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

Interaction Design

Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction is an explanation of the design of the current and next generation interactive technologies, such as the web, mobiles, wearables. These exciting new technologies bring additional challenges for designers and developers - challenges that require careful thought and a disciplined approach. Written for both students and practitioners from a broad range of backgrounds, this book addresses these challenges using a practical and refreshing approach. The text covers a wide range of issues, topics and paradigms that go beyond the traditional human-computer interaction (HCI).

Perlman, Gary. Interaction Design (2002). Resources>User Interface>Interaction Design>User Experience

Interactions 08 in the Garden of Good and Evil

An interview with Dan Saffer, 2008 Conference Chair and IxDA Director. Dan discusses the context of the organization, how the conference emerged and formed, what the conference will be like, and how one might get a flavor even if attendance is not an option.

Baum, Chris. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>Interviews>Interaction Design>User Experience

User Experience

This document outlines typical areas of concern when porting a Microsoft Windows application to Mac OS X, and provides guidance for transitioning to the Mac OS X UI.

Apple Inc. (2004). Design>User Experience>Human Computer Interaction

User Experience Design and Usability

Blog on interface design, interaction design and usability.

Lipiec, Maciej. User Experience Design and Usability (2007). (Polish) Design>User Experience>Interaction Design>User Centered Design

What Puts the Design in Interaction Design

Interaction design lies at the junction of several design disciplines. The resulting crossover between various specialties and issues is often muddled, understandably. There is no doubt that interaction design, as a design discipline, differs from applied human-computer interaction and cognitive psychology. These distinctions are omnipresent in the current literature.

Silver, Kevin. UXmatters (2007). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design

Thoughts on Interaction Design

It is the primary goal of this text to better define Interaction Design: to provide a definition that encompasses the intellectual facets of the field, the conceptual underpinnings of Interaction Design as a legitimate human-centered field, and the particular methods used by practitioners in their day to day experiences.

Thoughts on Interaction Design (2007). Books>User Experience>Interaction Design

Web 2.0: Mistaking the Forest for the Trees?

Think of Web 2.0 as more of a concept than a person, place or thing and you'll find firmer ground. Even better, spend some quality time with O'Reilly's lengthy essay. Finally, keep in mind that the lion's share of Web 2.0 discussion is from a technological perspective; it hasn't yet filtered down to the information architecture, interaction design and similar discussion lists.

Rogers, Dave. GotoMedia (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Interaction Design

Learning From Museums: Kate Talks with the SFMOMA Interactive Educational Technologies Team

What can the User Experience field learn from the world of museums? Peter Samis and Tana Johnson of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Interactive Technologies Team can help answer the question. The issues that they grapple with (and solve through inventive design) are firmly grounded in the goal of providing exceptional and inspiring museum experiences.

Rutter, Kate. Adaptive Path (2008). Articles>Interviewing>User Experience>Interaction Design

Web Anatomy: Introducing Interaction Design Frameworks

If we simply look at what's already working well, and why, we can give ourselves two things we desperately need: a starting point for the design, and insight into to how to create better-stronger-faster interactions that are just as easy to use as the old classics.

Hoekman, Robert, Jr. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Planning

Opportunity India: Interaction Design Market Potential

The Indian community of Interaction Designers and Usability Professionals is growing by rate of 20% annually which is far too less. Around 6 to 8 new design institutes have suddenly opened up in past couple of years (to name a few- Symbiosis Institute of Design, MAEER MIT’s Institute of Design and Creative-I College, Pune, Raffles Design International, Mumbai, IILM School of Design, Gurgaon, Wigan & Leigh College, New Delhi) But all these are indirect contributors to interaction design, as they do not offer education in that area.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2006). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design

Using Wikis to Document UI Specifications

The role of the interaction designer is to specify the interface’s behaviors and elements, so that engineers know what to build and how the product should operate. This documentation is commonly known as a UI specification or UI spec. There are several applications for authoring a UI spec, with wikis being a relatively new tool. However, designers should be aware of a wiki’s benefits and drawbacks for documentation, since UI specs uniquely reflect a project and its context. The documentation needs are often based on the size of the project, launch date, team dynamics, audience, technology, and the product development process. The development process usually plays a major role in how teams interact and how work is completed or delivered, thus, there is a direct relationship between the UI spec and the process the team is using.

Gremett, Peter. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Functional Specifications

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

Are We The Puppet Masters?

