Chapter 3

CONCEPTUALIZING
INTERACTION DESIGN?
 Conceptualizing design
Proof of concept
• Conceptualize what the proposed product will
do
Why the need to conceptualizing design?
• To scrutinize vague ideas and assumptions about
the benefits of the proposed product in terms of
their feasibility
• How realistic is it to develop?
• How desirable and useful?

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 Assumptions and claims
• Write down your assumptions and claims
when coming up with a new design
• Try to defend and support them by what they
will provide
• Those that are difficult to articulate
§ Can highlight what ideas are vague or unrealistic
§ Identify human activities and interactivities that
are problematic
• Iteratively work out how the design ideas
might be improved
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 What is an assumption?
• Taking something for granted when it
needs further investigation
§ For example, people will want to watch TV while
driving

Technotopic Narratives and Networked Subjects: Preparations for Everyday Life in Cooltown

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 What is a claim?

• A claim is stating something to be true

when it is still open to question

§ For example, “a multimodal style of interaction

for controlling GPS — one that involves
speaking while driving — is safe.”

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Activity: How will enabling robot waiters to speak
to customers enhance their experience?

Source: Xinhua, Guo Cheng

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 What is the problem being
addressed?
• The benefits:
§ The robot could take orders and entertain
customers by having a conversation with them
§ The robot could make recommendations for
different customers, such as restless children or
fussy eaters
• But just assumptions
• The real problem being addressed:
“It is difficult to recruit good wait staff who provide
the level of customer service to which we have
become accustomed.”

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 Working through assumptions
• Many unknowns need to be considered in
the initial stages of a design project
§ Where do your ideas come from?
§ What sources of inspiration were used?
§ Is there any theory or research that can be
used to inform them?
• During the early ideation process
§ Ask questions, reconsider assumptions, and
articulate concerns

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 A framework for analyzing the
problem space
• Are there problems with an existing product or
user experience? If so, what are they?
• Why do you think there are problems?
• How do you think your proposed design ideas
might overcome these?
• If you are designing for a new user experience,
how do you think your proposed design ideas
support, change, or extend current ways of doing
things?

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 Activity
• What were the assumptions and claims made
about watching 3D TV?

Figure 3.2 A family watching 3D TV

Source: Andrey Popov, Shutterstock

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Assumptions and claims: how realistic?

• There was no existing problem to overcome

§ What was being proposed was a new way of
experiencing TV
• An assumption
§ People would really enjoy the enhanced clarity and
color detail provided by 3D
• A claim
§ People would not mind paying a lot more for a new 3D-
enabled TV screen because of the new experience

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 Benefits of conceptualizing

Orientation
• Enables design teams to ask specific questions about
how the conceptual model will be understood
Open-minded
• Prevents design teams from becoming narrowly
focused early on
Common ground
• Allows design teams to establish a set of commonly
agreed terms

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From problem space to design space
• Having a good understanding of the
problem space can help inform the design
space
§ For example, what kind of interface, behavior,
functionality to provide

• Before deciding upon these, it is important

to develop a conceptual model

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 Conceptual model
• A conceptual model is:
“…a high-level description of how a system is organized
and operates” (Johnson and Henderson, 2002, p26)

• A conceptual model enables:

“…designers to straighten out their thinking before they
start laying out their widgets” (Johnson and Henderson,
2002, p28)

• Provides a working strategy and framework

of general concepts and their interrelations

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 Components
• Metaphors and analogies
• Understand what a product is for and how to use it for
an activity

• Concepts that people are exposed to

through the product
§ Task–Domain objects, their attributes, and operations
(for example, saving, revisiting, organizing)

• Relationship and mappings between these

concepts

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 First steps in formulating a
conceptual model
• What will the users be doing when carrying out
their tasks?
• How will the system support these?
• What kind of interface metaphor, if any, will be
appropriate?
• What kinds of interaction modes and styles to
use?
§ Always keep in mind when making design decisions how
the user will understand the underlying conceptual model

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 Conceptual models

• Many kinds and ways of classifying them

• The best conceptual models are often
those that appear:
§ Obvious and simple
§ The operations they support are intuitive to
use

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 Interface metaphors
• Interface designed to be similar to a physical
entity but also has own properties
§ For example, desktop metaphor, and web portals
• Can be based on activity, object, or a
combination of both
• Exploit user’s familiar knowledge, helping them
to understand ‘the unfamiliar’
• Conjures up the essence of the unfamiliar
activity, enabling users to leverage this to
understand more aspects of the unfamiliar
functionality
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 Examples of interface metaphors
• Conceptualizing what users are doing
§ For instance, surfing the Web
• A conceptual model instantiated at the
interface
§ For example, the desktop metaphor
• Visualizing an operation
§ For instance, an icon of a shopping cart into
which the user places items

