Usability Engineering

ITUEA2-44
Disclaimer

Please note that the content made available on myLMS may deviate
slightly from what is covered in lecturer-led sessions. However, the
material on myLMS, along with prescribed textbooks and any other
designated learning resources, constitutes the compulsory content
students are expected to consult and prepare for assessments.
 Eduvos and the Flipped Classroom

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Before this lecturer-led session During this lecturer-led session After this lecturer-led session

At home, in your self-study time, you During your lecturer-led session(s), you will Depending on how difficult this lecturer-led
worked through myLMS content to prepare engage with your peers and lecturer in session is, your lecturer may recommend
you for this lecturer-led session. You have active learning. i.e. you will have an some concepts to revise for this week's
completed any practice activities and opportunity to ask your questions, to learning opportunities. Then you will focus
prepared any questions you may still have debate topics, and to practice working on the following learning opportunities on
on the content. The lecturer-led session will through the technical aspects of what you myLMS in your self-study time to prepare
not be a traditional lecture. learnt at home. You will be exposed to for the next lecturer-led session(s).
higher-order thinking activities. Your
lecturer will guide you on what to prepare
before attending your next session.
What will be covered in the rest of today’s session?

1. What is Interaction Design

2. What to Design

3. The Process of Interaction Design

 What is Interaction Design

Interaction Design can have different perspectives:

 User-centered design
 Human-centered design
 People-centered design
 Customer experience design
 Good and bad design

•Why is the TiVo remote much better designed than

standard remote controls?
•Peanut shaped to fit in hand
•Logical layout and color-coded, distinctive buttons
•Easy-to-locate buttons
Discussion
• Discuss remote control interfaces
 Dilemma

Which is the best way to interact with a smart TV? Why?

 Pecking using a grid keyboard via a remote control
 Swiping across two alphanumeric rows using a touchpad on a remote control
 Voice control using remote or smart speaker
 What to design

Need to take into account:

 Who the users are,
 What activities are being carried out,
 Where interaction is taking place.

Need to optimize the interactions people have with a product:

 match their activities and needs
 Defining Interaction Design

• “Designing interactive products to support the way people

communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives.”
Sharp, Rogers, and Preece (2019)

• “The design of spaces for human communication and interaction.”

Winograd (1997)
 Goals of Interaction Design

 Develop usable products

 Involve people in the design process
 Consider what people are good and bad at
 Consider what might help people with the way they currently do things
 Think through what might provide quality experiences
 Consider a person’s privacy concerns if data is being collected about
them
 Listen to what people want and getting them involved in the design
 Use people-centered techniques during the design process
 Which kind of design?

 Number of other terms used emphasising what is being designed,

for example:
 User interface design, software design, user-centered design, product
design, web design, experience design (UX)
 Interaction design is the umbrella term covering all of these
aspects:
 Fundamental to all disciplines, fields, and approaches concerned with
researching and designing computer-based systems for people
Interaction design
 Relationship between ID, HCI, and other
fields−academic disciplines

Academic disciplines contributing to ID:

 Psychology
 Social Sciences
 Computing Sciences
 Engineering
 Ergonomics
 Informatics
 Relationship between ID, HCI and other
fields−design practices

• Design practices contributing to ID:

• Graphic design
• Product design
• Artist-design
• Industrial design
• Film industry
 Relationship between ID, HCI and other
fields−interdisciplinary fields

• Interdisciplinary fields that ‘do’ interaction design:

• HCI
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Human Factors
• Cognitive Engineering
• Cognitive Ergonomics
• Computer Supported Co-operative Work
• Information Systems
 Working in multidisciplinary teams

• Many people from different backgrounds involved

• Different perspectives and ways of seeing
and talking about things
• Benefits
• More ideas and designs generated
• Disadvantages
• Difficult to communicate and progress forward the designs being create
 Interaction design in business

• Large number of ID consultancies. Examples of well-known ones

include:
• Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter the age of the
consumer, designing human-centered products and services”
• Cooper: “From research and product to goal-related design”
• IDEO: “creates products, services and environments for
companies pioneering new ways to provide value to their
customers”
 People-centered design

• involves understanding how people feel about a product and their

pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it, holding it, and
opening or closing it.
• their overall impression of how good it is to use
• the quality of the experience
• “It is not enough that we build products that function, that are
understandable and usable, we also need to build joy and
excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes, beauty to people's lives.”
Don Norman (2004)
 Defining the user experience

• How users perceive a product, such as whether a smartwatch is

seen as sleek or chunky, and their emotional reaction to it, such as
whether people have a positive experience when using it. (Hornbæk
and Hertzum, 2017)
• Hassenzahl’s (2010) model of the user experience
• Pragmatic: how simple, practical, and obvious it is for the user to achieve
their goals
• Hedonic: how evocative and stimulating the interaction is to users
• Hassenzahl et al (2021) reflection on the way the user experience
has evolved over the last 20 years
• growing interest in designing for hedonic aspects in relation to
wellbeing
 Why was the iPod user experience such a
success?

