UX in Practice: A Real World Analysis of Embedded Graphical User Interface Impact

UX in Practice:
A Real World Analysis of Embedded Graphical User Interface Impact
UX in Practice:
A Real World Analysis of Embedded Graphical
User Interface Impact
September 2012
Steve Tengler, User Experience Director
Altia, Incorporated
7222 Commerce Center Drive, Suite 240
Colorado Springs, CO 80919
www.altia.com
i September 2012
UX in Practice:
Document Revision History
Title Date
Public Release August 2011
Open Systems Media Release September 2012
ii September 2012
UX in Practice:
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction........................................................................................................... 1
2.0 The Rules: Altia Product Rating System (and the Underlying Science) ........... 2
3.0 Our Real World Example ...................................................................................... 8
4.0 Category #1: “Well Configured and Reconfigured” .......................................... 9
4.1 Fitt’s Law Is Upheld ........................................................................................... 11
4.2 Chunky Food ..................................................................................................... 12
4.3 SCORING FOR WC&R (“Well Configured & Reconfigured”): ............................ 14
5.0 Category #2: “I Can See What’s Going On!” .................................................... 15
5.1 SCORING FOR ICSWGO (“I Can See What’s Going On!”): .............................. 17
6.0 Category #3: “Iconic Design” ........................................................................... 18
6.1 SCORING FOR ICONIC DESIGN: .................................................................... 21
7.0 Category #4: “No Errors on Errors” .................................................................. 22
7.1 SCORING FOR NO ERRORS ON ERRORS: ................................................... 24
8.0 Category #5: “Attractive Design” ..................................................................... 25
8.1 SCORING FOR ATTRACTIVE DESIGN: ........................................................... 26
9.0 Usability Summary ............................................................................................. 27
10.0 The Big Picture ................................................................................................ 28
11.0 About the Author ............................................................................................. 29
12.0 About Altia ....................................................................................................... 29
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UX in Practice:
List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1: The Samsung Wi-Fi Smart Fridge ................................................................... 8
Figure 2: Chunking Access into Function Groups ......................................................... 12
Figure 3: Dialog for Choosing Ice Type ........................................................................ 13
Figure 4: The Status Bar .............................................................................................. 16
Figure 5: The Settings Menu ........................................................................................ 16
Figure 6: Some Example Home Screen Icons .............................................................. 18
Figure 7: Adjusting Temperature .................................................................................. 19
Figure 8: Written Text Supports Icon Recognition......................................................... 20
Figure 9: "Back" and "Home" Quick Access ................................................................. 22
Figure 10: Confirmation Dialog ..................................................................................... 23
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UX in Practice:
1.0 Introduction
Times have changed and technology has progressed to the point where people can no
longer claim ignorance when it comes to embedded user interfaces. Whether you call it an
HMI (human-machine interface) or a GUI (graphical user interface) or an MMI (man-
machine interface) or simply a UI (user interface), you know what “it” is – and you have
borne witness to the power that these embedded displays with their colorful touch screens
and advanced features have had on consumer products. A graphical user interfaces are no
longer nice-to-haves; in the mind of the current marketplace they are a necessity.
Many companies have made the leap into HMI – and many more are soon to follow. This
Great New World is exciting and ripe with opportunity, but success does not come easily. It
is up to your Marketing department to get a clear idea about what your customers want from
your product. By “want”, I am not talking about fancy animations and extra games or
methods to customize the product screen, but first and foremost the customer’s goals for
using your product.
Once Marketing has determined goals and feature needs, it’s up to your team of Industrial
Designers and Human Factors experts to figure out how customers can successfully, easily,
safely accomplish those goals. At the same time, your Systems Engineers and Software
Engineers need to be in the mix to understand how those features can be applied to the
overall system and get that HMI into production. These different departments working
together have the best chance to achieve a User-Centered Design (UCD), a product that
provides the user with a satisfying, safe and successful user experience while meeting his
goals or needs.
I want you to enjoy this ride by first understanding what HMI is; not just the acronym, but the
basics and the method to my madness when giving the thumbs up or down to the User
Experience (UX) of an HMI. So for full disclosure, I will spell out a series of evaluation
categories, the underlying science, and a system for rating the quality of a product’s user
experience. After that, I will apply this rating system to a real product in the field.
1 September 2012
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2.0 The Rules: Altia Product Rating System (and the Underlying Science)
The product will be judged in five categories which have underlying requirements, but
