Reviewer in ITHCI

Chapter 1

Interaction design is particularly responsible for commands centered mainly on the

exploration of the product specifications, the designs of anything to meet the requirements,
and the development of the prototype is then evaluated. In addition, design interactions
focus on consumers and their priority.

The UK council of design has formulated the double diamond of design, which is iterative
in nature and has four phases, namely:

1. Discover: Designers attempt to gather insights into the problem.

2. Define: Designers are developing a straightforward brief that identifies the design
challenge.
3. Develop: Remedies or ideas are formed, prototyped, tested and iterated.
4. Deliver: The resulting product will be completed, developed and released.

Working in multidisciplinary teams-“Pertains to people with different field of expertise are

The User Experience - this refers to the observation of how a product behaves and is being
utilized by people in real life.

Core characteristics of interaction design

• All throughout construction of the product, users should be engaged

• At the start of the project, precise usability and user experience objectives
must be defined, clearly outlined and consented upon.
• Iteration is required through all the core operations

Accessibility: refers to the degree over which as many individuals as possible can access an
interactive product.

The common classification by the type of impairment are:

1. Sensory impairment (such as loss of vision or hearing)

2. Physical impairment (having loss of functions to one or more parts of the body, for
example, after a stroke or spinal cord injury)
3. Cognitive (for instance, learning impairment or loss of memory/cognitive function
due to old age or a condition such as Alzheimer’s disease)
Impairment can also be categorized as follows:

• Permanent (for example, long-term wheelchair user)

• Temporary (such as after an accident or illness)
• Situational (for instance, a noisy environment means a person can’t hear)

Inclusiveness: refers to the manufacturing of products and services which support as many
individuals as possible.

Usability Goals

Usability considers the perspective of the user, it aims to design interactive products that
are easy to learn, efficient to use, and enjoyable.

Usability has 6 goals:

1. Effective to use

2. Efficient to use

3. Safe to use

4. Have good utility

5. Easy to learn

6. Easy to remember how to use

User experience goals - takes into considerations of choosing terms to express the
emotions, feelings, and so on of a person can help designers understand the multifaceted
nature of the user experience.
  Design principles - These are generally applicable abstractions aimed at orienting
designers to look at various elements of their designs.
• “Generalizable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design”
• “The do’s and don'ts of interaction design”
• “What to provide and what not to provide at the interface”
• “Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience, and common-
sense”

Feedback - is relative to the notion of visibility. This is best demonstrated by a metaphor to

what daily life without it would be like.

Constraints - The idea of constraining design refers to the determination of ways to limit the
types of user interaction that can take place at a given moment.

Consistency - relates to the design of interfaces with similar operations and the use of
comparable elements to achieve similar tasks.

 Internal consistency refers to designing operations within an application to behave

the same. This is hard to accomplish with complex interfaces.
 External consistency refers to developing operations, interfaces, and so on across
apps and devices to be the same.

Affordances: This is a term used to refer to an object characteristic that enables people to
comprehend what to do with it. It basically, means “To give a clue” on how to use a
particular product.

User – centered design pertains to the involvement and consideration of the perception and
needs of the users all throughout the whole process.

The Importance of Involving Users

Expectation management

• Realistic expectations
• No surprises, no disappointments
• Timely training
 • Communication, but no hype

Ownership

• Make the users active stakeholders

• More likely to forgive or accept problems
• Can make a big difference in acceptance and success of product

User-centered approach is based on:

• “Early focus on users and tasks: directly studying cognitive, behavioral,

anthropomorphic, and attitudinal characteristics “
• “Empirical measurement: users’ reactions and performance to scenarios,
manuals, simulations, and prototypes are observed, recorded, and analyzed”
• “Iterative design: when problems are found in user testing, fix them and carry
out more tests”

Four basic activities of Interaction Design

1. Discovering requirements
2. Designing alternatives
3. Prototyping alternative designs
4. Evaluating product and its user experience throughout

Chapter 2

Conceptualizing design- it is essential to conceptualize them in definitions of what the

product proposed will do. This is sometimes referred to as developing a proof of concept.

Proof of concept pertains to conceptualizing what the proposed product will do.

Assumption “refers to taking something for granted when it needs further investigation”

A claim tells that even if it is still up for question, one already asserts that something is true
example,

Benefits of conceptualizing

Orientation - It allows design teams to ask particular questions on how to perceive the
conceptual model.

Open-minded - Discourages design teams from focusing narrowly at an early stage

Common ground - Enables design teams to create a set of rules commonly agreed to each
and everyone in the team
Conceptual model - Provides a working strategy and framework of general concepts and
their interrelations.offers a working strategy in a nutshell and a framework of general
concepts and their interrelationships.

The following are the core components:

1. Metaphors and analogies aims to tell people how to recognize what a product is being
used for and also how to use it for an activity. (for example browsing and bookmarking).

2. The concepts to which people are exposed through the product, They create and
manipulate taskdomain objects, their attributes, and the operations that can be performed
on them, (such as saving, revisiting, and organizing).

