials selectively, telling different stories within a common context. The different accounts were organized according to themes, and laid out spatially on the image of a fictitious island for navigation by end users. The work enters several areas or aspects of hybridism. First, the authors of the stories (e.g., community members) were using hypermedia technology for the first time, and were thus in the role of learners, even while they were the owners of the stories, and were thus in the role of experts. Second, the authors wrote from their own perspectives, which were sometimes in strong conflict with one another. Third, the authors could make use of one another's materials, effectively moving away from single-author narratives and into a kind of collaborative collage of materials, which conveyed interlinked stories. Fourth, just as the community members were negotiating and defining their roles as learner-experts, the software professionals/researchers were negotiating and defining their roles as expert's facilitators/students. Using Paper and Pencil to tell stories A second line of practice and research has emphasized end users telling their stories using a system of paperand-pencil, card-like templates. The earliest version was the Collaborative Analysis of Requirements and Design (CARD) technique later developed into a more general tool The card-based practices used pieces of cardboard about the size of playing cards. Each card represents a component of the user's work or life activities, including user interface events (e.g., screen shots), social events (conversations, meetings) and cognitive, motivational, and affective events (e.g., the application of skill, the formation of goals or strategies, surprises and breakdowns, evaluations of work practices). The cards were used by diverse teams in analysis, design, and evaluation of work and technology. Because the cards were novel object to all the participants, they occasioned third-space questionings and negotiations, resulting in new shared understandings and co-constructions. Often, teams used the cards to prepare a kind of story board, narrating the flow of work and technology used and annotating or innovating cards to describe that work. The resulting posters formed narratives of the work that were demonstrated to be understandable to end users, corporate officers, and software professionals, and which led to insights and decisions of large commercial value. Using Photographs for story telling Stories can be told in many ways. One approach that has informed recent PD work is end- user photography through (a) taking pictures and (b) organizing pictures into albums. These activities allow end users to enter into a kind of native ethnography, documenting their own lives. In keeping with the issues raised in the preceding "Stories" section, it is important that the informants themselves (the end users) control both the camera and the selection of images. They thus become both authors and subjects of photographic accounts of their activities. This dual role leads to one kind of hybridity, in which the photographic activities partake of both the world of common social life, and the world of documenting and reporting on working conditions. Module 3  26 Photo documentaries were used as a means of providing familiar, concrete artifacts to enable design collaborations. Photo documentaries are used as one component of a set of user-composed diary techniques, with a subsequent user created collages to serve as a rich source of discussions. End-user photography is an interesting case of hybridity and the production of third spaces. Photography is a good example of an "in-between" medium—one that is part of many people's informal lives but that is also an intensively studied medium of communication and argumentation. Photography occurs at the margin of most people's work, and yet can easily be incorporated into their work. Discussions around the photographs, and combination of the photographs into photo narratives or collages can lead to mutual learning and new ideas, particularly through the inclusion of the voices of the photographers, the viewers, and especially the people depicted in the photographs. Benefits. The use of end-user photographs appears to be new and experimental, and there are few strongly supported claims of benefits. Informal claims of success and contribution include the following: Richer, contextualized communication medium between end users and designers. (In some cases, the designers were not, themselves, software professionals.) Stronger engagement of designers with end-users' worlds. Enhanced sharing of views and needs among end users, leading to stronger articulation by them as a collective voice. The informants should make their own decisions about what was important, and therefore what they should photograph. Dramas and Videos Drama provides another way to tell stories—in the form of theatre or of video. One of the important tensions with regard to drama in PD is the question of whether the drama is considered a finished piece, or a changeable work-in-progress. Many PD drama-practitioners make reference to Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal described theatrical techniques whose purpose was explicitly to help a group or a community find its voice(s) and articulate its position(s). The most influential of Boal's ideas was his Forum Theatre, in which a group of nonprofessional actors performs a skit in front of an audience of interested parties. The outcome of the skit is consistent with current events and trends—often to the dissatisfaction of the audience. The audience is then invited to become authors and directors of the drama, changing it until they approve of the outcome. Changes in work patterns and work-group relations were acted out by software professionals in the endusers' workplace, using cardboard and