Monday, December 11, 2006

Journal-3rd revision

Interaction Design – a New Perspective in Making a System

There are many interactive products in everyday use. For example, cell phone , computer , personal organizer, remote control, soft drink machine, coffee machine, ATM , ticket machine, library information system, the web , photocopier, watch, printer, stereo , calculator, video game, etc and the list is endless. Viewing from the usability side, not all of them are actually easy, effortless, and enjoyable to use. These conditions happen because when making those things, the product-maker did not concern about the human factor and its interaction with the system. Therefore, interaction design developed. Furthermore, interaction design improves the usability and experience of the object or system, by first researching and understanding user's goals, expectations, behaviors, and needs and then deliberately design to meet and exceed these needs and desires for designated user groups.

There is a formal definition about interaction design. In essence, interaction design is a designing interactive product to support people in their everyday and working lives. Another reference says that Interaction Design means the branch of user experience design that illuminates the relationship between people and the interactive products they use. This entails creating user experiences that enhances and extend the way of people work, communicate, and interact. The practice of interaction design is grounded in an understanding of real users—their goals, tasks, experiences, needs, and wants. Now that it is widely accepted, that Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has moved beyond designing computer system for one user sitting in front of one machine to embrace new paradigms. Interaction design has covered a wider range of issues; include ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing that make use of wireless of collaborative technologies.

To know more about interaction design, there are several things that will be explained in this paper, which are:

  • Understanding and conceptualizing interaction
  • Understanding how interfaces affect user
  • User-centered approaches to interaction design
  • The process of interaction design

Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction

When making a new system or product, it is important to realize that having a clear understanding of what kind of product that will be designed, why designing the product and how to design the product, before writing any code, can save much time and effort later on in design process.

In the process of creating an interactive product, it starts with working out how to design the physical interface and what interaction style to use. A problem with trying to solve a design problem beginning at this level is that critical usability goals and user needs can be easily overlooked. For example, consider the problem of making a system for better navigation and traffic information in a car. In the context of driving, it could be very helpful for the driver in displaying information about what to do at certain points during their journey and to find out where they are going. In fact, images of places and directions to follow could be projected inside the car, on the dashboard or rear-view mirror. However, it is unsafe. Because, it could easily distract drivers, luring them to switch their attention from the road to the images were being projected.

While it is certainly necessary at some point to decide on the design of physical aspects, it is better to make these kinds of decisions after understanding the nature of the problem space by conceptualizing what to create, why creating it and how the design will support people in their everyday and working lives. Clarifying the usability and user experience goals is a central part of working out the problem space. This process involves making explicit the implicit-assumptions and claims. Assumptions that are found to be vague can highlight design ideas that need to be better formulated. This process can also help to determine relevant user needs for given activity, which is involves identifying human activities and interactivities that are problematic and working out how they might be improves through being supported with a different from of interaction. These following questions provide a useful framework to thinking through the problem space:

  • Are there problems with an existing product?
  • Why do you think there are problems?
  • Why do you think your proposed ideas might be useful?
  • How would you see people using it with their current way of doing things?
  • How will it support people in their activities?
  • Will it really help them?

Having a good understanding of the problem space can help inform the design space just likes what kind of interface, behaviour, functionality to provide. But before deciding upon these, it is important to develop a conceptual model, since it is a fundamental aspect of interaction design. A conceptual model is a description of the proposed system in terms of a set of integrated ideas and concepts about what it should do, behave and look like, that will be understandable by the users in the manner intended. To develop a conceptual model involves imagining the proposed product, based on the user’s needs and other requirements identified. To ensure that it is designed to be understandable in the manner intended requires doing iterative testing of the product as it is developed. A key aspect of this design process is initially to answer these following questions:

  • What will the users are doing when carrying out their tasks?
  • How will the system support these?
  • What kind of interface metaphor, if any, will be appropriate?
  • What kinds of interaction modes and styles to use?

It is important to keep in mind when making design decisions, think how the user will understand the underlying conceptual model.

There are various kinds of conceptual models that are categorized according to the activity or object they based on. Conceptual models based on activities that user will do, which is consist of the following things:

  • Giving instructions means issuing commands using keyboard and function keys and selecting options via menus
  • Conversing means interacting with the system as if having a conversation
  • Manipulating and navigating means acting on objects and interacting with virtual objects
  • Exploring and browsing means finding out and learning things

Conceptual models based on objects usually based on an analogy with something in the physical world. An example of highly successful conceptual model based on an object is the spreadsheet, which is looked likes and based on the ledger sheet.

The next step is creating the prototypes of conceptual models. There are several issues will need to be addressed when developing and testing initial prototypes of conceptual models, which are:

  • How about the way information to be presented and interacted with at the interface?
  • What combinations of media to use?
  • What kind of feedback that will be provided?
  • What combinations of input and output devices to use?
  • What kinds of help to provide and in what format?

References

Authors
Dian Syahfitra 13504021
Gahayu Handari E 13504031

posted by Gahayu Handari @ 2:28 PM

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