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Argentine tango blog: Interaction Design interludes by Oleh Kovalchuke |
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Interaction Design is Design of Time. Conversation from IxD list.
<< Back to "Interaction Design is Design of Time" topic
Apr. 4, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction design is concerned primarily with time design (as opposed with design of space - a realm of graphic design).
The goal of interaction design is to remove time fluff: excessive clicks, scrolling, browsing, unnecessary screens - time-wasting information/interaction (of course the important question here is who decides which information is important (in a good process the importance is filtered from future users)).
Since time flow is subjective experience, the designer goal is to make it seamless unless disruptions are required due to overriding safety concerns.
Another important condition: the processes should be optimized to fit human nature (for instance it should support learning via exploration of system boundaries, for another instance it should support hero role playing), not to "ease of use" - a misnomer for usability if there was one.
Apr. 4, 2006 - Brian LeRoux
I like this analogy. It ties nicely back to Flow as defined by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. Try saying that three times.
Apr. 4, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
The concept of flow is good concept, which fits nicely into predictive hierarchical memory model of intelligence by Hawkins, which is even better concept. Csikszentmihalyi books on the other hand are way too preachy - the one I have read could have been condensed to 10 relevant pages. By the way, another well known instance of flow experiences from dancing tango: tango trance or tango zone.
i tend agree with this assessment. i don't consider myself an interaction designer but i have to spec and design a lot of user interfaces as part of my job. some are good, some are great and some are horrible.
why? the key factor is time - i have very little of it. many of my projects are spec'd commando style or ad hoc to solve problems on the fly.
it's very easy to make an interface overly complicated if one rushes or does not think out how something may work.
if one has time, one can apply methodology and process to solving many of these problems. when one has limited time, one does the best they can.
Apr. 4, 2006 - Mauro Cavalletti
Very interesting point of view. I am not sure if our goal is allways
>to remove time fluff: excessive
>clicks, scrolling, browsing, unnecessary screensbut it definitely includes manipulating the sense of time and flow. Not sure, either, if there is any conflict between time and space in this context.
It reminds me when I was in the architecture school and a professor claimed the "time component". He said that likewise music, architecture could not separate time from space. To me, this estatement makes even more sense in the digital environment.
Apr. 5, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
On similarity between architecture and music:
Fundamentally the same but more direct comparison is that of a photograph and a movie. In both cases time based storytelling informs the experience (the point made by the architecture professor). The difference is that for movies the time perception is more tightly guided. When you compare graphic and interaction design the same difference in degree of control of time perception applies. Incidentally that is why storyboards are so important for both movie directors and for interaction designers (the editor room is where the movie "prototype" (dailies) gets its second usability test).
Your architecture professor was both right and wrong: on elementary level human perception of both music and architecture incorporates both time and space - all senses have both temporal and spatial patterns, see "On Intelligence" by Hawkins for details.
Still Heidegger is on my reading list.
Music and movies can be considered the design of time-based experiences with pacing, introduction, climax, anticipation, breath-taking, rhythm, beats, etc. But these are all linear and largely controlled by the designer.
If we are contemplating a new vocabulary, I think it is important that we remember our design of time is indirect. It's time+choice. Level of choice is a key aesthetic. Maybe the word "motion" helps to combine time+space+choice.
With interaction, we are setting up an environment, a set of potentialities more like architecture, or an event (like a conference)--but an event ultimately co-constructed with the user. We can think of or construct beginnings and endings to tasks, but we can't make the experience. Most users may enter through the lobby, so we can plan for the experience there, but some will come in through the side door if they want to.
I do think the attention on time goes a good step though toward considering the aesthetics of experience (e.g. choppy, smooth, zigzaggin, momentary, spread-out, slowburn, swept-away, diving in, bubbling up ... well those are mostly spatial metaphors but that's because it is hard to visualize time)
Is it the design of time or the design of attention? It seems that from your description saved time is a positive side effect of minimizing divided and/or selective attention. There are certainly occasions where focusing attention on appropriate information will increase the time, e.g. in a medical record where you want the doctor to actually look at someone's information rather than flowing past it.
