📖About face: the essentials of interaction design

IxD — Interaction Design

UX is the whole:

• Form: Industrial, graphic design

• Content: Information architecture, Copywriting, Animation, Sound design

• Behavior: Interaction Design

When developers do design, a conflict of interest arises. (Because they are judged to code fast.) p.9

User goals are rarely to do something effectively. Their goal is to appear professional, competent, and be engaged. (p.13)

Implementation model (System model) <— Represented model (Designer’s model) —> Mental model (Conceptual model) (p.17)

• Implementation model—how system works

• Conceptual model—how user thinks system works

• Represented mode—what model designer wants to show

Design as product definition (p.21)

There are Interaction Design patterns (p.27)

Focus on goals first, not features (p.29)

Numbers (statistics) are subject of interpretation and can easily be manipulated. (p.32)

In interviews, people may propose new solutions (features), but you should always look at what problems are they trying to solve. (They are not designers, so their solutions might be off, bet the problem is always valid). (p.41)

• XY problem / Always ask “Why”

customers $\not\equiv$ users (p.42)

Contextual inquiry, master-apprentice model (user = master, researched = apprentice) (p.44)

Use closed-ended questions to pause and redirect discussion with next open-ended question. (p.53-54)

Persona is a model of a user. (p.62)

Elastic user. When everyone in a team has their own idea of who user is, the user becomes “elastic” bending and stretching to the needs of whoever is talking. (p.65)

(How to develop empathy?)

Personas are context-specific and should not be reused across products (p.67)

Personas should be based on data and interviews. Otherwise they risk to degrade into stereotypes, designer biases, and assumptions. (p.68)

Other personas:

• customer (buyer)

• served persona (e.g., in medical)

• anti-persona (malicious user)

Visceral design is not about beauty, but about affect—appropriate psychological or emotional reaction. (p.74)

Users perceive attractive interfaces as more usable. (p.74)

goals (p.76)

• reflective → life goals

• behavioral → end goals (performing tasks)

• visceral → experience goals (how you want to feel)

prioritize goals of users before technical or organizational goals (p.81)

One primary persona per interface (p.88)

• There can be multiple secondary personas

https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

• calculate sample size for a survey

considerate products take an interest (p.181)

• remember what user has entered

  • but not financial, private, or secure information

• don’t treat user as a database you can query any time

considerate products are deferential (p.182)

• allow user to do what they want (entering incomplete/wrong information, that can be fixed later)

• suggest, but do not limit actions

Dunbar’s number = 150 connections for human (p.202)

Most users are intermediates (p.238)

• beginners quickly become competent

• experts tend to gravitate to intermediates with time

• most intermediates remain intermediates

programmers tend to produce expert interfaces (for they are expert users of the product)

marketers/sales tend to overemphasize beginners (for they mostly deal with first-time users)

users don’t see product as a two-way communication

• they would rather use product as a tool

• re: Design is Communication ?

“Microinteractions” by Dan Saffer (p.267) #book

GUI success might be caused now by richer input, but by input being more restricted.

• i.e., command line allows you to enter any string, most of which are invalid commands, but gui only allows mouse interaction at specific points (p. 310)

• re: constraints

Undo supports exploration. p.364

Wizards are appropriate for initial hardware setup and online surveys. For other cases—not so much. (p.391)

Reframe “customizability” as “personalization.” Let users adjust environment to themselves, while keeping the main structure unchangeable. (p.395)

The Visual Design of Quantitative Information by Tufte (p.425) #book

WIMP: Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer

Menus represent a pedagogical vector. We can understand what application can do by browsing menus. (p.449)

• similar to restaurant menus

toolbar: show button shape only on mouse over to save space. (p.455)

disable buttons on toolbar, not hide them. Users rely on buttons position. Removing can disorient competent users and frighten new ones (p.458)

double click = single click + action

verb-object / object-verb order (p.476)

marching ants (marquee) to show a selection (p.476)

allow a small drag threshold (3px) to differentiate between selection (single click) and start of drag. (p.490)

• if one drag direction is preferable (e.g., vertical is more often than horizontal), drag threshold area can be of different shape.

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