intro to ux design

affordance

Affordances refer to the perceived and actual properties of the things. Basically, how things could possibly be used.

stakeholder examples

All right, so here's the example I promised you. Let's say that we design a new system to keep track of wear on running shoes. The runner would be the primary stakeholder, because she is wearing the newly designed running shoe, she is the end user. Using the same example, let's say that the runner is actually part of a member of a track team. Here, the coach for the track team would be considered a secondary stakeholder. Because he would be the one that monitors the data about the runner's shoes and makes decisions about when they have to get a new pair of sneakers. A tertiary stakeholder in our example maybe the project manager of the company that builds the shoes. Back to our example about another running shoe design that measures tread wear. We can imagine that our high end running shoe might have a high cost. If we now include a dashboard for coaches, this is a value added, however if we consider the tertiary stakeholder's prospective. On how much it would cost to put an actual sensor in each shoe then we might come with an alternative design consideration. Maybe it's not worth it to put our sensor in every shoe but maybe it's best to fabricate the sensor and make it transferable from shoe to shoe.

Card-based prototypes

All right, whereas a studyboard was getting at a narrative, card-based prototyping will allow us to look at the sequences of interactions we might have with the actual interface. You can take a set of three by five index cards and have each represent a sequence of a screen that the user would encounter as she tries to accomplish a task. You can even take a standard sheet of paper and cut it into six cards and do the same thing. Basically this is sketching the individual screens in an easy and fast way

Essential Use Case scenario

An Essential Use Case scenario, on the other hand, allows us to understand the user's activities, and what the system requirements are.They essentially use case scenario has three important elements. First it names the user's goals. What aspect of X this captures. Second, the user intention. The series of steps she needs to enter into the system. And third, the system's responsibilities. What the system must do after each step completed by the user.

The third design feature of usable design is feedback.

Feedback requires sending back user information about what system input has occurred. It communicates the result of an action. It basically lets the user know the interface has hear their command. Ex/ When we see the wrong letter in the text box, it gives us feedback that we'veentered the wrong, that we've pressed the wrong key.

ex of functional and non functional

Going back to my example from class, one team decided to design a study session organizer. A functional requirement for this system might be that it allows students to enter multiple classes that they want to study for, and the various times that they're free and available to study. While nonfunctional requirements might include encryption standards and a security function that automatically verified that the student ID number was actually valid.

interview

An interview can take place either in the field or in the lab. The one requirement is that there is enough privacy that the user can freely answer the questions being asked.The interview offers the designer an opportunity to have a conversation with the user. This is valuable because the interviewer can then follow any interesting lead the user can have. Closely related is the fact that the protocol for the interview is very flexible. By this, I mean that the designer can choose to ask followup questions that weren't on the protocol or even to let the user lead a particular point of interest. Disadvantages include the need for a skilled interviewer. She needs to know what user leads to follow and when to rein in a conversation that is no longer providing a value added. The interviewer skills are also important in maintaining rapport that is at once flexible and balanced. It makes the user comfortable enough to provide honest opinions, but not so much that the user wants to please the interviewer with her responses. Another disadvantage of the interview is that With interviewers, we're spending a lot of time on one person. interviews are best to end the data gathering strategy.

functional and non functionla requirements

Data from phase one also allows us to figure out the functional and non functional requirements for our design alternatives. Functional requirements are those things that the system should do. These are based on the expected functioning of the system. Non-functional requirements on the other hand relate to constraints on the system and its development. They can also be considered quality attributes. They include many backend functions such as security, performance, maintainability. But they can also include front-end or usability features, such as layout or flow, or maybe even language localization requirements, for example, that the spelling bee in American English versus British English, or vice-versa.

Descriptive statistic

Descriptive statistic allows us to summarize quantitative information. This includes the range, mean and median of a data set. The range was 3 to 30, that means one person said they downloaded three different content types. While there was one that downloaded 30 different items a day. The mean was 10.2 and and the median was 5. The median is important because it is less effected by extreme scores. So even though there was a person that downloaded 30 items and one that only downloaded three. The median gives us important information about the distribution of those five data points.

evaluation

Evaluation is the answer. It allows us to ascertain that we are improving the user experience.

fourth phase ux design what do we do?

