-Human centered design-

The process of interaction design:

Intro:
What is interaction design?
 how to design an interactive product, the steps to follow, where to start,…
What does it involve?
4 phases :
- Discover: gather insights about the problem
- Define: develop a clear brief that frames the design challenge
- Develop: solution or concepts are created, prototyped, tested and iterated
- Deliver: the resulting project is finalized, produced and launched
 Double diamond design, kind of the traditional way of designing things
 Interaction design uses those steps and includes the user throughout the
process.

How do you include the user in the design process?

- When starting the project, you need to create a lot of ideas to give
alternatives to the user and other people involved in the process.
- Once the ideas are formulated, you want to make them comprehensible.
To do so, use sketches, simple explanation in natural language, diagrams,
prototypes…
 the design needs to be captured and expressed in a form that allows
review, revision and improvement.
- You also need to find a balance between how much you let the user’s
requirements direct the process, and the technical requirements.
Process:
- PHASE 1: identify the problem as clear as possible, not just the main
problem but also problems that are considered minor. How does the user
feel about those problems, do they make him overwhelmed, demotivated?
- PHASE 2: define the area on which to focus, what can be improved, what
are the main goals of the product?
- PHASE 3: how can you reach those goals?
Understanding the problem space
- you need to think about the problem that needs to be addressed at the
very beginning. You cannot start by looking at technical aspect, because
you are then likely to forget about the user and overlook its demands and
needs.
- Start from the user and its needs and then apply technology on it. Do not
try to see how technology could be used to solve a problem, solve a
problem by using technology.
- Understanding the user experience and what he expects to be improved.
Figure out why a change is needed, and how this change will improve the
UX.
- In other words, understanding the problem space means that you have to
spend a lot of time in the early phases of the project, and consider every
aspect before starting to create. Every voice needs to be heard in order to
be successful in the end. ‘spending time enumerating and reflecting upon
ideas during the early stages of the design process enables more options
and possibilities to be considered’.

Important: if the user is always very important in interaction design, it does not mean
that it is only appliable to user centered design: it can also be activity centered
design (focus on the attitude of the user rather than his goals and needs), systems
design (focus on the system for more complex problems), and Genius design (relies
largely on the experience and creative flair of a designer, meaning that the user is
consulted to approved the ideas of the designer and not direct them)
 But all of these do keep a close focus on the user as the design is created
for them.

Importance of involving Users:

