Block Three

Question 1

Why is it inappropriate to start designing at the physical level?

Answer 1

If a designer beings by considering the physical aspects of an envisaged product, and maybe the technology to be used, then usability and user experience goals can easily be overlooked.

Question 2

What activities are central to working out the problem space for a product?

Answer 2

The central activities are clarifying your usability and user experience goals, and explicating your assumptions and claims.

Question 3

Give four questions that you can ask of a situation that will hep you to start exploring the problem space.

Answer 3

• Are there problems with an existing product or user experience? If so, what are they?
• Why do you think there are problems?
• How do you think your proposed design ideas might overcome these?
• If you have not identified any problems and instead are designing for a new user experience how do you think your proposed design ideas support, change or extend current ways of doing things?

Question 4

The definition of a conceptual model refers to four components of the intended product that should be descried in the product’s conceptual model. What are these four components?

Answer 4

1. The major design metaphors and analogies that are used to convey to the user how to understand what a product is for and how to use it for an activity.
2. The concepts that users are exposed to through the product, including the task-domain data-objects users create and manipulate, their attributes and the operations that can be performed on them.
3. The relationships between those concepts, e.g whether one object contains another, the relative importance of actions to others, and whether an object is part of another.
4. The mappings between the concepts and the user experience the product is designed to support or invoke.

Question 5

Name three benefits for the design team of conceptualizing design in general terms early on in the design process.

Answer 5

1. to orient themselves towards asking specific kinds of questions about how the conceptual model will be understood by the target users.
2. not to become narrowly focused early on.
3. to establish a set of common terms they all understand and agree upon, reducing the chance of misunderstandings and confusion arising later on.

Question 6

What is the main benefit of using an interface metaphors?

Answer 6

Interface metaphors allow people to talk about what they are doing in therms they are familiar with.

Question 7

What are the main disadvantages of emulating strategies fro the physical world in the digital world?

Answer 7

When strategies from the physical world are translated into the digital world too literally they may over-constrain the user, or fail to make the most of digital possibilities.

Question 8

How is the idea of emulating physical world strategies in the digital world related to the use of interface metaphors?

Answer 8

Metaphors are used in order to help users understand new concepts by building on familiar knowledge. This usually entails taking experience from the real world and translating it somehow into the digital world. Emulating strategies fro the physical world i one way of developing methaphors.

Question 9

Why is it difficult to delegate tasks to digital agents or to leave it to the environment to determine how to respond to a situation?

Answer 9

The problem with delegating tasks to agents or leaving it to the environment to determine how to respond is that it is very difficult to predict what is happening in and what users want done or the information they require, and so on.

Question 10

What does it mean for interaction to be tightly or loosely coupled? Give an example of each.

Answer 10

Coupling refers to the link between an action in the physical world and the response from an interactive product. Tight coupling is where the action causes and effect that is immediate and obvious, such as raising your arm causes the light to go on. Loose coupling is were the effect of an action is not immediate and not obvious, such as walking past a sensor which causes a message to be sent to someone’s phone

Question 11

Keyboards or keypads, and pointing devices are kinds of input devices. Briefly describe one example of each, and suggest an example application for which it would be appropriate.

Answer 11

One example of a keyboard is a chord keypad. With this device, several keys are pressed at once in order to enter a single character. This kind of input device has been used for deep sea divers who have restricted mobility.
An example of a pointing device is a trackball, which is an inverted mouse. Trackballs are often used with computer game consoles.

Question 12

Consider interfaces based on
-iris and fingerprint recognition, 
-handwriting recognition, 
-speech and gesture. 
Which of these is discrete and which is continuous?

Answer 12

Iris and fingerprint recognition is discrete since it is essentially a picture of the iris or fingerprint.

Handwriting, gesture and speech recognition are all examples of continuous input. Gesture represents continuous input as the system needs to monitor all movement to understand the gesture, while both handwriting and speech are also continuous actions.

Question 13

Cognition refers to what goes on in our heads. The Set Book introduces six cognitive processes that have implications for interaction design, but there are many other things going on inside our heads. Suggest some other processes that would be covered by this definition of cognition.

Answer 13

Other processes include being aware of the environment, sensing, making judgments and using imagination.

Question 14

Which cognitive process would affect the design decision of the following process:

-including animated adverts on a web page.

Answer 14

The cognitive process concerned is attention. Moving images attract our attention more than static text. Advertisers want their adverts to be read and so they animate their adverts.

Question 15

Which cognitive process would affect the design decision of the following process:

-the magnifying glass in Adobe Reader

Answer 15

The cognitive process concerned is reading.
The magnifying glass allows you to see the overall view of the document, yet also to magnify specific areas to be seen in more detail.

Question 16

Which cognitive process would affect the design decision of the following process:

-structuring commands in a desktop application around menus

Answer 16

The cognitive process concerned is memory.

Using menu structures promotes recognition rather than recall.

Question 17

Which cognitive process would affect the design decision of the following process:

-greying out commands that are not accessible or not relevant to the current operation.

Answer 17

The cognitive process concerned is learning.
If commands are greyed out when they are not appropriate then the user will get used to which commands are appropriate in what situation.

Question 18

Which cognitive process would affect the design decision of the following process:

-including tactile feedback in a computer game control console.

Answer 18

The cognitive process concerned is perception.
If the console shakes as though driving over rough ground at the same time that the game screen shows an image of driving down a rough road, then this increases your experience of the situation.

