The Elements, Laws and Attributes of Interaction Design
[Live Blogged Notes from UX Week 2006]
The appearance of trustworthiness is incredibly important.
How something looks give you a context for how it should and can be used. James Gibson called this affordance. Perceived affordances are incredibly important. When you look at a latch you can infer how it is to be used.
Interactions need to be smart. We use tools to accomplish things that we cannot do ourselves. Amazon and Google are smarter than us, they show us things that we could never come up with on our own, what result is best, what percentage bought what.
Moore's Law has significance for designers. Gordon Moore predicted an exponential growth rate for computer chips. The significance of this is that the things we are designing for are improving their power rapidly.
The magical number seven is important to consider.
We expect a product or service to be responsive, we expect to be acknowledged. Think about installation screens that tell you where you are. (It's accuracy is irrelevant because it s telling you that something is happening and gives a reasonable expectation of how much is left)
All interactions take place over time. The duration of that time can be anything. Computer time is not human time. The amount of time your screen displays is being slowed down to human time. As interaction designers we need to be aware of how to manipulate time. If anything is under a half-second delay you are OK. Once you are making someone wait a full second then you need to provide feedback. If you make them wait for more than a couple of seconds or ten seconds your users will think something has broken if you do not provide feedback.
Feedback should be done like crooked voting, early and often. Feedforward is also important. A button that says "Make a blog post" instead of "click here" is more useful.
Your interaction must be appropriate for the culture and the audience. Desert Storm soda might work in Japan but would be impossible to market in the United States. Yahoo! China is very different from Yahoo! America to be appropriate for the audience.
Texture is one of the least used elements of interaction design. But texture can all be used to tell us about context. Think of a diamond encrusted cell phone and a ruggedized black and yellow rubber cell phone. The texture implies a context of use.
Sound is another underused, perhaps rightfully so, interaction technique. The cooler you think your ringtone is, the more annoying it is to the rest of us. Sound can be very abrasive but can also be very useful as a periphery indicator. Instead of messages popping up, a small sound can effectively communicate status change or feedback.
Making an interaction clever can improve the experience. Think of the pause button on the Tivo remote control. They anticipated a need and designed for it. Think of the eight second rewind button on the Tivo remote. Real user research saw that people rewind a few seconds and so they created the button.
The Office Clippy doesn't meet any real needs so is a failure.
The Poka-Yoke principle is a very powerful notion. Making a plug only fit into one slot, like USB, is extremely effective.
Tesler's Law: The Conservation of Complexity.
For every process there is some amount of complexity that cannot be simplified. There are certain steps that you can't get rid of without breaking the process.
One of the ways that we explore new things is by playing with them. Think ludic. Undo lets people play with your product. It lets people feel safe as they explore an interaction.
Digital object can be manipulated through both direct and indirect manipulation. By providing multiple ways of manipulating things on screen is a good practice. We are used to the idea of drawing with a pen more than we are with the idea of select all.
For things to interact they need to move. We make a motion in physical space and something moves in digital space. When we are developing digitial objects we are constantly involved with motion. How the cursor moves, how fast a folder opens, all these are things we can manipulate and control in a clear way. Motion can influence feeling. Imagine manipulating of your ATM machine so things we sliding out and moving around. It would be horrible. But imagine a game where very little moves.
Motion occurs in space. In order for interaction to occur a space must be designed for interaction. Some feel that this is the ultimate goal of interaction design, to create spatial contexts for interaction.
Fitt's law says that the time it takes to reach a target it determined by the size of the target and the distance to the target.
Lastly, an interaction should be pleasurable. Think about a sauna. Every detail is designed for a particular function with a seamless aesthetic. The function and aesthetic blend in such a perfect well-designed way that you can't help but have a pleasurable experience in a sauna. This is kind of experience we should be striving to create.
Q: What about interactions that don't bring pleasure?
A: Think about how you can add a touch of whimsy. Yes a form for scheduling an appointment at the DMV will not be fun. But you can try to find where you can add pleasure.
Q: Do you keep in mind how long someone will be using it?
A: Yes. The initial functions must be used every time. If there is a long learning curve, you an add richness that comes out with time. Think of the hidden things in the Apple interface. Allen Cooper recommends designing for the intermediate user. This isn't completely right but length of time is very important.
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