Links on Interaction Design

Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Cooper created an interaction design methodology known as Goal-Directed Design. Their methodology identifies the goals and behaviors of users and directly translates them into the design. UIE’s Christine Perfetti recently had the chance to talk with Kim Goodwin , VP Design & General Manager at Cooper (www.cooper.com), about Goal-Directed Design and personas.

Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Posted in Interaction Design, User Research | Tagged , | Post a comment.

Printed books on User Experience free to read online

Free to read online books on Interaction Design

  1. Search User Interfaces- by Marti A. Hearst
  2. Web Style Guide- by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
  3. Designing Interfaces- by Jenifer Tidwell (Most of the book is available online, not all of it, as pointed out by Amanda Ruzin)
  4. Thoughts on Interaction Design- by John Kolko. Contributions by Ellen Beldner, Uday Gajendar, Chris Connors and Justin Petro (no longer free)

Free to read online books on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

  1. The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface- by Kent L. Norman
  2. Mental Models in Human-Computer Interaction: Research Issues About What the User of Software Knows- by John M. Carroll and Judith Reitman Olson (editors)

Free to read books on Web Accessibility

  1. Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design- by Shawn Henry
  2. Building accessible websites- by Joe Clark
Posted in Accessibility, Books, Interaction Design | Post a comment.

Beware of Style in Icon Design

The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced the author to think about ’style’ in icon design.

What are the possible ways to overcome problems related to style of icons?

  1. Create sample icons which are representative of the complexity and overall range of icons required for the project. These icons should be best rendered and acceptable in terms of desired quality and style.
  2. Define style guidelines (all attributes shown above as applicable) based on sample icon designs.
  3. Sensitize the entire design team to understand the style sensitive attributes of icon design. Help them notice and feel each attribute of the style.
  4. Select the designers whose style of designing/rendering is naturally similar.
  5. Lead designer(s) to sketch and compose all icons before they get rendered.
  6. Lead designer to monitor and guide the rendering (This is similar to the model of key animators and in-between artists followed in animation field).
  7. Review the stylistic aspects as per the guidelines.
  8. Ask users / designers / developers to identify the misfit icons in terms of style.
    Proper definition of style attributes can be helpful in evaluating the consistency of style.
  9. Refine

Beware of Style in Icon Design

Posted in Creative design, Interaction Design, User Experience | Post a comment.

Season of Usability

Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS).

During a 3 month collaboration, students work closely together with key developers from FLOSS software projects to improve the use experience of a FLOSS application.

Season of Usability

Tagged , , | Post a comment.

Confirming Passwords Is Annoying: Is There a Better Way?

The defining characteristic of a password field is that it abstracts text as dots. While the intention of this behavior is understandable (it makes users feel secure and protects from prying eyes), the unintended effect is that it creates a usability problem. Users can’t tell if they’ve entered a password incorrectly until after the site’s validation informs them. It’s like typing with your eyes closed.

The author describes and provides demonstrations to three alternate methods to approaching password confirmation.

Confirming Passwords Is Annoying: Is There a Better Way?

Post a comment.

OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK? & OK and Cancel Buttons- What’s the Right Order?

OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?

By Jakob Nielsen

Summary
Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box

OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?

OK and Cancel Buttons- What’s the Right Order?

By Tom Tullis

Takeaways

  1. Avoid using grouped buttons labelled as “OK” and “Cancel” on the web. There’s too great a chance that your users may have a different expectation from yours about which button is which. If they’re in a hurry, they might accidentally choose the wrong button.
  2. It’s probably better to use buttons that are visually separated.
  3. With the buttons visually separated, putting the action to continue (e.g., OK, Save, Submit, etc) on the right is more likely to match your users’ expectations.

OK and Cancel Buttons- What’s the Right Order?

Posted in Interaction Design, Usability Engineering | Tagged , | Post a comment.

Interfaces Magazine

Interfaces is a quarterly magazine with features, events, reviews and jobs. Interfaces is available in print for members and as downloads for everyone else.

Interfaces Magazine

Posted in Human Factors, Interaction Design, Usability Engineering | Tagged , , , | Post a comment.

The 10 Laws of Simplicity

John Maeda wrote a very nice book entitled The Laws of Simplicity which was published in 2006. The book is about his thoughts on simplicity. In the course of 100-pages, he outlines the ten Laws that are:

Law 1: Reduce
The Simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
Law 2: Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer
Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity
Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler
Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other
Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less
Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust
Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple
Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful

Read more about the laws o simplicity at The Laws of Simplicity website

Tagged , , , | Post a comment.

Web Application Design Patterns by Pawan Vora

Book cover for Web Application Design Patterns by Pawan Vora- a book for interaction designers

Title & Author

Web Application Design Patterns by Pawan Vora

Description

Ever notice that in spite of their pervasiveness, designing web applications is still challenging? While their benefits motivate their creation, there are no well-established guidelines for design. This often results in inconsistent behaviors and appearances, even among web applications created by the same company. Design patterns for web applications, similar in concept to those for web sites and software design, offer an effective solution.

In Web Application Design Patterns, Pawan Vora documents design patterns for web applications by not only identifying design solutions for user interaction problems, but also by examining the rationale for their effectiveness, and by presenting how they should be applied.

Audience

User interface designers, usability professionals, application developers working on commercial or intranet type products, and product management and project management.

Reviews

This is the type of book you’ll want to read with your entire team and a flip chart, because every page will produce a list of actionable changes to the applications you’re developing. Pawan Vora has produced an amazing catalogue ofthe essential patterns for designing today’s
web-based applications.

Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

Web Application Design Patterns is a must read if you are in the business of designing web applications, or simply want to understand the elements of a well-designed web application. Pawan Vora has condensed best practice, along with research and his solid experience, to create a useful reference about designing web applications. Even if you skimmed the book and looked at the designs, it will spark creative design ideas.

David Dick, Technical Writer

Publisher

Morgan Kaufmann (March 13, 2009)

ISBN

ISBN-10: 012374265X
ISBN-13: 978-0123742650

Purchase

At Elsevier

Posted in Books, Interaction Design | Post a comment.

The Elements of a Design Pattern

A quality library means team members have the information they need at their fingertips. Choosing usable components that work smoothly for users becomes the developer’s path of least resistance.

It takes a push from the library creators, but once it’s completed, the value seems to be immediate: teams can start to discuss what works and what doesn’t in current designs, laying out a vision for future development.

What do teams put into their design pattern descriptions?

  1. Pattern Name
  2. Description
  3. Context of Use
  4. Where to Use it
  5. How it Works (with visual aid)
  6. Specifications
  7. Related Patterns
  8. Competitive Approaches
  9. Source Code (quite rare)
  10. Usability Research
  11. Discussion

The Elements of a Design Pattern

Tagged , | Post a comment.