Slide 1

Understanding Interaction, Users and Interfacesand

Designing for Collaboration and Communication

(Chapters 2-5 of Interaction Design text)

CSSE 371 Software Requirements and Specification Don Bagert, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

October 25, 2005

Thanks to Steve Chenoweth for some of the slides included.

Slide 2

Outline

• Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction

• Understanding Users

• Designing for Collaboration and Communication

• Understanding How Interfaces Affect Users

Slide 3

Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction

Slide 4

Understanding the Problem Space

• Focus on usability goals and user needs before addressing the physical system

• Some questions to address when designing a solution:– (If applicable) Why are there problems with the existing

interface?– Why do you think your proposed ideas might be useful?– How will your proposed design support people in their activities?

Slide 5

Conceptual Models

• Based on Activities e.g.– Instructing– Conversing– Manipulating and Navigating– Exploring and Browsing

• Based on Objects e.g.– Books– Vehicles

Slide 6

“Borrowing”

• Metaphors

• Analogies

Slide 7

Understanding Users

Slide 8

Cognition

• How do people understand what we try to show them?

• What are some the basic processes of cognition?– Attention– Perception and recognition– Memory– Learning– Reading, speaking and listening– Problem solving, planning, reasoning and decision

making

Slide 9

One example of a cognition technique

• Engineers love to see “the condition of a system” as a Kiviat chart:

In this one, farther out from center is better…In the classic style, it’s the reverse!

Slide 10

Designing for Collaboration and Communication

Slide 11

Social Mechanisms - Example

• Written vs. oral dialogue – not the same!– Example, from Desperate Measures, by Pat Johnson

ISBN:1-59129-680-3:

“Tell us, Winston, just what did happen?” Roosevelt  asked.

[Churchill replied,] “We had too little left; too little aircraft, too little anti-aircraft guns, and too little ships. We had bet it all on trying to save France. When they succumbed to the onslaught and fled for North Africa, we had little left in which to defend ourselves. They kept their fleet in the Mediterranean to help protect their shores and what trade shipping they could.”

This is not how we talk! Why is it always shown this way in books, as if we did?

Slide 12

Understanding How Interfaces Affect Users

Slide 13

Some Techniques

• Affective aspects – producing an emotional response

• Expressive interfaces

Slide 14

User Frustration

• Gimmicks (e.g. “Under Construction”)

• Error Messages

• Overburdening the User

Slide 15

Does anthropomorphism help?

• Aibo – big hit … as a dog

• The human equivalent – apparently didn’t make it… Yet?