In the fourth phase, evaluation,we take one of the designs from phase three and we actually test the system's usability and usefulness with either users or experts who can provide us with feedback about how to improve the system.

Hierarchical Task analyses. Is the most common task analysis technique. what doe it allwow?

It allows us to consider how users are currently completing a task.Here it is key to focus on observable actions. ex/ Notice that I start with the goal. And number each of the major steps towards meeting my goal. Some of the steps have substeps that I must fulfill before going on the next step. This technique is all about the users goals. Unlike the essential used case. We didn't considered what the airline system needs to do at ech of the users steps Also notice that I didn't include system interaction tasks like using a scroll bar. This is just about the user and the steps to accomplish the goals.

learnability and memorabiliy

Learnability refers to how easy it is to complete a task successfully. We can get an objective measure of this by looking at the data for number of clicks to complete a task, or amount of time to complete a task, and then compare these to expert performance. Memorability refers to how easy it is to remember how to use a product, or more specifically, how to perform a given task on an interface after repeated trials. We can measure amount of time or number of clicks to complete a task over repeated trials to get a measure of memorability.

can the prototype we have will affect where we can conduct our evaluation?

Low fidelity prototypes require a controlled environment, for example, a laboratory setting or an office. On the other hand, high fidelity prototypes may be deployed in the wild. We might, for example, put our new app on the user's phone, or we might place a kiosk in an area where the general public can interact with it.

ethics of nauralistic observation

Paramount is the fact that we must safeguard the privacy of the individual. We must maintain the anonymity of the user. This means we should not collect identifying information about the people we observe, not pictures, not other identifying information without asking their permission. And again, naturalistic observation data is really useful, but it is best thought of as a platform for future data collection.

prototyping resources 2

Resources for Prototyping 2 https://uxmag.com/articles/what-a-prototype-is-and-is-not https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/the-skeptics-guide-to-low-fidelity-prototyping/ http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/low-fidelity-prototype/ http://andrewchen.co/why-every-consumer-internet-startup-should-do-more-low-fidelity-prototyping/ http://www.telono.com/en/articles/lo-fi-vs-hi-fi-prototyping-how-real-does-the-real-thing-have-to-be/ http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/prototyping-types-of-prototypes-14927 http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/horizontal-and-vertical-prototypes/ http://marketblog.envato.com/grow-improve/creativity/introduction-sketch-ui-design/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/the-messy-art-of-ux-sketching/ http://www.slideshare.net/LaneHalley/how-to-draw-quick-useful-ui-sketches http://ui-patterns.com/blog/User-interface-sketching-tips-part-1 https://uxmag.com/articles/storyboarding-in-the-software-design-process http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672917/the-8-steps-to-creating-a-great-storyboard http://www.slideshare.net/fgarofalo/users-story-ux-storyboarding

Scenarios describe the stories and context behind why a specific user or user group comes to your site.

Scenarios also provide a narrative of both the qualitative and quantitative data. It allows us an opportunity to convey the richness of the data set we collected in a storyline that highlights all of the important aspects about the task and how it is currently accomplished.

Secondary Stakeholders

Secondary stakeholders do not use the design directly, but may do so indirectly because they get some kind of output from it.

four discovery techniques. Naturalistic observation, survey, focus group and interview. We also have techniques for representing what we discover about the user. This include user characteristics tables and personas. There are also techniques to represent findings about the tasks. These include scenarios, essential use case scenarios, hierarchical task analysis and current UI critique.

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Tertiary stakeholders

Tertiary stakeholders may not use the design at all, but are directly affected by the design in either a negative or a positive way.

These allow us to model our new design, but don't quite fit into the low and high fidelity categories. They include Wizard of Oz, Proof of Concept videos, and Metaphor Development techniques.

