Psychology Of Social Design

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This is the talk that I gave at UXWeek 2007 in Washington, DC.

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Improving Interface Design

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Web Visions 2007 Improving Interface Design Workshop

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Read more about – “Usability”

Contextual inquiry is a user-centered design (UCD) method, part of the contextual design methodology, that happens up front in the software development lifecycle. It calls for one-on-one observations of work practice in its naturally occurring context. During or after the observations, discussion ensues wherein users’ daily routines or processes are discovered so that a product or website can be best designed to either work with the processes or help to shorten or eliminate them altogether. Contextual inquiry comprises preparation, evaluation, analysis, and design phases.

Reference to read

• Contextual inquiry at UsabilityNet
• Contextual inquiry at the Usability Methods Toolbox

n broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user’s learning curve may look like.

The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the system or function.

UCD Models and Approaches
Models of a user centered design process help software designers to fulfill the goal of a product engineered for their users. In these models, user requirements are considered right from the beginning and included into the whole product cycle. Their major characteristics are the active participation of real users, as well as an iteration of design solutions.

* Cooperative design: involving designers and users on an equal footing. This is the Scandinavian tradition of design of IT artefacts and it has been evolving since 1970. (reference: Greenbaum&Kyng (eds): Design At Work – Cooperative design of Computer Systems, Lawrence Erlbaum 1991)
* Participatory design (PD), a North American term for the same concept, inspired by Cooperative Design, focusing on the participation of users. Since 1990, there has been a bi-annual Participatory Design Conference. (reference: Schuler&Namioka: Participatory Design, Lawrence Erlbaum 1993 and chapter 11 in Helander’s Handbook of HCI, Elsevier 1997)
* Contextual design, “customer centered design” in the actual context, including some ideas from PD (reference: Beyer&Holzblatt, Contextual Design, Kaufmann 1998)

All these approaches follow the ISO standard Human-centered design processes for interactive systems (ISO 13407 Model, 1999).

User-centered design according to Donald Norman
he book “The Design of Everyday Things”, originally called “The Psychology of Everyday Things” was first published in 1986. In this book, Donald A. Norman describes the psychology behind what he deems ‘good’ and ‘bad’ design through examples and offers principles of ‘good’ design. He exalts the importance of design in our everyday lives, and the consequences of errors caused by bad designs.

In his book, Norman uses the term “user-centered design” to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he considers to be secondary issues like aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, and designing for error. Norman’s overly reductive approach in this text was redressed by him later in his own publication “Emotional Design”.

User-centered design focuses on more than just computers and single users
While user-centered design is often viewed as being focused on the development of computer and paper interfaces, the field has a much wider application. The design philosophy has been applied to a diverse range of user interactions, from car dashboards to service processes such as the end-to-end experience of visiting a restaurant, including interactions such as being seated, choosing a meal, ordering food, paying the bill etc.

When user-centered design is applied to more than single user interactions, it is often referred to as user experience. A user experience comprises a number of separate interfaces, human-to-human contacts, transactions and conceptual architectures. The restaurant example (above) is an example of this – ordering a meal or paying the bill are two user interactions, but they are a part of the “user experience” called dining out. It is not enough to have the separate interactions that comprise an experience being usable. The goal is that each interaction should integrate with every other interaction that forms a part of a single experience. In this way, the experience as a whole is rendered usable.

In product design, this is sometimes referred to as the “out of the box experience,” referring to all tasks the user must complete from first opening the box the product is shipped in, through unpacking, reading the directions, assembly, first use and continuing use.

User experience design is a subset of the field of experience design which pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user’s perception of a device or system. The scope of the field is directed at affecting “all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.”

The user experience
User experience, often abbreviated UX, is a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system. It most commonly refers to a combination of software and business topics, such as selling over the web, but it applies to any result of interaction design. Voice User Interface (VUI) systems, for instance, are a frequently mentioned design that can lead to a poor user experience.