will be bubbled up to a score for that category and eventually an overall score. By definition,
user experience is a blending of objective and subjective (e.g. user satisfaction), and so
shall be my evaluations.
The categories are as follows:
#1 -- Well Configured and Reconfigured
Before the struggles between fauna and flora, man and woman, or religion-x and religion-y,
it was said that a fierce battle was waged between features and controls, otherwise known
as “affordance” in the User Experience (UX) world. Who won? The battle continues and,
unfortunately, is lost more often than won. Why? Because designers either are ill-informed
or simply forget some age-old principles regarding the frequency, placement, size and
configurability of controls. That and, according to Mark Sanders, “Human Factors is not just
common sense. [Otherwise], given the number of human factors deficiencies in the things
we use, [we would have to] conclude that common sense is not very common.”
• FREQUENCY: A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a man named William
Edmund Hick, after whom an algorithm named “Hick’s Law” was named. That complex
formula would flick the snooze button in your brain, so I’ll give the executive summary: Joe
User takes x-seconds to sift through all the information and choices (see Wikipedia). More
stuff equals more time. Period. Minimalistic designs, therefore, help the user make the
desired choice and don’t overwhelm him in the process.
• PLACEMENT AND SIZE: Speaking of wise forefathers within the User Experience world,
along comes Paul Fitts who also produced a formula coincidentally named “Fitts’s Law” that
demonstrates the importance of correlating the size and proximity of the control (to the user)
with the importance of the function. The classic example is, of course, the emergency button.
Making it a small button far from the user would seem implausible, yet that mistake has been
frequently replicated in millions of products in multiple industries (e.g. automotive,
telecommunications). This Law can be misused (see
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fitts-law.html), so Altia’s rating
takes into account properly applying usability in this fashion.
• CONFIGURABILITY: The list of battles above should have included the novice versus the
expert or the battle between two consumers named I-Use-This and I-Use-That. Thwink.org
defines configurability well: “The ratio of system variation to input effort [or restated] … the
smallest amount of effort I can do to control the greatest amount of system behavior?” This
all will eventually conform to Tengler’s Law since … well … I want a law, too!
• CHUNKING CONTROLS AND DISPLAYS: Look up chunking in a psychology textbook and
it’ll refer to it as “…a strategy [or methodology] for making more efficient use of short-term
memory by recoding information.” Applying this to User Experience, bucketing similar
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functions/displays into logical groups helps the user create a mental model of where to find
items.
#2 -- “I Can See What’s Going On!”
Have you ever been listening to someone’s PowerPoint presentation, and they flip to the
next slide which contains either black-on-blue text, font small enough that only escapees
from Krypton can view it, or a bunch of acronyms/technical jargon that completely escapes
you? That presenter didn’t consider the audience – the users of his product – and
how both seeing and understanding are crucial.
• COLOR WARS: If you want to maximize legibility, white text on a black background has the
highest contrast ratio and perceptivity. However, stark HMIs can only go so far, and then
varying contrast ratios must be used for highlighting or de-emphasizing objects. Thereafter,
one must consider color blindness, photometry with various sunglares, minimum contrast
ratios (e.g. ISO/FDIS 15008), and societal norms for colors (e.g. red = danger, stop or end).
• VIEWING ANGLE: Depending upon the industry (e.g. aerospace, automotive, medical), the
positioning of the display and/or controls with respect to the primary task (e.g. horizon,
patient) can drastically affect the usability of the HMI, especially if we’re talking about a
driver.
• LEGIBILITY: Font selection (e.g. height, aspect ratio) can either help, hinder or hurt legibility.
Imagine Jane Doe asks for a new alarm clock for her 90th birthday and she doesn’t wear her
thick-as-a-brick eyeglasses to bed. Your gift – the winning product – would have likely
maximized legibility. Assessing legibility has some unclear or conflicting research, but various
aspects can be readily measured (e.g. “The optimal stroke width for individual letters should
be about 18% of the total width or height of the letter” per Rolf F. Rehe, (Typography: how to
make it most legible (Carmel, Indiana: Design Research International, 1974).
• SYSTEM STATUS: Rather than HMI, some use HSI for Human-System Integration as to
remind engineers that humans are part of the equation. Jabberwocky such as “Initializing
multiplex positioning algorithm” hasn’t helped the user to understand the status, especially if
there isn’t a status bar demonstrating progress towards the indecipherable goal.
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#3 -- Iconic Design
No, no, no … not iconic like Sean Connery, Cadillac or Coca-Cola … I’m talking real icons.
Pictures. Per Camacho et al (1990), icons allow more rapid processing and provide
multilingual advantages as long as they are intelligible to the user. My 7-year-old son
instantly understood a stove is hot from this flame icon, but his skin might not have been
saved if it required him to parse through the language underneath.
Warning: surface may be hot.
Precaución: la superficie puede estar caliente.
Achtung: Oberfläche kann heiß sein
Atenção: A superfície pode estar quente
Typical pitfalls, though, of icons are unintelligible pictures and inconsistent usage, which
usually arises from not scheduling usability clinics with live participants outside of the
engineering community. As suggested by Sollenberger, “By using familiar UI … you will help
your users feel at home.”
Flat tire: Some automotive OEMs didn’t label this icon, and had subsequent owner confusion.
4 September 2012
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Multiple vehicles on the market (from more than one company)