I agree with a previous post that interaction design is primarily concerned with attention. Time management is a side-effect.
It's how users allocate attention that we first need to understand and subsequently design for. Simplicity in design helps achieve this goal. By enabling people, through design, to allocate their attention to what they care about, we enable them to succeed with a minimum of wasted effort...and time.
Here are a couple of my favorite quotes on this topic:
"What information consumes is...the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources..." - Herb Simon (father of aritificial intelligence)"Create less clutter, or make sense of it faster than the competition, and you win." - Bill Jensen, Simplicity
yes, I agree with this, Todd.in some cases, your objective will be to get the user from point A to point B as quickly as possible, with the least number of errors. This is particularly true for transactional style interfaces.
In other interfaces, though, the goal may be to hold the users attention for an extended period of time.
So, I guess, time *is* a factor in interface design, but that shouldn't be simplified to mean that *speed* is always the goal.
And I'm not sure I agree that interface design is *primarily* concerned with design of time...
After reading through the post, I think I'll have to modify my initial thought and say that it's the management of attention through time. It was brought up that interactions take place in time, pretty much by definition. Management of attention in a static way would be in the realm of information and/or graphic design, so the process aspect is what IxD adds. But I'll maintain (at least for now) that time *savings* is a side effect of the management of attention across time.
I agree with a previous post that interaction design is primarily concerned
> with attention. Time management is a side-effect.I wouldn't exactly say that it is the design of time, unless you are some sort of divine entity. :)
But since all interactions take place in time, time is one of the elements of interaction design and needs to be accounted for. Sometimes that time can be near-instantaneous, like the time it takes to click a mouse. Sometimes it can involve very long durations. You can still find online usenet messages from decades ago.
Movement through space takes time to accomplish. As every gamer will attest, it takes time to press buttons (around 8 milliseconds at the fastest). Even with broadband speeds, it takes time for packets of data to travel from distant servers through the physical wires and perhaps through the air via wireless signal to your computer.
Interaction designers need an awareness of time. Some tasks are complicated and take a long time to complete—for instance, searching for and buying a product, and designers need to be aware of this.
Apr. 5, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
> I wouldn't exactly say that it is the design of time, unless you are
> some sort of divine entity. :)Personally I lean toward experientialism and therefore think that I can design my time and help others with the same.
On Apr 4, 2006, Jeff Howard wrote:
>> Dan Saffer said:
>> I wouldn't exactly say that it is the design of time, unless you
>> are some sort
>> of divine entity. :)
>
> The book Einstein's Dreams offers some nice insight into how that
> might work...I haven't read the book (I didn't know it was part of the IxD cannon of literature :) ) but to me there are two aspects of time:
1) Actual time, which objectively goes by, second by second. Or in digital terms, millisecond by millisecond.
2) Experienced time, which is more flexible. Waiting in a line or being stuck in traffic can seem to take hours, although it may take minutes. A week-long holiday might seem to fly by in a day's time.
I can see experienced time by manipulated by interaction designers constantly: even a few milliseconds can make a big difference in how an application feels. Actual time, well, I'll leave that to Einstein to manipulate.
Dan,
I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly.
If nothing else, read the Anthropologist Edward T Hall's "Dance of Life". It looks at the different dimensions of time, of which you have proposed 2 here. Too often we think of Newtonian time (sequential, linear, discreet seconds), instead of how that time is perceived.
In many of his papers and his book, "Flow", Csikszentmihalyi further explored the 'loss of time' during engaging experiences.
The perception and management of time is something that has been explored quite thoroughly in human factors - so anyone interested could look at the literature, especially the works in engagement, telepresence, crew resource management, operational performance, domestic technology, etc...