The Wizard of Oz technique is used to mimic functionality of a product by having a human perform the task usually performed by the computer. Here, the user is unaware that the product is not functional. This technique has the advantages of saving time and money that would be required to build a functioning product. However, it also has disadvantages. These include the fact that considerable time is required to get this to work appropriately and it always requires multiple people to operate.

the importance of cultural values in design

The design ecosystem includes the social level. Here the idea is that there are cultural issues that impact the use or adoption of a system. As designers we need to be aware of cultural values related to the task that the user engages in, and design with those issues in mind.

the goal of surveys

The goal of surveys is to get the user's opinions. Most often, we get them to provide a self report about their behavior, perceptions, attitudes and feelings. However, this also leads to perhaps its biggest shortcoming. That is, that the information we collect is superficial. It doesn't really provide us with insight into the problem area or what we want to design. Other shortcomings include recall bias, social desirability, and sample bias. First, when we ask users to tell us about things that happened in the past, there is a chance that their recollections are incorrect or inaccurate. Second, when we ask users about their opinions, they may want to respond in a way that pleases the researcher. Or that is in accordance with their cultural norms, but that may not reflect their actual attitudes. Finally we only have data from the users in our study that chose to participate. And these people may not represent the users we couldn't reach or that didn't want to participate.

alternative design phase/ design space

The goal of the alternative design phase is to develop interfaces or systems to do a better job of meeting the needs of the user than their existing practices. In particular, our job is to hone in on what problems we want to solve. This is the design space..

the persona

The persona provides a narrative of both the qualitative and quantitative data. It allows us an opportunity to convey the richness of the data set we collected in the story line. That highlights all of the important data we collected about the user. In other words, it allows the user and her needs to come to life.

Evaluation is generally defined in two categories. Formative evaluation is conducted early on in the design process with low fidelity prototypes, while summative evaluation is conducted with high fidelity prototypes or a near final interface.

The type of data we collect is related to the type of prototypes we are using. Low fidelity prototypes require that the designer collects the data. For example, time to completion or count number of clicks during the task. High fidelity prototypes may produce data that the designer can access and analyze, which tells us about how the system was used. For example, there might be time stamps of when the user started andended a session, and log data of how the user interacted with the system.

user engagement process (process for engaging with users. This is NOT user ressearch)

The user engagement process has three parts, the introduction, the interaction and the closing. We will go over each in turn. First, you want to provide a brief overview. Let the user know what the goals are for the session Ask them for their frank opinion. Let them know that there are no right or wrong answers and they should simply give you whatever feedback comes to mind. Explain that the interaction is confidential. You will not refer to any personal information they provide. During the introduction, explain to the user that their participation is completely voluntary. That they are free to stop participating at any time. If they wish to stop participating, this will not negatively affect their relationship with your company or institution. This part is important to let the user feel at ease and unconstrained about the fact that you may be representing an entity that has a high profile in their community. During the session, keep control of the interaction. If the user has gone on a tangent or if you have gotten enough information on a given topic, steer the conversation back on track. Maintaining a respectful tone tells them that this was very helpful and that there are other items to cover during the time that you have left. At the end of the session, remind them about the goals of the interaction and what you plan to do with their data. Ask if they have anything else to add. This part of the interaction is also called the debriefing andis just as important, as the rest of the engagement process. It allows you to get any last minute thoughts the user might have or answer any questions. It is also a final opportunity for you to build rapport with them and establish a sense that you are a professional. This is paramount, because you are an ambassador not just for the company or institution you represent, but also for the field.

indicators of the subjective user satisfaction while executing the task.

These can be both cognitive or emotional aspects of the task completion.We are going to refer to cognitive measures as those that relate to the mental effort it required to complete the task. For example, were the steps required to complete the task intuitive? For the emotional component, we want to have a sense of the feelings that the user experienced as she completed the task. These two might be correlated. It might be that a task that was unintuitive will lead to the user feeling frustrated

techniques for representing what we discover about the user.

These include descriptive statistics, user characteristic tables and persona.

evaluation more advanced techiques

Thus, I did not cover other advanced topics, for example, analytic evaluation. Here, experts are used to simulate or predict typical user performance. Some common examples are heuristic evaluation or cognitive walk-through

why should we start with low fideliy protoypes always?