have 2-3 phone buttons in the same car that have different functions.
I will objectively measure this by A) the percent of controls with an associated icon, and B)
the accuracy for novice recognition of the icon’s meaning sans the associated wording.
#4 -- No Errors on Errors
To err is human, to forgive is divine … so a divine HMI should forgive the human. Andrew
Rae said it well “A safe HMI design must reduce incidence of human error but equally
importantly, it must reduce the consequences of both operator and computer error by
helping the operator to mitigate errors.” (Helping the Operator in the Loop: Practical Human
Machine Interface Principles for Safe Computer Controlled Systems). How that is done:
• MULTIPLE PATHS: If the Information Architecture (IA) is done correctly, the user will
understand the primary, design-intended path to the desired goal. If not, however, providing a
logical, secondary means can help him get there.
• BACK, UNDO & HOME: Recently I was on an elevator where the other occupant hit the
wrong floor and exclaimed, “Why don’t elevators have UNDO buttons?!” Good question!
• ERROR MESSAGING & HELP: User or systems errors are rarely completely preventable.
Therein, providing fallbacks or messaging to assist the user is key to a successful HMI.
Jakob Nielson of UseIt.com says, “Error messages should be expressed in plain language
(no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.”
The method of measurement: Percent of major use cases without sufficient help per the
novice users.
#5 -- Attractive Design
Just like sex sells in marketing, sexy designs sell for User Experience. Yes, usability keeps
the customer, but a flashy, sleek design is why high-resolution touchscreens are becoming a
staple in products ranging from refrigerators to medical devices to smart phones. We have
millions of years of encoding and, just like fish or monkeys, are lured by a flashy, cool-
looking object. And as Talin points out, the aesthetics may range from artistically appealing,
temporally attractive (e.g. not sluggish), or simply [must not] look, “… to someone else like a
mistake.”
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So now I know what you’re thinking: “Dude, you’re a male engineer. You’ve got no idea how
to judge cool or attractive.” Bingo. That’s where the jury comes in. Any User Experience
engineer worth his weight in salt (*and, yes, we engineers usually weigh a little more), relies
on usability testing with customers and measures their task completion, task time, task
efficiency and user satisfaction.
So I have asked three real, live people – a jury of your peers – to gauge the user
satisfaction based upon a few quick use cases and the overall appearance of the
product. The basic question shall be, “If I were shopping for this type of product, I would be
attracted to this one” with a Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly
Agree”.
The jury is based upon these three fictional personas:
• LISA: Lisa is a 41 year-old mother that has both a Bachelors and a Masters in Elementary
Education, but has redirected her talents towards being a homemaker of three little boys and
a [professional] husband (a.k.a. a bigger boy). She represents the “mode” of the current day
buying power given that women, “…control about 80 percent of household spending,
including new car purchases.” (Understanding the Increasing Affluence of Women, Judith E.
Nichols). Women perceive colors differently than men and introduce other ergonomic issues
(e.g. long fingernails for touchscreens).
• GREG: Greg is a 65 year-old quasi-retiree who spent most of his adult life butchering meat at
a local market, but has adopted a second, part-time career transporting cars for a dealership
given his love of driving. Greg represents the Baby Boomers who, given their numbers (28%
of the population, $12 trillion in global spending power according to the MetLife Mature
Market Institute), are still squarely in the crosshairs for many product developers. And
additionally, the older user presents unique challenges for a technology’s user interface (e.g.
more visual acuity issues, slower cognitive processing)
• CALVIN: Calvin is a 14 year-old boy-man who texts more often than most people inhale, and
has never known a world without the Internet. If you ask him his future product needs, he’ll
probably shrug and say “Dunno” … but corporations hire teen consultants specifically to
brand their merchandise and user interfaces towards the teen. Although Generation Y (ages
1 to 20) represents 26% of the American population, they already control 10% of U.S.
spending.
In addition, I asked each jury member to interact with the product trying to accomplish a set
of goals, and then I had them complete the System Usability Scale to provide a
comprehensive user satisfaction score; one based upon the melding of physical and
usability attractiveness.
2.1.1.1 The Rating System
The maximum score in any category shall be 20 points, thereby making the maximum score
in the Usability Decathlon 100 points. After ten products have been evaluated, we will
6 September 2012
UX in Practice:
declare that round’s gold, silver and bronze medal in the Decathlon with the grand prize
being kudos and free advertising herein.
Therein, each product’s scorecard will appear as follows:
MAXIMUM POINTS
PRODUCT NAME: ___________________
POINTS ACHIEVED
Well Configured and Reconfigured 20
“I Can See What’s Going On!” 20
Iconic Design 20
No Errors On Errors 20
Attractive Design 20
TOTAL 100
7 September 2012
UX in Practice:
3.0 Our Real World Example

