User centered design approach seeks to involve users throughout the design process.

There are many different ways of achieving this for example for example through observing
users, talking to them, interviewing them, modelling their performance, asking them to fill in
questionnaires, and even asking them to become co-designers. The findings from the
different ways of engaging and eliciting knowledge from users are then interpreted with
respect to on-going design activities.

Real users and their goals, not just technology, is the driving force behind product
development. A well designed system will make the most of human skill and judgement, will
be directly relevant to the activity in hand, and will support rather than constrain the user.
1985 Gould and Lewis 3 principles:

1. Early focus on users and their tasks
2. Empirical measurement
3. Iterative design

3 principles are the basis for user centered approach. Olympic messaging system (OMS)
was the first reported large computer system to be developed using these 3 principles.

1. Early focus on users and tasks

This principle can be expanded into 5 principles:

1. Users tasks and goals are the driving force behind development what
technologies are available to provide better support for users goals.
2. Users behaviour and context of use are studied and the system is designed to
support them.
How people perform their tasks is also significant. Understanding behaviour
highlights priorities, preferences, and implicit intentions.
3. Users characteristics are captured and designed for.
General characteristics need to be captured for the target group. Peoples limitations
must be taken into account to limit the mistakes made.
4. Users are consulted throughout development from the earliest phases to the latest
and their input is seriously taken into account.
Users must be respected by designers different levels of user involvement and
different ways to consult users.
5. All design decisions are taken within the context of the users, their work, and their
environment.
Designers must remain aware of users while making decisions.

2. Empirical measurement

Specific usability and user experience goals should be identified clearly documented and
agreed upon at the beginning of the project. Helps designers choose between alternative
designs and check on progress of product development. Identifying specific goals means
that the product can be empirically evaluated at regular stages of development.

3. Iterative Design

Allows designs to be refined based on feedback.





Four Basic activities of interaction design

1. Establishing requirements for the user experience.
In order to design to support people the target users must be established and the kind of
support an interactive product could usefully provide. These needs form the basis of the
products requirements and underpin subsequent design and development. This activity
is fundamental to a user-centered approach and is very important in interaction design.
Understanding these needs is gleaned through data-gathering and analysis.

2. Designing alternatives to meet these requirements
This is the core activity of designing actually suggesting ideas for meeting the
requirements. Can be broken up into 2 subactivities viz conceptual design and physical
design. Conceptual design involves producing the conceptual model for the product and
this model describes an abstraction outlining what people can do with a product and
what concepts are needed to understand how to interact with it. Physical design
considers the detail of the product including the colours, sounds and images to use,
menu design, and icon design. Alternatives are considered at every point.

3. Prototyping the alternative designs so that they can be communicated and assessed
Interaction design involves designing interactive products. The sensible way for users
to evaluate such designs is to interact with them and this can be achieved by
prototyping. This does not necessarily mean that a piece of software is required. There
are different prototyping techniques.

4. Evaluating what is being built throughout the process and the user experience it offers
Evaluation is the process of determining the usability and acceptability of the product or
design that is measured in terms of a variety of criteria including the number of errors
that the users makes using it, how appealing it is, how well it matches the requirements,
and so on. Interaction design requires a high level of user involvement throughout
development and this enhances the chances of an acceptable product being delivered.
Number of activities are concerned with quality assurance and testing. Evaluation does
not replace these activities but complements and enhances them.


Some practical issues

Who are the users?

Involving the right users are crucial to user centered design. The most obvious definition is
those people that interact directly with the product to achieve a task. There are also others
that can be thought of as users. Holtzblatt and Jones definition of users: Those who
manager direct users, those who receive products from the system, those who test the
system, those who make the purchasing decision, and those who use competitive products.
Eason identifies 3 categories of users primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary users
are those likely to be frequent hands-on users of the system; secondary users are
occasional users or those who use the system through an intermediary; and tertiary users
are those affected by the introduction of the system or who will influence its purchase.

Stakeholders are people or organisations who will be affected by the system and who have
a direct or indirect influence on the system requirements. Identifying the stakeholders for
a project means that you can make an informed decision about who should be involved and
to what degree and how to involve the relevant stakeholders.





Emotions and the user experience (Chapter 5)

Emotional interaction is concerned with how we feel and react when interacting with
technologies. It covers different aspects of the user experience from how we feel when first
finding out about a new product to getting rid of it. Emotional interaction is about considering
what makes us happy, sad, anxious, annoyed, frustrated, motivated, delirious, and so on,
and translating this knowledge into different aspects of the user experience from first wanting
the product to replacing it.

In addition to creating user experiences that elicit, avoid or encourage certain kinds of
emotional reactions another approach called affective computing has attempted to develop
computer based systems that recognise and express emotions in the same way that humans
do.

Expressive Intefaces

Expressive forms like emoticons, sounds, icons, and virtual agents have been used at the
interface to :
i) Convey emotional states
ii) Elicit certain kinds of emotional responses in users such as feeling at ease,
comfort, and happiness

Icons and animations have been used to indicate the current state of a computer or a cell
phone notably waking up or being rebooted. The appearance of an icon on the screen can
be reassuring to users indicating that their computer is working correctly.

