Analysing Everyday Interaction

Inspired by Don Norman's classic book, 'The Design of Everyday Things', I started to collect my own examples of bad designs to analyse according to interaction design principles. Here are just a few.

Poole, Alex. Alex Poole (2004). Articles>Usability>Interaction Design>User Experience

Critic to Creator: Recognizing Good Design

All too often, people in our field focus so much on pointing out the egregious interaction design mistakes that make it to market, we forget to pay attention to the good design that exists. Not only does it make our profession look bad if we are always complaining, but it also makes us less effective.

Calde, Steve. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Interaction Design

The End of Web Design

Websites must tone down their individual appearance and distinct design in all ways: visual design; terminology and labeling; interaction design and workflow; and information architecture. These changes are driven by four different trends that all lead to the same conclusion.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Interaction Design

Featuritis (or Creeping Featurism)

Featuritis or creeping featurism is the tendency for the number of features in a product (usually software product) to rise with each release of the product. What may have been a cohesive and consistent design in the early versions may end up as a patchwork of added features. And with extra features comes extra complexity.

Soegaard, Mads. Interaction-Design.org. Articles>Usability>Interaction Design>Project Management

The Human Interface

The phrase 'human error' is taken to mean 'operator error', but more often than not the disaster is inherent in the design or installation of the human interface. Bad interfaces are slow or error prone to use. Bad interfaces cost money and cost lives.

Dix, Alan. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Usability>User Centered Design

Interaction Modeling: User State-Trace Analysis

Interaction modeling is a good way to identify and locate usability issues with the use of a tool. Several methods exist. Modeling techniques are prescriptive in that they aim to capture what users will likely do, and not descriptive of what users actually did.

Queen, Matt. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Interaction Design

Of Mice and iPods, or The Death of the Designer

Computing technologies are becoming so familiar it can feel as if they have always been here. It is strange to think that the mouse, for instance, was invented by Doug Englebart in the seventies. He must encounter a degree of incredulity when he mentions this to people. “You invented the mouse? Really? How nice. Did you also invent the pen?”

Blythe, Mark. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>Usability

One Hundred and One Spots, or How Do Users Read Menus?  

Proceedings of a paper about how readers interact with designed documents.

Aaltonen, Antti, Aulikki Hyrskykari and Kari-Jouko Raeihae. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (1998). Articles>Document Design>Interaction Design>Usability

Prototyping Techniques for Interactive Design  

Almost all design methodologies call for a prototyping stage, but it can be difficult to decide where to put scarce time and resources for the most impact on the final project. To make a decision, it is important to understand the different types of prototypes and their strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, the larger and more complex a project, the more complete each prototype must be, but even with small projects the right prototype can help ensure that you and your clients have a chance to see and test the design before it is too late to make changes. If you do your work right, each step builds on the previous one, and there are no surprises at the end of the project.

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Usability>Interaction Design

Scrolling and Scrollbars

Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. Among the ongoing problems that result are frustrated users, accessibility challenges, and missed content.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

Troubling Aspects of the Online Realm

Find out how the blogosphere is portrayed as stupid, how automatic reloading of web pages annoys users, how it's very difficult or impossible to scroll text entry boxes, why search engines need filters, why usability is not "dead" for web design, why delete must not automatically open the next email message, why "view profile" must not be omitted, and why all user actions need prominent "action succeeded" messages and "view action results" page links.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Cyberculture>Interaction Design>Usability

人性的界面

我们常常看到这样的新闻报道：飞机坠毁夺走了好几百人的生命，某次工业事故导致几百万英镑的损失，某新发现的系统医疗错误致使数千病患重返医院。几个月后，公布的调查结果如下：操作机器设备时的人为错误导致了这些事故。人们使用‘人为错误’一词来表达‘操作上的错误’，而经常的情况是，这些‘人为错误’ 根本就是机器设备的人机界面设计或安装上本身固有的问题。低劣的人机界面会导致使用效率降低或者容易发生错误，严重的则会造成财产和生命损失。

Dix, Alan. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Usability>User Centered Design

Interaction Elasticity

Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design

Usability Tips for Your Application (Part I)

There are a exponentially growing amount of applications being developed. Some of them vanish at an early stage, while others grow to be quite (and sometimes extremely) popular. What really dazzles me is how sucky many of them (both the popular and the unpopular ones) are regarding how they deal with user-interaction.

Odden, Michael. Unlimited Edition (2009). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design

iPhone Is Not Easy to Use: A New Direction for UX Design

I live and breathe user experience design, and yet it took me two years to get myself the device referenced by almost every single presentation about user experience since 2007… Apple’s iPhone. My reasons were very specific and perhaps boring, but what is interesting is the perspective this wait has afforded me. Since it was released, the iPhone has grabbed an astonishing share of mobile Web traffic, been regarded as a “game-changer” in both the design and business worlds, and has even been referred to as the “Jesus Phone.” Now that I’ve owned one for two weeks I’ve developed a different perspective. The iPhone is surprisingly difficult to use, but it sure is fun! And that is why it’s a game-changer.

Beecher, Frederick. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>Usability>Interaction Design>User Experience