The subject of this evaluation is the Samsung “Wi-Fi Smart Fridge” (Model# RF4289HA, Sears Item
#04680853000), which is a 28 cubic foot, bottom-freezer, stainless steel refrigerator with wireless
connectivity and a touchscreen interface (see below).
Figure 1: The Samsung Wi-Fi Smart Fridge
In accordance with the aforementioned Altia product rating system, the product under review can
receive a possible 100 points based upon five performance categories relating to configuration of the
user interface, overall presentation of display (color, legibility, etc.), design of icons, management of
human errors, and attractiveness of the display design.
That said I shall additionally evaluate two other areas regarding this refrigerator – graphical
experience and market value. Feedback about these two additional categories naturally occurred
while running participants, so capturing this information is important since a purchase decision is
typically influenced by these as much or sometimes more than product usability. Without spoiling the
content too much, I have chosen to nickname this product “Semi-Smart Fridge,” since feedback for
these areas was much less favorable.
8 September 2012
UX in Practice:
4.0 Category #1: “Well Configured and Reconfigured”
Upon adding connected functionality, the temptation of most marketers would be to use The Kitchen
Sink Effect – brainstorm 1,001 features and add them to the product in a jumbled mess. This cloud-
brainstorm usually plays out with little to no thought about organization, coordination, etc. It also
provides a veritable kaleidoscope of applications through which the user must wade.
Not true here. Samsung [arguably] wisely constrained the number of applications facing the novice
user and, therein, provided a Feng Shui touchscreen with obvious attention to “Well Configured and
Reconfigured.”
Before digging into individual elements, though, it is important to establish a base set of critical tasks
with prioritization according to urgency and importance for this product. Understanding the frequent
needs of the user facilitates gauging the user interface’s Information Architecture and geographical
apportionment to determine if those requirements have been appropriately prioritized within the
design.
1. SELECT ICE MODALITY: Since first and foremost the product is a refrigerator, the most
important task must be within the base functionality expectation of a fridge. If the user is
unable to accomplish a base task, then [s]he will abandon the product and stick with the
smart phone and a standard refrigerator.
2. SET CURRENT TIME: Having the refrigerator, microwave and stove displaying
uncoordinated times can be disruptive and frustrating for a family, so enabling clock
coordination is also a base task.
3. CHECK THE WEATHER: Given that the kitchen is the epicenter of familial activity,
planning outdoor activities versus the weather makes this feature incrementally more
important than other provided features.
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Inversely, it is worth understanding the tasks that are of lesser importance and urgency as to
understand if they have been over-emphasized within the design.
1. POST-IT® NOTE: At first glance, this might seem like a handy feature with obvious
urgency, but two of the usability-testing participants felt this would be supplanted by
texting or e-mail provided by other interfaces and that a localized message would only
occasionally be desirable.
2. GET RECIPES: Two of the three participants categorized this as a smart phone feature
– not a smart fridge feature – since they would desire the information while food
shopping. If the app coordinated information with their phone, it would provide some
value; the question still came back to “Why not just use the phone?”
3. READ AP NEWS: All of the participants felt the news was something they only read
when convenient and reclined; not a feature likely used while standing in the kitchen.
10 September 2012
UX in Practice:
4.1 Fitt’s Law Is Upheld
The reason for a Human Factors engineer to rank relative urgency of use cases is to inject that
hierarchy into the size, placement on frequency of controls within the interface. As previously noted
an emergency stop button’s best design would be a single, LARGE button residing close to the user,
thereby requiring little cognitive loading, lesser ergonomic accuracy, and nearly no selection
ambiguity.
So using Fitt’s Law to compare the Index of Difficulty of selecting the features listed previously, we
see that they appear in the order of assigned priority per the few participants interviewed about this
product.
WIDTH OF DISTANCE INDEX OF DIFFICULTY