3. The relationships between those concepts (for instance, whether one object contains
another).

4. The mappings between the concepts and the user experience the product is designed to
support or invoke a design (for example, one can revisit a page through looking at a list of
visited sites, most frequently visited, or saved websites).

Types of Conceptual Model

Metaphor Concept Model- is a central component of a conceptual model. They provide a

framework which is comparable to aspects of a familiar entity (or entities) in some way, but
they have their own behaviors and properties as well.

1. Interface metaphors - The interface was developed to be a kin to a physical entity,

but it has features of its own.
2. The card metaphor – considered to be the very popular UI because of its familiar
form and its characteristics to be easily flicked through, ordered and themed.

Interaction Types - another way to conceptualize the design space is.

•Instructing: Where users issue a system with instructions. This can be expressed in a
variety of ways, including typing commands, choosing options from menus in a
Windows environment or on a multi touch screen, speaking aloud commands,
gesturing, pressing buttons, or using a function key combination.
 • Conversing: Where users do have software dialog. Users could even speak through
an interface or type questions that are answered by the system via text or speech
output. Interacting with a system as if a conversation were being held

• Manipulating: Where users in a virtual or physical space interact with objects by

manipulating them (for instance, opening, holding, closing, and placing). Users could
even develop their familiar understanding of how to communicate with objects.

• Exploring: Where users navigate through a physical space or a virtual environment.

3D worlds and augmented and virtual reality systems include virtual environments

•Responding: Where the interaction is initiated by the system and the user decides
whether to react. For instance, proactive technology based on mobile locations can
alert individuals to areas of interest.

Difference between interaction types and interface styles Interaction type:

Interaction type: is regarded as a definition as to what the user does when interacting with
a system, such as teaching, talking, browsing, or responding to the style of the interface.

While

Interface style: The kind of interface used, such as command, menu-based, gesture, or
voice, to support interaction

Examples of Interface styles

• Command • Speech

• Data-entry • Form fill-in

• Query • Graphical

• Web • Pen

• Augmented reality • Gesture

Paradigm - In terms of shared assumptions, concepts, values, and practices, a paradigm

refers to a general approach adopted by a community of researchers and designers to carry
out their work.

Vision - Vision is a future state that shapes interaction design research and development,
often depicted in the form of a movie or narrative theory It is a well-founded description of
some part of a phenomenon;
The theory of processing information, for instance, describes how well the mind, or some
aspect of it, is supposed to function.

A model is a simplified representation of some aspect of human-computer interaction

intended to facilitate the prediction and evaluation of alternative designs by designers.

The framework is a set of interrelated concepts and/or a set of defined queries intended to
inform a specific field (e.g. collaborative learning) or an analytical method (for instance,
ethnographic studies).

Chapter 3

Cognitive Aspects - what humans are good and bad at and show how this knowledge can be
used to inform the design of technologies that both extend human capabilities and
compensate for their weaknesses.

Cognition refers to some of our common activities such as Thinking, remembering, learning,
daydreaming, decision-making, seeing, reading, talking, writing…

COGNITIVE PROCESS

• Perception

• Memory

• Learning

• Reading, speaking and listening

• Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and decision-making

• Attention - is mostly about selecting objects to focus on at a point in time from the mass
of stimuli around us, and allows anyone to pay attention on information relevant to what
we're doing.

Two types of attention:

 Focused attention

 Divided attention

Multitasking can make people lose their way of thinking, make mistakes, and have to start
over.
Perception

• How information is acquired from the world and transformed into experiences

Memory

• Involves recalling various kinds of knowledge that allow people to act appropriately

Processing in memory

• Encoding is first stage of memory

▪ Determines which information is attended to in the environment and how it is interpreted

Context is important

• Context affects the extent to which information can be subsequently retrieved

• Sometimes it can be difficult for people to recall information that was encoded in a
different context:

When creating an interface, should the designer…

• Present only 7 options on a menu

• Display only 7 icons on a tool bar

• Have no more than 7 bullets in a list

• Place only 7 items on a pull down menu

• Place only 7 tabs on the top of a website page?

• Not necessarily…

• Bergman and Whittaker, Three Interdependent Processes Model (2016) to help people
manage their stuff:

I. How to decide what stuff to keep

II. How to organize it when storing

III. Which strategies to use to retrieve it later

Memory load

• Online/mobile and phone banking now require users to provide multiple pieces of
information to access their account

▪ For instance, ZIP code, birthplace, a memorable date, first school attended

▪ Known as Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

Learning

• Involves the accumulation of skills and knowledge involving memory

• Two main types:

▪ Incidental learning (for example, recognizing people’s faces, what you did today)

▪ Intentional learning (for instance, studying for an exam, learning to cook)

Information processing

• Conceptualizes human performance in metaphorical terms of information processing

stages

COGNITIVE FRAMEWORKS

Most well known are:

▪ Mental models

▪ Gulfs of execution and evaluation

▪ Distributed cognition

▪ External and embodied cognition

MENTAL MODELS

• Craik (1943) described mental models as:

▪ Internal constructions of some aspect of the external world enabling predictions to be

made

• Involves unconscious and conscious processes

▪ Imagery and analogies are activated

• Deep versus shallow models

▪ For example, how to drive a car and how it works