Download - Lecture 13. affordance & uaf

Lecture 13

Affordance & UAF

UX Theory / IIT 2014 Spring Class hours : Monday 4 pm – 7 pm 2nd June

Exercise13-1: Formative UX Inspection of Your System

• Goal

– To gain experience in writing effective benchmark tasks and measurable UX

targets.

• Activities

– Unless you have another prototype, use the paper prototype you built in the

previous exercise. If your paper prototype is not suitable for an effective exercise

in UX inspection, select an application or appropriate Website as the target of your

inspection.

– Perform a UX inspection as described in Chapter 13.

– If you are working with a team, use the team approach described in Chapter 13.

• Deliverables : A list of UX problems identified by your UX inspection.

• Schedule : An hour and a half.

Lecture #13 IIT_UX Theory 2

AFFORDANCES DEMYSTIFIED Textbook Chapter 20.


WHAT ARE AFFORDANCES?

• The Concept of Affordance

– In HCI design, where we focus on helping the user, an affordance is

something that helps a user do something.

– In interaction design, affordances are characteristics of user interface

objects and interaction design features that help users perform tasks.


WHAT ARE AFFORDANCES?

• Definitions of the Different Kinds of Affordance (Hartson, 2003)

– Cognitive affordances help users with their cognitive actions:

thinking, deciding, learning, remembering, and knowing about things.

– Physical affordances help users with their physical actions: clicking,

touching, pointing, gesturing, and moving things.

– Sensory affordances help users with their sensory actions: seeing,

hearing, and feeling (and tasting and smelling) things.

– Functional affordances help users do real work (and play) and get

things done, to use the system to do work.


A LITTLE BACKGROUND

• Who “invented” the concept of affordances?

– Norman did introduce the concept to HCI (1990)

– The concept itself goes back at least as far as James J. Gibson (1977,

1979)

– Gibson is a perceptual psychologist who took an “ecological” approach

to perception, meaning he studied the relationship between a living being

and its environment, in particular what the environment offers or affords

the animal.

– In his ecological view, affordance is reckoned with respect to the

animal/user, which is part of the affordance relationship.


A LITTLE BACKGROUND

• And after

– Gaver(1991) sees affordances in design as a way of focusing on strengths

and weaknesses of technologies with respect to the possibilities they

offer to people who use them. He extends the concepts by showing how

complex actions can be described in terms of groups of affordances,

sequential in time and/or nested in space, showing how affordances can

be revealed over time, with successive user actions, for example, in the

multiple actions of a hierarchical drop-down menu.

– McGrenere and Ho (2000) may think design of cognitive affordances is

acknowledged to be about design for the cognitive part of usability, ease

of use in the form of learnability for new and intermittent users


FOUR KINDS OF AFFORDANCES IN UX DESIGN

• Cognitive Affordance

– Cognitive affordance is a design feature that helps, aids, supports, facilitates,

or enables thinking, learning, understanding, and knowing about something.

Cognitive affordances play starring roles in interaction design, especially for

less experienced users who need help with understanding and learning.

– Symbol of an icon

– The form of a clear and concise button label

• Feed forward : semantics or meaning of user interface artifacts.

– Feedback

• helping a user know what happened after a button click.

• helps users in knowing whether the course of interaction has been successful so

far.



• Physical Affordance

– Physical affordance is a design feature that helps, aids, supports,

facilitates, or enables doing something physically. Adequate size and

easy-to-access location could be physical affordance features of an

interface button design enabling users to click easily on the button.

– Fitts’ law (Fitts, 1954; MacKenzie, 1992), physical disabilities and

limitations, and physical characteristics of interaction devices and

interaction techniques.


𝑇 = 𝑎 + 𝑏 log 2 (1 + 𝐷𝑊

)


• Sensory Affordance

– Sensory affordance is a design feature that helps, aids, supports,

facilitates, or enables user in sensing (e.g., seeing, hearing, feeling)

something. Sensory affordance is associated with the “sense-ability”

characteristics of user interface artifacts, especially when it is used to

help the user sense (e.g., see) cognitive affordances and physical

affordances.

– noticeability, discernability, legibility (in the case of text), and audibility (in

the case of sound) of features or devices associated with visual, auditory,

haptic/tactile, or other sensations.



• Sensory Affordance (continued)

– Why do we call it “sensory affordance” and not “perceptual affordance?”

• In the general context of psychology, the concepts of sensing and perception

are intertwined. To avoid this association, we use the term “sensing” instead

of “perception” because it excludes the component of cognition usually

associated with perception (Hochberg, 1964). This allows us to separate the

concepts of sensory and cognitive affordance into mostly non-overlapping

meanings.



• Functional Affordance

– Functional affordances connect physical user actions to invoke system, or

back end, functionality. Functional affordances link usability or UX to

usefulness and add purpose for physical affordance. They are about

higher level user enablement in the work domain and add meaning and

goal orientation to design discussions.

– an affordance helps or aids the user in doing something.

– We use the term functional affordance to denote this kind of higher level

user enablement in the work domain.




