Chapter one of Interaction Design goes over some of the core elements of becoming a successful designer in todays modern design scheme.
The authors start off with going over good and bad design ideas that illustrate the point very well and comes across well for someone just learning about the design process. The example of the Voice Mail System at the hotel sets a good starting point to see how something as simple (at least in everyday life with all the cell phones and they all having their own voice mail) voice mail system can go wrong just because of how instructions are used along with how intuitive the system is. In alot of ways we can see how these types of systems are in everyday life where there just isn’t enough information for users to use the system easily for example programming a clock on a DvD player or VCR to take a more common one.
Going along with the chapter they start to go into what interactive design is and who is involved in the process of designing a device or system so it meets curtain criteria. Interaction design is a mutli-disipline idea that takes from many people and require the work of people from many different disciplines. The conjunction of all these like HCI, social scientists and psychologist bring many ideas and professional opinions that can not be regulated into one discipline. I thought this was interesting how it encompasses many people in the design process and makes sense because every factor that goes into the design process like how will something look, how is it going to be used or how can this be achieved, has to come from many different people because some will know alot about one area but not the other.
The rest of the chapter goes over User Experience and the goals/principles that go along with it. The user experience as the authors said, has become central to interaction design and is how a product behaves/is used by the user. This is the needs/wants of what the system should fulfill for the user and how the user is going to react to it and how easily it is going to be for the user to pick up and use. There was some interesting ideas put forth like the date conflict and what designers should be looking for. Like the example in the book, dates are marked down differently in different parts of the world so if a global company wanted to keep track of user birthdays then they would have to keep in mind this difference between cultures and how they want to standardize it on their site. Also keeping in mind they they need to keep it very clear the date system they are using so users will not become confused when trying to put in those dates.
I think I could keep writing about this chapter but don’t want to run on to much, I think the core thing to take from this chapter is an overview of basic design ideas and common do’s/don’t’s of the design process. The examples given in the chapter were very helpful seeing how a simple thing can go wrong and frustrate users easily so every aspect of the design process has to carefully weighed and examined.
May 9, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Good summary of the chapter. One of the things that I have been thinking of after reading this chapter is why potentially good products just turn sour in the end. I am sure the designer wasn’t saying to himself, “How can I create something that looks useful but actually add frustration and anxiety to the situation?”
My hypothesis is that too much time was in the physical creation of the product and not enough time in the conceptual arena.
Any thoughts?
May 9, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Good job of summarizing the chapter. I thought that this chapter was a very interesting read. As stated above, the chapter dealt with the principles of good and bad design, and how the users of each product react to these designs (also known as the user experience). I thought that the examples used in the text were very helpful in getting the author’s points across.
I especially liked the example of good and bad design dealing with the remote controls, and how TiVo was ahead of the game in designing controls. Their design, focusing on the user, had larger clearly labeled buttons that were easy to find for the user, as opposed to other controls that had many small buttons whose functions were unknown. It just proves to show that considering your user when designing a product is an absolute must.
May 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I think you put a thorough and thoughtful summary up there, Shaun. I was wondering if you had any thoughts (or anyone else for that matter) for what ties this chapter together. Shaun, you wrote that it was describing “core elements of becoming a successful designer.” This is true, but why the three components that you described in those paragraphs?
The multidisciplinary teams are extremely important to HCI design. We are going to talk a little bit about this Tuesday, and then again the following Tuesday, when I talk about innovation in design. Have multiple designers coming from different backgrounds with different experiences who have different ideas about how a design should go provides a much better chance of designing something truly original, than a group that comes from the exact same background with the exact same experiences. A little bit of conflict is a resource for us!
May 11, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Ben,
That is a highly contextual question. Sometimes good design processes fail as well. You could also ask a question like why do good designs succeed, like Marie points out with Tivo. This is why it is hard for people to come out with a book that says, “Listen, here are the steps that you need to take to design successfully.” This is also why people come out with Design Principles and Design Patterns that are abstract and will not by themselves lead to good designs, but my lead to good enough practices that can increase the likelihood of good designs.
I’m sure that you can come up with a list of pitfall that lead to failure: not involving users, projects that go way over cost, projects that rely on technological innovation to carry poor design, projects that don’t evaluate their design after its too early to iterate on them, projects that don’t really have a target audience, etc. etc. Nonetheless, projects can still succeed in certain situations despite this. It depends on the individual project.
May 14, 2008 at 2:04 pm
What I think really ties it all together in chapter one is proper planning in your design practices. Having a game plan before you start the process, research area where designs like this has been used before and know what the end goal is (although this may change during the process).
I think this really ties all design together as it sets the staging ground for the whole process. Having a good head start even before you bring anything to the table will only help in the long run and makes sure you do not skip anything along the way. I think this is why the authors are putting these core ideas at the beginning of the book.
For example, we now know that the design process in mutli-disciplinary teams. If you were trying to design a product that isn’t in a huge orginzation then finding some of these team members that could help you would take time/effort to find. If you properly plan before the design stage then you could find these people before hand.
Also the testing phase of the design is also very important in this process and planning before hand can only make the test better and will produce more reliable and accurate data to the testers.
I can draw from personally experiance on this when I had to do an usability test for a website. When learning about this test from the book, “Don’t make me think” by Krugg it said to let the user think out loud to see what was/was not working on the website. With this in mind I did not come into the test with set aside questions just in case and my first user wouldn’t think out loud for the life of himself. So I regrouped, planned out some questions just in case the user became stumped during the test and it provied me with alot more information when they would stop talking out loud because I could ask something like, “If you came to this site and wanted to figure out who designed it, where would you click?”
Peronally I think of proper planning as like a check list of ideas/things to do before going into the design phase. Although this list would change/grow as time went on it gives a proper foot hold going into the design.
“bejellio, why potentially good products just turn sour in the end”
I think this could be a multitude of things in the end. From not testing enough (I’m really big on the testing process if you could not tell), to the consumer/user just not accepting it to fill a niche in what they need. Not doing good testing could result in something in the design process that just goes wrong after it has been released. One example of this is when Xbox 360 first came out. Their power supplies would burn out or even catch fire if left on to long with out enough proper cooling. If this was caught in the design process Microsoft could of done something to fix this by adding extra cooling.
May 14, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Thanks Shaun,
Excellent comments. I think you have a strong point about planning. My only addition to that (which I don’t feel that you were suggesting in your comment, but just wanted to point it out) was that you do not want to be so rigid in your response that you don’t allow your users or the project to develop naturally. But good planning and thoughtful preparation can have a significant impact as you explained with the usability example.