User Centred Design

A starting journey in usability

studies
Welcome
•Lecturer
–Flora Salim ([email protected])
–William Lim ([email protected])
•Head tutor
–William Lim ([email protected])
•12 lectures
–Two-hour pracs cover the lecture content of the previous
week + hands on
Class Schedule
Day Time Venue Tutor
Tuesday 1430-1630 14.10.30 Renee
Tuesday 1530-1730 14.09.15 Johanne
Tutors:
Tuesday 1630-1830 56.04.82 Bowen
- William Lim
Wednesday 830-1030 14.09.23 Bowen - Renee McMillian-Tolley
Wednesday 1230-1430 14.09.15 William - Bowen Wu
Wednesday 1730-1930 56.04.82 Andrian - Johanne Trippas
Wednesday 1730-1930 14.09.23 Abhijeet - Andrian Radic
Wednesday 1930-2130 TBC TBC - Veatrissa Lim
Thursday 830-1030 14.10.30 Renee - Abhijeet Nair
Thursday 1030-1230 14.09.15 Renee
Thursday 1430-1630 14.09.15 William
My consultation time:
Thursday 1730-1930 56.04.83 Abhijeet
Friday 830-1030 14.09.15 William
after lecture and by
Friday 1430-1630 14.10.31 Veatrissa
appointment
Friday 1530-1730 56.04.87 Andrian (TBC)
Book?
•User-Centered Design
–Cheap ($20 for eBook)
–DRM free
–Short
–Good
•Influenced our lecture notes
Book?
• Don't make me think, revisited : a • 100 things every designer needs to
common sense approach to Web know about people by Susan
usability by Steve Krug Weinschenk
Pay attention to lectures & come to
pracs – why?

UCD covers two aspects: Theoretical and practical.

Most lectures are theoretical / conceptual, most pracs (tute-labs) are
about applying the concepts learned in the lecture.
Pracs materials always follow the preceding week of lecture materials.
Both will be assessed
Overall Course Structure*
• All about users and working with users
– Observation and user study
– Designing with users
– Prototyping and experimenting with users
• Design principles, patterns
– Design heuristics, i.e. Nielsen
– Design and interaction framework
– Web Design patterns
– Mobile design patterns
– Accessibility and internationalisation
• Industry Guest Lecture(s) *For week-by-week structure, see Canvas or Course Guide
Assessment Structure
•Assignment 1 (15%) – User centered survey
•Assignment 2 (30%)
Part 1: Interface design, heuristics, and report;
Part 2: Working prototype and final report
– Both Assignment 1 and 2 will be done in groups.
– Each member of the group will peer-review and evaluate contributions
of other members at the end of each assignment.
• Mid-semester test (10%) – week 7, during lecture
• In-lecture quizzes (5%) : 1pt/quiz, 6x (week 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12), max 5/5
• Final Examination (40%)
What students think about UCD course
“I really like the content explored in the lectures. Lab activities were really cool as well. Both teacher
and lecturer were always very engaged and motivated”
“it gave me a clear understanding of the importance of the relationship between design and
technology. I really enjoyed this course.”
“The content taught is useful as a software designer, and will help us make easily used applications.”
“The course was important for my understanding of software systems and their development to help
me understand the true goals of software rather than the technical details of implementation, which
is the role of other courses.”
“The tutorials allow you to put what you've learned into practice and get feedback from the tutor
immediately, which really helps in clearing up misunderstandings of the subject.”

“The tutorials were by far the most enjoyable of my degree so far, X our tutor was passionate and
very helpful with the content and made it highly enjoyable. The content was relevant to my degree
and was interesting. ”
Student Feedback
“I was one of the students in the middle of my degree when the restructure
happened for the IT degree through rmit and oua. It wasn't that much of a concern
for me, and it doesn't really matter what I'm doing, I always get something out of it.
But I gotta say, I totally agree that this subject is a foundation for an IT degree.
Whether you're going to be a networking guy, or build computers, or be a
developer, or whatever, understanding why people are going to be using a
system is a fundamental thing that crosses all of them.
Can't believe this type of thing wasn't there before, but it goes to show that IT is
more than just programming things these days, and that definitely came across in
the course.”
Today’s Learning Objectives
•To understand what is User Centred Design (UCD)
•To understand where does it fit in the usability sphere.
•To understand its relevance in the industry.
Why is UCD important

What can you get out of this course?

