01 Designing interactive systems: A fusion of skills

Aim
The aim of this chapter is to get you interested in designing interactive systems,
on the breadth and scope of the subject and on the different skills that designers
need.

Notes
• Computing and communication devices are embedded in all sorts of
everyday devices such as washing machines and televisions, ticket
machines and jewellery.
• No self-respecting exhibition, museum or library is without its interactive
component.
• We carry and wear technologies that are far more powerful than the
computers of just a few years ago.
• There are websites, online communities, mobile applications and all
manner of other interactive devices and services that need developing.
• The designer of interactive systems needs to be able to deal with the wide
range of technologies and contexts in which they are used.
• The designer of interactive systems needs to take a human-centred
approach to the activity of design. Being human-centred is important to
ensure systems are safe, developed in an ethical manner, effective and
sustainable.

Use the tags to Google and find out more.

1.1 The variety of interactive systems

Aim
In this section you will study examples of interactive products and services. Think
about the differences between them and at the design issues.

Tags
Designing interactive systems, iPhone, Wii, Second Life, Artificial Life, Toys,
Facebook

Tips for Studying

iPhone
There are plenty of good videos on Apple’s iPhone site. Watch the adverts,
critique the designs and compare to similar features on your own and on your
friends’ phones. Look at specific features – e.g. the wheel for selecting dates and
times. Look at some apps and reviews on the apps store.

Wii
Use the Wii to think about games and in particular to discuss gesture as an input
method. There are plenty of videos of people playing the Wii. How will gesture
move from the games domain to other applications? How can the system
recognize gesture (how does the Wii do it)? Compare this to the Xbox interface.
Gesture means much more inclusive interaction. How do we use gestures in
everyday life?
Second Life
Focus on the ideas of avatars and avatars as representations of the self. How
closely do people identify with their avatars? There is plenty of content at
http://secondlife.com. Sign up and play around with it. Look at the navigation
interaction.

Spike the Dinosaur

Think about designing for children and about toys in general. What toys did you
have? What was the technology? Think about similarities and differences in
technologies. How fundamental are they? Go back a generation and think about
toys and principles of interactivity.

Facebook
Most students will have some form of social networking, but will often only use
one. What apps do you use? What are the differences between Bebo, Facebook,
Orkut, and MySpace? Think about privacy issues and how invasive (or not) you
find social networking.

Further Thoughts
The Further Thoughts box is on artificial life. The idea here is to get you thinking
about how technologies may develop in the future. What is possible, what is likely
and what is not? The book Prey by Michael Crichton is a great example, well
worth reading and raises many of the issues. Watch films such as 2001: A Space
Odyssey, AI and I Robot.

1.2 The concerns of interactive systems design

Aims
This section introduces the idea of design and what it is and the specifics of
interaction design, being human-centred and the fact that in interactive systems
there has to be an interface for people to access and manipulate content.

Tags
product design, design, engineering design, artistic design, design as craft,
Donald Schön, interactive system, people and technologies, (user) interface,
human-computer interaction (HCI), human-centred design,

Tips for Studying

Design
Think about different types of interactive systems design along with product
design. Think about the idea of service design. Look at iTunes as the best
example of services – or Amazon’s check out. Compare with your favourite awful
examples, such as Ryanair.

Think about design as engineering, art and design as craft.

Think about design as a ‘conversation with materials’ and the work of Donald
Schön. There is a good article on Schön at http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-
schon.htm
Look at http://www.howdesign.com for general discussions about design
including interactive design.

People and Technologies

The key sentences here are ‘Interactive systems are things that deal with the
transmission, display, storage or transformation of information that people can
perceive. They are devices and systems that respond dynamically to people’s
actions.’ Think about what fits in and what is outside the scope of interaction
design.

People and Technologies are different. Discuss the contents of Box 1-1 with
friends. There is a nice extract from Donald Norman’s book The Design of
Everyday Things available via the Open University. You need to register, but we
will come back to this site later. Otherwise buy Norman’s book.

