Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Edition

1

What is interaction design?

• Describe what and who is involved in the process of interaction design.
• Outline the different forms of guidance used in interaction design.
• Enable you to evaluate an interactive product and explain what is good and bad about it in terms of the goals and core principles of interaction design.

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Good and poor design

1.3 What is interaction design?

1.4 The user experience

1.5 The process of interaction design

1.6 Interaction design and the user experience

1.1 Introduction

How many interactive products are there in everyday use? Think for a minute about what you use in a typical day: cell (mobile) phone, computer, personal organizer, remote control, coffee machine, ATM, ticket machine, library information system, the web, photocopier, watch, printer, stereo, DVD player, calculator, video game … the list is endless. Now think for a minute about how usable they are. How many are actually easy, effortless, and enjoyable to use? All of them, several, or just one or two? This list is probably considerably shorter. Why is this so?

Think about when some device caused you considerable grief—how much time did you waste trying to get it to work? Two well-known interactive devices that cause numerous people immense grief are the photocopier that doesn't copy the way they want and the VCR or DVD that records a different program from the one they thought they had set or none at all. Why do you think these things happen time and time again? Moreover, ...