- Expectation management: is the process of making sure that the user’s
expectations of the new product are realistic. By anticipating the user’s
expectations, you can lower the risk of disappointment. When marketing
the product you want it to be the closest to the user’s expectations and
prevent any feeling of disappointment or letting the user down.
- By involving the user you also create a feeling of ownership which will give
the user more motivation to use the product.
 - It is really important to keep the user in mind when creating but sometimes
playing the role of the user to imagine his expectations or needs is just not
enough and you actually need someone who will use the product on a
daily basis to have a good insight.
But how much do we actually need to involve them?
- If they are to much involved, the satisfaction decreases from both the user
and the developer.
- If they are not involved enough, the product is not accurate enough.
- Depends on the product
o Maintenance products=20% of overall project development time
- Initially: user involvement in the form of small groups or individuals in face-
to-face information gathering design, or evaluation sessions.
- Now: online connectivity  thousands of potential users can contribute to
product development. (example: OFE, online feedback exchange systems)
- Participatory design, or cooperative design, is an overarching design
philosophy that places those for whom systems, technologies, and
services are being designed, as central actors in creation activities.
- Depending on the type of design and the target, you may use different
sorts of user’s involvement. If it is for a particular company, it is easy to
involve users, but for a open market, OFE and targeted activities are
recommended.
Conclusion: there are many different sorts of products and they all need different
kinds of user involvement. For a clear user target it is possible to involve them
directly, and work with them, but for an open market you need to use other ways of
getting feedback and ideas (online). It is very important to think about the user’s
involvement and how much they will actually contribute to the project as it can
heavily affect the effectiveness of the final product.
- User involvement after product release:
o Feedback based on day to day use of the product.
o Helps improve the product
o But is time consuming Error reporting systems (ERSs)
automatically collect information, to improve on the long term.
What is User-Centered approach?
- The real users and their goals, not just technology, are the driving force
behind product development. It is less of a technique and more of a
philosophy
- 3 principles of design :
o Early focus on user and tasksobservations, studying the behavior
of users etc before creating
Instead of saying ‘where can we deploy this new technology?’, say
‘what technologies are available to provide better support for user’s
goals?’
 How people perform their tasks is as important as the nature of the
task itself. You need to understand behavior.
Bring support to the user.
o Empirical Measurements scenarios, evaluation, testing
prototypes with given context… specific usability and user
experience goals should be defined, documented and agreed upon
at the beginning of the project.
o Iterative design based on the two previous steps, you come up
with new prototypes that you will then remeasure and so on.
Iteration is inevitable because designers never get the solution right
the first time.
4 basic activities of Interaction design:
- Discovering requirements: left side of the double diamond of design.
Understanding the target users and the support an interactive product
could usefully provide. In other words, this phase is about understanding
the demand and sorting out what the design is destined to be about
- Designing alternatives: is part of the develop phase of the double
diamond. You find ideas to meet the requirements. There is conceptual
design and concrete design. The first one is about outlining what people
can do with the design and the second one is about the constitution of the
design. Both conceptual and concrete present alternatives.
- Prototyping: develop phase. This does not necessarily require a working
piece of software. The purpose of this step is to make the user interact for
the first time with the design. It allows to see potential problems, and
visualize how the final product will work.
- Evaluating: develop phase. It is the process of determining the usability
and acceptability of the product or design measured in terms of a variety of
usability and user-experience criteria. This allows us to sort the multiple
alternatives out and improve them.

Simple lifecycle model for interaction design:

  This shows how the different activities of interaction design are related.

Google design sprints:

- Structured approach to design that supports rapid ideation and testing of
potential solutions to a design challenge. You go from a design challenge
to a solution that has been tested in only five days, and from there you
improve the ideas, and make new prototypes and so on. It is very fast and
uses iterative design.
- Here are the steps:
o Setting the stage: choose the design challenge, gather the team,
organize the time and space to run the sprint. The team is
composed of about seven people including a decider, a customer
expert, and a technical expert.
o Unpack : day 1 focuses on making a map of the challenge and
choosing a target
o Sketch competing solutions: day 2 is about generating solutions,
with sketches and individual creativity
o Decide on the best: day 3 is about choosing the best idea and
producing a storyboard
o Build a realistic prototype: day 4 is about making prototype that can
receive feedback.
o Test with target customers: day 5 speaks for itself.

Conclusion:
The user is at the center of the interaction design. Where it is important to consult
him to improve the UX, it is also important to find a balance to prevent getting the
opposite result. To include the user in the process, you can use online feedback if it
is for a big project that will reach a wide audience, or have a direct feedback and
work with the particular target.
Instead of saying ‘where can we deploy this new technology?’, say ‘what
technologies are available to provide better support for user’s goals?’
the design process is about finding solutions to problems and not finding a way of
using technology in every day life. You thus start by understanding the problem
space before looking for solutions. It is important to keep in mind why a change is
needed.
When designing, it is important to start by setting the requirements and generating a
lot of alternatives to meet the requirements. You can then prototype and evaluate the
designs to start again and improve the product.
Requirements/ goals ideas/ alternatives prototypes tests, feedback
And you start again…
Cognitive aspects:

