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Argentine tango blog
/ with Interaction Design interludes / by Oleh Kovalchuke |
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April, 2006
Apr. 30, 2006 - Online version of Paper cut out dolls game
Anonymous from Gussy online has asked: "Can ideas like this work?".
What you are offering is online version of cut out paper dolls game. It is more engaging experience than watching photographs and will appeal to the same people who used to dress up those cut out dolls.
Problems with current implementation and several suggestions:
- "Available Items" area is too big for smaller monitors - jeans will not be visible. Put "There is more" indicator if user needs to scroll. Consider constraints of future expansion of the catalogue due to company growth. In the later case you might use this kind of page as an engaging interaction for exclusive selection of "featured" items.
- Consider highlighting mutually nonexclusive items in the "Available items" area.
- Consider using single click for item selection/removal instead of drug-n-drop.
- Consider adding "Save This Outfit" option for side by side comparison of two or more different ensembles.
- Disable "Buy Now" when no items are selected (for mannequin in underwear).
- Present "Buy Now" action as visibly clickable button. Place it under the list of selected items.
- Show both item description and price without animated rotation.
Spent the last six months cramming on IxD literature and the last two days putting the Interaction Design book list on the website. I've learned a lot.
Apr. 24, 2006 - Sustainable design
Interesting post on Sustainable Design.
The sustainable design is one of the latest developments in the steady shift from "father knows best", "absolute truth" views to "cooperative knowledge", humanist mentality and ethics. In Western civilization the shift started about 500 years ago with advent of Renaissance.
Lakoff in 'Don't Think of an Elephant' illustrates this shift of views with the example of current US politics where neocons (visibly represented by "Bush, Inc.") embody the latest push-back of "restrictive father" family values and therefore disregard such issues as sustainable living. It's a good book and Lakoff also offers several approaches to reframing our collective conscience in terms responsible living.
Apr. 10, 2006 - Why UI Design is in fact a branch of Interaction Design
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 user interface attributes 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.
Apr. 8, 2006 - Selecting appointment time
Two visual suggestions.
1. http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=694653
Time selection at Google Finance site. The top scale would represent working hours period (obviously there is no need for zoom window).2. http://tinyurl.com/ovcre
Product rating at Amazon - scroll to the bottom of the page to "This DVD and You" section to view example. Imagine time in 15 minutes increments instead of stars. Select start point with mouseover, select end of appointment with click. Re-select new time with the same technique.Suggestion #2 simplified (hence time saved in all senses):
If most appointments are half hour long you could provide a scale in half hour increments where one click would select appointment time. Two hour appointment would result in four clicks. For edge cases provide 15 min scale and "Show time in 15 minute increments" button, which swaps the scale (if user preselected half hour interval it is preserved and displayed as selected). All of it is fairly simple to code.
As a result most users would select appointment in one click with few selecting it in fewer than four clicks - less than drop-downs approach, which forces _everyone_ to do at least 6 clicks (drug counts for click). Tremendous savings of time for everyone concerned.
Apr. 7, 2006 - Reality bats last
On brainstorming new designs Josh Seiden wrote about approach used by Cooper:
"reality bats last" means that eventually, reality will impose itself upon your thinking. Reality never needs an advocate.
To illustrate the inevitable imposition of reality further: you are an interaction designer (first reality imposition); someone asks you: "Could you redesign this ATM card?" (second reality imposition); you reply: "Who needs ATM?" and go to live in a desert for the rest of your life (I have skipped couple steps here).
Well, this kind of reasoning is exceedingly rare (Buddha comes to mind). Hence "You do not need to advocate for reality it will take care of itself" is really good approach. New solutions (creativity) will always be based on rearranging patterns from experience anyway (another plug to Hawkins book is due here). Try to reach for untapped, weakly connected patterns.
Apr. 6, 2006 - Interaction design is design of time (refined concept)
After some discussion on IxD list here is refined definition of interaction design.
The discussion illustrates another peculiar property of human mind. The idea has to be presented in one simple chunk, not in three paragraphs. Otherwise the qualifiers (second and third paragraph) will be ignored. On elementary level an example of this phenomenon would be shape perception: perception of either two faces or a vase in Rubin's Vase. On more complex concept level it is known as "own a word in the customer's mind" in marketing ("cola", "overnight" etc.).