What is Usability?
•A trending word in today’s IT development and design
circles?
•Is in fact one of the oldest concepts.
•According to ISO, it is defined as "The extent to which a
product can be used by specified users to achieve
specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and
satisfaction in a specified context of use."
What is Usability?
Jakob Nielsen’s definition of usability
“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user
interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to
methods for improving ease-of-use during the design
process”.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
Nielsen’s Components of Usability
•Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks
the first time they encounter the design?
•Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can
they perform tasks?
•Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of
not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
•Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these
errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
•Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
Steve Krug’s Attributes of Usability
•Useful: Does it do something people need done?
•Learnable: Can people figure out how to use it?
•Memorable: Do they have to relearn it each time they use
it?
•Effective: Does it get the job done?
•Efficient: Does it do it with a reasonable amount of time
and effort?
•Desirable: Do people want it?
•Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even fun?
Let’s make a distinction
•Usability is not UCD
•Usability is a result, goal, a field (UE, UX)

•UCD is a methodology
•Usability is an outcome of UCD process
Some definitions
From Lowdermilk’s book, User-centered design:
•HCI focuses specifically on humans interacting with
computing products.
•UCD is a methodology used by developers and
designers to ensure they’re creating products that
meet users’ needs.
•UX is one of the many focuses of UCD. It includes
the user’s entire experience with the product,
including physical and emotional reactions.
In short
Usability
How well a product communicates with the user on:

Engage How to use me

to

Enable How to use me to achieve your task

to
Empower
How well do you understand my role in achieving
your goal.
Overall Process
Identify Goal

Identify
requirements

Personas and
Scenarios
Speak to
users at every Wireframes
stage.

Prototyping
Prototyping
Analysing user behaviours
The chicken and egg of UX and UI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wZUTe70w1Y
Why do we care?
http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2014/06/5-reasons-
cant-afford-ignore-mobile-app-quality.html
 About mobile app but it’s more general
– Competition
– First impressions
– No compartmentalize quality
– Apps are everywhere
– Quality is not IT only
Usability is critical to success in a way it just wasn’t until recently
Facebook
Has a huge team for UX and invests a lot of resources in this sector. Why
do you think?

The Like button

Facebook Reactions

Check out this video https://youtu.be/quJdL9ggETI

Instagram
Their simple to use UI and UX propelled them far away and above
established players like photobucket or flickr.

Users are lazy.

Humans are lazy.

Humans using different platforms have different behaviours.

The idea is...
We understand what are the processes involved in UCD right now.

We put into practice what we learn, via theory, guidelines and lessons
learnt.

We understand the language, and take this into account whenever you
are building anything, for clients or as a hobby.
Shifting the focus
Users

Don’t care about underlying

issues (though they used to)
Users
•Do not care about technical details
•Not quite
–They used to, but user population is
growing
Most of all, users
•Sometimes does not know what they
want.
–How do we design for them?
User Centred Design
•Is a method/process to improve usability
•To remove as much guess work as possible
•To work from the perspective of the user whenever it is
relevant to do so
Because the goal is…
•To create a better user experience
•To continually work with users to understand what works
best
•Example - Instagram
–“[Follow] what people love. If you just play user psychologist a little and you
listen to your users and you see what they’re focusing on and what they’re
ignoring…sometimes if you do what they’re hinting…you should do because
of their behavior, good things can happen.”
But what does that mean?
•Let’s journey back 5000 years. (No dinosaurs)
•Consider a bronze age stone dagger. (~2300 BCE)
Can you deduce…
•Which end is the cutting end? Why?
•Why are there ridges on the edges?
•How would you improve its usability?
Now how about something ubiquitous
•The humble nail
•It is obvious which end one should strike with the hammer
•Yet, consider the person who invented it.
–What would be his thought process when he enlarged
the flat end?
So back to computing…
•Usability is everywhere. The practice pervades itself in
every tool, object you can use.
•The very design of this lecture hall, to
•the smartphones you are using right this moment, to
•the facebook status updates you are now checking, to
•the quick lock buttons on your phones when you heard me
muttering the word facebook.
Usability is not just design
•Your websites being pretty is not the main goal here.
•The value of aesthetics change
•Like other things, your product can be pretty and flashy but
is difficult to use.
Usability is not just design
•It is not only about making the best looking application
–Google example
•It is not merely concerning the aesthetics
•Looks aren’t everything. Well it certainly helps of course.
Steve Jobs on design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPfJQmpg5zk

