Chapter 9: User-centered approaches to interaction design

Chapter 9: User-centered approaches to interaction design

From “Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction”

By J. Preece, Y. Rogers, H. Sharp

Presented by:

Xiaohong Bao

Steve Abrams

Introduction

User involvement in the development process

Contents: Advantages Principles Understanding user’s work: applying

ethnography in design Involving users in design: participatory design

Advantages

Developers gain a lot for better product by understanding users better

Expectation management Make sure that the users’ views and expectations are

realistic Support the users’ work more effectively Help the users to know and understand the product at

the early stage training

Ownership

Degrees of involvement

Full-time or part-time Duration of the whole project or a limited

time Through newsletters or workshop Attending evaluations

Principles

To design a useful and easy to use computer system Early focus on users and tasks Empirical measurement Iterative design

Early focus on users and tasks

User’s tasks and goals are the driving force behind the development

Users’ behavior and context of use are studied and the system is designed to support them

Users’ characteristics are captured and designed for.

Users are consulted throughout development from earlier phases to the latest and their input is seriously taken into account

All design decisions are taken within the context of the users, their work, and their environment

Involving users in design: Participatory Design

Users are actively involved in development. They design the product in cooperation with the designers

PICTIVE(Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology

Initiatives through Video Exploration)

PICTIVE --- continued

1. The stakeholders all introduce themselves

2. Brief tutorials about the different domains

3. Brainstorming the designs

4. A walkthrough of the design and the decision discussed

CARD(Collaborative analysis of Requirements and Design)

Takes a more macroscopic view of the task flow, while PICTIVE concentrates on detailed aspects of the system

Conclusion

Involving users in the design process helps with expectation management and feelings of ownership, but how and when to involve users is a matter of dispute

Putting a user-centered approach into practice requires much information about the users to be gathered and interpreted

Ethnography is a good method for studying users in their natural surroundings

Conclusion -continued

Representing the information gleaned from an ethnographic study so that it can be used in design has been problematic

The goals of ethnography are to study the details, while the goals of system design are to produce abstractions; hence they are not immediately compatible

Conclusion –continued 2

Coherence is a method that provides focus questions to help guide the ethnographer towards issues that have proved to be important in systems development

Contextual design in a method that provides models and techniques for gathering contextual data and representing it in a form suitable for practical design

PICTIVE and CARD are both participatory design techniques that empower users to take an active part in design decisions