Topic 1: Interaction Design Overview

Question 1

Existence of Good and Poor Design & their environment

Answer 1

In terms of usability one can differentiate good and poor interaction designs through design weaknesses and strengths.

Notice: The environment needs to be taken into account as well since goods designs are not useful in every environment (e.g., marble answering machine at a hotel)

Environment: Who, how, where, kind of activity when interacting

Question 2

Hints of a bad interactive design

Answer 2

Irritating, misleading, inconsistent, inefficient (number of basics steps are required), no feedback by the system.

Question 3

Hints of a good interactive design

Answer 3

Aesthetically pleasing, playful, enjoyable to use, one-step actions, intuitive, color-coding

Question 4

Reasons for the rise of interaction design

Answer 4

1) Everyday consumer items, that used to be physical, are now predominantly digitally based requiring interaction design (cameras, microwave, toaster)

2) The move toward transforming human-human transactions into solely interface-based ones (self-checkouts)

Question 5

What is interaction design?

Answer 5

“Designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their
everyday and working lives.”

By Sharp, Rogers, and Preece (2019)

Question 6

Components of Interaction Design (Fields of Professions that are in touch with Interaction Design

Answer 6

Interaction design is highly interdisciplinary. Many fields overlap and only differ in methods and philosophies they use to study and design an product as well as scope and problems they address. (See graphics ppt slide 2)

Question 7

Is Interaction Design (ID) Beyond HCI?

Answer 7

Themain difference between interaction design (ID) and (HCI) as one of scope.

Historically, HCI had a narrow focus on: design and usability of computing systems,

ID was seen as being broader: theory, research, and practice of designing user experiences for all manner of technologies, systems, and products.

Question 8

Who is usually involved in Interaction Design teams, what are the benefits and downsides of these teams?

Answer 8

Interaction design is ideally carried out by multidisciplinary teams (need of different backgrounds and perspectives)
(+) Generation of more ideas and designs
(-) more communication effort requires

Question 9

What is User Experience (UX)?

Answer 9

“all aspects of the enduser’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
By Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman (2014)

UX refers to how a product behaves and is used by people in the real world.

Question 10

Central aspects of UX / UX goals

Answer 10

usability, functionality, aesthetics, emotional appeal, fun, experiencing flow, cultural and social identity. But there is no magic formula for quality UX.

One cannot design quality user experience directly, but only create the design features that can evoke it.

Question 11

Explain ID as a process - The double diamond of design.

Answer 11

This approach has four phases which are iterated: (See graphics ppt slide 3)

• Explore and analyse -
  1) Discover: Designers try to gather insights about the problems space
  -> current UX, why change?, how change improves UX?
  -> articulating problem space as group to minimize incorrect assumptions

2) Define: Designers develop a clear brief that frames the design challenge.

• Design and deliver -
  3) Develop: Solutions or concepts are created, prototyped, tested, and iterated.

4) Deliver: The resulting project is finalized, produced, and launched.

Question 12

Benefits of a designer understanding users?

Answer 12

1) Adjust design with what people want, need and may desire

2) Acknowledge appreciating that one size does not fit all (e.g. teenager vs. adults needs)

3) Identify any incorrect assumptions they may
have about particular user groups.
(e.g. not all old people need a big font size)

Question 13

Why is it important to involve users? Three answers.

Answer 13

1) Functional specification
(understanding functional requirements)

2) Expectation management
(Realistic, no suprises, no disapointment)

3) Ownership (users become active stakeholders, forgiveness of problems)

Question 14

Which types of user involvement are typical when designing a new product or a service? (Degrees of user involvement)

Answer 14

1) Users as member of the design team
2) Face to face activities
3) Online contribution (feedback, citizen science)
4) user involvement after product release (error reporting)

Question 15

What are the four design approaches to Interactive Designs?

Answer 15

1) User centered design:
User knows best and guides the designer

2) Activity centered design:
Users behavior rather than their goals is important

3) System design:
The system(people, computer, devices) is the center of attention

4) Genius design
Relies on the experience and creativity of the designer.