Question 19

Briefly explain the gulf of execution and the gulf of evaluation and how these can be bridged.

Answer 19

The gulf of execution describes the distance from the user to the interface, while the gulf of evaluation is the distance from the interface to the user. Here ‘distance’ does not refer to physical distance but conceptual distance. These gulfs can be bridged by designing interfaces that take account of the psychological characteristics of the user, and by the user learning to create goals, plans and action sequences that fit with how the interface works.

Question 20

What are the two kind of knowledge in a user’s mental model?

Answer 20

Knowledge of how to use the system and knowledge of how the system works.

Question 21

How can interface metaphors help a user to develop an appropriate mental model of a product?

Answer 21

The user will construct a mental model of the system based on their understanding of the metaphor being used. If the metaphor is appropriate then this will help the user construct an appropriate mental model.

Question 22

What is the main criticism of the information processing model?

Answer 22

The main criticism of the information processing view of cognition is that it focuses on the individual, without taking into account our interactions with external representations. The investigations on which the theory is built are regarded as rather artificial, ignoring the real-world context.

Question 23

What can a user gain from a prototype?

Answer 23

A prototype allows users to interact with an envisioned product, to gain some experiences of using it in a realistic setting and to explore imagined uses.

Question 24

A prototype may be high-fidelity or low-fidelity. Which type would you use to:

• determine whether the new interactive product will be compatible with an existing wireless network

Answer 24

For this purpose, a high-fidelity prototype would be needed so that network connections can be tested. A high-fidelity prototype exhibits some automatic interaction and is built using materials close to those of the final product.

Question 25

A prototype may be high-fidelity or low-fidelity. Which type would you use to:

• clarify the flow of work documents between groups within the client company.

Answer 25

For this kind of purpose, a low-fidelity prototype would be sufficient. Low-fidelity prototypes exhibit no automatic interaction and are built using materials unlike those of the final product. They are intended for exploration only.

Question 26

Why do low-fidelity prototypes tend to be used early in development?

Answer 26

Low-fidelity prototypes are used early in development because they are quick, simple and cheap to produce and to modify, and are therefore ideal for exploring ideas.

Question 27

Is it possible to produce a low-fidelity vertical prototype?

Answer 27

Yes, there is no restriction on the kind of prototype for horizontal or vertical treatment.

Question 28

Two approaches to prototyping are: evolutionary prototyping and throw-away prototyping. How do they differ, and what is the consequence of choosing one rather than the other for product development?

Answer 28

Evolutionary prototyping involves iteratively evolving the prototype into the final product.
Throw-away prototyping involves producing many prototypes that are intended to be thrown away.
In the former case, the quality assurance and testing regime must be commensurate with the intention that it will become the final product.
In the latter case, such rigorous testing is not needed, but it is important to resist any temptation to build the final product using these prototypes.

Question 29

Storyboards are useful for prototyping some aspects of a system, but not all. What aspects do you think this form of prototyping is useful for exploring?

Answer 29

It is helpful to portray a series of physical actions, and to capture the environment within which the product will be used. If the task involves only screen shots of a system or product, for example, then this kind of storyboarding is not so helpful. Using index cards to sketch screen shots is more appropriate approach under these circumstances.

Question 30

Interaction design proceeds through a cycle of evaluation and design or redesign.
- concepts and terminology
- navigation, work flow and task flow
- content
- documentation/help
- requirements/functionality
- interface layout
All of the issues above are important, but which one(s) will have the most impact on redesign?

Answer 30

Finding problems with requirements and functionality would probably have more impact on the redesign that the other issues, although issues with the work flow and information display could be equally influential.
The other issues listed may not cause a great impact on the redesign form the developer’s point of view, but they will be very significant for users. If terminology is wrong or confusing, then the system will be unusable.

Question 31

Design is about balancing requirements which are often in conflict. What kind of conflict in requirements might be evident for the design of a computer game?

Answer 31

The kind of conflict here might be that the game needs to be challenging, but at the same time it must be possible for the target user group to progress through the levels, otherwise no one will want to buy it.

Question 32

How can plus and minus scenarios help in conceptual design?

Answer 32

They help because they prompt you to explore the problem space, and to understand the limits and exceptions in the situation you are designing for . How disastrous would it be if things went wrong? Whats the worst that can happen? Whats the most beneficial outcome?

Question 33

Scenarios can play a variety of roles: a basis for overall design, technical implementation, cooperation within the design team and communication across professional boundaries. We have discussed the perils and joys of working in a multidisciplinary team. How do you think scenarios can help support this effort?

Answer 33

Scenarios can support cross-discipline discussion because they are informal stories, and people are good at understanding and telling stories. One potential pitfall is the use of terminology that is then misunderstood. Storyboards, in conjunction with scenarios, can help communication and hence clarify any misunderstandings.

Question 34

Storyboards and early prototyping are intended to focus on the conceptual design of a product. Based on your experience of drawing storyboards, suggest some disadvantages of this approach.

Answer 34

Sketching storyboards forces you to think about some of the detail of the interaction: what the environment is like, what equipment should be available and how it should be laid out. Keeping the right balance between detail and abstraction is difficult, but again is all part of the iterative nature of development. At conceptual design stage it is important to be constantly asking questions of your product, your design and your assumptions.