plywood prototypes, in anticipation of new technologies, the workers served as the audience, and critiqued the envisioned work activities and working arrangements. The drama was carried out iteratively, with changes, until it was more supportive of the skilled work of the people in the affected job titles. The researchers made repeated visits with more detailed prototypes, again using the vehicle of a changeable drama, to continue the design dialogue with the workers. This work was widely credited with protecting skilled work from inappropriate automation and leading to a product that increased productivity while taking full advantage of workers' skills. Module 3  27 Muller et al. (1994) presented a related tutorial demonstration piece called Interface Theatre, with the stated goal of engaging a very large number of interested parties in a review of requirements and designs (e.g., in an auditorium). In Interface Theatre, software professionals acted out a user interface "look and feel" using a theatrical stage as the screen, with each actor playing the role of a concrete interface component. Dramatic approach brings a strong overlap of the world of end users and the world of software developers, showing concrete projections of ideas from one world into the other world—and, in most uses, allowing modification of those ideas. Drama is marginal to the work domains of most software professionals and most end users, and thus moves all parties into an ambiguous area where they must negotiate meaning and collaboratively construct their understandings. Agreements, conflicts, and new ideas can emerge as their multiple voices and perspectives are articulated through this rich communication medium. Benefits Building bridges between the worlds of software professionals and users. Enhancing communication through the use of embodied (e.g., acted-out) experience and through contextualized narratives. Engaging small and large audiences through direct or actor-mediated participation in shaping the drama (influencing the usage and design of the technology). Increasing designers' empathy for users and their work. Simulating use of not-yet-developed tools and technologies to explore new possibilities. Fuller understanding by focus group members, leading to a more informed discussion. GAMES From theory to practice, the concept of games has had an important influence in participatory methods and techniques. Ehn's theoretical work emphasized the negotiation of language games in the course of bringing diverse perspectives together in participatory design. In this view, part of the work of a heterogeneous group is to understand how to communicate with one another. The work of heterogeneous teams is, in part, the "mutual validation of diverse perspectives" Games have been an important concept in designing practices, with the convergent strategies of enhanced teamwork and democratic work practices within the team. When properly chosen, games can serve as levelers, in at least two ways. First, games are generally outside of most workers' jobs and tasks. They are therefore less likely to appear to be "owned" by one worker, at the expense of the alienation of the non-owners. Second games are likely to be novel to most or all of the participants. Design group members are more likely to learn games at the same rate, without large differences in learning due to rank, authority, or background. This in turn can lead to greater sharing of ideas. In addition, games can help groups of people to cohere together and communicate better. One of the purposes of games is enjoyment Module 3  28 of self and others—and this can both liven a project and build commitment among project personnel. "Design-by-playing" approach, introducing several games into PD practice: Examples include: Specification Game, a scenario-based game based on a set of "situation cards," each of which described a workplace situation. Players (members of the heterogeneous analysis/design team) took turns drawing a card and leading the discussion of the work situation described on the card. Organization Kit and Desktop Publishing Game, in which cards illustrating components of work or outcomes of work were placed on posters, with annotations. CARD, a card game for laying out and/or critiquing an existing or proposed work/activity flow PICTIVE, a paper-and-pencil game for detailed screen design Icon Design Game, a guessing game for innovating new ideas for icons (this game assumes subsequent refinement by a graphic designer). Interface Theatre, for design reviews with very large groups of interested parties The games emphasize hands-on, highly conversational approaches to discussing both the user interface concept itself and the work processes that it was intended to support.. The Technology Game adds simple shapes that stand for technologies, again playing those shapes onto the work environment in the Landscape Game. Finally, the Scenario Game moves back to the real world, enacting possibilities based on new ideas from the preceding three games. The enactments may be video recording, both for documentary purposes and to generate further video material for another cycle of the four games. Each of these games would take all of its players outside of their familiar disciplines and familiar working practices, but strategically reduced the anxiety and uncertainty of the situation by using the social scaffolding of games. Each game requires its players to work together through mutual learning to understand and define the contents of the game, and to interpret those contents to one another in terms of multiple perspectives and disciplines. The conventional authority of the software professionals was thus replaced with a shared interpretation based on contributions from multiple disciplines and perspectives. Benefits. Participatory design work with games has been claimed to lead to the