FUNCTION BUTTON, TO BUTTON, (ID),
cm cm bits
Set Current Time 4.5 33.5 3.08
Select Ice Modality 2.9 33.6 3.65
Check Weather 1.2 33.0 4.83
Read AP News 1.2 33.1 4.84
Get Recipes 1.2 33.2 4.84
Create Post-It® Note 1.2 33.7 4.86
The only reason this may be deceiving: subjects often subjectively report their needs inaccurately.
Henry Ford once noted, “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.” If instead Samsung visited the homes of customers and found Post-It® notes adorned upon
fridges and cabinetry, this list might be inaccurate.
11 September 2012
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4.2 Chunky Food
The user’s ability to discern the correct button can easily be influenced by relative positioning, shape
or other visual cues (e.g. icons) since there is the possibility that they overcame any Index of
Difficulty obstacles with other physical characteristics.
• CHUNKING: As you can see by the picture (below), the interface groups like functions
(a.k.a. “chunking”), including sub-chunking such as social networking apps within the
Application Bar. The only exceptions are “Settings” and “Show Memo,” with the latter
being arguable given the fact that users might card-sort that option into either an
application or status message.
Figure 2: Chunking Access into Function Groups
12 September 2012
UX in Practice:
• HICK’S LAW: Hick’s Law quantifies the decision time as a result of the possible choices
provided, and is theorized to be logarithmic to a base of two since cognitive processing
follows a subdivision, elimination process where half of the remaining choices at each
step are discarded until the final choice is selected. Or more simply, the fewer the
choices provided at any given time, the easier the mental task for the user. Samsung did
this well by keeping the features to a minimum and making supporting pages equally
simple. The ice picture below, for example, requires only 1.58 bits.
Figure 3: Dialog for Choosing Ice Type
• RECONFIGURABILITY: Although the user is afforded some customization that