The designers
This field has its roots in human factors and ergonomics, a field that since the late 1940s has been focusing on the interaction between human users, machines and the contextual environments to design systems that address the user’s experience. [2] The term also has a more recent connection to user-centered design principles and also incorporates elements from similar user-centered design fields:

* Human computer interaction
* Information architecture
* Interaction design
* Interface design
* User interface design
* Usability
* Usability engineering
* Visual design

As with the fields mentioned above, user experience design is a highly multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of psychology, anthropology, computer science, graphic design and industrial design. Depending on the purpose of the product, UX may also involve content design disciplines such as communication design, instructional design, or game design. The subject matter of the content may also warrant collaboration with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on planning the UX.

The design
At its core, user experience design incorporates most or all of the above disciplines to positively impact the overall user experience with a particular system or device. User experience design defines a sequence of screen presentations, user interactions, and system responses that meet user goals and tasks while satisfying business and functional requirements.

Typical outputs include:

* Wireframes (screen blueprints or storyboards)
* Prototypes
* Written specifications that describe the design….

Benefits

User experience design is integrated into software development and other forms of application development in order to inform feature requirements and interaction plans based upon the user’s goals. The benefits associated to integrating these design principles include:

* Reducing excessive features which miss the needs of the user
* Improving the overall usability of the system
* Expediting design and development through detailed and properly conceived guidelines
* Incorporating business and marketing goals while catering to the user

User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user’s experience and interaction. Where traditional graphic design seeks to make the object or application physically attractive, the goal of user interface design is to make the user’s interaction as intuitive as possible—what is often called user-centered design. Where good graphic/industrial design is bold and eye catching, good user interface design is to facilitate finishing the task at hand over drawing attention to itself. Graphic design may be utilized to apply a theme or style to the interface without compromising its intuitive usability. The intuitiveness of an interface may depend on symbology from an artistic perspective as much as functionality from a technical engineering perspective. User Interface design is involved in a wide range of projects from computer systems, to cars, to commercial planes; all of these projects involve much of the same basic human interaction yet also require some unique skills and knowledge. As a result, user interface designers tend to specialize in certain types of projects and have skills centered around their expertise, whether that be software design, user research, web design, or industrial design.Processes

There are several phases and processes in the user interface design some of which are more demanded upon than others depending on the project. (note for the remainder of this section the word system is used to denote any project whether it is a web site, application, or device) * Functionality requirements gathering – assembling a list of the functionality required of the system to accomplish the goals of the project and the potential needs of the users.
* User analysis – analysis of the potential users of the system either through discussion with people who work with the users and/or the potential users themselves. Typical questions involve:
o What would the user want the system to do?
o How would the system fit in with the user’s normal workflow or daily activities?
o How technically savvy is the user and what similar systems does the user already use?
o What interface look & feel styles appeal to the user?
* Information architecture – development of the process and/or information flow of the system (i.e. for phone tree systems, this would be an option tree flowchart and for web sites this would be a site flow that shows the hierarchy of the pages).
* Prototyping – development of wireframes, either in the form of paper prototypes or simple interactive screens. These prototypes are stripped of all look & feel elements and most content in order to concentrate on the interface.
* Usability testing – testing of the prototypes on an actual user—often using a technique called talk aloud protocol where you ask the user to talk about their thoughts during the experience.
* Graphic Interface design – actual look & feel design of the final graphical user interface (GUI.) It may be based on the findings developed during the usability testing if usability is unpredictable, or based on communication objectives and styles that would appeal to the user. In rare cases, the graphics may drive the prototyping, depending on the importance of visual form versus function. If the interface requires multiple skins, there may be multiple interface designs for one control panel, functional feature or widget. This phase is often a collaborative effort between a graphic designer and a user interface designer, or handled by one who is proficient in both disciplines.

User interface design needs good understanding of user needs.

Criticism against the termThe term is currently criticized because its focus is more narrow than the overall user experience. Too much concentration on the technical aspects of user interface distracts the designer from the overall activity (see Activity theory) and real goals of users.[1] Nevertheless, while the terms are often discussed in methodological disputes, the activities behind them are much the same.

Tushar A Deshmukh welcomes you!!!