Understanding and

Conceptualizing
Interaction
Objectives
The main aims of this chapter are to:
■ Explain what is meant by the problem space.
■ Explain how to conceptualize interaction.
■ Describe what a conceptual model is and how to
begin to formulate one..
Objectives
■ Discuss the use of interface metaphors as part of
a conceptual model.
■ Outline the core interaction types for informing
the development of a conceptual model.
■ Introduce paradigms, visions, theories, models,
and frameworks informing interaction design.
Recap
■ HCI has moved beyond designing interfaces for desktop
machines
■ About extending and supporting all manner of human
activities in all manner of places
■ Facilitating user experiences through designing interactions:
□ Make work effective, efficient and safer
□ Improve and enhance learning and training
□ Provide enjoyable and exciting entertainment
□ Enhance communication and understanding
□ Support new forms of creativity and expression
Understanding the
problem space
■ What do you want to create?
■ What are your assumptions?
■ Will it achieve what you hope it will?
What is an assumption?
■ taking something for granted when it needs
further investigation
□ e.g. people will want to watch TV while driving

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What is a claim?
■ stating something to be true when it is
still open to question

□ e.g. a multimodal style of interaction for

controlling GPS — one that involves speaking
while driving — is safe
Understanding the Problem Space and
Conceptualizing Interaction
■ The problem with starting here is that usability
and user experience goals can be overlooked.
Understanding the Problem Space and
Conceptualizing Interaction
■ Identifying usability and user experience goals
is a prerequisite to understanding the problem
space.
■ Explicit underlying assumptions and claims
■ Team effort
Understanding the Problem Space and
Conceptualizing Interaction
The following framework is intended to provide a set of
core questions to aid design teams in this process:
■ 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?
■ How do you think your proposed design ideas support,
change, or extend current ways of doing things?
Understanding the Problem Space and
Conceptualizing Interaction
Understanding the Problem Space and
Conceptualizing Interaction

The benefits of conceptualizing the design

space early on are:
■ Orientation
■ Open-mindedness
■ Common ground
 Conceptual Model
13

“…a high-level description of how

a system is organized and
operates”
(Johnson and Henderson, 2002, p26)

“…designers to straighten out their thinking

before they start laying out their widgets”
(Johnson and Henderson, 2002, p28)

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 ■ used by the design
CONCEPTUAL team as the basis
MODEL from which to
develop more
detailed and concrete
aspects of the design

■ represented as a
SHARED textual description
BLUEPRINT and/or in a
diagrammatic form
Core Components of Conceptual Models

The core components are:

Metaphors & Analogies
convey to people how to
understand what a product is for
and how to use it for an activity

(e.g. browsing, bookmarking).

Core Components of Conceptual Models
■ The concepts that people are exposed to
through the product, including the task–
domain objects they create and
manipulate, their attributes, and the
operations that can be performed on them

(e.g. saving, revisiting, organizing).

Core Components of Conceptual
Models
The core components are….
■ The relationships between those concepts
(e.g. whether one object contains another, the relative
importance of actions to others, and whether an object is part
of another).

■ The mappings between the concepts and the user

experience the product is designed to support or
invoke (e.g. one can revisit through looking at a list of visited sites,
most-frequently visited, or saved websites).
Conceptual Models

THE BEST CONCEPTUAL MODEL?

■ Those that appear obvious
■ The operations they support being
intuitive to use
 A Classic Conceptual Model: The Star

The Star interface,

developed by Xerox back
in 1981.
INTERFACE METAPHORS
■ a central component of a conceptual model
■ intended to provide familiar entities that enable
people to readily understand the underlying
conceptual model and know what to do at an
interface.
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22

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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23

Problems with interface metaphors

■ Break conventional and cultural rules
□ e.g. recycle bin placed on desktop

■ Can constrain designers in the way they

conceptualize a problem space

■ Conflict with design principles

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24

Problems with Interface Metaphors

■ Forces users to only understand 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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 4 Main Types
User Interaction
Instructing, Conversing, Manipulating & Exploring
INSTRUCTING
□ users carry out their tasks by telling
the system what to do.
Ex.
Giving instruction to a system to perform operations such as tell
the time, print a file and appointment reminder.

