Lecture 1

Question 1

What is interaction design and two key goals, usability and UX?

Answer 1

Interaction Design
Designing the interactive aspects of digital technologies: appearance, structure and behaviour.
- Good usability
- Positive user experience

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

UX
UX encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction.
1. Meets needs of the customer.
2. Simplicity and elegance which produces products that are a joy to own and to use.

UX McCarthy and Write - Four Core Threads

• Sensual (being completely absorbed by the experience)
• Emotional
• Compositional (the narrative part of the experience)
• Spatio-temporal (space and time and how they effect the experience)

Question 2

Summarise HCI from The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.

Answer 2

Design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

Emerged in the 1980s with the introduction of personal computing which created a need of better usability. It emerged initially as a specialty area in computer science embracing cognitive science and human factors engineering.

Multifaceted

One of the biggest ideas was the so-called messy desk metaphor.

• Browsing, graphical interactions, search, web
• Social computing
• New technology & ubiquitous computing
• Understanding and critically evaluating the interactive technologies people use and experience.
• Understanding contemporary human practices and aspirations, including how those activities are embodied, elaborated, but also perhaps limited by current infrastructures and tools.
• It is about exploring design spaces, and realising new systems and devices through the co-evolution of activity and artefacts, the task-artefact cycle.

Question 3

What are the 7 stages of action, explained by Norman?

Answer 3

Execution

1. Establishing the goal
2. Forming the intention
3. Specifying the action sequence
4. Executing the action

Evaluation

5. Perceiving the system state
6. Interpreting the state
7. Evaluating the system state.

Question 4

What is the Gulf of Execution & Evaluation?

Answer 4

The distance between the user’s expectation of the actions needed to achieve his/her goal and the actions allowed by the system. If the two are the same, the interaction will be effective.

The distance between the presentation of system state and the expectation of the user. If the user can readily evaluate the presentation in terms of his/her goal, the gulf is small and the interaction more effective.

Question 5

Give 5 points on what poor usability lead to.

Answer 5

1. Systems that cause frustration, stress and fatigue to users
2. Ultimately, systems that are rejected or underused.
3. Inefficient interfaces that cost money due to more user errors and slower operation speeds
4. Unsafe systems
5. Systems that go against national and international standards.

Question 6

Give 5 examples on how we could measure usability.

Answer 6

1. Effectiveness (success) - how often users succeed at tasks.
2. Ease of use (efficiency) - resources for user to perform a task.
3. Ease of learning (learnability) - the time and effort required for a user to meet a specified level of performance.
4. Incidence of usability issues - the number and types of usability issues in the system.
5. UX and satisfaction - whether users enjoy using the system, feel successful, in control, competent etc.

Question 7

What are the 4 steps in the Interaction Design Process?

Answer 7

1. User Research
2. Conceptual Design
3. Detailed Design
4. Evaluation