We always want to start with low fidelity prototypes first. This is the case even if resources are not a problem. We do this because it is quick and easy. And it's a way to verify our design objectives. We do this for ourselves because putting our thoughts on paper may lead us to quite literally see things in a different light. Once we have gone through a couple of iterations, we can then share these low fidelity prototypes with colleagues and get their feedback. We can even engage stakeholders in the process. However, I want to remind you that user feedback is a very valuable resource, and we want to be judicious in how often we reach out to get their help. With low fidelity prototyping we're not going for perfection. We are looking for sequential iterations to check some aspects of our design.

horizontal vs vertical prototypes

We can build horizontal prototypes that allow us to model the breadth of the design feature we plan to incorporate but include little functionality. Or, we can choose vertical prototypes where we will model a few features in depth. The question of whether to engage in horizontal or vertical prototyping depends on the goal of the exercise. ex/ Now imagine that we have identified the following five features. A horizontal prototype would require that we include all of them in existing interface, so a user could get a sense of how the five different features would be integrated. On the other hand, we could decide that two of these features are really the most important. And that we want to fully model the various screens that would be required for the user to complete the task for these two tasks. This is vertical prototype

when do you stop evaluating?

Well, one rule of thumb is that you stop when you have met your design objectives.And this translates to an evaluation cycle that shows that the user can interact with your design in an effortless and enjoyable manner.

Characteristics table

allow us to highlight important aspects about what we learn via the requirement gathering process. It provides a tabular summary of our findings. In this table we see that we can include both quantitative and qualitative information. Quantitative information includes basic demographics, for example, age, sex and education. Play video starting at :3:4 and follow transcript3:04But also a summary of qualitative information, such as the user's computer experience or their motivation and attitudes. Thus we provide a quick summary of all of our data in a simple form factor.

Primary stakeholders

are the people who use the design directly. These are the users that designers most commonly interact with, they're called the end users.

defining problem space and how to narrow it down

ex/ Students in my class were tasked with coming up with new user experiences that would get users to get to know their neighbor. The problem space is huge. It requires that the designer consider who is the neighbor? What is a neighborhood? this is the problem space Here is a list that reflects how students in my class narrow it in on the Design Space. They decided that neighbors and neighborhood included people in apartment buildings, in a residential block, business travelers visiting a new town or city, students on campus or in class or at the gym.

In reviewing the result from the requirement gathering phase, what can you do to improve the individual's experience? How can you change the design of an existing interface to improve interactions among a group of users? Consider a system that you currently use that allows a group interaction. A common example is a social media application. For example, Facebook. How did you feel the last time that they updated the interface?

good questions to ask

Resources for Requirement Gathering LINKS

http://personalexcellence.co/blog/brainstorming-techniques/ http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2009/03/nonfunctional-requirements-minimal-checklist.html http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/answer/Differentiating-between-Functional-and-Nonfunctional-Requirements http://www.usabilityfirst.com/usability-methods/facilitated-brainstorming/ http://blog.abovethefolddesign.com/2010/11/11/5-powerful-ways-to-brainstorming-with-teams/ http://www.inspireux.com/2013/07/18/tips-for-structuring-better-brainstorming-sessions/ http://www.slideshare.net/jessicaivins/aiga-cincy-uxworkshop01 http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/idea-creation-tools/overview/affinity.html https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_86.htm http://infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/affinitydiagramming/

general resources links:

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/index.html http://www.usabilitybok.org/what-is-usability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design https://uxmag.com/ http://www.usabilityfirst.com/ http://alistapart.com/article/usability-testing-demystified http://uxmyths.com/

RESOURCES FOR PROTOTYPING

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/prototyping.html http://www.telono.com/en/articles/lo-fi-vs-hi-fi-prototyping-how-real-does-the-real-thing-have-to-be/ http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/high-fidelity-prototype/ http://www.atlargeinc.com/insights/high-fidelity-vs-low-fidelity-prototyping-web-design-and-app-development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91-JnTq3MhA Tools http://www.uxrecorder.com/ https://www.invisionapp.com/ https://marvelapp.com/ http://www.axure.com/

