Interaction Design, 6th Edition

Chapter 7INTERFACES

• 7.1 Introduction
• 7.2 Interface Types
• 7.3 Natural User Interfaces and Beyond
• 7.4 Which Interface?

 

Objectives

The main goals of the chapter are to accomplish the following:

• Provide an overview of the diversity of interfaces.
• Highlight the main design and research considerations for each of the interfaces.
• Discuss what is meant by a natural user interface.
• Consider which interface is best for a given application or activity.

7.1 Introduction

When considering how to solve a user problem, the default solution that many developers choose to design is an app that can run on a smartphone. Making this easier still are many easy-to-use app developer tools that can be freely downloaded. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to see just how many apps there are in the world. In 2022, Apple had more than 2 million apps in its store while Google had more than 3 million!

Despite the immensity of the smartphone app industry, the web continues to proliferate in offering services, content, resources, and information. A central concern is how to design websites that deliver services, content, resources, and information across different devices and browsers, which takes into account the varying form factors of smart watches, smartphones, laptops, smart TVs, and computer screens. Besides the app and the web, many other kinds of interfaces have been developed and researched, including voice interfaces, touch interfaces, gesture interfaces, and multimodal ...