Interaction design
IS 403: User Interface Design
Shaun Kane

Today
• More on interaction design
• Getting started with user testing

Check-in on A6
• How is everybody doing?
• Problems? Need feedback?
• A7 posted

Interaction design
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
” – Steve Jobs

What makes a good design?
• What skills have we picked up so far?

What makes a good design?
• Requirements gathering
• Good information design and architecture (IS 387)
• Good interaction design
• Testing, iteration, improvement

Some recap from IS 387

Consider a web site…
What questions might a user have?

Consider a web site…
What questions might a user have?
Where am I?
Where can I go?
What can I do here?
What did I just do?

Tools from IS 387
• Site ID
• Global / persistent navigation
• “You are here”
• Breadcrumbs

Site ID
• The main site, brand identity
• Click to go home

Global navigation
• It should be persistent
• 5 elements

Utilities
• Site-wide elements that are not part of the content hierarchy
• Separate them, so we don’t have to shoehorn them into content

“You are here”
• Show user’s position in hierarchy
• Helps user understand hierarchy
• Can be shown in several ways

Breadcrumbs
Hierarchical vs. chronological

Buttons and links
• Make them actions

More about interaction design

The holy texts of usability

The holy texts of usability
<- how people think tools, methods -> processes

Norman
• You’ve probably read it before
• Worth a reread
– Now you have fun projects to apply it to

Important ideas from Norman
• It’s not the user’s fault
• Affordances
• Conceptual models
• Make things visible (system status, feedback)
• Feedback
• Mapping
• Constraints
• Next time: execution and evaluating

Affordances
• Examples in everyday life/this class?

Affordances
Jared Sinclair, “Untouchtable”. http://blog.jaredsinclair.com/post/64880801326/untouchable

Perceived vs. actual affordance
Affords sitting Affords pushing Perceived affordance

Affordances vs. convention
• What does this do?

Affordances vs. convention
• What does this do?
• A cultural convention: blue underlined things are web links

Conceptual models
• How the system works vs. how the user thinks it works
• Examples?

Conceptual models

Conceptual models
• Good conceptual models aren’t always the same as the system model

System status and feedback
• What’s going on?
• What did I just do?

System status

System status
Good?
Bad?

System status
Good?
- Tells me I need to wait
Bad?
- Why?
- How long?
- What is it doing?

Feedback

Mapping
• What is it?
• What is a good mapping?

Mapping

Mapping
Arbitrary mapping
Natural mapping

Constraints
• What are they?
• Good/bad?

Constraints

Don’t do this
Phone number:
Phone number MUST be formatted XXX-YYY-ZZZZ

Class activity
• Take out your phones (no really!)
• In groups of two, find good and bad examples of:
– Affordances, mapping, feedback, constraints

Next time
• Norman, model of execution
• Usability heuristics (Nielsen)