There are a few issues rolling around this thread.
1st I want to commend the original poster for bringing up this issue. I think I definitely agree with the core aspect of the post which is to suggest that time is a key component to what interaction designers are trying to manipulate.
In my sessions at the IA Summit, I used the phrase, "Time is our new constant companion." New in the sense that for IAs, they previously dealt with content and information as their primary focus, but more and more of them are dealing with interaction design as a core requirement of the solutions they are developing.
I have been trying to develope a concept of what are the core foundational elements that an interaction designer manipulates in order to create a solution. I'm concentrating on the purest pieces of IxD and avoiding areas of presentation, in so far as they don't effect the interaction design, which I hold to the definition on the IxDA web site. I summarize as simply the design of the behavior of interactive digital systems.
Time is definitely an important foundational element we manipulate. And with that I have to disagree with Dan and his assertion that we don't design time. We design time in the sense that time is a mental construct and is very relative through various experiential elements. I recommend that people read the book "Einstein's Dreams" as a great way to learn to explore time. I read it before I was a designer and it wasn't until this thread that I realized how much this fairly otherwise lame book was helpful for me to think about time as a device that I design and equally important design for.
Time can be broken down into a few types when we think about designing for it within interactive systems:
1. posture - how much time do I spend and with what level of concentration in a given application.
2. flow - how much time does it take to complete a task
3. management - how can I mitigate the perception of wasted time
4. efficiency - does my solution take less time than without my solution (note, you don't always want things to take less time).
5. physicality - how long does it take me to type, mouse, or use other external devices (think fitt's law)
There are more for sure.There are also more criteria in designing behavior than just time. But time does things that the other criteria don't. Designing for time requires that we experience the results to understand their effect. This is why prototyping is so important for interaction design practice.
Back to the other parameters. I know there are more of them, but the one that speaks loudest to me is "dialog". yes, dialogs exist over time, but dialogs are also about tone, presense and personality. Two great IA Summit presentations come to mind that are importnat to dialog. One is the Kevin Cheng piece about Comics. Comics is a great tool for designing dialog, and for getting an emotional experience of it. the other was the presentation on personality being engendered in objects. I can't remember the details, but also a great piece.
While I think that Time is really important to our work as IxD types, I would call it primary, and would call it one of the components that truly differentiates us. But it is not the only piece, that's for sure.
Leisa wrote:
So, I guess, time *is* a factor in interface design, but that shouldn't be simplified to mean that *speed* is always the goal.And I'm not sure I agree that interface design is *primarily* concerned with design of time...
This is one way to look at it: http://www.challishodge.com/images/ed_equation.gif
Apr. 5, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
> This is one way to look at it:
> http://www.challishodge.com/images/ed_equation.gif
>
> -challisThe classification illustrated by the diagram is misleading. Both UI and IA should be viewed as branches of interaction design.
Why UI design is interaction design? Take a look at any illustration of eye tracking of UI. They unfold in time. Hence guided time perception is indelible from UI design. Users spend time looking and discovering familiar patterns and use them as anchors for further interactions.
Why IA is interaction design? It is primary goal is reducing time of finding relevant information.
In this classification user experience is associated with interaction design, even though it is indeed wider category (a lot of experience is not designed).
I don't intend to be misleading I just don't agree with your definitions. The diagram is intended to describe roles and how skill sets contribute to various design efforts. The model also speaks to the evolution of design and the addition of new roles over time to support needs in print then software then web then mobile.
Apr. 8, 2006 - Gunnar Langemark
I'm not sure Einstein would have agreed that space is a subcategory of time.
While I find your argument interesting - I don't agree on the conclusion.
Sure: Every kind of interaction takes place in time. But equally: All kinds of experiences of and in time - are situated in space (relative to other places/spaces).
So in my world - time and space are on the same level of importance - and as such the information space and the interaction time - are equally important, and weigh in with different emphasis - on different projects. Exactly as in the graphic.
