SIMS 213: User Interface Design & Development

Marti HearstThurs, Feb 6, 2003

Cooper on Designing for Goals

We do tasks to achieve goals – don’t equate them!– Traveling safely in 1849 vs. 1999

Goal of good design: help users achieve practical goals while not violating their personal goals– No “unnatural acts”

Distinctions:– Personal goals– Corporate goals– Practical goals– False goals

Example: goal-directed tv news system

Think Outside-in versus Inside-out

Do not expect others to think or behave – as you do– as you would like them to

Assess the meaning of the displays and controls based on what a user can be assumed to know, not based on what you know

Example: Playing Pictionary

Getting into someone else’s head

However (from Cooper)

Being a victim of a problem does not necessarily bestow the power to see the solution An individual is not always representative– Company president example

Personas (from Cooper)

“Hypothetical Archetypes”– Archetype: (American Heritage)

• An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype

• An ideal example of a type; quintessence

A precise description of a user and what they want to accomplish– Imaginary, but precise– Specific, but stereotyped

• Real people have non-representative quirks

The Essence of Personas

Describe a person in terms of their – Goals in life (especially relating to this project)– Capabilities, inclinations, and background

People have a “visceral” ability to generalize about real and fictional people– We can have detailed discussions about what Harry Potter,

Scarlett O’Hara, or Colin Powell will think or do.– They won’t be 100% accurate, but it feels natural to think

about people this way

Reasons for Personas

A compromise design pleases no-one– The broader you aim, the more likely you miss the bulls-eye– 50% of the people 50% happy doesn’t work

• Car example – soccer mom, carpenter, dot-com exec– “Every time you extend functionality to include another constituency,

you put another speed bump of features and controls across every other user’s road.”

A targeted design can achieve– 10% people 100% ecstatic– Examples:

• Ram pickup truck• Sony aibo

There is no such thing as an average user

Reasons for Personas

Examples of results of targeted design– Dodge Ram pickup– Roller suitcases– Sony Aibo

• Isn’t useful for anything• Not fuzzy and warm• Too delicate to let children use it, but

– Passionate fan clubs– Brisk sales despite steep price – and prices now coming down

Reasons for Personas

Avoid the “elastic user”– If the description is not specific, it

can easily wiggle to suit the design needs of the moment

Piston analogy

Helps prevent designer / programmer from imagining they are the user

Image from www.howstuffworks.com

Reasons for Personas

Puts an end to feature debates– Makes hypothetical arguments less hypothetical

• Q: “What if the user wants to print this out?”• A1: “The user won’t want to print often.”• A2: “Emilee won’t want to print often.”

User Persona, not Buyer Persona– This is one way HCI differs from marketing– Eventually it pays off in more sales

Case Study using Personas

Sony TransCom’s P@ssportInitial design: Conventional solution– Deep hierarchy of screens

• “Uninformed consent”• Reflected the internal design of the software

– This design decision forced them to throw out the natural choice of a touchscreen

– 3D graphics, artistic icons, map-and-globe metaphor• But no substance• “Painting the corpse”

Case Study using Personas

Procedure:– Interviews inside Sony

• What are their goals?• What is the project history?

– Interviews in the field• Airline personnel, particularly flight attendants

– Every new story lead to a new persona• 30 personas at one point

– Eventually, see commonalities, collapse them down• 4 passengers, six airline employees• Passengers are the hard part

Case Study using Personas

Passenger Personas– Chuck Burgermeister– Ethan Scott– Marie Dubois– Clevis McCloud

Goal: satisfy all of them, make no one unhappy, but don’t have to make any of them exceptionally happy– (contradiction of earlier point – captive audience)

Interesting development: one persona became a “common denominator” and a “touchstone”

Case Study using Personas

Interesting design decisions– No navigation

• Only one screen – This isn’t really accurate – they had different screens for different kinds of

entertainment• This means – not very many movies to choose from – and is not what a

computer scientist would design for– Physical knob like a radio dial– Few clicks means touchscreen is ok– Content provided much of the value

• Movie vendors surprised the designers by being enthused about having to supply content

• Consequence of the fact that every movie is carefully marketed already

Other interfaces needed for airline personnel

Cooper on Scenarios

Daily Use– Fast to learn– Shortcuts and customization after more use

Necessary Use– Infrequent but required– Nothing fancy needed

Edge Cases– Ignore or save for version 2

Example: image cropping application– It works so intuitively, it feels like magic

Cooper’s Perpetual Intermediaries

Beginners

Intermediates Experts

Programmers design for experts

Perpetual Intermediaries

Beginners

Intermediates Experts

Marketers design for beginners

Perpetual Intermediaries

Beginners

Intermediates Experts

People spend most of their time as intermediates

Perpetual Intermediaries

Beginners

Intermediates Experts

Paradoxical Curves

Let’s practice creating personas