Benefit: Quick and Efficient

CONVERSING
■ based on the idea of a person having a
conversation with a system, where the system
acts as a dialog partner.
■ simple voice-recognition, menu-driven systems,
more complex natural language-based systems
Benefit: allows people to interact with a system in a way that is familiar to
them
Siri's response to the question
“Do I need an umbrella?”
 Would you
talk with
Anna?

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 Pros and Cons of conversational
model
31

■ Allows users, especially novices and technophobes, to

interact with the system in a way that is familiar

□ makes them feel comfortable, at ease and less scared

■ Misunderstandings can arise when the system does not

know how to parse what the user says

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MANIPULATING
■ manipulating objects and capitalizes on users’
knowledge of how they do so in the physical
world.

Ex: Wii, Kinect

Manipulating
 Direct Manipulation
34

■ Shneiderman (1983) coined the term DM, came from

his fascination with computer games at the time

□ 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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 Why are Direct Manipulation
interfaces so enjoyable?
35

■ 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

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 Why are Direct Manipulation
interfaces so enjoyable?
36

■ 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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37

4. Exploring
■ Involves users moving through virtual or
physical environments

■ Physical environments with embedded

sensor technologies

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EXPLORING

■ users moving through virtual or physical

environments
 Many kinds of interface types
39

available including…
■ Command ■ Graphical
■ Speech ■ Web
■ Data-entry ■ Pen
■ Form fill-in ■ Augmented reality
■ Query
■ Gesture

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40

Which interaction type to choose?

■ Need to determine requirements and user needs

■ Take budget and other constraints into account

■ Also will depend on suitability of technology for

activity being supported

■ This is covered in course when designing

conceptual models

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Paradigms, Visions, Theories, Models,
and Frameworks
■ A paradigm refers to a general approach that has
been adopted by a community of researchers and
designers for carrying out their work, in terms of
shared assumptions, concepts, values, and
practices.
Paradigms, Visions, Theories, Models,
and Frameworks
■ A vision is a future scenario that frames research
and development in interaction design – often
depicted in the form of a film or a narrative.
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Paradigms, Visions, Theories, Models,
and Frameworks
■ A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of
some aspect of a phenomenon;

for example, the theory of information processing that

explains how the mind, or some aspect of it, is
assumed to work.
Paradigms, Visions, Theories, Models,
and Frameworks
■ A model is a simplification of some aspect of
human–computer interaction intended to make it
easier for designers to predict and evaluate
alternative designs.
Paradigms, Visions, Theories, Models,
and Frameworks
■ A framework is a set of interrelated
concepts and/or a set of specific questions
that are intended to inform a particular
domain area

(e.g. collaborative learning), online communities,

or an analytic method (e.g. ethnographic studies).
 PARADIGMS
■ adopting a set of practices that a community has
agreed upon

1980 – UX app for Desktop Application, WIMP, GUI

1990 – start of beyond desktop
1991 – Ubiquitous Technology (Weiser)
- AI to environment
- sensors
VISIONS
■ driving force that frame research and
development in interaction design

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator (25 years)

2011 – Speech System (Siri)
Internet of Things (IoT)
THEORIES
■ primarily cognitive, social, and
organizational in origin

means of analyzing and predicting the performance of users carrying out

tasks for specific kinds of computer interfaces and systems
(Rogers, 2012)
 MODELS
■ typically abstracted from a theory coming from a
contributing discipline, like psychology, that can be
directly applied to interaction design.

■ 1988 – Norman (developed a number of models of user

interaction based on theories of cognitive processing,
arising out of cognitive science)
2005 – Modelled emotional design
FRAMEWORKS
■ help designers constrain and scope the
user experience for which they are
designing
■ offers advice to designers as to what to design or look for, helping
designers think about how to conceptualize learning, working,
socializing, fun, emotion, and so on and others that focus on how to
design particular kinds of technologies to evoke certain responses
3 Framework’s Interacting
Components
■ The designer's model
■ The system image
■ The user's model
 Summary
54

■ Developing a conceptual model involves good understanding

of the problem space, specifying what it is you are doing,
why, and how it 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 (e.g. conversing, instructing) provide a way
of thinking about how best to support user’s activities
■ Paradigms, visions, theories, models, and frameworks provide
different ways of framing and informing design and research

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SEATWORK (1/4 sheet)
The aim of this activity is for you to think about the
appropriateness of different kinds of conceptual
models that have been designed for similar physical
and digital information artifacts;
Compare the following
A.) a paperback book and an ebook;
B.) a paper-based map and a smartphone map.