emphasizes an application above the others (e.g. Pandora-emphasized, personalized
pictures incorporated, AP News-emphasized) the vast majority of the interface does not
permit extensive modifications like with a smart phone. Maybe its greatest shortcoming is
the inability to change languages, so a French-speaker must either buy the refrigerator
via a distributor providing that end item or download a revised interface via the Wi-Fi
connection (and customer service), neither of which affords a great user experience.
This missing reconfigurability is especially perplexing given the better user interface
development tools have “language objects” that permit swapping languages within an
existing interface layout.
13 September 2012
UX in Practice:
4.3 SCORING FOR WC&R (“Well Configured & Reconfigured”):
SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS
Fitt’s Law 5 3
Chunking 5 5
Hick’s Law 5 5
Reconfigurability 5 2
TOTAL 20 15
14 September 2012
UX in Practice:
5.0 Category #2: “I Can See What’s Going On!”
Per the original criteria, this category is both about the visibility and intelligibility of the product; the
user physically and mentally can visualize the output of the interface. In general, users were
perplexed by the tasks; not by the complexity of the requested steps, but inversely I must surely
have been asking for something more difficult.
• COLOR WARS: Contrast is the measure of the foreground and background color difference
ranging from 1:1 (i.e. no contrast, like black text on a black background) to 21:1 (i.e. the
maximum contrast, like black text on a white background). The size of the Samsung font
ranges depending upon the location from ~10 to 22pt font, the suggested minimum contract
ratio is ranges from 4.5:1 to 3:1 (see WCAG 2.0 1.4.3). The off-white text on sky blue
background, though, only provides a 2.6:1 contrast ratio. Depending upon the environmental
lighting (e.g. eastward windows), sun-washout might be a slight issue for visibility.
• VIEWING ANGLE: For the younger members of the family and/or handicapped users, the
touchscreen has been appropriately located. Yes, for users of larger stature, the packaging
requires some hunching, but that cannot be helped easily.
• LEGIBILITY: The stroke width of the numbers is 25% of the width and 17% of the height of
the sans-serif characters, which is very close to ideal. The choice of font provided great
legibility.
• SYSTEM STATUS: The Status Bar (see picture) provides the user some level of information
about the inner workings of the product. That said, the intelligibility of several of the icons
sans additional information (which is provided in the Settings Menu) would be low.
15 September 2012
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Figure 4: The Status Bar
Figure 5: The Settings Menu
16 September 2012
UX in Practice:
5.1 SCORING FOR ICSWGO (“I Can See What’s Going On!”):
Color Wars 5 3
Viewing Angle 5 5
Legibility 5 5
System Status 5 3
TOTAL 20 16
17 September 2012
UX in Practice:
6.0 Category #3: “Iconic Design”
This is where Samsung gets glowing remarks and grades. On not just the home screen, but in many
places throughout the design, the refrigerator provides both an icon and supporting English (only)
text. From a usability standpoint, this permits the participant to initially identify the control via text,
but then subsequently locate the same control with lesser cognitive effort in the future using the icon.
Figure 6: Some Example Home Screen Icons
18 September 2012
UX in Practice:
APPROPRIATE FREQUENCY: Samsung provided an appropriate mix between having icons and
not providing icons. In some screens (like adjusting the freezer and fridge temperatures as depicted
below), the icon provided a centering frame of reference but permitted the user to make the
adjustment using specialized-yet-textural controls. In other screens, icons were used nearly
exclusively – like on the home and settings screens. As long as such design strategies are
consistent and comprehensible, the user can easily navigate the varying waters.
Figure 7: Adjusting Temperature
19 September 2012
UX in Practice:
COMPREHENSIBLE: The users run through the system demonstrated no recognition issues of the
icons, possibly in some part due to the written, supportive text. There were no controls to provide
accessibility for the blind, though, like those provided in the “Flex Zone Controls”, a separate control
panel well-positioned to provide area-specific temperature adjustment for drawer.
Figure 8: Written Text Supports Icon Recognition
USE OF STANDARD ICONS: Samsung used standard icons wherever possible (e.g. speaker
sound, Pandora, Twitter, calendar), but did improvise with unique icons requiring novice learning
with varying levels of success (e.g. Flex Zone Control = good).
TEXT SUPPORT: With the exception of the status bar, all of the icons have textural support,
thereby providing the user some insight into the meaning of the control. However, one glaring
omission is the inability to change the display language. For a system with so much emphasis put
into the multifunctional and customizable screen, the lack of multilingual support is an odd and short-
sighted engineering decision.
20 September 2012
UX in Practice:
6.1 SCORING FOR ICONIC DESIGN:
Appropriate Frequency 5 5
Comprehensible 5 4
Use of Standard Icons 5 4
Text Support 5 2
TOTAL 20 15
21 September 2012
UX in Practice:
7.0 Category #4: “No Errors on Errors”
The natural assumption is that refrigerators have little depth to menus and, therefore, there is little
need to provide navigational or anti-error assistance for users. However, a Smart Fridge does
require smart design, and Samsung delivered for the most part.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: The ideal Information Architecture (IA) creates a task hierarchy,
guiding users down correct or alternates paths with ease. No participant went down the wrong path,
thereby showing that the hierarchy was well-conceived.
UNDO: As mentioned during the review of Panasonic’s clock radio, the most frustrating lack-of-
Undo in any digital clock is when the system does not permit undoing when a user hits “up” one too
many times. On this design, however, there is an Up and Down button provided, and so the user
may easily navigate to the desired time even is [s]he overshoots. This was also true with
freezer/fridge temperatures.
BACK and HOME: Both were provided on sub-screens, but Samsung shall not receive the
maximum points since their proximity to the upper brow made the task(s) difficult for the
anthropometrically-larger users.
Figure 9: "Back" and "Home" Quick Access
22 September 2012
UX in Practice:
ERROR MESSAGING and HELP: Samsung provides occasional help and/or pop-up-window
messaging when needed to assist the user. An example: if leaving a page without saving the
intended information, they confirm the quasi-destructive action as to understand the user’s intent.
Yes, if done ad nauseam this strategy could be frustrating, but occasional customer usage married
with few such use cases means the applied strategy works well.
Figure 10: Confirmation Dialog
23 September 2012
UX in Practice:
7.1 SCORING FOR NO ERRORS ON ERRORS:
Information Architecture 5 5
Undo 5 5
Back & Home 5 4
Error Messaging & Help 5 5
TOTAL 20 19
24 September 2012
UX in Practice:
8.0 Category #5: “Attractive Design”
Sexy designs sell. Usability sustains. If user satisfaction is bifurcated, the marketer cannot
understand the whole picture. An inviting design will not capture the eye of the consumer and,
thereafter, a sleek design may be attributable to both graphic design and usability.
Before asking each panelist within a mini-jury to rate the refrigerator, I asked each participant to
complete the following tasks: change the time, check the weather and change the setting to “cubed
ice”. Each participant then completed the ten questions of the System Usability Scale (SUS), and
the overall SUS score was averaged.
After all of this, I had them respond to the statement: “If you were shopping for a refrigerator, you
would be attracted to this one,” with the possible responses being:
• 4 = Strongly Agree
• 3 = Agree
• 2 = Neither Agree Nor Disagree
• 1 = Disagree
• 0 = Strongly Disagree
LISA (age 41, housewife): “Do I get one free for participating??”
• RATING: 4
GREG (age 65, car transporter): “I don’t need Facebook or stuff like that, so I’m not sure I’d pay for
all of that.”
• ”RATING: 2
CALVIN (age 14, 9th grade): “Cool improvement using technology.”