The Interface
Some people call this the ‘user interface’, but I am consistently dropping the term
‘user’ from my vocabulary, as we are all users now. The key things here are:
• to think about physical, perceptual and conceptual interfaces,
• distinguish interfaces with people (‘user interfaces’) from interfaces
between components (such as networks)
• think about input, output and content (e.g. video, graphics, text, sound,
etc.) and their relationships. What media for content do different
technologies support?

Distinguish interface from the whole interaction; human-device interaction and

human-human interaction that are mediated by technologies.

Being Human-centred
This is a chance to look at a bit of history and to think about the relationship
between human-computer interaction (HCI), Computer Human interaction (CHI)
and interaction design. This is a good opportunity to get acquainted with SIGCHI
and its extensive archives. http://www.sigchi.org/

1.3 Being digital

Aim
The aim of this section is to expand on the history just introduced to give a rich
understanding of the development of human-centred interaction design ideas and
where we might be going.

Tags
Nicholas Negroponte, MIT, Media Lab, Bruce Tognazinni, Tog, history, ‘Lick’
Licklider, Media Equation, graphical user interface, GUI, Xerox Parc, Alan Kay,
Shackel, CHI, information appliances, apps, Wi-Fi, IDEO

Tips for Studying

Critique Negroponte’s vision. Not bad as it was written 15 years ago! Can you
imagine 15 years into the future?
How we got here
There are plenty of opportunities to expand on this material, for example by
looking in depth at one or more of the main figures. Again use the SIGCHI site for
starters. Jonathan Grudin’s introduction in The Handbook of HCI (2nd edition) is
excellent.

Where are we heading?

There are interesting discussions to be had about applications on iPhone, Android,
etc. and the principles underlying the information appliances idea. Discuss with
friends.

The Microsoft report provides a good view of where things are heading and
available free.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/hci2020/

Think about ideas of worth and what interaction designers should contribute to
the world.

1.4 The skills of the interactive systems designer

Aim
This section surveys the disciplines that interaction system designers need to be
able to draw upon.

Tags
Social sciences, sociology, cultural studies, Psychology, Ergonomics,
Technologies, community of practice, product design, graphic design

Tips for Studying

In the introduction note the reference to activities in the process of interaction
design –understand, design, envision, evaluate. There is a chapter on each of
these in Part II of the book and they are introduced in Chapter 2 and 3.

People
Surveying the main people-oriented disciplines - we’ll be studying much more on
all of this later. Many of the chapters in Part IV of the book deal with
understanding people.

Technologies
There is more on technologies in Chapter 2. Think about software and hardware
and all the emerging technologies such as new materials (fabrics, plastics and so
on) that will be involved in interaction design.

Activities and Contexts

The social side of being human - The idea of ‘community of practice’ is worth
exploring in some more detail. Again there is a nice article at infed,
http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm

Design
Dealing with design disciplines - Think back to the discussion on design earlier in
this chapter. Think about working in a design team and how to facilitate
communication between team members. What notations and other forms of
envisionment do design teams use?

1.5 Why being human-centred is important

Aim
This section explores the rationale for being human-centred.

Tags
ROI, safety, Three Mile Island, human error, effectiveness, Jared Spool, UIE.com,
pogo-sticking, ethics, intellectual property, standards, sustainability,

Tips for Studying

Return on investment
This covers ideas of effectiveness in general including cost effectiveness. There is
a nice paper at Amber Light that also introduces the ideas of usability companies
and what they do. Look at their resources section at http://www.amber-
light.co.uk/user-experience-and-usability-resources.php.

It is also a good time to get acquainted with the site at http://www.uie.com and
browse their white papers.

Safety
Don Norman has a little bit on safety; time to get acquainted with his site at
http://www.jnd.org/index.html. Also look for HCI in health and medical domains,
where safety is again a critical issue.

Ethics
Ethics is a huge issue that is just given a brief introduction here. Look at the ACM
code at http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics. In particular issues of IP and
‘borrowing’ material from websites is a good topic for discussion.

Sustainability
This is just emerging as an important topic in HCI and interaction design. Discuss
social (and cultural) sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental
sustainability. Think about the developing countries in the world as well as
Western societies.