The Interaction Design - Assignment Example

How does user experience play a role in Interaction Design (ID)? The outcome of a product released in market is basically a direct consequence of how the users feel about the interface design. Though the technical requirements play a key role, the first thing that any end user would see in the software is the interaction design. Hence, the experience of the user plays a key role while designing the requirements for interaction design. The main plus point of user experience is that, the developers could learn about how users feel learning the software and using it. The human computer interaction is basically the starting point of development of any device like, audio systems, military devices etc. If it doesn’t hold up good, even a better programmed one could fail. For example, the reason Google search is more prolific of all search engines is not only because of its searching algorithms but also because of its usability. All the users find it so easy to search and they could not experience the same with others search engines, say, Yahoo or Bing. 2. Define the key usability and design principles identified by Donald Norman that help to ensure good design. Why do you think that these are important to the design process? Norman defined seven key usability and design principles that the developer can follow to produce an effective design. He asks developers to use both the conceptual thinking of what is in mind and what is in real world and accordingly develop manuals before proceeding with the design. Secondly, modify each of the requirements as simple and as independent as possible. Thirdly, he asks developers to show things that could help users to click on right buttons for appropriate actions. As a fourth point, he mentions that things have to be designed with several different techniques, like using graphics etc., so that the user can understand the operation just on the sight of view. Hence a proper mapping is needed. Fifth point is an alternate version of second point where things have to be made simple and the effect of constraints that determine the things design should be very minimal. As a sixth point, the author suggests developers to design for usability test. The faulty designs are designed just to check how well the usability test progresses. Finally, the author advises developers to follow any standard design of user interface to follow, only if they are unsure of the success they could attain through the implementation of above six points. These are very important because these points basically identify and standardize the quality of the design that is developed. They act as the benchmark for any design evaluation. 3. Should we design systems for the “average” person? Why or why not? Designing of the software basically depends on the pool of end users who are going to use it. For ex., if it is Google Search or Google Mail, it has to be designed with regard to a so-called ‘average’ person who has very minimal or less knowledge of the computer technologies. Here, the type of end user and hence an inclusion of all kinds of networks like landline, T1, Broadband and mobile networks come into play. Therefore, the designer has to take into consideration of all these factors and ‘average’ person indeed play a big role here. But, in case of high end technology software like Coral Draw, Adobe PhotoShop etc. are more concentrated towards people with good technical skills. Hence a more advanced and technically smart interaction design can be provided since the user has the capability to handle it. Thus, it is a matter of the purpose of the software and type of end user that determine the design and there is no mandate to develop the system design always for an “average” person. 4. What is the importance of conceptual models? Define the basic categories that conceptual models are classified as, giving an example of each. The conceptual model’s aim is to provide clarity over the terminologies and entities described by business professional and provide a meaningful relation between them. The importance of conceptual models is that they are totally independent of how they are going to be implemented. They provide the options to solve ambiguities over a concept or requirement which other diagrams can’t provide. They give a better understanding of what are the needs and what are the unnecessary details that have to be done over a requirement analysis. They also help in prioritizing the requirements so that what needs to be done first can easily be identified. There are two basic categories by which conceptual models can be categorized. They can be designed either implicitly or explicitly. Implicit design is where each and everyone develop their own design without even proper communication and finally end up with several designs. It has severe impact if key concepts and requirements are not fulfilled. An example of it is done in manufacturing industries, where the design technique is not standardized. The other basic category is explicit wherein a proper meeting is kept and all work on the same model of design with everyone knowing what others are doing. An example of it is any successful interface design that is implemented in computers. 5. Discuss the concept of the gulf of execution and the gulf of evaluation in layman’s terms. Give me a personal example or situation that you may have had that would help you in bridging the gulf. The term ‘Gulf Of Execution’ in layman terms can be explained as the difference between the expectations of the users and the actual output of the system. For ex., it can be defined as something which the user wants to perform in a specific way, but the system performs in the other way. For ex., while I want to record a movie in say a computer or a video player, my intention would be to simply click on the record button and start doing. But, the system requires an input time from which the recording has to start. It is different from what I expected. This is called as ‘Gulf of Execution’. The term ‘Gulf of Evaluation’ can be explained in layman’s terms as when the system is not able to explain to the user what are the steps that need be done to achieve the intended goal. In such a case the gulf is large and users have to refer lots of things to find a solution. Following the real time example given above, say, if I press the record button, the system has to display or mention that time of record has to be entered. If that is not mentioned, I would be clueless on why it is not recording. 6. How can we support communication and collaboration with design? Why is this important in term of design? The communication and collaboration with design can be supported using several groups of software, also called as groupware. In terms of design, communication and collaboration with design is very important to pass on information from one state of the system to other. Also, none of the current systems can survive without interacting with several other such systems. Hence enhancements have to be given from the design stage itself. For example, in case of registration for any kind of services, say opening an account in a bank, the user can open either savings or DDA account and hence one screen can take up this information and pass it to the next screen according to the choice made. This is why communication in design is all the more important. 7. What are techniques that designers can employ to alleviate user frustration? Discuss in terms of the basic frustration areas as outlined in our text. One of the critical factors determining design techniques is user frustration. The user can be frustrated due to many scenarios. They can be largely frustrated with the loading time and run time of any kind of application. This can be avoided using affective computing. Also during an interaction, if system doesn’t respond as user expected, the user could get frustrated. Affective computing also alleviates this kind of frustration. Another technique used to react to user frustration is the emotion control system which understands the user’s emotion and acts accordingly. Users sometime get frustrated with error messages being displayed. Customized error messages could alleviate their frustration and increase productivity. 8. After reading the review of interface types, what do you think is the most important emerging user interface in terms of ID and why? Can you give an example to support this? The next best thing to happen in User interfaces is Surface Computing. It simply means computing and performing operations on the surface. Imagine controlling all your house hold devices sitting in one table. Such kind of interface is provided by surface based user interface and the future of this is not far away. In probably 5 years this would be as similar to PC’s and laptops as we have now. The recent introduction of surface Computing technique introduced by Microsoft is a perfect example of such a design. Named as Cristal, users can literally do anything just by touching. The user interface is totally exceptional and it has opened the path for surface computing in future. 9. Briefly define the four major areas in the Interaction Design Process? What are some of the key characteristic involved in this process that will make the design successful? Discovery phase is the first step of ID process where the business needs and user requirements are identified through several methodologies like media, interviews, survey etc. So refining the requirements is the critical factor of this process. The design process is the second step and it involves prototyping the collected requirements and working on a dummy data to finalize the design. The design of UI and prototypes are the critical success factors of this step. The third step is Usability testing where the developed prototype is initially tested for several user actions and finally the end produced is tested for the same. If there are no deviations, this phase is passed. The test cases and specification developed are the key factors for the success of this phase. The final phase is delivery phase. If the end product is able to meet the requirements of the user, then this in itself predicts the success of the product. 10. Differentiate between formal and informal data gathering techniques. In what situations would one be more effective than the other? Give an example Formal data gathering techniques like surveys, meetings, emails mostly preplanned and are performed with discussion about factual data. Whereas, informal data gathering techniques include chats, memos, other sort of phone conversations, messaging and other sort of conversational details. They are not backed by any kind of statistics or factual data. They are just gathered probably out of experience for most of the time and by some other methods like manual collection of data. An example of formal data gathering technique is surveying, where group of people go pre-organized knowing what they want to ask and recording whatever they are expected to do. Whereas an example of informal data gathering in when people just share information in a day to day basis without providing any facts of what they say and hence cannot be publicized . Both kinds of techniques are important to understand accurately the needs of the user on the design perspective. Read More