Block 1 - Overall Interaction Design

Question 1

Give four questions you need to answer in order to optimise user interaction with an interactive product. Why are these questions so important?

Answer 1

• Who is going to be using the interactive product?
• How is it going to be used?
• Where are they going to use it?
• What activities will the user be doing when interacting with the product?
  These are important because they help you to focus on aspects of the context which relate directly to the design of the interaction.

Question 2

Define Usability

Answer 2

The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfactory in a specified context of use.

Question 3

Define User Experience

Answer 3

User Experience is how people feel about a product and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it, holding it, and opening or closing it. Or more similarly, how a system feels to a user.

Question 4

What is Interaction Design and what are the results of good Interaction Design?

Answer 4

Interaction Design is defined as ‘designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives.’ Interaction Design aims to develop interactive products that are easy, effective and enjoyable to use. Good ID encourages an easy, natural and engaging interaction between user and a system.

Question 5

Multi-disciplinary teams – Describe three conflicts that may arise in the team as a consequence of differing priorities.

Answer 5

Conflicts that may arise include: the use of imaginatively designed graphics may make buttons less obvious; the development of interactive graphics is also likely to cause the software engineers extra work; the video clips take a long time to download, which make the site less usable.

Question 6

What is the ID Process activities involve?

Answer 6

• Identifying the needs and establishing requirements for the user experience
• Developing alternative designs that meet those requirements
• Building interactive versions of the design so that they can be communicated and assessed
• Evaluating what is being built throughout the process and the user experience it offers

Question 7

What are the key characteristics of the interaction design process?

Answer 7

• Users should be involved throughout the development of the project
• Specific usability and user experience goals should be identified, clearly documented and agree upon at the beginning of the project
• Iteration through the four activities is inevitable.

Question 8

What are the six usability goals?

Answer 8

• Effectiveness: ‘effective to use’
• Efficiency: ‘efficient to use’
• Safety: ‘safe to use’
• Utility: ‘having good utility’
• Learnability: ‘easy to learn’
• Memorability: ‘easy to remember how to use’

Question 9

What are these questions relevant to: Is it possible for the user to work out how to use the product by exploring the interface and trying out certain actions? How hard will it be to learn the whole set of functions?

Answer 9

Learnability

Question 10

What is this question relevant to: What is the range of errors that are possible using the product and what measures are there to permit users to recover easily from them?

Answer 10

Safety

Question 11

What is this question relevant to: Is the product capable of allowing people to learn well, carry out their work efficiently, access the information they need, or buy the goods they want?

Answer 11

Effectiveness

Question 12

What is this question relevant to: Does the product provide an appropriate set of functions that will enable users to carry out all theirs tasks in the way they want to do them?

Answer 12

Utility

Question 13

What is this question relevant to: What kinds of interface support have been provided to help users remember how to carry out tasks, especially for products and operations they use infrequently?

Answer 13

Memorability

Question 14

What is this question relevant to: Once users have learned how to use a system to carry out their tasks, can they sustain a high level of productivity?

Answer 14

Efficiency

Question 15

What are the ten user experience goals?

Answer 15

Satisfying, enjoyable, fun, entertaining, helpful, motivating, aesthetically pleasing, supportive of creativity, rewarding and emotionally fulfilling.

Question 16

What are the five design principles? And the sixth principle?

Answer 16

Visibility, feedback, constraints, consistency and affordance. Mapping is the additional principles.

Question 17

What are design principles used for?

Answer 17

To avoid problems when creating a design and to understand problems within an existing design

Question 18

Define the Mapping design principle and what it is concerned with?

Answer 18

Mapping concerns the relationship between controls and their effects in the world. An example is the up and down arrows used to represent the up and down movement of the cursor.

Question 19

Brief description of the Visibility design principle

Answer 19

Controls should be clearly visible, so users can see the controls that are available to them.

Question 20

Brief description of the Feedback design principle

Answer 20

This is the information sent back to the user to confirm what action has been done and what result has been accomplished.

Question 21

Brief description of the Constraints design principle

Answer 21

Constraints are ways of restricting the kind of interaction that can take place at a given moment.

Question 22

Brief description of Consistency design principle

Answer 22

Where a user interface is designed to follow certain rules, such as always selecting objects by clicking the left mouse button.

Question 23

Brief description of Affordance design principle

Answer 23

Affordance is an aspect of a control that makes it obvious how to use it.

Question 24

Three reasons why user involvement can be useful

Answer 24

To ensure users activities and goals are taken into account, expectation management (making sure user views and expectations are realistic) and to ensure ownership (users with a sense of ownership are more likely to be receptive to a product).

Question 25

What is the ‘user-centred’ approach?

Answer 25

This means that real users and their goals are the driving force behind the development of a product.

Question 26

What are other possible driving forces behind the development process other than user centred?

Answer 26

Other forces could be the characteristics of the technology or preferences of other stakeholders

Question 27

Define Stakeholders

Answer 27

Stakeholders are people or organisations who will be affected by the systemor who have a direct or indirect influence on the system requirements.

Question 28

What are the four stakeholder groups?

Answer 28

Beneficiaries, Decision Makers, Gatekeepers (like secretaries) and Workers

Question 29

What is the role of the user in field studies?

Answer 29

In the field studies it is the role of the users to behave naturally,continuing as usual whilst they are being observe by evaluators.

Question 30

What is heuristic evaluation?

Answer 30

Heuristic evaluation is a method which identifies usability problems by evaluating the design against a collection of heuristics, based on design guidelines.

Question 31

Who are the common members of a multi-disciplinary team?

Answer 31

Interaction Designer - wants it to be easy to learn and use
Teacher (educational advisor) - wants it to able the user to learn from the product
Graphic Designer - want it to look attractive
Software Engineer - want the programming of the product to be achievable.