Cognitive affordance Design feature that helps users in knowing Something

A button label that helps users know what will happen if they click on it

Physical affordance Design feature that helps users in doing a physical action in the interface

A button that is large enough so that users can click on it accurately

Sensory affordance Design feature that helps users sense something (especially cognitive affordances and physical affordances)

A label font size large enough to be discerned

Functional affordance Design feature that helps users accomplish work (i.e., usefulness of a system function)

The internal system ability to sort a series of numbers (invoked by users clicking on the Sort button)

Table 20-1 Summary of affordance types

AFFORDANCES IN INTERACTION DESIGN

• Communication and Cultural Conventions

• Cognitive Affordance as “Information in the World”

• Affordance Roles—An Alliance in Design


FALSE COGNITIVE AFFORDANCES MISINFORM AND MISLEAD


Figure 20-1 A door with a confusing sign containing conflicting cognitive affordances.



Figure 20-2 False cognitive affordances in a form letter that looks like an affordance to cut.



Figure 20-3 False cognitive affordances in a menu bar with links that look like buttons.



Figure 20-4 Radio switch with mixed affordances.



Figure 20-5 Useless dial marks between power settings on a microwave.

USER-CREATED AFFORDANCES AS A WAKE-UP CALL TO DESIGNERS


Figure 20-6 Misdirection in a cognitive affordance.



Figure 20-7 Glass door with a user added cognitive affordance (arrow) indicating proper operation.



Figure 20-8 A user-created cognitive affordance explaining copier darkness settings.



Figure 20-9 A user-made automobile cup-holder artifact, used with permission from Roundel magazine, BMW Car Club of America, Inc. (Howarth, 2002).



Figure 20-10 A user-created cognitive affordance to help users know how to insert blank letterhead stationery.

EMOTIONAL AFFORDANCES


Figure 20-11 A user-created cognitive affordance added to a roadside sign; see arrow on post to left of the sign.


• Affordances that help lead users to a positive emotional response.

– This means features or design elements that make an emotional

connection with the user. These will include design features that connect

to our subconscious and intuitive appreciation of fun, aesthetics, and

challenges to growth.

– This new kind of affordance plays well into the original Gibson ecological

view of affordances that are about the relationship between a living being

and its environment. This is just what we are talking about with respect to

emotional impact, especially phenomenological aspects.

– Gibson’s affordances are about values and meanings that can be

perceived directly in the environment.



• Emotional Impact

– Emotional impact is the affective component of user experience that

influences user feelings. Emotional impact includes such effects as

pleasure, fun, joy of use, aesthetics, desirability, pleasure, novelty,

originality, sensations, coolness, engagement, novelty, and appeal and

can involve deeper emotional factors such as self-expression, self-

identity, a feeling of contribution to the world, and pride of ownership.


THE INTERACTION CYCLE AND THE USER ACTION FRAMEWORK

Textbook Chapter 21.


INTRODUCTION

• Interaction Cycle and User Action Framework (UAF)

– The Interaction Cycle is our adaptation of Norman’s “stages-of-action”

model (Norman, 1986) that characterizes sequences of user actions

typically occurring in interaction between a human user and almost any

kind of machine. The User Action Framework (Andre et al., 2001) is a

structured knowledge base containing information about UX design,

concepts, and issues.

– Within each part of the UAF, the knowledge base is organized by

immediate user intentions involving sensory, cognitive, or physical actions.


INTRODUCTION

• Need for a Theory-Based Conceptual Framework

– “Classification lies at the heart of every scientific field. Classifications

structure domains of systematic inquiry and provide concepts for

developing theories to identify anomalies and to predict future research

needs.”


INTRODUCTION

• The UAF is such a classification structure for UX design concepts,

issues, and principles, designed to:

– Give structure to the large number of interaction design principles, issues,

and concepts

– Offer a more standardized vocabulary for UX practitioners in discussing

interaction design situations and UX problems

– Provide the basis for more thorough and accurate UXproblem analysis

and diagnosis

– Foster precision and completeness of UX problem reports based on

essential distinguishing characteristics


THE INTERACTION CYCLE


Figure 21-1 Norman’s (1990) stages-of action model, adapted with permission.


• Gulfs between User and System

– The gulf of execution

– The gulf of evaluation



• From Norman’s Model to Our Interaction Cycle

– Partitioning the model

– Adding outcomes and system response

– The resulting Interaction Cycle




Figure 21-1 Norman’s (1990) stages-of action model, adapted with permission.


• Example: Creating a Business Report as a Task within the Interaction

Cycle


Calculate monthly profits for last quarter

Write summary, including graphs, to show company

performance

Create table of contents

Print the report

Open spreadsheet program

Call accounting department and ask for numbers for each month

Create column headers in spreadsheet for expenses and revenues in each product category

Compute profits


• Cooperative User-System Task Performance within the Interaction

Cycle

– Primary tasks

– Path variations in the Interaction Cycle

• Multiuser tasks (Figure 21-3)

– Secondary tasks, intention shifts, and stacking

• Secondary tasks and intention shifts

• Stacking and restoring task context

• Example of stacking due to intention shift (Figure 21-4)




Figure 21-3 Multiuser interaction, system events, and asynchronous external events within multiple Interaction Cycles.



