spring 2011- introduction

the course team

➝ Prof. Jeffrey Huang (responsible) ➝  teacher: Hendrik Knoche ➝  teaching assistant: Michal Fok ➝ guest lecturers – tba

course basics

➝ 6 credits ➝ 2 h lecture ➝ 4 h studio/lab ➝ 4 h home based preparation ➝ no written exam

the course structure

➝ 1 design brief ➝ 4 design reviews ➝ 14 interactive lectures/seminars ➝ 14 studio sessions ➝  reading assignments ➝  interactive exercises all in English

assessment

the final grade is based on: the grades of four mandatory reviews "

(submitted documentation and its presentation): 1.  results and design ideas from requirements capture (i)"

through scenarios, storyboards and personas 2.  design idea presentation through first (lo-fi) prototype (i) 5.  interactive prototype / demonstrator (i) 6.  final presentation, incl. video and UX evaluation report (i)"

and 7.  optional video submission to Microsoft Imagine Cup (g) 8.  individual participation in the class/studio "

(attendance is mandatory) ✱(i) = individual ✱(g) = group

assignment dates

➝ 22nd Mar – 1st review (rc results + ideas) ➝ 12th April – 2nd review (design solutions) ➝ 4th May – Microsoft Imagine Cup "

round 1 competition deadline

➝ 10th May – 3rd review (prototype) ➝ 31st May – final review documentation for each review is due on the Monday before the review at 12:00 ✱ late submissions are subject to penalty

how is your design evaluated?

by a panel of experts Q: how do you assess concepts or designs? A: Scott Jenson (former director of Symbian):

❝First I’ll be asking‘what’s the value of this?’, that is‘Will people really want it?’ [… the] second is simplicity.❞ Jones & Marsden (2006)

❝…being humble as these [designs] are

evaluated and seen to fall short, and to need refining.❞

Jones & Marsden (2006)

what is this course?

Personal Interaction Studio focuses on ➝ mobile devices as the platform (personal) ➝  interaction design ➝ studio as the teaching format

➝  the idea is to generate, communicate, evaluate, iterate and improve design ideas through synthesis by re-defining problem and the solution

resources

➝  all communication and further readings, links etc. will go through moodle

➝ please enroll with the key: persint

➝  http://moodle.epfl.ch/course/view.php?id=6881

syllabus

1.  introduction 2.  data collection 3.  analysis 4.  design techniques 5.  mobile i/o 6.  screen design 7.  prototyping 8.  -14. guest lectures and seminar

example

things you will learn (about) ➝  brainstorming, ice breaking ➝  interviewing ➝  qualitative analysis ➝  personas ➝  scenarios ➝  storyboarding ➝  elevator pitch ➝  lo-fi prototyping ➝  hi-fi prototyping ➝  designing, critiquing, re-designing ➝  communicating your ideas through various means – show

and tell, posters, presentation "(if time permits – video)

topics addressed in this class

➝ design thinking ➝  interaction design ➝  user experience

design brief Rain-fed farming provides the bulk of the world’s food supply and has tremendous potential to increase its productivity to meet the 2015 hunger reduction target of the Millenium Development Goal (MDG): "

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Innovations are needed in land, water and crop management but the efforts required to achieve this need to focus on increasing human and institutional capacity, build knowledge and improve management and infrastructure. Large numbers of people especially in rural areas are excluded from access to relevant information either because information is not available or inaccessible due to illiteracy. The mobile phone is the only widely available programmable platform. Your task is to design an application that empowers rural people to improve their livelihoods.

more details…

attribution: parts of these slides are based on Angela Sasse and Sven

Laqua’s course on interaction design at UCL

why mobiles?

❝The most profound technologies are those that disappear.❞ Mark Weiser

mobile life

why design?

➝ post WWII declining American manufacturing quality disillusioned purchasers who, after being attracted by external style, found products unsatisfactory in use

➝ American industry got decimated from 1960s on from imports from Japan and Germany where greater attention to production quality and a more holistic approach to design were the norm.