• Quality user experience from

the start
• Simple, elegant, distinct
brand, pleasurable, must have
fashion item, catchy names,
cool...
 Core characteristics of interaction design

• Users should be involved throughout the development of the

project
• Specific usability and user experience goals need to be identified,
clearly documented, and agreed to at the beginning of the project
• Iteration is needed through the core activities
• Help designers:
• Understand how to design interactive products that fit with what
people want, need, and may desire.
• Appreciate that one size does not fit all (for example, teenagers
are very different to grown-ups).
• Identify any incorrect assumptions they may have about
particular user groups. (for example, not all old people want or
need big fonts).
• Be aware of both people’s sensitivities and their capabilities.
• Accessibility: the extent to which an interactive product
is accessible by as many people as possible.
• Focus is on people with disabilities; for instance, those using
android OS or apple voiceover.
• Inclusiveness: making products and services that
accommodate the widest possible number of people.
• For example, smartphones designed for all and made
available to everyone regardless of their disability, education,
age, or income.
• Whether someone is disabled changes over time with age, or
recovery from an accident.
• The severity and impact of an impairment can vary over the course
of a day or in different environmental conditions.
• Disabilities can result because technologies are designed to
necessitate a certain type of interaction that is impossible for
someone with an impairment.
• Disabilities can be classified as:
• Sensory impairment (such as loss of vision or hearing)
• Physical impairment (having loss of functions to one or more parts of the body after a
stroke or spinal cord injury)
• Cognitive (including learning impairment or loss of memory/cognitive function due to old
age)
• Each type can be further defined in terms of capability:
• For example, someone might have only peripheral vision, be color blind, or have no light perception
• Impairment can be categorized:
• Permanent (for instance, long-term wheelchair user)
• Temporary (that is, after an accident or illness)
• Situational (for example, a noisy environment means that a person can’t hear)
• Prosthetics can be designed to
move beyond being functional
(and often ugly) to being desirable
and fashionable

• People now refer to “wearing their

wheels,” rather than “using a
wheelchair”
• 5/21/2023 versus 21/5/2023?

• Which should be used for international services and online forms?

• Why is it that certain products, like smartphones, are universally accepted by

people from all parts of the world, whereas people from different cultures react
to websites differently?
• Effective to use
• Efficient to use
• Safe to use
• Have good utility
• Easy to learn
• Easy to remember how to use
• Enjoyable to use
• Selecting terms to convey a person’s feelings, emotions, and so
forth can help designers understand the multifaceted nature of the
user experience

• How do usability goals differ from user experience goals?

• Are there trade-offs between the two kinds of goals? (for example,
can a product be both fun and safe?)

• How easy is it to measure usability versus user experience goals?

• Desirable aspects
• Satisfying Helpful Fun
• Enjoyable Motivating Provocative
• Engaging Challenging Surprising
• Pleasurable Enhancing sociability Rewarding
• Exciting Supporting creativity Emotionally fulfilling
• Entertaining Cognitively stimulating Experiencing flow

• Undesirable aspects
• Boring Unpleasant Creepy
• Frustrating Patronizing Intrusive
• Making one feel guilty Makes one feel stupid Deceptive
• Annoying Cutesy
• Childish Gimmicky
• 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
• Control panel for an elevator
• How does it work?
• Push a button for the floor you want?
• Nothing happens. Push any other button?
Still nothing. What do you need to do?
• It is not visible as to what to do!
[Link]
 • …with this elevator, you need to insert your room
card in the slot by the buttons to get the elevator to
work!
• How would you make this action more visible?
• Make the card reader more obvious
• Provide an auditory message that says what to do
(which language?)
• Provide a big label next to the card reader that
flashes when someone enters
• Make relevant parts visible
[Link]
• Make what has to be done obvious
• Invisible automatic controls can make it
more difficult to use

[Link]
• Sending information back to the user about what has been done
• Includes sound, highlighting, animation, and combinations of these
• For example, when screen button is clicked, it provides sound or
red highlight feedback:

“ccclichhk”
• Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
• Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
• Physical objects can be designed to constrain things (for example,
there being only one way you can insert a key into a lock)
• Where do you plug the mouse?
• Where do you plug the keyboard, in
the top or bottom connector?
• Do the color-coded icons help?

[Link]
 [Link] [Link]

• (A) provides direct adjacent • (B) provides color coding that

mapping between icon and associates the connectors
connector with the labels
• Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar
elements for similar tasks (for example, always use Ctrl key plus
first initial of the command for an operation: Ctrl+c, Ctrl+s, Ctrl+o)

• The main benefit is that consistent interfaces are easier to learn

and use
• What happens if there is more than one command starting with the
same letter? (for example, save, spelling, select, style)

• You have to find other initials or combinations of keys, thereby

breaking the consistency rule (for example, Ctrl+s, Ctrl+Sp,
Ctrl+shift+l)

• Increases learning burden on user, making them more prone to

errors
 Keypad numbers layout
A case of external inconsistency

(a) phones, remote controls (b) calculators, computer keypads

1 2 3 7 8 9
4 5 6 4 5 6
7 8 9 1 2 3
0 0

[Link] 42
• Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how
to use it. (For example, a mouse button invites pushing, a door
handle affords pulling)

• Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday

objects

• Has since been popularized in interaction design to discuss how to

design interface objects (for example, scrollbars to enable moving
up and down; icons to click on)
• Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical
objects
• Norman argues that it does not make sense to talk about
interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
• Instead, interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’
affordances:
• Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at
the interface
• Some mappings are better than others
• Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical
objects
• Norman argues that it does not make sense to talk about
interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
• Instead, interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’
affordances:
• Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at
the interface
• Some mappings are better than others
Activity
• Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support
how people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives
• It is concerned with how to create quality user experiences for services,
devices, and interactive products
• It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disciplines
and fields
• Optimizing the interaction between users and interactive products requires
consideration of a number of interdependent factors, including context of use,
types of activity, UX goals, accessibility, cultural differences, and user groups.
• Design principles, such as feedback and simplicity, are useful heuristics for
informing, analyzing, and evaluating aspects of an interactive product.