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 The card metaphor
• The card is a very
popular UI. Why?
§ It has familiar form factor
§ It can easily be flicked
through, sorted, and
themed
§ It structures content into
meaningful chunks (similar
to how paragraphs are used to
chunk a set of related
sentences into distinct
sections)
§ Its material properties give Figure 3.5 Google Now card
the appearance of the for restaurant
recommendation in Germany
surface of paper
Source: Johannes Shonning
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Benefits of interface metaphors
• Makes learning new systems easier
• Helps users understand the underlying
conceptual model
• Can be very innovative and enable the
realm of computers and their applications
to be made more accessible to a greater
diversity of users

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Problems with interface metaphors
• Break conventional and cultural rules
§ For instance, recycle bin placed on desktop
• Can constrain designers in the way that they
conceptualize a problem space
• Conflicts with design principles
• Forces users to understand only the system in terms of
the metaphor
• Designers can inadvertently use bad existing designs
and transfer the bad parts over
• Limits designers’ imagination in coming up with new
conceptual models

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 Activity
• Describe the components of the
conceptual model underlying most online
shopping websites, for example:
§ Shopping cart
§ Proceeding to check-out
§ 1-click
§ Gift wrapping
§ Cash register

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 Interaction types
• Instructing
§ Issuing commands and selecting options
• Conversing
§ Interacting with a system as if having a conversation
• Manipulating
§ Interacting with objects in a virtual or physical space by
manipulating them
• Exploring
§ Moving through a virtual environment or a physical space
• Responding
§ The system initiates the interaction and the user chooses
whether to respond

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 1. Instructing
• Where users instruct a system and tell it what
to do
§ For example: Tell the time, print a file, or save a file

• Very common conceptual model underlying a

diversity of devices and systems
§ For instance: Word processors, VCRs, and vending
machines

• The main benefit is that instructing supports

quick and efficient interaction
§ Good for repetitive kinds of actions performed on multiple
objects

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Which is easiest and why?

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 2. Conversing
• Underlying model of having a conversation
with another human
• Ranges from simple voice recognition menu-
driven systems to more complex ‘natural
language’ dialogs
• Examples include timetables, search engines,
advice-giving systems, and help systems
• Also virtual agents, chatbots, toys, and pet
robots designed to converse with you

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 Pros and cons of conversational
model
• Allows users, especially novices, to interact
with a system in a way that is familiar to them
§ Can make them feel comfortable, at ease, and less scared

• Misunderstandings can arise when the

system does not know how to parse what the
user says
§ For example, voice assistants can misunderstand what
children say

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 3. Manipulating
• Involves dragging, selecting, opening, closing
and zooming actions on virtual objects
• Exploit’s users’ knowledge of how they move
and manipulate in the physical world
• Can involve actions using physical controllers
(for example, Nintendo Wii) or air gestures
(such as, Microsoft Kinect) to control the
movements of an on-screen avatar
• Tagged physical objects (for instance, balls)
that are manipulated in a physical world result
in physical/digital events (such as animation)
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 Direct Manipulation (DM)

• Ben Shneiderman (1983) coined the term DM

• Three core properties:
§ Continuous representation of objects and actions of
interest
§ Physical actions and button pressing instead of
issuing commands with complex syntax
§ Rapid reversible actions with immediate feedback on
object of interest

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 Benefits of direct manipulation
• Novices can learn the basic functionality quickly
• Experienced users can work extremely rapidly to carry
out a wide range of tasks−even defining new functions
• Intermittent users can retain operational concepts over
time
• Error messages rarely needed
• Users can immediately see if their actions are furthering
their goals, and if not, do something else
• Users experience less anxiety
• Users gain confidence and mastery and feel in control
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 Disadvantages of DM
• Some people take the metaphor of direct
manipulation too literally
• Not all tasks can be described by objects, and
not all actions can be done directly
• Some tasks are better achieved through
delegating, for example, spell checking
• Can become screen space ‘gobblers’
• Moving a cursor using a mouse or touchpad can
be slower than pressing function keys to do the
same actions
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 4. Exploring
• Involves moving through virtual or physical
environments
§ Users can explore aspects of a virtual 3D
environment
§ Physical environments can also be embedded with
sensors that when detect the presence of someone
will trigger digital or physical events to happen
• Many examples of virtual environments,
including cities, parks, buildings, rooms, and
datasets
§ Enable users to fly over them and zoom in and out of
different parts

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Seeing things larger than life in VR