following benefits: Enhanced communication through the combination of diverse perspectives. Enhanced teamwork through shared enjoyment of working in a game-like setting. Greater freedom to experiment and explore new ideas through flexible rules and redefinition of rules during the game. Improved articulation of the perspectives, knowledge, and requirements of workers. New insights leading to important new analyses and designs with documented commercial value. Module 3  29 CONSTRUCTIONS Preceding sections have considered hybridism in participatory activities, such as site selections, workshops, stories, photography, dramas, and games. This section continues the survey of participatory practices that bring users and software professionals into unfamiliar and ambiguous "third space" settings. Collaborative construction of various concrete artifacts comprising: Low-tech prototypes for analysis and design. Cooperative Prototyping Low-Tech Prototypes that includes participatory prototyping: Low-tech prototypes may lead to "third space" experiences because they bring people into new relationships with technologies—relationships that are "new" in at least two important ways. First, the end users are often being asked to think about technologies or applications that they have not previously experienced. Second, in participatory work with low-tech prototypes, end users are being asked to use the low-tech materials to reshape the technologies—a "design-by- doing" approach In this way, participatory work with lowtech prototypes involves much more user contribution and user initiative than the more conventional use of "paper prototypes" as surrogates for working systems in usability testing The UTOPIA project provided impressive demonstrations of the power of low-tech cardboard and plywood prototypes to help a diverse group to think about new technologies, office layouts, and new working relations that might result from them. Benefits. The low-tech participatory prototyping approaches benefits include: Enhanced communication and understanding through grounding discussions in concrete artifacts. Enhanced incorporation of new and emergent ideas through the ability of participants to express their ideas directly via the low-tech materials, and through the construction of artifacts that can be used in other techniques, especially drama and video documentaries. Enhanced working relations through a sense of shared ownership of the resulting design. Practical application with measured successes in using low-tech design approaches to real product challenges, achieving consequential business goals. Cooperative Prototyping This last section on participatory methods is concerned with software prototyping. The potential of cooperative prototyping in several projects, using different technology infrastructures led to enhanced communication with end users, improved incorporation of end- user insights into the prototypes, and stronger collective ownership and collective action planning by the team. Also observed is the time consuming breakdowns in the design process itself, when new ideas required significant programming effort. In a different prototyping approach, a system is delivered to its end users as series of iterative prototypes, each of which gradually adds functionality What appears to be critical is that the prototype functions as a crucial Module 3  30 artifact in the end-users' work, such as, (a) a resource of documents for librarians (b) an online event checklist that served as the crucial coordination point for the work of diverse contributions or (c) a database supporting funding work in a nonprofit organization. Trigg (2000) provided a series of observations and tactical recommendations about how to engage the users in the evaluations that both they and the software professionals had agreed were needed. This very brief survey of cooperative prototyping and "iterative delivery" approaches shows several aspects of hybridity. In the case of cooperative prototyping, the cooperative work may be done in a physical third space that is neither the end-users' office nor the software developers' office In the case of the delivery of iterated prototypes, each prototype is presented in the end users' setting, but is unusual and only partially functional, and thus occasions reflection about its nature, its role in the end users' work, and, ultimately, the work itself. In both cases, the invitation (or perhaps the necessity) of the end-users' actions to help shape the technology becomes an important means of refocusing their attention, as well as the attention of the software developers. The ensuing conversations are concerned with the interlinked feasibility of changes to technology and to work practices, with attributes of hybridity including polyvocal dialogues, challenging one another's assumptions, and developing plans for collective actions. Benefits. Some of the virtues of the low-tech prototyping approaches have also been claimed for the cooperative prototyping and "iterative delivery" approaches as follow: Enhanced communication and understanding through grounding discussions in concrete artifacts. Enhanced working relations through a sense of shared ownership of the resulting design. Additional claims for software-based prototypes include: Earlier understanding of constraints posed by the practical limitations of software. Improved contextual grounding of the design in the end-users' work practices. Brainstorming The most well-known idea generation technique is brainstorming, introduced by Osborn (1957). His goal was to create synergy within the members of a group: ideas suggested by one participant would spark ideas in other participants. Subsequent studies challenged the effectiveness of group brainstorming, finding that aggregates of individuals could produce the same number of ideas as groups. They found certain effects, such as production blocking, free riding, and evaluation apprehension, were sufficient to outweigh the benefits of synergy in brainstorming groups. Brainstorming, is an important group-building exercise for participatory design; designers may brainstorm ideas by themselves. Brainstorming in a group is more enjoyable and, if it is a recurring part of the design process, plays an important role in helping group members share and develop ideas together. The simplest form of brainstorming involves a small group of people. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible on a pre-specified topic: quantity, not quality, is important. Brainstorming sessions have two phases: the first for generating ideas and the second for reflecting upon them. The initial phase should last no more than an hour. One person should moderate the session, keeping time, ensuring that everyone participates, and preventing people from critiquing each other's ideas. Discussion should be Module 3  31 limited to clarifying the meaning of a particular idea. A second person records every idea, usually on a flipchart or transparency on an overhead projector. After a short break, participants are asked to reread all the ideas and each person marks their three favorite ideas. One variation is designed to ensure that everyone contributes, not just those who are verbally dominant. Participants write their ideas on individual cards or Post-it notes for a prespecified period. The moderator then reads each idea aloud. Authors are encouraged to elaborate (but not justify) their ideas, which are then posted on a whiteboard or flipchart. Group members may continue to generate new ideas, inspired by the others they hear. Another variant of brainstorming, called "video brainstorming" is a very fast technique for prototyping interaction: instead of simply writing or drawing their ideas, participants act them out in front of a video camera. The goal is the same as other brainstorming exercises, i.e., to create as many new ideas as possible, without critiquing them. However, the use of video, combined with paper or cardboard mock ups, encourages participants to experience the details of the interaction and to understand each idea from the perspective of the user, while preserving a tangible record of the idea. Each video brainstorming idea should take two to five minutes to generate and capture, allowing participants to simulate a wide variety of ideas very quickly. The resulting video clips provide illustrations of each idea that are easier to understand and remember than hand-written notes. Video brainstorming requires thinking more deeply about each idea than in traditional oral brainstorming. It is possible to stay vague and general when describing an interaction in words or even with a sketch, but acting out the interaction in front of the camera forces the author of the idea and the other participants to consider seriously the details of how a real user would actually interact with the idea. Video brainstorming also encourages designers and users to think about new ideas in the context in which they will be used. Video clips from a video brainstorming session, even though rough, are much easier for the design team to interpret than written ideas from a standard brainstorming session. Unlike standard brainstorming, video brainstorming encourages even the quietest team members to participate. UNRESOLVED ISSUES IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN: Participation by non-organized workforce. The field of PD has long been concerned about how to engage in meaningful participative activities with workers or others who are not organized into a group with collective bargaining power or other collective representation. Evaluation and metrics. One of the weaknesses of the literature on participatory practices is the dearth of formal evaluations. There is a small set of papers that have examined software engineering projects across companies, and have found positive outcomes related to end-user participation There are no formal experiments comparing participatory methods with non-participatory methods in a credible workplace context. Such studies would be difficult to perform, because they would require that a product be implemented and marketed twice (once with participation, and once without). The problem is made more difficult because measurements and metrics of organizational outcomes, user participation, and user satisfaction are currently vexing research issues. Module 3  32 Lesson 4 System Interactive Design Patterns A pattern is an invariant solution to a recurrent problem within a specific context. An HCI design pattern is an approach to reusing knowledge about successful design solutions Patterns do not exist in isolation but are linked to other patterns in languages which enable complete designs to be generated. CHARACTERISTICS OF PATTERNS The characteristics of patterns include the following: Capturing the design practice and not the theory Capturing the essential common properties of good examples of design Representing design knowledge at varying levels of social, organisational, and conceptual framework Embodying values and expressing what is humane in interface design. Patterns are intuitive and readable and can therefore be used for communication between all stakeholders A pattern language should be generative and assist in the development of complete designs. GUIDES AT DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE DESIGN PATTERNS Commencement of design process: The human interaction designer would commence his design process by asking the following questions: The design: What is the design all about? What are the interventions? What are the goals? What are the constraints? The design process What happens when? The Users Who are the users? What are their likes and dislikes on interactivity? Navigation