Apr. 10, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
Here only some of UI Design principles concerned with time:
- Chunking, Arranging content in grids, Alignment - reduce time of information scanning
- Fitt's law and Recognition over recall - directly time related
- Hick's law and related Signal-to-Noise ratio, Form follows function, Ockham's razor and Framing (or Priming), Choice of color and language based on Cognitive Dissonance principle - all save time by focusing on "user defined" meaningful info
- Storytelling and consistency - save time remembering things and predicting events
Even somewhat tricky Attractiveness Bias or "Halo" Effect principle can be reduced to (gene encoded) filter for information credibility, and like Garbage-in, Garbage-out principle helps to find meaningful info quicker.
Hence UI design is design of time, is interaction design (unless one chooses to ignore _all_ of the above principles in which case resulting design should not include UI attribute in my opinion).
Good example of time based interaction design approach specifically related to UI Design is described in "Designing from Both Sides of the Screen" by Isaaks and Walendoewski. To choose layout of screen elements the authors use matrix of frequency of use vs. commonality of use. Both frequency and commonality are time of use criteria.
The authors also offer somewhat rough but practical measure of time in UI Design: mouse click. For instance selecting item from a menu is 3 clicks (open, scroll, select). I would add 1 more "click" to remember which menu to open.
Hi, just been scanning this thread and I was taught on my interactive system design course that it is about time and space, although I can't remember Einstein coming up in the lessons. The terminology used that has stuck with for over ten years is time and space multiplexing. To my mind the idea that all interaction design uses a combination of time and space still very much rings true. For example of extremes an automated phone system uses time and a book uses space. Most web design uses space multiplexing mostly - with the time element coming into play with the concept of flipping between pages.
Apr. 10, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
Stewart Dean wrote:
> To my mind the
> idea that all interaction design uses a combination of time and space still
> very much rings true. For example of extremes an automated phone system uses
> time and a book uses space.You are referring to level of time control by design. In design of space time is more loosely coupled (or as Eugene Chen has put it: "Level of choice is a key aesthetic").
Here are more examples of tight and loose control of user time by design (tight vs. loose control): architecture (tunnel vs. office), music (classic vs. jazz), UI design (wizard vs. sovereign app window), visual presentation (movie vs. photo), directory (automated phone system vs. yellow pages book). Notice that even though these examples share the principle of time design, not all of them are related to space design
I don't think that the goal of interaction design is necessarily to remove time fluff. In some cases, efficiency might be prized. In others, not. In some cases, flow might be prized; other interactions are more cursory, or more considered. Wasn't Myst all about time fluff?
Interactions take place in the realm of time, but they also take place in the realm of language, and color and form. I don't think you can discount "space" quite so easily either. Certainly not in physical interactions.
Apr. 5, 2006 - Oleh Kovalchuke
Jeff Howard wrote:
> I don't think that the goal of interaction design is necessarily to remove time fluff. In some
> cases, efficiency might be prized. In others, not. In some cases, flow might be prized; other
> interactions are more cursory, or more considered. Wasn't Myst all about time fluff?Not at all (although I agree with your assertion that "wasted time" in the sense it is more frequently used is artificial and politically charged category). The goal of Myst player is flow experience achieved via exploration. If you where to disrupt that time flow with "To proceed you need to install software module B" messages, now that would be good example of time fluff to be cut.
As you can see there is no contradiction with what I have said:
> >Another important caution: the processes should be optimized to fit
> >human nature (for instance it should support learning via exploration
> >of system boundaries), not to "ease of use" - a misnomer for usability
> >if there was one.and
> I don't think you can discount "space" quite so easily either.
> Certainly not in physical interactions.Indeed my senses keep informing me that space cannot be dismissed but I would like to emphasize the fact that perception in general and that of space in particular is temporal.
