COMP1649 - HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION AND DESIGN
Lecture 01: INTRODUCTION
The aim of Interaction Design: to develop interactive products that are usable. For example: Coffee Machine. Is this design good? Is there anything need to be review and improve?
The course aims are to:
- provide you with an in-depth knowledge of how users interact with products and how we can design better interactive systems
- enable you to gain an appreciation of established design principles and methodologies to solve interaction design problems
- provide a comprehension of how complex multimedia systems can be designed and implemented.
The course outcomes: by the end of this course you will be able to:
- demonstrate a critical level of comprehension of the nature of cognitive psychology and how it influences the ways in which users interact with computer systems.
- use established design principles and methodologies to solve interaction design problems
- develop multimedia applications which incorporate the critical selection and use of advanced interaction design techniques;
- demonstrate the synthesis of theory and application;
- demonstrate a critical evaluation of current issues in Interaction Design.
- Ethical, Legal, Social & Professional Issues: understand and apply;
- the ethical and social implications of accessibility policies and legal standards;
- professional standards and codes of conduct;
- gain an understanding of the external factors which may impact on the work of the Interaction Designer including accepting responsibility for work which affects the well-being of society, environmental, economic and commercial factors and globalization.
- Personal and Professional Skills:
- develop high level cognitive skills with respect to relating theoretical concepts to practical implementations;
- develop high level key transferable skills in problem solving and decision making; communication skills; working with others and working to deadlines;
- present work in a variety of ways including a report and a demonstration.
Assessment:
The course is 100% coursework which will provide the opportunity for you to provide evidence that you have met the course learning outcomes. The planning, research and low fidelity prototypes will be undertaken in teams with formative feedback provided. The high fidelity prototype and final report will be completed on an individual basis.
What is Interaction Design?
- By interaction we mean designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives.
- Interaction designers are the architects of the product whereas software engineers are the builders.
What areas does it cover?
Recent job opportunities: HMRC , ABRS, Blueskies, Talk Talk, Amazon, Google, CranberryPanda. In UK, starting salaries £25k for junior positions to 90K for senior positions with some being undisclosed.
What do professionals do in the ID business?
- interaction designers - people involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product
- usability engineers - people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles
- web designers - people who develop and create the visual design of websites, such as layouts
- information architects - people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products
- user experience designers (UX) - people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products
Interaction Design consultancies
Examples of well known ones include:
- Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter the age of the consumer, designing human-centered products and services”
- Cooper: ”From research and product to goal-related design”
- Swim: “provides a wide range of design services, in each case targeted to address the product development needs at hand”
- IDEO: “creates products, services and environments for companies pioneering new ways to provide value to their customers”
Activity 1: Below is coffee machine's guide line, how do you think? Is that good or bad, which points that need to be improved? Suggestions: steps, color, size, ...
What happens if we follow with steps 1 to 3?
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Why study this topic?
- Interaction designers play an essential role in the development of successful products.
- Microsoft introduced Vista the successor to Windows XP in January 2007 but users moaned about a lack of driver support and intrusive security measures. Industry were worried about incompatibility with older applications. Microsoft hurriedly pushed out Windows 7 in October 2009 and hoped we would forget about Vista as soon as possible.
Why was the iPod user experience such a success?
- Quality user experience from the start
- Simple, elegant, distinct brand, pleasurable, must have fashion item, catchy names, cool, etc.,
- When does up mean up?
- Which one do you prefer?
- Do they need to be redesign?
Exercise 1: Review and make improvement for Remote Control for Smart TV
Based on above pictures, you will re-design a new remote control for Smart TV which is more convenience for end users. This could support with standard functions that has on traditional TV as well new functions
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Designing interactive systems
…. is more than designing the input, output and content.
(Figure: Novel Biker jacket interface)
It is about designing the whole human-computer interaction and this is often enabled through devices, whole environment of interlinked devices and objects
Think of designing museum exhibits, a hotel lobby or a shopping mall.
Core characteristics of interaction design
- Users should be involved through the development of the project
- Specific usability and user experience goals need to be identified, clearly documented and agreed at the beginning of the project
- Iteration is needed through the core activities
Are cultural differences important?
- 5/21/2012 versus 21/5/2012? Which should be used for international services and online forms?
- Why is it that certain products, like the iPod, are universally accepted by people from all parts of the world whereas websites are reacted to differently by people from different cultures?
- For example with Anna on IKEA online sales agent
What are the differences and which is which?
What should Anna’s appearance be like for other countries, like India, South Africa, or China?
- Either a company that sells clothes targeted at 15-25 year olds in Europe and Asia.
- OR a technology company selling the latest innovations in phones, tablets and watches
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Usability goals are concerned with meeting specific criteria
- Effective to use (effectiveness)
- Efficient to use (efficiency)
- Safe to use (safety)
- Having good utility (utility)
- Easy to learn (learnability)
- Easy to remember how to use (memorability)
These can be turned into usability criteria that provide specific objectives to enable the usability of a product to be assessed in terms of how it can improve or otherwise a user's performance. For example time to complete an event (learnability), number of errors made when carrying out a task(efficiency).
User experience goals
Desirable aspects:
- satisfying helpful fun
- enjoyable motivating provocative
- engaging challenging surprising
- pleasurable enhancing sociability rewarding
- exciting, supporting creativity, emotionally fulfilling
- entertaining, cognitively stimulating
- Undesirable aspects
- boring, unpleasant
- frustrating, patronizing
- making one feel guilty, making one feel stupid
- annoying, cutesy
- childish, gimmicky
These cover a range of emotions and felt experiences and differ from usability goals as they are concerned with how users experience an interactive product from their perspective rather than how useful or productive a systems is.
For example, listening to music in a shower maybe highly pleasurable, listening to music in a car may be enjoyable, listening to music on an iPod shuffle may be exciting and emotionally fulfilling especially if you do not know what is coming next. This process of selecting terms that convey a user's experience help designers to understand the multifaceted and changing nature of the user experience.
Next section 2. Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction
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