Cyber-Insects in the CAVE Source: Alexei A. Sharov

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 Exploring data in VR

Image courtesy of Kalev Leetaru, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois.
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 Responding
• System takes the initiative to alert user to something
that it “thinks” is of interest
• System does this by:
§ Detecting the location and-or presence of someone in a
vicinity and notifies them on their phone or watch,
§ What it has learned from their repeated behaviors
• Examples:
§ Alerts the user of a nearby coffee bar where some friends
are meeting
§ User’s fitness tracker notifies them of a milestone reached
• Automatic system response without any requests
made by the user
This type suggested by Christopher Lueg et al. (2018)
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 Potential cons of system-initiated
notifications
• Can get tiresome or frustrating if too many
notifications or the system gets it wrong
• What does it do when it gets something
wrong?
§ Does it apologize?
§ Does it allow the user to correct the advise or
information?

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 Choosing an interaction type
• Direct manipulation is good for ‘doing’ types of
tasks, for example, designing, drawing, flying,
driving, or sizing windows
• Issuing instructions is good for repetitive tasks, for
example, spell-checking and file management
• Having a conversation is good for certain services,
for instance, finding information or requesting
music
• Hybrid conceptual models are good for supporting
multiple ways of carrying out the same actions

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 Difference between interaction
types and interface styles
Interaction type:
• A description of what the user is doing when
interacting with a system, for example, instructing,
talking, browsing, or responding

Interface style:
• The kind of interface used to support the interaction,
for instance, command, menu-based, gesture, or
voice

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 Many kinds of interface styles
available (see Chapter 7)…
• Command
• Speech
• Data-entry
• Form fill-in
• Query
• Graphical
• Web
• Pen
• Augmented reality
• Gesture

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 Other sources
Conceptual knowledge that is used to inform
design and guide research include:
• Paradigms
• Visions
• Theories
• Models
• Frameworks

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 Paradigm
• Inspiration for a conceptual model
• General approach adopted by a
community for carrying out research
§ Shared assumptions, concepts, values, and
practices
§ For example, desktop, ubiquitous computing,
in the wild

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Examples of new paradigms in HCI
• Ubiquitous computing
• Pervasive computing
• Wearable computing
• Internet of Things (IoT)

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 Visions
• A driving force that frames research and
development
• Invites people to imagine what life will be like in 10,
15, or 20 years’ time
§ For example, Apple’s 1987 knowledge navigator
§ Smart cities, smart health
§ Human-centered AI
• Provide concrete scenarios of how society can use
the next generation of imagined technologies
• Also raise ethical questions such as, privacy and
trust

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Questions raised by tech visions
• How to enable people to access and interact
with information in their everyday lives

• How to design user experiences where there is

no obvious user control

• How and in what form to provide contextually-

relevant information to people

• How to ensure that information passed around

interconnected devices and objects is secure
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 Theory
• Explanation of a phenomenon
§ For example, information processing that explains
how the mind, or some aspect of it, is assumed to
work
• Can help identify factors relevant to the design
and evaluation of interactive products
§ Such as cognitive, social, and affective
• Can be used to predict what users will do with
different interfaces

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 Models
A simplification of an HCI phenomenon
• Enables designers to predict and evaluate
alternative designs
• Abstracted from a theory coming from a
contributing discipline, for example:
§ Don Norman’s (1996) model of the Seven Stages
of Action
§ Marc Hassenzahl’s (2010) model of the user
experience

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 Frameworks
• Set of interrelated concepts and-or specific
questions for ‘what to look for’
• Provide advice on how to design user experiences
§ Helping designers think about how to conceptualize
learning, working, socializing, fun, and emotion
• Focus on how to design particular kinds of interfaces
to evoke certain responses
• Come in various forms:
§ Such as steps, questions, concepts, challenges,
principles, tactics, and dimensions

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 A classic HCI framework
Don Norman’s (1988) framework of the
relationship between the design of a conceptual
model and a user’s understanding of it

Consists of three interacting components:

• The Designer’s Model
§ The model the designer has of how the system should work
• System Image
§ How the system actually works, which is portrayed to the user
through the interface, manuals, help facilities, and so on
• The User’s Model
§ How the user understands how the system works

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 Summary
• Developing a conceptual model involves:
§ Understanding the problem space
§ Being clear about your assumptions and claims
§ Specifying how the proposed design will support users
• A conceptual model is a high-level description of a
product in terms of:
§ What users can do with it and the concepts they need to understand
how to interact with it
• Interaction types provide a way of thinking about how to
support user’s activities
• Paradigms, visions, theories, models, and frameworks
§ Provide ways of framing design and research

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