Intro:
- This chapter covers these aspects by examining the cognitive aspects of
interaction design. It considers what humans are good and bad at, and it
shows how this knowledge can inform the design of technologies that both
extend human capabilities and compensate for human weaknesses.
What is cognition?:
- Cognition: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and
understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
- There are many different types of cognition such as thinking,
remembering, learning…
- You can divide those different types of cognition in two categories:
o Experiential cognition: is a state of mind where people perceive and
react to their surroundings.
o Reflective cognition: involves mental effort, attention, judgement…
- You can also divide them according to slow and fast thinking
2+2= fast
21*19=slow
- Cognition has also been described in terms of specific kinsd of processes,
these include the following:
o Attention
o Perception
o Memory
o Learning
o Reading, speaking and listening
o Problem solving, planning, reasoning, and decision making

It is important to note that many of these cognitive processes are

interdependent.

Attention:
- Selects things on which to concentrate, allowing us to focus to information
that is relevant to what we are doing.
- The extend to which this process is easy or difficult depends on whether
someone has clear goals and whether the information they need is salient
in the environment.
Clear goals:
 - When you have clear goals you can associate them directly with the
information that is available.
- If you goals are not that clear, you will search from a list of things, read
until you find something that suits you. You will make decisions based on
the information that is available.
Information presentation:
- The way the information is displayed plays a big role in how easy it is to
comprehend it.
Multitasking and attention:
- Is it possible to perform multiple tasks without one or more of them being
detrimentally affected?
o It depends: nature of task and what they require
o Difference between people who are used to multitask and those
who are not: multitaskers are easily distracted but they can use it if
the distracting sources are relevant to the subject studied, non-
multitaskers are more focused and complete the task quicker.
- Using the phone while driving: distracted, mind is elsewhere, slower to
react, drive in auto mode and is less perceptive of unexpected events.
The user will imagine the conversation in its head and maybe imagine the
facial expressions of the person he is talking to hands free device is not
necessarily better.
 Design application:
o Make it clear to use, think about the spacing of items, sequencing
info…
o Avoid cluttering visual interfaces with too much info
o Consider designing different ways of supporting effective switching
and returning to a particular interface

Perception:
- Refers to how information is acquired from the environment via the five
sense organs, and transformed into experiences.
- Understanding how the user will acquire the info allows us to make it
easier and more efficient.
Vision: having chunks of information makes it easier to scan rather than
one long list of text that is all the same.
 Design application:
o Design icons or graphical representation
o Use white space and separators
o Design audio that is distinguishable
o Color contrast  research to do it the right way
o Haptic feedback should be use judiciously???
Memory:
- Not possible to remember everything filtering process
How information is interpreted when encountered plays a big role in
remembering it or not, as does context.
- People are much better at recognizing than recalling things.
- With the use of phone, we rely way more on it to recall things, and we are
more likely to forget things precisely. Why need to remember it if you have
a picture on you phone to remind you?
Personal information management:
- Store files of all kind in phone or computer in order to access them later.
- Design challenge: help user organize those files for an easier access
- To have easier access to the document you are looking for, there are
several ways of organizing your docs:
o Naming (problem: you have to remember the name)
o Stamping, categorizing, tagging…
o Using folders : the most common use, because it is easy to
understand and use
 To reduce the use of cognitive activity that can be overwhelming or take to
much time and be less efficient, new technologies have to think of a way of
organizing things to make the files reachable and findable.
Memory load and passwords:
- Security: you have to remember a lot of information to access you bank
account in order to prevent fraud.
- BUT: this implies a lot of memory load it can be nerve-racking
- Solution: face ID or fingerprints the device has to recognize you and
takes in the memory load
- Magical number 7: for short term memory and not for a home page for
instance.

Conclusion:
When creating a product you must keep in mind that the user might not be
completely alert while using it make it easy to use even when the focus is
elsewhere.
HOW?
o Make it easy to read use space, not too much info at the same
time…
o Color contrast
o Icons that are clear
The user will not remember everything, it can be difficult to find the way back to a
certain file or passwords… you have to find ways to make it easier( face ID, file
storing…). Use recognition instead of remembering