➝  key differentiator for products ➝  key skill in IT – differentiator for employees

why design digital products

digital products’ shortcomings: ➝  require computer-centred thinking ➝ poor behaviour, rudeness

reasons ➝  ignorance about users ➝ conflicting interests ➝  lack of process

what is design?

hard to grasp – industrial design, graphic design, software design, interface design, product design …

in interaction design (Fallman 2003) : ➝  scientific/eng. process (conservative) ➝  art form (romantic) ➝  ad-hoc activity (pragmatic, bricoleur) none are adequate – design is unfolding "both problem and solution evolve through sketching (prototyping)

what is interaction design (IxD)?

➝  it’s about the design of behavior"http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/behaving-badly-in-vancouver.html

➝ designing the mechanisms for interacting with a product (Cooper 2007)

➝ …designing interactive products to support people in their everyday and working life (Preece et al, 2002)

interaction design within a company

➝ management ➝ marketing ➝  engineering ➝ design team How to achieve buy-in for your ideas? How do you

communicate your ideas to them? What’s the language – same as yours?

Scott Jenson: ❝Design is about semantics and syntax. First you need to see what people do and want – the semantics and then you have to find a way to make that possible – the syntax.❞

jobs - interaction design responsibilities include: • lead interaction design (entire product lifecycle), tools and deliverables,

including: -  persona development -  use cases, user task flows -  user interface concepts and interaction models -  annotated wireframes -  information architecture -  documentation of design concept in detailed UI specs

• effectively communicate interaction models and design ideas to the team, leveraging above tools / documents

• identify appropriate user research techniques and metrics for gauging success

• guide product direction and set UI requirements based on user research, functional requirements, and business goals

• recommend concepts for testing and interpret consumer feedback / results

design philosophy

➝  centred on human needs ➝  individual or group ➝ support goals and activities ➝ design technology to fit human needs and

characteristics ➝  involve users whenever possible ➝ mix analytical, creative and pragmatic approaches ➝ pick from range of design tools ➝  use existing best practices but not uncritically ➝ monitor design process and reflect on it

what is UX?

❝User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.❞

Nielsen, Norman Group

user-centred

❝User experience and interface design in the context of creating software represents an approach that puts the user, rather than the system, at the center of the process. This philosophy, called user-centered design, incorporates user concerns and advocacy from the beginning of the design process and dictates the needs of the user should be foremost in any design decisions.❞

Microsoft

product centred

❝The user experience for Mac OS X applications encompasses the visual appearance, interactive behavior, and assistive capabilities of software. With the Aqua graphical user interface, Universal Access features, and user-assistive technologies like the Address Book framework, Apple Help, and VoiceOver, you can deliver the cohesive and professional user experience that Macintosh users have come to expect. It's easy to leverage the user experience technologies of Mac OS X to make great Macintosh software.❞

Apple

bad UX

➝ ❝Technology that does not work the way they expect makes people feel stupid.❞

➝ ❝if you intend to drive people away from your site, it’s hard to imagine a more effective approach than making them feel stupid.❞

➝  JJ Garrett: Elements of User Experience

➝  User: ❝… so I have all these files and documents, all over my desktop, different versions of documents in different folders, and documents I don’t need any more. I never get round to tidying up. I keep emails because I might need because of the address, or the content. But I never get round to putting them into the address book and deleting the mails, so they just pile up. My electronic workspace is a mess.❞

➝  Q: How does that make you feel? ➝  User: [thinks] ❝It makes me feel that I am a bad person.❞

From Richard Boardman’s (2005) PhD thesis on Improving Tool Support for Personal Information Management

impact on users’ lives

user experience (UEX, UX)

Cooper 2006

industrial/graphic design

form

content

information architecture, animation etc.

behaviour

interaction designer

Any account of what is often called the user experience must take into consideration the ❛felt❜ experience: emotional, intellectual, and sensual aspects of our interactions with technology.

John McCarthy, Peter Wright 2004: Technology as experience. MIT Press

❝We don't just use technology, we live with it.❞

lived experience

USER SYSTEM

GOAL

CONTEXT

interacts with

to attain

and interaction takes place in a has general & specific characteristics

physical incl. other technologies

social

cultural

temporal

framework for design

Garret’s planes of UX

➝  strategy – what user wants to achieve ➝  scope – what functions and features are required ➝  structure – navigation – how are screens linked

and grouped ➝  skeleton – placement of buttons, tabs, blocks of

text, pictures ➝  surface – series of pages in high fidelity

surface

skeleton

structure

scope

strategy abstract

concrete

Garrett’s planes Of UXP

❝When designers make choices that do not align with planes above and below, you end up with a jumble of components that don’t fit.❞

Garret’s planes of UX

levels of interaction

Human Structures! Computer Structures!

