Overview

• What is involved in Interaction Design?

The process of interaction –
–
Importance of involving users
Degrees of user involvement

design –
–
What is a user-centered approach?
Four basic activities

• Some practical issues

– Who are the users?
– What are ‘needs’?
– Where do alternatives come from?
– How do you choose among alternatives?

• A simple lifecycle model for Interaction Design

• Lifecycle models from software engineering

• Lifecycle models from HCI

Interaction Design – a process Importance of involving users

• It is a creative activity • Understand users’ requirements in

• Focus on user and their goals a better way
• Involve them in the design process
• Four basic activities: • Correct errors in the early stages
– Understand requirements
– Alternative design solution • Higher user acceptance
– Building interactive versions of the design
– evaluation

Degrees of user involvement Who are the users?

• Member of the design team • Designers?

• People working in the same
• Via communication channels company?
• Proxy user?
• Combination of these approaches

1
 who are the stakeholders? Stakeholder categories

• Stakeholder is anyone effected by • Primary – actually uses the system

success or failure of system • Secondary – receives output or
• System will have many provides input
stakeholders with potentially • Tertiary – no direct involvement
conflicting interests but is affected of success or failure
• Facilitating – involved in
development or deployment of the
system

Who are the stakeholders? Meet the stakeholders’ needs

Check-out operators
• designers need to meet as many
• Suppliers
• Local shop
stakeholder needs as possible
owners – People and groups have conflicting
goals

– have to prioritise

Customers
Managers and owners

What is a user-centered
Balance trade-offs
approach?
• Stakeholders’ requirements User-centered approach is based on:
• Materials and technology – Early focus on users and tasks
possibilities – Empirical measurement
• cost, and feasibility – Iterative design
• a set of alternatives and
successive elaborations
• Time available

2
 What are the users’ capabilities?
User requirements and needs
Humans vary in many dimensions:
— body size
• User’s task and goals — motor abilities
• Behavior and context of use — strength
— disabilities
• User’s characteristics

• What happen if there is not user

identified?

Can user tell the ‘needs’? Alternative designs

• Users rarely know what is possible
• Users can’t tell you what they ‘need’ to help them • Decisions are taken within the
achieve their goals
context of the users, their work,
• Look at existing tasks, they know what they want
and their environment

How do you choose among

Lifecycle models
alternatives?
• Evaluation with users • Show how design activities are
• Technical feasibility related to each other
• Usability goals and criteria • Many lifecycle models exist, for
—safety: how safe? example:
—utility: which functions are superfluous?
—from software engineering: waterfall,
—effectiveness: appropriate support? task spiral, JAD/RAD, Microsoft, agile
coverage, information available
—from HCI: Star, usability engineering
—efficiency: performance measurements

3
 Design process – General A simple interaction design
overview model
A need for a new system

Prototype
What is there Evaluation
Vs
What is wanted
Analysis Design

Current situation Guidelines

Stakeholders Principles Implement and
Interviews Theories Deploy
Observation Precise specification
Questionnaires Architecture documentation
Ethnography
Help system
Scenarios
Task analysis Exemplifies a user-centered design approach
etc.

The waterfall model Interactive system life cycle

What system will be expected to provide
Requirements
Requirements Requirements
Requirements
specification
specification specification
specification

How system provides services expected from it

Cannot assume a linear
Architectural
Architectural
design
design
Architectural
Architectural
design
design
sequence of activities
Detailed Refinement of architectural components as in the waterfall model
Detailed Detailed
Detailed
design
design design
design

Coding
Coding and
and Verify performance of each unit Coding
Coding and
and
unit
unit testing
testing unit
unit testing
testing

Put components together Integration

Integration Integration
Integration
and
and testing
testing and
and testing
testing

Correction system errors Operation

Operation and
and
Lots of feedback
Operation
Operation and
and
maintenance
maintenance maintenance
maintenance

Realistic waterfall model ISO 13407

time
Pre-investigation

Analysis

Requirements (artifact)
Decision
Design points

Programming

Testing
Implementation

Review

4
 Summary
Four basic activities in the design process
1. Identify needs and establish requirements
2. Design potential solutions ((re)-design)
3. Choose between alternatives (evaluate)
4. Build the artefact

User-centered design rests on three principles

1. Early focus on users and tasks
2. Empirical measurement using quantifiable &
measurable usability criteria
3. Iterative design

Lifecycle models show how these are related