> Oleh Kovalchuke said:
> perception in general and that of space in particular is temporal.Bergson's Time and Free Will seems like another particularly apt reading.
> dave atixdg.org said:
> While I think that Time is really important to our work as IxD types, I would call
> it primary, and would call it one of the components that truly differentiates us.It's certainly important for us to recognize time as a component of interaction design. In my opinion, that's one of the main distinctions between IxD and interface design.
I also agree with that time is primary to what we do. Language, behavior, emotion, perception... they don't exist outside of the context of time. But saying that interaction design is the design of time is like saying that industrial design is the design of gravity. It's necessary but not sufficient.
Apr. 4, 2006 - panu.korhonen@nokia.com
Interesting thread!
I like very much the concept of time for differentiating interaction design from (some) other related design disciplines, like graphic design and industrial design. Interaction is about the behavior of the thing in time. A direct sign of this is the popularity of scenarios and use cases for describing interaction. In that, the discrete events are ordered on a sequential timeline.
I'm working a lot with industrial designers who create the 3D appearance of products. For them, the product usually "is" or "looks like", and the product is the subject of the discussion. For interaction design, the product is an object and a (sometimes implicite) user "does", like "first the user presses this button, and then...". The discourse about interaction design is different - it includes both time and the user. For the industrial designer, the object will still be red if there would be nobody there to look at it... (Jeff mentioned that interaction design works with language; the differences in language designers use about and in their design would need another thread.)
Time is difficult to present. For industrial design or graphic design, if you show the object or design at hand, the audience will see all of it at once (well, for 3D you may need to turn the object around a few times). For interaction design, if you show one image, e.g. the starting screen of the interaction, the audience will only see the tip of the iceberg. It will take a lot of time and exploration by walking through the different interaction paths to really see the full designed object in interaction design. I think this is one of the reasons why interaction design has a challenge in the organizations. Because it's time based, with the short attention span of hectic business life will never see and therefore don't fully appreciate the complexity of interaction design. Anyone ever experienced an underestimated and underbudgeted UI design project?
Apr. 11, 2006 - Robert Reimann
Great thread, all!
My thoughts on the matter of time and IxD are as follows:
Although behavior occurs in time, it would be a mistake to reduce the design of behavior to mere manipulation of time (or more accurately, the perception and use of time). In particular, there is a "matching" of behaviors--machine to human--that must occur when designing superior interactions; it is not only time+space+choice as Eugene suggests, but rather time+space+choice+*response*, where the human choice is reciprocated by an appropriate machine response that (ideally) fits with human expectation or emotion in the context of that choice or action.
In About Face 2.0, I discuss translating human needs (for the purposes of designing interactions) into sets of objects+actions+contexts that provide an appropriate outcome. The complete behavior of a system could then be expressed as the set of relationships between all objects+actions+contexts in the system. Those relationships could be spatial, temporal, or even cognitive or emotional. It is the human context, the *meaning and interpretation* (to Dave's point regarding tone, presentation, personality) of behaviors according to emotions and mental models that elude a reduction to mere space and time.
Hey, that's it! I think we finally solved it. ;)
Seriously though, I think Robert's is a pretty full description. Don Norman described it as "Activity Design" in a recent issue of Interactions.
The focus on "user-centered design" (as a term) is after all missing exactly half the picture. We evolved from building feature-based systems to focusing on user needs. I think there are two concerns coming over the horizon:
1) what is the computer doing to add to the picture? surely it is more than a passive receptacle for user data and button pushes? what is it's part in the "dialog" as Dave put it--how does it *listen* and *respond*? can we create frameworks for computer behavior?
2) what is the result of the joint "Activity"? Photoshop is not just a tool, it's a medium. Likewise with say Ableton Live (a piece of music software that has been hugely responsible for the types of music that are created with it). Social SW also comes to mind.
we could really break open the door from usability to creativity here, schools of interaction style, personalities of interaction, moods of sw, etc...
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