Userʼs knowledge!of task domain!!!!Userʼs knowledge!of language!!!!Userʼs hands,!eyes!

Computerʼs representation!of task domain!!!!Computer command!language!!!!Computer keyboard,!display!

TASK!LEVEL!!!DIALOGUE!LEVEL!!!!!INPUT / OUTPUT!LEVEL!

GOAL LEVEL User’s/corporate goals Output in the Real World

➝  represent user groups ➝  system may be used by

one or several personas ➝  different characteristics ➝  different goals

➝  e.g. buyers of a new car ➝  Jean-David (playboy): "

go fast, impress women ➝  Aurelie (soccer mum): "

fit in many kids, be safe ➝  Bob (the Builder): "

haul big loads, be reliable

personas

➝ persona-based scenarios "concise narrative description of how persona interacts with system to achieve goals

➝  context-based scenarios "how product can serve needs of persona, created before any design is done

➝  to key path scenarios – refined with design ➝  to validation scenarios – based on ❛what … if❜"

focus on illustrate requirements (the what), "top-down decomposition to functionality (the how)

scenarios

storyboards

❝… scenarios are an interactive means of defining the behaviour of a product from the standpoint of specific users (personas). This includes not only the functionality of the system, but the priority of functions and the way those functions are expressed in terms of what the user sees and how she interacts with the system. use cases, on the other hand, are based on exhaustive descriptions of the functional requirements of the system, often of a transactional nature, focussing on low-level user actions and accompanying system response.❞

scenarios vs. use cases

Cooper 2006

➝  in-depth qualitative data ➝  interviews ➝  in-depth analysis such as Grounded Theory and

Discourse Analysis ➝  ethnographic methods

➝ mostly observational ➝ can be combined with surveys, interviews, qualitative

studies

eliciting UX requirements

general reading recommended books (available at EPF-BIB)

Cooper, Reimann & Cronin (2007) "About Face 3, Wiley

Jones & Marsden (2004) "Mobile Interaction Design, Wiley

Scott McCloud (1993)"Understanding Comics, Harper Perennial (on order)

Schneiderman & Plaisant (2010) "Designing the User Interface. Addison-Wesley.

Preece, Rogers & Sharp (2002)"Interaction Design, Wiley

summary

➝  focus on design approaches, methods and tools ➝  learning by doing ➝  interaction design is a relatively young and rapidly

developing field ➝  interaction designers have to address new

technologies and adapt their methods and tools ➝  collect artefacts: "

paper, pictures, audio, video

practical part – design techniques

brainstorming

➝ group size <10 – ideally between 5-7 + facilitator ➝  find and set up comfortable space ➝  appoint recorder - up-coming ideas on shared

display, flip chart, whiteboard ➝  ice-breaking exercise – to familiarize members of

groups ➝ define problem clearly ➝ goal: generate as many ideas as possible

adapted from www.mindtools.com/brainstm.html

brainstorming – how to

➝  address what, how, when, where and why ➝ give people time on their own at beginning then

ask to share them ➝  encourage ➝  to develop ideas of others further or use as new seeds ➝ enthusiastic, fun, uncritical attitude,

➝  include everyone to contribute (practical and impractical ideas) and develop

➝  ensure no criticism or evaluation – riskless atmosphere

ice breaker

➝  effective to start a training, team-building event ➝ goal: ➝ get to know each other ➝ get into the event ➝ become comfortable contributing to event ➝ establish level playing field ➝ create common sense of purpose

➝  ingredients: ice, a breaker (method), a facilitator

ice breaker - when to use

if participants ➝  come from different backgrounds ➝  need to bond quickly to work on common project

or goal ➝  are unfamiliar with topic at hand ➝ don’t know the facilitator but should and vice

versa

the ice

participants have ➝  not met before ➝ different age, status or levels in an organization ➝ different backgrounds – different perceptions of

each other choose method accordingly & ➝ don’t try to uncover the whole iceberg

ice breaker – methods (introductory)

➝  everyone shares name, nationality, focus of study and one human element, e.g.: ➝ one little known fact about me ➝  true/false - three to four short statements – the group

guesses which one is false, or ➝ pair interview – interview and then introduce partner to

the group