Other ways of conveying system status is through the use of:

Dynamic Icons (eg recycle bin expanding when file place in it)
Animations (eg beach ball whirling to say computer is busy)
Spoken messages using various kinds of voices, telling the user what needs to be done e.g
GPS
Various sonifications indicating actions and events (eg a ding for new email arriving)
Vibrotactile feedback, such as distinct cell phones buzzes that specifically represent special
messages from friends and family

One of the benefits of using these kinds of expressive embellishments is that they can
provide reassuring feedback to the user that can be both informative and fun. They can
have the opposite effect on people who find them intrusive causing them to get annoyed or
even angry. This is especially true for cutesy ones. How they are perceived varies across
cultures. Users also are inventive in expressing emotions at the computer interface through
the use of emoticons. Emoticons are originally keyboard symbols that were combined in
various ways to convey feelings and emotions by simulating facial expressions such as
smiling, winking, or frowning on the screen. Meaning of the emoticon depends on the
content of the message and where it is placed on the screen.

The style of an interface, in terms of the shapes, fonts, colours, balance, white space, and
graphical elements that are used and the way they are combined can also influence its
emotional impact. Use of imagery at the interface can result in more engaging and
enjoyable experiences. The design of aesthetically pleasing interfaces has also become of
central concern to interaction design. Empirical studies show that aesthetics of an interface
can have a positive effect on peoples perceptions of the systems usability. Aesthetically
pleasing interfaces make users more tolerant and are often more satisfying and pleasurable
to use. A key concern therefore is to strike a balance between designing aesthetic and
usable interfaces.
Frustrating interfaces

Interfaces, if designed poorly, can make people look stupid, or feel insulted or threatened.
The effect can be to make them annoyed to the point of losing their temper. There are many
reasons why such emotional responses occur:

When an application doesnt work properly or crashes
When a system doesnt do what the user wants it to do
When a users expectations are not met
When a system does not provide sufficient information to let the user know what to do
When error messages pop up that are vague or obtuse
When the appearance of the interface is too noisy, garish, gimmicky , or patronising
When a system requires users to carry out too many steps to perform a task, only to
discover a mistake was made somewhere along the line and they need to start all over again

Often user frustration is a result of bad design, no design, inadvertent design or ill-thought
out design. The impact of poor design on users can be quite drastic and make them
abandon the application or tool.

1. Gimmicks
An example of this is that frustration can happen when clicking a link to a website only to
discover that it is still under construction. It can be even more annoying when the website
displays a jokey sign. Although the website owner think that such signs are amusing, it
merely increases the viewers frustration having made the effort to go to the website only to
be told that it is incomplete.

2. Error Messages

Threatening error messages can cause users to panic. Error messages should state the
cause of the problem and how to fix it.

Recommendations:
Rather than condemn users, messages should be courteous, indicating what users need to
do to set things right
Avoid using terms like FATAL, ERROR, INVALID, BAD, ILLEGAL
Avoid long code numbers and uppercase letters
Audio warnings should be under the users control, since they can cause more
embarrassment
Messages should be precise rather than vague
Messages should provide a help icon or command to allow users to get context sensitive
help
Messages should be provided at multiple levels so that short messages can be
supplemented with longer explanations

3. Waiting
An example of this is when websites or software apps that take forever to download can be
frustrating. Showing an icon whirring around and the word loading with a slow percentage
bar increasing on the splash page can be off-putting, unless the user expects or knows that
something good is going to appear. Links that hang and eventually do not load can also be
very annoying.

4. Appearance
People are often annoyed by:
Websites that are overloaded with text and graphics, making it difficult to find the
information desired and are slow to access.
Flashing animations, especially flashing banner ads and pop-up ads that cover what
the user is looking at and which requires them to actively click on a check box to
close them.
The over-use of sound effects and music, especially when selecting options, carrying
out actions, running tutorials or watching website demos.
Featuritis an excessive number of operations such as the array of buttons on
remote controls.
Childish designs that keep popping up on the screen, such as certain kinds of helper
agents.
Poorly laid out keyboards, pads, control panels, and other input devices such that
cause users to persistently press the wrong keys or buttons.


Persuasive Technologies and Behavioural change

A diversity of technologies is increasingly being used to draw peoples attention to certain
kinds of information in an attempt to change what they do or think. Pop-up ads, warning
messages, reminders, prompts, personalised messages, and recommendations are some of
the methods that are being deployed on computer screens. Fogg labelled this phenomenon
persuasive technology; interactive computer systems are deliberately designed to change
peoples attitudes and behaviours. E.gs are amazons one-click mechanism.
Recommenders based on previous purchases, splash pages to online shopping site, colour
images of holiday destinations are designed to lure people into impulse purchases.

In addition they can be used to change peoples behaviours in non-commercial domains
such as safety, preventative healthcare, fitness, personal relationships, energy consumption.
Here the emphasis is on changing habits or improving well-being through monitoring their
behaviour. Designers use the use of positive reinforcement to inform their design.

Properties that make real-time feedback effective:

One dimension is the frequency of feedback. Continuous or daily feedback may give
better results than monthly feedback.
Type of representation used. If it is too obvious or explicit it may be perceived as too
personal, blunt resulting in people rejecting it. Must also not be too implicit or
abstract.
Peer pressure
Social norms