Through the designs we create, we have the ability to directly influence another person’s behavior. The ethical implications of this are important and not easily definable. I was interested in ethics before I ever considered becoming a designer, but the lessons I learned while studying philosophy impacts the way I view my designs. In nature, our goal is a good one. We strive to help others by improving the interactions that define their life. This drives us to create and innovate new ways of interacting with old concepts. The question remains, do we have the right to influence another person? Further, are there guiding principles we can follow that can keep us on the moral path? The answers to these questions rests on the shoulders of the whole community, not a single person or group.

Nunnally, Brad. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Rhetoric

Who Watches the Watchman?

The watchclock is another kind of interaction design, one whose function corrals the user into a single, linear, constrained sort of behavior. The night watchman has a fundamental social constraint — the desire to not get fired from their job. This constraint allows the watchclock patrol system to work so effectively (some would say insidiously) as an interaction design instrument of control.

Fahey, Christopher. Graphpaper (2009). Articles>User Experience>Management>Interaction Design

Design for Interaction: Ideation and Design Principles

Once you’ve come up with tons of ideas, how do you choose which ones are worth pursuing? You use a set of design principles that will not only help select the best ideas, but guide the design through refinement, prototyping, development, and beyond. But first, let’s diverge and come up with concepts.

Saffer, Dan. Johnny Holland (2009). Design>User Experience>Interaction Design

Engaging the User: What We Can Learn from Games

As an Interaction Designer, I’m perpetually impressed with the continual design success inherent in most video games. We are taught to know our users by understanding their goals, leveraging mental models, and taking ourselves out of the equation in order to design useful and appropriate interfaces. And although a user-centered design approach is invaluable, I can’t help but wonder how game designers just seem to nail it time and again for what are large and diverse audiences.

Sasinski, Marc. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Games

Designing for B2B and Enterprise Applications

It's not uncommon to hear people complaining about the poor user experience of some B2B and enterprise applications. Read through these top tips to help you design enterprise applications that offer a better user experience and increase productivity.

Baxevanis, Alexander. Webcredible (2009). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>User Experience

Cr@p Error Messages

When writing software, *please* don't give error messages that are only meaningful to developers of the software. Microsoft used to be awful for this: "System fault at DEAD:BEEF, please contact your system administrator". Which would've been cool, except that I *was* the system administrator.

Bailey, Jeff. LiveJournal (2009). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>User Experience

Design Essentials for Non-Designers

This tutorial is intended for practitioners who have come to interaction design from a research, psychology, information architecture, or other non-design background. It focuses on what happens after the requirements are done and before you build your first prototype. Design fields such as graphic arts, architecture, and industrial design have long-standing practices for innovative design, and these apply well to interaction design.

Schrag, John and Ian Hooper. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Design>User Experience>Interaction Design

First, Do No Harm 

In my column, On Good Behavior, I’ll explore the essentials of good interaction design. This first column provides a brief introduction to interaction design—defining the scope this column will cover—then explores some key design principles. What is interaction design?

Gabriel-Petit, Pabini. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Workflow

Fluency as an Experiential Quality in Augmented Spaces   

The use of digital products and services has expanded from largely instrumental, work-oriented settings to include entertainment, leisure, personal communication, and other classes of hedonistic use. The development of foundational concepts in the interaction design community to succeed usability and utility has lagged behind considerably. I argue that interaction design would benefit from attempts to articulate experiential qualities of digital products and services, and illustrate the approach by presenting the concept of fluency. It refers to the degree of gracefulness with which the user deals with multiple demands for her attention and action, particularly in augmented spaces where the user moves through shifting ecologies of people, physical objects, and digital media. I develop the concept of fluency by analyzing a range of digital artifacts in use situations, addressing the main themes of (1) social norms and practices and (2) peripheral interaction and calm technology. In terms of research methodology, this paper illustrates how design and criticism can be merged to construct elements of transferable knowledge for communication with design-research communities.

Löwgren, Jonas. International Journal of Design (2007). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design

Effects of Visual-Auditory Incongruity on Product Expression and Surprise   

Product experience is influenced by information from all the senses. Our experiments provide insight into how sounds contribute to the overall experience of a product's expression. We manipulated the sounds of dust busters and juicers so that they either did or did not fit the expressions of the products' appearances. In some, but not all cases, we found an inverse relationship between the degree-of-fit of a sound and the degree of surprise evoked. Furthermore, we found in some cases that the expression of a product's sound influenced the overall expression of that product.

Ludden, Geke D.S. and Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein. International Journal of Design (2007). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design