Resources for Evaluation links

http://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/usability-evaluation.html https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/usability-evaluation http://www.wqusability.com/articles/more-than-ease-of-use.html http://www.diku.dk/~kash/papers/CHI2000_froekjaer.pdf http://www.wqusability.com/articles/more-than-ease-of-use.html https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/

What are the key elements of a User Interface?

input and output

The Metaphor Technique

is meant to help the user build a relevant mental model of how a new design functions. The metaphor communicates the functionality of the novel design compared to systems that the user already knows and is familiar with.

where are evaluations for each type of prototype done?

low fidelity is in a controlled environment and high is in the field or wild.

naturalistic observation

observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. While it's true that in most cases, there is no interaction between the designer and the user during this observation, the designer must have a plan for the observation session. During the naturalistic observation session, the data collected can be either qualitative, or quantitative. However, the major shortcoming of this technique includes that the designers' data are limited to his or her own collection technique and interpretation. There's no way to verify if the assumptions that the designer made are correct. We actually don't know why the user is completing a given task in a certain way. This is the main reason why naturalistic observations are usually first steps in the requirements gathering process.

three low fidelity prototyping

sketching, storyboarding, and card-based prototypes. sketching: Sketching is a freehand depiction of images related to our design. The main point here is that this does not require being an artist or even having any talent that requires drawing skills. It is merely an exercise to get you to conceptualize an idea. You can easily represent people with stick figures and devices with squares.

Improving a design may mean that we simply improve the inputs or outputs

t

Now you're in a position to present your requirement gathering findings via a series of different techniques. These include scenarios, essential use case scenarios, hierarchical task analyses, and current UI critique.

t

The goal of the novel designs we create is to do a better job of meeting the needs of the user than the existing designs. the goal of design is not novelty for its own sake, it's novelty and the service of improving the user experience. It may require that we create a whole new system. Or it may be that we simply design novel inputs and outputs

t

We can classify prototyping in two ways. Low fidelity prototypes bare little similarity to the final design in either form or function, while high fidelity prototypes are very similar to the final design.

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signifiers

tell us where that action should take place. Basically they indicate what actions are possible.

storyboards

the best ex of a soryboard is one tat provides a narrative about your design. Studyboards are a common way to provide a narrative in a static fashion. Think about your favorite newspaper comic strip, in four to eight sequences you get an entire storyline. The technique of storyboarding does the same for designers. It allows us to put our design in context. It provides an opportunity to consider how the user would engage our new design with a given scenario.

requirement gathering phase

the designer aims to understand how the user is currently completing the task. Here we have the designers as detective, trying to understand the who, what, when, where of the user's goals. The goal of requirement gathering is to understand the problem space. Basically, What users perceive are problems with their current practices. And user's wish list for improving how they currently accomplish their task. The problem space refers to Areas where the data indicates that we can improve the user experience

example of using the entire design cycle.

the designer can take the qualitative data from this session and come up with a set of questions to ask during a direct interaction with the user. For example, let's say that during our naturalistic observation we notice that there are three prominent ways the user is completing the task. We can then develop a survey where we find out where these preferences for using a given task comes from. Then we can host a focus group or do a set of interviews to further clarify the findings from the survey data.

In the third phase what does the designer do?

the designer takes the best designs from phase two and actually builds models or prototypes that the user will be able to engage with.

task completion measures for evaluations

time to completion of the task, number of clicks, or number of errors while performing a task.

For any given project, creating only three or four personas is best. Remember that it is better to paint with a broad brush and meet the needs of the larger populations than try to meet the needs of everyone.

true

If you are conducting research, you are collecting information with users with the goal of reporting the findings in a conference.

true

We can only design useful and usable systems if we have good understanding of the individuals, and how they currently complete a given task. We gather this data during the user interaction sessions.

true

If the user can complete the task in an effective, efficient and satisfying manner than we say the design is

usable

In the second phase, designing alternatives what are we able to do?

we are able to develop novel interfaces to successfully complete the task.