of Interaction How does the user find his way around a system? Module 3  33 Design Considerations: Scenarios of interaction part of the scenarios is a probe of rich stories relating to design issues that include users' experiences and expectations. Iteration and prototypes Remember that the designer never get it right the first time! Interactions and Interventions The designer should design interactions not just interfaces and not just the immediate interaction because technology changes. The designer should design interventions not just artefacts and not just the system, but also related documentation such as manuals and tutorials. What is design? Design is achieving goals within constraints, so the design should consider those to benefit from the goals and for what purpose. The design should consider the constraints in terms of materials and platforms and the corresponding trade-offs. The Golden rule of design is for the designer to understand his materials for Human—Computer Interaction Understanding materials means understanding computer's limitations, its capacities, its tools and platforms. It also means understanding people, their psychological and social aspects. The design should consider the possibility of human error and their interaction, since to err is human. THE DESIGN PROCESSES The design life cycle Requirements: This is identifying what is there and what is wanted. Analysis: This is on ordering and understanding. Design: This concerns what to do and how to decide on what to do. Interaction and prototyping: Means setting it right and finding what is really need. Implementation and deployment: Making it happen and delivering. To carry out the above, consider: The trade-off usability: Find out problems that may work against the ultimate usage of the designed interaction and ensure such problem(s) are tackled right from the onset. Remember that a perfect system is one that was badly designed; so do not expect to design a perfect system. Systems are dynamic. Module 3  34 User focuses It is essential that you know your users, their personality and cultural probes. Talk to those class of users, watch them and use your imagination of their perception of the system they want. Innovate a 'user' model not necessarily a real person but carry out a prototype of a system. Design's cultural probes Cultural probes can be carried out as follows: By direct observation though sometimes hard; for example on psychiatric patients By giving out probe packs that consist of items to prompt responses. These are given to people to open in their own environment and to record what is meaningful to them. These probe packs are used to inform interviews, prompt ideas and en-culture designers Gathered stories for the design are used and reused. By communicating with others to validate models and understand dynamics. Finding out what will users want to do by step-by-step walkthrough on what they can see using sketches, screen shots etc. or what they are used to doing e.g manipulating keyboard and mouse, etc. Find out their thinking on the proposed interaction design. Explore the depths by exploring interaction to determine what happens when. Explore cognition to determine the users thinking. Explore architecture of the system to determine what is happening inside. Use particular scenarios to communicate with other designers, clients and users. Validate other models by comparing them with your models. Express dynamics through screenshots appearances and scenario behaviors. Use several scenarios and use several methods since scenarios provide one linear path through system design. An example of a personality probe for a design. Sola is 37 years old, She has been the Warehouse Manager for five years and worked for an Engineering company for twelve years. She didn't go to the university, but has studied in her evenings for a business diploma. She has two children aged 15 and 7 and does not like to work late. She did part of an introductory in-house computer course some years ago, but it was interrupted when she was promoted and could no longer afford to take the time. Her vision is perfect, but her right-hand movement is slightly restricted following an industrial accident 3 years ago. She is enthusiastic about her work and is happy to delegate responsibility and take suggestions from her staff. However, she does feel threatened by the introduction of yet another new computer system (the third in her time at the Engineering company). Module 3  35 Navigation design Within the local structure, utilize a single screen. Within the global structure, utilize a whole site. Levels of design to guide the designer include: Widget choice level containing menus, buttons etc. Screen design level Application navigation design Environment design level that comprises other applications and operating systems. Example of a web design: A web interaction design comprises: The widget choice level containing elements and tags e.g The screen design such as page design The application navigation design such as site structure The environment design such as the web, the browser, and external links. The physical devices interaction design comprises: The widget choice level comprising the controls such as buttons, knobs and dials. The screen design such as the physical layout. The application navigation design such as the modes of device. The environment design such as the real world. Structure of design should be viewed from the following platforms: Within a screen Locally looking from one screen looking out Globally from the structure of the site and movement between screens with applications And wider still, consider relationship with other applications The four golden rules of the design are: Knowing where you are Knowing what you can do Knowing where you are going or what will happen Knowing where you have been or wh at what you have done Module 3