Figure 21-4 Stacking and returning to Interaction Cycle task context instances.

THE USER ACTION FRAMEWORK—ADDING A STRUCTURED KNOWLEDGE BASE TO THE INTERACTION CYCLE


Figure 21-5 Basic kinds of user actions in the Interaction Cycle as the top-level UAF structure.

THE USER ACTION FRAMEWORK—ADDING A STRUCTURED KNOWLEDGE BASE TO THE INTERACTION CYCLE

• From the Interaction Cycle to the User Action Framework (Figure 21-5)

• Interaction Style and Device Independent

• Common Design Concepts Are Distributed

• Completeness


INTERACTION CYCLE AND USER ACTION FRAMEWORK CONTENT CATEGORIES

• Planning (Design Helping User Know What to Do)

– a typical sequence of planning activities :

• Identify work needs in the subject matter domain (e.g., communicate with

someone in writing)

• Establish goals in the work domain to meet these work needs (e.g., produce a

business letter)

• Divide goals into tasks performed on the computer to achieve the goals (e.g.,

type content, format the page)

• Spawn intentions to perform the steps of each task (e.g., set the left margin)



• Planning (Design Helping User Know What to Do)

– Planning concepts

– Planning content in the UAF

• User model and high-level understanding of system

• Goal decomposition

• Task/step structuring and sequencing, workflow

• User work context, environment

• User knowledge of system state, modalities, and especially active modes

• Supporting learning at the planning level through use and exploration



• Translation (Design Helping User Know How to Do Something)

– Translation concepts

– Translation content in the UAF

• Existence of a cognitive affordance to show how to do something

• Presentation (of a cognitive affordance)

• Content, meaning (of a cognitive affordance)

• Task structure, interaction control, preferences and efficiency

• Support of user learning about what actions to make on which UI objects and

how through regular and exploratory use



• Physical Actions (Design Helping User Do the Actions)

– Physical actions—concepts

• sensing the objects in order to manipulate them

• Manipulation

– Physical actions content in the UAF

• Existence of necessary physical affordances in user interface

• Sensing UI objects for and during manipulation

• Manipulating UI objects, making physical actions



• Outcomes (Internal, Invisible Effect/Result within System)

– Outcomes—concepts

– Outcomes content in the UAF

• Existence of needed functionality or feature (functional affordance)

• Existence of needed or unwanted automation

• Computational error

• Results unexpected

• Quality of functionality



• Assessment (Design Helping User Know if Interaction Was Successful)

– Assessment concepts

– Assessment content in the UAF

• Existence of feedback or indication of state or mode

• Presentation (of feedback)

• Content, meaning (of feedback)


ROLE OF AFFORDANCES WITHIN THE UAF


Figure 21-6 Affordances connect users with design.

ROLE OF AFFORDANCES WITHIN THE UAF


Figure 21-7 Interaction cycle of the UAF indicating affordance related user actions.

PRACTICAL VALUE OF UAF

• Advantage of Vocabulary to Think About and Communicate Design

Issues

• Advantage of Organized and Structured Usability Data

• Advantage of Richness in Usability Problem Analysis Schemes

• Advantage of Usability Data Reuse


Week 15

Final Presentation

UX Theory / IIT 2014 Spring Class hours : Monday 4 pm – 7 pm 9th June

Mid-Term Presentation Guideline

• Presentation Document Content

– System Concept Statement

– Flow Model

– Social Model

– Persona

– Some sketches (as many as possible)

– Storyboard

– UX Metrics

– Prototype in Xcode Storyboard or any tools equivalent

– UX Evaluation Report(5-7 participants)


Mid-Term Submission Guideline

• Post a blog

– Embed the presentation file from slideshare.

– 3 mins(Maximum) concept movie

• Brief your product/service idea

• You can add your interview

– Compile into the Kickstarter format

• Your funding goal

• USP you need to promote

• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aldobeqiraj/bringrrtm-helping-you-keep-

track-of-what-matters-m


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aldobeqiraj/bringrrtm-helping-you-keep-track-of-what-matters-m

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aldobeqiraj/bringrrtm-helping-you-keep-track-of-what-matters-m

Elements of a Kickstarter Page

Lecture #6 IID_UX Prototyping 54

Title and USP

Concept Movie

Project Description

Funding Goal

Embed Slideshare PT at the end

Link the Kickstarter page to your github repository page


Contributors

Kickstarter Page Link

Checklist

• Send me your GitHub repository link

– until 11:59 pm Sunday 8th June

• URL of your Kickstarter page

• Pinterest collections

• Prorototype in Xcode project

• User Evaluation Report

• Class review pages

– http://uxtheory.wordpress.com/

• Final Evaluation links

Lecture #6 IID_UX Prototyping 56

http://uxtheory.wordpress.com/

Download - Lecture 13. affordance & uaf

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