INTERACTION design

AND INTERACTION 09
 What is
Interaction design?
Interaction design?
Defining what
happens when a
person uses a
product or services.
 But we all do
that at scribd.
that at scribd.
“The only thing new about it is that
now...it's been recognized as a
discipline....Before, like other types of
design, it was simply done without much
reflection. ”

—Dan Saffer (former experience design director

at Adaptive Path)
 Whatannual
was interaction 09?
• Second
conference of the
interaction design
community, IxDA
 What was interaction 09?
• Second annual
conference of the
interaction design
community
Frog Design
Cooper Inc
Royal College of
Art
Fit Associates, LLC
Adaptive Path
Doors of
Perception
...and Jared Spool
time to learn! yay!
the elusive IXD principles
• Apparently there aren’t any.
the elusive IXD principles
• Apparently there aren’t any.

From David Malouf’s

“Introduction to Interaction Design”
workshop
the elusive IXD principles

From David Malouf’s “Introduction to Interaction Design”

workshop
 Lots of hCI* paralleLS
*human-computer interaction
*human-computer interaction

• Time & Movement = Principle of the moving part

Things should move around and react in a
familiar way.
 Lots of hCI* paralleLS
*human-computer interaction
*human-computer interaction

• Metaphor = Principle of pictorial realism

Things should look similar to real life.
(A map looks like a map.)
 Lots of hCI* paralleLS
*human-computer interaction
*human-computer interaction
• Abstraction = Principle of predictive aiding

“A display should attempt to eliminate resource-

demanding cognitive tasks and replace them
with simpler perceptual tasks to reduce the use
of the user’s mental resources.”

• Inother words, you can change the level of

interaction from very realistic (dragging with
your finger) to very abstracted (the command
line).
 Lots of hCI* paralleLS
*human-computer interaction
*human-computer interaction

Metaphor and real-world similarities are great,

but if you can find a better way for users to
interact with things, awesome.
 can there be
hard & fast rules?
hard & fast rules?
• Some say yes.
 can there be
hard & fast rules?
hard & fast rules?
• User-centered design: things are designed
around the user.

• Usually involves extensive testing.

• JakobNielson’s Ten Usability Heuristics are

based on years of experience testing & studying
user-centered design.

• Tog’sFirst Principles of Interaction Design are

also very user-centric.

• Proneto the “too many cooks in the kitchen”

problem. (Microsoft is the poster child for this.)
 can there be
hard & fast rules?
hard & fast rules?
• Genius design: left to their own devices, a few
designers create a fabulous product.

• “Wewanted to make a product we would use

ourselves.”

• More likely to introduce novel design patterns

(designers are given room to innovate).

• Oftenlovely & clever, but end up museum

pieces.

• Caneither be genius...or a total disaster.

(Apple is the poster child for this.)
 a combination of both
• Parti & The Design Sandwich: Luke Wroblewski

• “parti”is a term from architecture: “the central

idea or concept of a building.”

• Wroblewski
was on the team designing the
Yahoo! homepage and integrated a parti into the
process.
 a combination of both
• for large sites, parti is derived from:

• tech opportunity

• resource alignment

• company strategy

• customer insights, and

• market factors.
• "It
a combination of both
used to be that we had no clue what people
were doing, but now we have way too much
information."

• Nonetheless they finally got to a parti: for the

Yahoo homepage: “the dashboard for what you
love on the Web.”

• So
they created a lot of dashboard designs,
some very literal.

• Testing,testing, testing. They don’t just do A/B,

they do everything: multivariate, eyetracking,
heuristic evaluation.
 a combination of both
• So what if user testing indicates the parti is no
good?

“A poor designer will attempt to hold onto a

failed parti and patch local fixes onto the
problem areas, thus losing the integrity of the
whole. But a good designer understands the
erosion of a parti as a helpful indication of where
a project needs to go next.”
 Do we have this?
• Not formally. It’s definitely worth discussing.
 What
• That else
interaction did both
designers you learn?
desperately
want to be defined and are sick of talking about
it.

• ThatIxD designers should all focus on

sustainable design and going green (no really--
two keynotes on this subject).

• Thateverybody wants a rigorous IxD foundation,

but nobody’s sure what the fundamentals should
be.

• Thatmost people think motion design is the

coolest.
 What else did you learn?
• ThatScribd has no need for a alpha-numeric
multi-state wireframing system (woo-hoo!)

•A quick refresher on gestalt principles of form

perception:

similarity continuation closure proximity

figure & ground
 So where else can you look?
• IxDA message board (www.ixda.org/discuss.php)

• Jakob
Nielson’s Alertbox (
www.useit.com/alertbox/)

• UIE
(User Interface Engineering) Brainsparks (
Text
www.uie.com/brainsparks/)

• Boxes & Arrows (boxesandarrows.com)

• Designpattern libraries (Yahoo, Berkely, Welie,

FactoryJoe)
Questions?