• RATING: 4
25 September 2012
UX in Practice:
SYSTEM USABILITY SCORE: Samsung’s fridge scored well in general. This user study was
somewhat abbreviated both in scope of demographics and in tasks performed. However, for those
tasks participants were generally comfortable working with the product.
• RATING: 97.1
• Worth noting: all three participants gave perfect scores for six of the ten questions including
“I felt very confident using this system.”
8.1 SCORING FOR ATTRACTIVE DESIGN:
SUS Score 8 8
Lisa 4 4
Greg 4 2
Calvin 4 4
TOTAL 20 18
26 September 2012
UX in Practice:
9.0 Usability Summary
Totaling up all of the scores from the five categories, here is the final score for the Samsung “Wi-Fi
Smart Fridge”:
MAXIMUM POINTS
EVALUATION CATEGORIES AWARDED
POINTS
Well Configured and Reconfigured 20 15
“I Can See What’s Going On!” 20 16
Iconic Design 20 15
No Errors On Errors 20 19
Attractive Design 20 18
TOTAL 100 83
27 September 2012
UX in Practice:
10.0 The Big Picture
Without denigrating the usability science, it only provides a portion of the picture. People do not buy
products for usability alone. Otherwise products like the Pontiac Aztec would be market hits.
Companies beyond those in the automotive industry have traditionally seen styling and cost amongst
the top five drivers of purchase decision. Along these lines, while running participants through the
Samsung Smart Fridge it was startlingly clear that although usability would score well, two other
areas –graphical experience (quasi-styling) and market value (price for what you got) – were getting
negative feedback.
For graphical experience, Samsung may want to add some animations and interactions for screen-
to-screen transitions. Yes, animations at times may have an inverse effect on usability (e.g. increase
task time), but the iPhone has created an expectation that smart devices have premiere graphics.
Samsung’s fridge falls short. With the task bar mimicking the phone app’s static look, the initial user
impression may provide an unrealistic expectation: 21st century “wow” rather than 10-20 year-old
screen interaction (e.g. no micro-animations, fading, etc.). Not to mention, the user may attempt
swiping (as Calvin did) and/or other complex manipulations (e.g. pinch) and find the interface limiting
in its simplicity. That skimping on pizzazz has left the [fridge] door open to competitors ready to
provide that premium feel.
Yet, the harder problem for Samsung to fix might be the market demand. Several of the users liked
the fridge until they heard the price point: just above $3000 in Southeastern Michigan with other
markets stretching several hundred dollars above that. The reaction of one user mimics the
monetization issues that have faced other industries trying to connect into the networking craze:
“Wow! For that price, I could buy a standard fridge, an iPad, a few steaks and ten bottles of wine!!”
So customers with sticker shock split into two types: 1) “If I wanted that functionality, I’d get it in my
phone or tablet” (generations X, Y or Echo Boomer), or 2) “I don’t want/need that functionality
anywhere” (Baby Boomers). Greg (the oldest participant), in fact, immediately assumed he would be
paying for “stuff I don’t need” and wanted a lesser refrigerator before knowing the price.
And so the question becomes, “Which is most important: the usability, the graphical experience, or
the price point?” The answer is “it depends.” If the price point was significantly lower, the graphical
experience could likely be ignored. But the price and connectivity suggest the target market IS an
early adapter to technology and, therefore, will recognize the disparity between premium price and
non-premium graphics.
28 September 2012
UX in Practice:
11.0 About the Author
As the User Experience Director at Altia, Inc., Steve Tengler oversees the global team of engineers
and designers in their application of Altia's User Interface Engineering software. Steve is a proven
expert in the field of Human-Machine Interface design and deployment with over 20 years of
experience on some of the country's top automotive teams.
Before joining Altia, Steve managed the global HMI development team at OnStar – GM's award-
winning driver assistance system. His team pioneered innovative services like OnStar eNav and
Injury Severity Predictor. In the past two decades, Steve has also put his expertise to work at
Nissan, Ford, and Visteon.
Steve is a member of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) and participates within the
Human Factors and Safety Subcommittee within the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). To
date, over 90 patent applications feature his work. Steve has a Masters in Industrial Engineering
focusing on Human Factors and Ergonomics from The University of Michigan. Steve has also been
appointed Adjunct Professor of User Experience at Wayne State University.
12.0 About Altia
Great user interfaces make the complex simple — and so do great user interface development tools.
With Altia, you get a first class embedded display from your artist’s imagination to the lowest cost
hardware in the shortest amount of time.
As stated above, a cool GUI is no longer just a “nice to have” – it’s a necessity. Your product’s user
interface defines your brand and differentiates your company from your competitors. With Altia’s user
interface development tools, companies produce market-winning user interfaces quickly. Altia makes
great GUIs a reality – whether your product is using low-cost, low-power hardware or a more
capable, high-end processor.
Companies in the automotive, home appliance, consumer electronics, medical and defense
industries are putting state-of-the-art user interfaces into production with Altia.
29 September 2012