Question 16

The basic ID lifecycle model

Answer 16

Exemplifies a user user-centered design approach:
(See graphics ppt slide 4)
1) Discovering requirements for the interactive product.
Mainly through the use of data gathering and analysis.
(left side of the double diamond)

2) Designing alternatives that meet those requirements.
From conceptual to concrete designs.
(part of the develop phase of the double diamond)

3) Prototyping the alternative designs so that they can be communicated and assessed. (also part of the develop phase)

4) Evaluating the product and the user experience it offers throughout the process. Determining the usability and acceptability of the product. (also part of the develop phase)

Question 17

Google Design Sprint for rapid idea development and testing

Answer 17

A design sprint is divided in 5 phases and each phase is completed in a day. Iterations are possible.
One won’t finish with a detailed product, but one will make rapid progress and know if headed into the right direction.

Question 18

Research in the wild approach for idea development

Answer 18

Develops technology solutions in everyday living by creating and evaluating new technologies and experiences in situ.

Question 19

Methods for how to generate alternative designs?

Answer 19

1) already mentioned genius design

2) Cross-fertilization of ideas from different perspectives, individuals, and contexts (even straight copiying)

3) brainstormint, especially in multidisciplinary teams

Question 20

Methods on how to choose alternative designs?

Answer 20

The design decisions are driven by prior the information gathered about users and their preferences.

For decision between two alternatives use A/B Testing:
it’s a simple idea—give one set of users one version and a second set the other version and see which set scores more highly against the success criteria. But dividing up
the sets, choosing the success criteria, and working out the metrics to use are nontrivial

Question 21

ID Principle - Feedback

Answer 21

Products should be designed to provide adequate feedback to the users that informs them about what has already been done so that they know what to do next in the interface.

Question 22

What are ID Principles?

Answer 22

The generalizable do do’s and don’ts of interaction design.
Feedback
Visibility
Constraints
Consistency
Affordance

Question 23

ID Principle - Visibility

Answer 23

The more visible functions are, the more likely it is that users will be able to know what to do next.

Question 24

ID Principle - Constraint

Answer 24

Restricting the possible actions that can be performed, when only a selection of action is relevant for a task.

Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options.

There are physical or digital constraints.

Question 25

ID Principle - Consistency

Answer 25

Refers to designing interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for achieving similar tasks.

Consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use.

Question 26

Internal vs. External consistency

Answer 26

Internal: designing operations to behave the same within an application.

External: designing operations, interfaces, and so on to be the same across applications and devices
(e.g. phone vs. calculator number keypad)

Question 27

ID Principle - Affordance

Answer 27

Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it.

When affordance is achieved, it is easy to know how to interact with a product.

Question 28

What is usability?

Answer 28

Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal:
- effectively,
- efficiently and
- satisfactorily.

Usability is a component of UX.

Question 29

What are usability goals?

Answer 29

Effective to use (related to quality of the output)
Efficient to use (considers input effort vs. achieved output)
Safe to use (safety)
Have good utility (utility)
Easy to learn (learnability)
Easy to remember how to use (memorability)

Question 30

What are common usability measures?

Answer 30

Time to learn
Speed of performance
Rate of errors
Retention over time
Subjective satisfaction

Question 31

How do usability goals differ from user experience goals?

Answer 31

UX goals are more broad, usability goals are more practical.

Question 32

Are there trade trade-offs between the usability and UX goals?

Answer 32

Yes, probably. (e.g. emotionally fullfilling (UX) vs. speed of performance (usability))

Question 33

How easy is it to measure usability versus user
experience goals?

Answer 33

Usability is easier to measure, since it is has more quantitative measures. UX goals are measured more qualitatively.

Question 34

What are the core characteristics of interaction design?

Answer 34

1) Users should be involved throughout the development of the project.

2) Specific usability and user experience goals need to be identified and agreed to at the beginning of the project.

3) Iteration is needed through the core activities (see double diamond)

Question 35

ID Principle - Accessibility and inclusiveness

Answer 35

Accessibility : the extent to which an interactive
product is accessible by as many people as
possible (focus: people with disabilities)

Inclusiveness : making products and services that accommodate the widest possible number of people. (Inclusivness is broader term and can include Accesibility.) (e.g. taking cultural differences into account)