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

Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience

The most effective companies realize that they can't succeed on advertising alone; the customer matters.

Hurst, Mark. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Experience

Design and Emotion

Emotion is one of the strongest differentiators in user experience namely because it triggers unconscious responses to a product, website, environment or interface. Our feelings strongly influence our perceptions and often frame how we think about or refer to our experiences at a later date.

Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2004). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Emotions

The Iceberg Analogy of Usability

Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the 'look and feel' aspects aren't the major contributors at all. Look and feel have been popular discussion topics for many years, and some developers have proposed various schemes purporting to allow an easy swap of one look and feel for another. They were perhaps compelled to this thinking to compensate for an inadequate understanding of their users. Around 1990, I became alarmed by the popularity of design architectures advocating paradigms like the User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) that enable a pluggable look and feel. Many of my colleagues and I felt that look and feel represented only the tip of the iceberg. We felt that the set of concepts users must learn and understand to use a product or Web site effectively is actually the most important factor.

Berry, Dick. IBM (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Web Design

iPhone Evaluation Report

User Centric, a privately held usability consulting firm based in Chicago, evaluated the long-term usability and user experience of the iPhone in 2007.

uiGarden (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability

Is Beauty the New Usability Attribute?

The beauty of a product can influence the users' overall impression or general user satisfaction of the product. Think iPod. But how do you measure that?

Hall, Mark D. and Kathleen Straub. Human Factors International (2005). Articles>Usability>Aesthetics>User Experience

Let's Get It Started!

STC communities have moved from trying to figure out how they will work in the new model to starting to make the kinds of fundamental changes and undertake initiatives that will build value for members. We are starting to understand how to 'play' within and succeed with our new rules. For UUX to undertake new initiatives, we need more members to volunteer.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Usability>User Experience

Million Dollar Web Usability Tips

What has long been a struggle for UEX professionals can actually be a great tool to demonstrate the importance of your role. We have found a way, using tools that you may already have, to support the users' needs that can positively impact your company’s bottom line.

Remus, Jacqueline and Jessyca Frederick. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Experience

The Narrative Web: Beyond Usability and Design

The point is not that we should add stories to our sites to ensnare narrative-starved readers. The point is that the reader's journey through our site is a narrative experience. Our job is to make the narrative satisfying.

Bernstein, Mark. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Rhetoric

Optimizing the User Experience  

Web sites should be designed to facilitate and encourage efficient and effective human-computer interactions. Designers should make every attempt to reduce the user's workload by taking advantage of the computer's capabilities. Users will make the best use of Web sites when information is displayed in a directly usable format and content organization is highly intuitive. Users also benefit from task sequences that are consistent with how they typically do their work, that do not require them to remember information for more than a few seconds, that have terminology that is readily understandable, and that do not overload them with information.

Usability.gov (2006). Articles>Usability>User Experience

OVID Tutorial: Mastering the Complexity of Creating Highly Satisfying User Experiences

A description and presentation materials from a tutorial given on OVID at the CHI 2002 and MITE 2002 conferences. OVID is a method to use while performing User Engineering.

IBM. Articles>Usability>User Experience

The Perpetual Super-Novice

The problem of the perpetual super-novice is the tendency of people to stop learning about a digital product--whether it's an operating system, desktop application, Web site, or hardware device.

Sherman, Paul J. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Interface

Philadelphia: User Experience Beyond The Web

Because many of the local Usability Professionals Association (UPA) members work in internet-related fields, Philadelphia's second Annual World Usability Day looked to broaden horizons by focusing on 'User Experience Beyond the Web.' The pervasive theme of the presentations by Hal Rosenbluth, James Mitchell, and Stephen Wilcox was that we actually have a lot in common.

Madaio, Mike. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>User Experience

Satisficing

Satisficing describes the situation where people settle with a solution to a problem that is 'good enough.'

Soegaard, Mads. Interaction-Design.org. Articles>Usability>User Experience>Cognitive Psychology

Simplicity in Your Mind

This article postulates that we cannot address the issue of simplification exclusively by analyzing the physical and computational parameters of technology. Instead, we must understand the goal of simplification in light of the knowledge, tasks, and processing-load demands on its users. We can approach simplicity as an engineering endeavor by controlling the impact on these three usage dimensions.

Santos, Lucinio. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability>Minimalism

System Concepts

How valid is the assertion that 'attractive things work better'? This article explores the association, if any, between user's perceptions of usability and aesthetics for developed systems.

Chawda, Bejal. System Concepts (2005). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Experience

Technical Communicators as Potential Usability Reviewers

This article defines the niche for Technical Communicators / Writers in Usability Engineering. It makes an important observation "Technical Communicator explains the product to users and Usability Engineer attempts to design self-explanatory products. If the design doesn't speak up, Technical Communicators have to overwork." Technical communicators can serve as the 'barometer' of user interface design.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>Usability>Technical Writing>User Experience

Usability, User Experience, Or Both?  

Explains how the new name of the former STC Usability SIG better serves the growing number of technical communicators whose work encompasses the overall product--not just usability or documentation.

Bachmann, Karen L. Intercom (2005). Articles>Usability>Community Building>User Experience

User Experience - UX

'User Experience', often abbreviated 'UX', is the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design.

Knemeyer, Dirk and Eric Svoboda. Interaction-Design.org (2006). Articles>User Experience>Usability

Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience

Physical products, from consumer electronics to cars, are needlessly complex because they're developed by insular companies that continue to ignore the growing usability trend.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Centered Design

User Experience Design: The Evolution of a Multi-Disciplinary Approach  

Easy task completion (traditional usability) is not enough in the Web world. Appealing visual site design is not enough. A site visitor needs to not only be attracted to a site and able to figure out how to buy (or register, sign up, etc.)-they need in addition to be able to tell quickly that a site will meet their needs, and they need to want to buy from this site, as opposed to a competitor's site. This is a key aspect of overall Web site success.

Mayhew, Deborah J. Journal of Usability Studies (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Usability

A Tale of Installation Frustration

The technology business is filled with frustration. Trying to hook something up, troubleshoot something, make it do something–on a deadline–is a weekly occurrence for me. But last week, I just about blew my stack.

Pogue, David. New York Times, The (2006). Articles>Technology>Usability>User Experience