UX in Practice: A Real World Analysis of Embedded Graphical User Interface Impact

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UX in Practice:

A Real World Analysis of Embedded Graphical User Interface Impact

Steve Tengler, User Experience Director

Document Revision History

Open Systems Media Release September 2012

iii September 2012

List of Figures and Tables

The categories are as follows:

#1 -- Well Configured and Reconfigured

#2 -- “I Can See What’s Going On!”

Warning: surface may be hot.

Precaución: la superficie puede estar caliente.

Achtung: Oberfläche kann heiß sein

Atenção: A superfície pode estar quente

Multiple vehicles on the market (from more than one company)

The jury is based upon these three fictional personas:

2.1.1.1 The Rating System

Therein, each product’s scorecard will appear as follows:

3.0 Our Real World Example

Figure 1: The Samsung Wi-Fi Smart Fridge

4.0 Category #1: “Well Configured and Reconfigured”

4.1 Fitt’s Law Is Upheld

WIDTH OF DISTANCE INDEX OF DIFFICULTY

Set Current Time 4.5 33.5 3.08

Select Ice Modality 2.9 33.6 3.65

Check Weather 1.2 33.0 4.83

Read AP News 1.2 33.1 4.84

Get Recipes 1.2 33.2 4.84

Create Post-It® Note 1.2 33.7 4.86

4.2 Chunky Food

Figure 2: Chunking Access into Function Groups

Figure 3: Dialog for Choosing Ice Type

• RECONFIGURABILITY: Although the user is afforded some customization that

4.3 SCORING FOR WC&R (“Well Configured & Reconfigured”):

SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS

5.0 Category #2: “I Can See What’s Going On!”

Figure 4: The Status Bar

Figure 5: The Settings Menu

SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS

6.0 Category #3: “Iconic Design”

Figure 6: Some Example Home Screen Icons

Figure 7: Adjusting Temperature

Figure 8: Written Text Supports Icon Recognition

6.1 SCORING FOR ICONIC DESIGN:

SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS

7.0 Category #4: “No Errors on Errors”

Figure 9: "Back" and "Home" Quick Access

Figure 10: Confirmation Dialog

7.1 SCORING FOR NO ERRORS ON ERRORS:

SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS

8.0 Category #5: “Attractive Design”

CALVIN (age 14, 9th grade): “Cool improvement using technology.”

8.1 SCORING FOR ATTRACTIVE DESIGN:

SUBCATEGORY POSSIBLE POINTS AWARDED POINTS

9.0 Usability Summary

10.0 The Big Picture

11.0 About the Author

12.0 About Altia

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