What are the important points he made in the video?

Is there any highlights / lightbulb moments for you from his view of
design?
Example: Flash animations
•Were all the rage when flash first appeared.
•Most websites were literally not responsive to user input on
purpose for 5-10 seconds after being loaded.
•Why would they have thought this is a good idea?
Our public transport friend
Count the number of
arrows in this picture.

How long did it take for

you to learn how to use
this machine?

How long do you think it

would take an elderly?

Would you rather top up

your card at 7-11?
Consider another Melbourne staple
•Trams.
•Specifically, the old types where you had to pull an
overhead cord if you wanted get off at the next stop.
•How did you learn that?
•Did you see someone else doing it?
•Or did you pull and see what happens.
How do you open this door?
How do you open this door?
How do you open this door?
Norman Doors
Why you often don’t know whether to push or pull?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI
Norman Doors
Norman doors don’t signify the right affordance .

When users perceive the doors, they often develop

a mismatched mental model of how the door works
Affordance
First coined by James J. Gibson as:
all "action possibilities" latent in the environment,
independent of an individual's ability to recognize them, but
always in relation to agents (people or animals) and
therefore dependent on their capabilities

Don Norman appropriated the term for HCI.

Norman's affordances "suggest" how an object may be
interacted with.

(Wikipedia & The Design of Everyday Things)

What UCD is not
Not a bug report
•It is not only a reactive process
–Do listen to users, watch them
•It is in fact more effective when proactive
•Anticipation of user’s needs
Programmers and UCD
•As programmers it is always tempting to seek out the
HOW
•However we should ask WHY
•Implementing something cool is always great if you are
always the only user.
•The quick and easy way to code things often leads to poor
usability
Programmers and UCD
• Excel 2003
– “The sheet you are copying contains cells that have more than 255
characters in them. Copying an entire sheet truncates cells that contain
more than 255 characters. To avoid truncation, copy the cells of the
source sheet to the destination (rather than copying the entire sheet).”
Not a waste of resources
•One of the fastest growing field in IT
•Saves you time and money
Because it
•Reduces the probability of redesign later on
•Streamlines the testing phase of development
The biggest challenge?
It’s not just the users…
•Those commissioning your app have no idea what they
want

•What do you do?

To finish
Interface Hall of Fame or Shame?

Start to submit these to my email with the subject “Interface Hall of Fame or Shame”
and I’ll pick one for each lecture to discuss.
Interface Hall of Fame or Shame?
Interface Hall of Fame or Shame?
So to recap…
To understand what is User Centred Design (UCD)
To understand where does it fit in the usability sphere.
To understand its relevance in the industry.
How do you open this door?

Left Door Right Door

Next week we will…
•Try to understand the importance of identifying the correct
users
•Learn how to work with them towards a design objective
Suggested text reading
•Chapter 1: Our World Has Changed
•Chapter 2: What is User-Centred Design?
Possible books
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences by
Jesmond Allen & James Chudley
• Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design (Voices That Matter)
by Giles Colborne
• Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction by Yvonne Rogers,
Helen Sharp, Jenny Preece
•And now for something completely different...
–Make It So - Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction by Nathan
Shedroff & Christopher Noessel