Interaction Design

Front 1

Q1 2010: Five reasons why a user might become frustrated with the design of an interactive product.

Back 1

-When an application doesn't work properly or crashes.
-When a system doesn't do what the user wants it to do.
-When a user's expectations are not met.
- When a system doesn't provide enough info to tell the user what to do.
-When error messages pop up that are vague or abstruse.
-When the appearance of an interface is too noisy, garish, gimmicky, or patronising.
When a system requires a user to carry out too many to perform a task, only to find a mistake early on, requiring that the user start again.

Hint 1

Chapter 5, section 5.4

Front 2

A well designed interactive product adheres to the principles of good visibility and clear mappings.

There are two aspects to good visibility. Define each of these

Back 2

1. Clearly visible; e.g. the user can see the controls easily and well.
2. Clear functions: that is, the functions of the product are clear to the user and easy to discern.

Hint 2

Page 60 Unit 2 & Set book page 29.

Front 3

A well designed interactive product adheres to the principles of good visibility and clear mappings.

There are two aspects to good mapping. Define each of these

Back 3

1. Mapping: the relationship between controls and their real-world effect.
2. Well labelled controls.

Hint 3

Block 2 Page 61.

Front 4

Taking an example from an interactive product with which you are familiar, describe an interface element with both good visibility and clear mappings.

Back 4

My monitor's on/off button is labelled on/off, and is a nice easy-to-spot button.

Front 5

Describe a situation where the user experience goal fun needs to be favoured over the usability goal learnability. Why is it necessary to make this trade-off?

Back 5

A game, particularly a children's game, needs to be fun or has no point really existing!

Front 6

Describe a second situation where the usability goal learnability needs to be favoured over the user experience goal fun. Why is it necessary to make this trade-off?

Back 6

Anywhere that performance is critical, for example, I'd prefer that my spaceship's landing controls were easy to remember, but wouldn't worry too much about the fun!!