I should have written this:
We live in time. The goal of interaction design is design of time in user defined meaningful way. User gives time meaning based on perceived length of the time interval. The scale for time perception provides practical outline of meaning of different time periods.
Interaction designer has to be able to uncover and incorporate those time interval meanings, which users do not consciously articulate (this is what contextual interviews as well as formal education in philosophy and human sciences (physiology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology...) are for) - this important qualifying concept had to be written in a separate paragraph and hence it will be lost initially and brought to everyone's attention later on (just wait and see).
User time can be loosely (photos, architecture, sovereign application window) or tightly (movies, music, software Wizard) controlled by designer. To paraphrase: users can be offered few or many interaction choices by design.
It follows then that meaningless time fluff should be removed by interaction designer. Time disruptions due to safety concerns are not meaningless hence should not be considered time fluff and should be incorporated into design. It also follows then that to see and to incorporate meaning interaction designer has to be well versed in human sciences (and in philosophy).
I believe the above definition addresses slow design, Myst game experience, social nature of humans as well as safety concerns.
Apr. 5, 2006 - Why is it important? Practical implications
I like this story I have heard on NPR some time ago: "There are three stages of scientific discovery - 1. people deny it is true, 2. deny it is important 3. credit it to the wrong person".
Stage 2. Why is it important?
Unified approach to interaction design evaluation. A stumble to ponder "Why is this warning written in green and not in red?" could be quantitatively compared to two clicks and scroll to use drop down menu, to system responsiveness.
For once system responsiveness could be incorporated as one of the more prominent properties of interaction design (among other time consuming properties). Jeff Johnson lamented lack of this attention in GUI Bloopers.
Time based approach to interaction design suggests criteria for quantitative evaluation of various interaction designs, both heuristics and usability testing - the holy grail of academia. For that the time perception table below would have to be expanded and validated (potential degree generating project). Of course in business environment Krug's "Don't make me think" approach, reduce clutter in mental and physical load will remain preferred, cost efficient method.
Apr. 4, 2006 - Scale of time perception
Indeed, interaction design is design of perceived time. "Perceived" qualifier is superfluous if you happen to be an experientialist (good book on experientialism and on prototype theory of classification is "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" by Lakoff).
Notice that attention is drawn to time intervals listed below only when the time intervals are violated. Hence design of attention is related but narrower category than design of time.
To design time one needs to be aware of time properties. All times are approximate within one order of magnitude.
Time Interval Perception Example of interval perception Possible underlying mechanism 0.1 sec perception of causation "Is this button sticky or what?" - this interval is important for nonchoppy animation eye saccade, low level neuron pattern activation 1 sec perception of interval of taking turns in conversation "Go open that Window already, will you?" 10 sec time interval before attention begins to drift from a single task "I like the colors. And the point is?" - this particular interval is especially important in movie editing low level pattern activation in neocortex All of the above is important for design of perceived system response time (see GUI Bloopers by Jeff Johnson).
Attention span is important for interaction design of single layout.
Recognition is somewhere in the above time scale.1 min recall, formation of mental model???, just guesses here 10-30 min formation of flow experience "I think I see where you going", "Where was I?", "What time is it?", "Eureka!" predictive pattern preactivation in higher layers of neocortex 1 day short memory storage, formation of long term memory "Who wrote that message about design of time yesterday?" interaction of hippocampus and neocortex 1 week learning simple skill "Gmail? What is it?" Hebbian learning? 1 year learning complex skill "Unix command interface? No problem..." formation of significantly new patterns and propagation of stable patterns into lower levels of neocortex, Hebbian learning? 10 years formation of personal values "Who am I?" - a midlife crisis question persistent neocortex patterns Lifetime (100 years) individual memory "Who was that bully in the high school?" persistent neocortex patterns Thousands of years societal, cultural memory "Who is this God person anyway?" storytelling Millions of years DNA memory "Whom will I sleep with tonight?" - perennial question of selfish gene "lizard" brain Apr. 3, 2006 - Interaction design is design of time
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.
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