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Da Saffr
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Designing for Interaction, Second Edition: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices Dan Saer New Riders 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510/524-2178 510/524-2221 510/5 24-2221 (ax)
Find us on the Web at: www.newriders.com o report errors, please send a note to
[email protected] New Riders is an imprint o Peachpit, a division o Pearson Education Copyright © 2010 by Dan Saer Project Editor: Michael J. Nolan Development Editor: Box welve Communications, Inc. Production Editor: Becky Winter Copyeditor: Rose Weisburd Prooreader: Darren Meiss Indexer: James Minkin Cover designer: Aren Howell Interior designer: Andrei Pasternak with Maureen Forys Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No par t o this book may be reproduced or transmitted in a ny orm by any means, electronic, mechanical, phot photocopying, ocopying, recording, or otherwise, w ithout the prior written permission o the publisher. For inormation on getting permission or reprints and excerpts, contact permissions@peach
[email protected]. pit.com. Notice of Liability Te inormation in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation o the book, neither the author nor Peachpitt shall have any liabilit y to any person or entity with respect to a ny loss or damage Peachpi caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instruct ions contained in this book or by the computer soware and hardware products described in it. Trademarks Many o the designations used by manuacturers and sellers to disting uish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware o a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner o the trademark. All other product names and services identied throughout this book are used in editorial ashion only and or the benet o such companies with no intention o inringement o the trademark. No such use, or the use o any t rade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other aliation with this book.
ISBN 13: 978-0-321-64339-1 ISBN 10: 0-321-64339-9 987654321 Printed and bound in the United States o America
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Ad Te shadow o the two years I spent steeping in design at Carnegie Mellon University looms large over this book. When I wrote the rst edition, I ound mysel constantly reerring to my notes rom that time and hearing the echoes o my proessors’ words, including those o Dan Boyarski, Kristen Hughes, Karen Moye Moyer, r, John Zimmerman, and Jodi Forlizzi. I want to particularly note the infuence o Dick Buchanan, who immeasurably broadened broaden ed my understanding o t his discipline, and my r iend and advisor Shelley Evenson, who taught me at least hal o what I know about interaction design. Without her knowledge and experience, poorly ltered through me, this book would be shallow indeed. In the second edition, the infuence o my proessional colleagues at Adaptive Path and now Kicker Studio can be elt. Particular kudos to Adaptive Pathers Brandon Schauer, Peter Merholz, and especially Henning Fischer, who helped lead me, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the world o design strategy. Tis book is much improved or its inclusion. My Kicker Studio partners Jennier Bove and om Maiorana have been generous with their editing and design help help,, not to mention encouragement. My interviewees were generous generous with their time and ex pertise and I’d l ike to especially thank them. Your presence in my book honors me. I’m also grateul to companies who lent their case studies and beautiul product images to the book, illustrating my points better than I could have with words alone. Te sta at Peachpit/New Riders has been a tremendous tremendous help in making this book what it is, in t his edition and t he last. My editors Michael Nolan, Becky Winter, and Je Riley have polished my rough edges (and there were many) into the ne tome you have in your hands (or on your screen). Another special thanks goes to my riend and technical editor Bill DeRouchey, whose insights burnished this book. Other riends who have lent their support and help with both this edition and the last: Phi-Hong Ha, Jesse James Garrett, Andrew Crow, Jannine akahashi-Crow, akahashi-Crow, Kristina Krist ina Halvorson, Marc Rettig, Adam Greeneld, Ryan Freitas, Rae Brune, Jennier Fraser, Lane Becker, Brian Oberkirch, Chad Torton, Rob Adams, Kenneth Berger, Willow Stelzer, Kim Lenox, odd Wilkens, Uday Gajendar, Chiara Fox, Dave Malou, Kim Goodwin,
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vi
AcknowleDgements
Nancy Broden, Alan Cooper, Dana Smith, Rachel Hinman, Erika Hall, Rachel Glaves, Samantha Soma, Sarah Nelson, Jared Spool, Jody Medich, Mike Scully, Laura Kirkwood-Datta, Liz Danzico, Kevin Daly, Shinohara oshikazu, Zach Hettinger, my in-laws Mary and Barr y King, and my sister, Meagan Duy. Tanks to my parents, who bought me my rst computer (a imex Sinclair 1000) and a 300 baud modem and who paid the ensui ng long-distance phone bills. My daughter Fiona, a budding interaction designer hersel, had to endure my writing when I could have been playing Wii with her. More time or Mario now. Lastly, and most importantly, without the support support o my wie, R achael King, the creation o this book would have been impossible. impossible. All writers need ti me and space, and those are always her gis to me. T is book is as much a product o her generosity as it is o my words.
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c Introduction xiii
Chapr 1: Wha Is Iraci Dsig?
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What Are Interactions and Interaction Design? . . Tree Ways o Looking at Interaction Design Why Interaction Design Design?? . . . . . . . . . . . . Focusingg on Users . . . . . . . . . . . . Focusin Finding Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . Using Ideation and Proto Prototyping typing . . . . . . Collaborating and Addressing Constraints . Creating Appro Appropriate priate Solutions . . . . . . Drawing on a Wide Range o Infuences . . . Incor porating Emotion . . . . . . . . . . A (V (Very) ery) Brie History o Interaction Design. . . . 1830s to 1940s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1940s to 1960s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1960s to 1970s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2000s 200 0s to Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Stew o Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Products and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Practice Interaction Design? . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapr 2: th Fur Apprachs Iraci Dsig User-Centered Design . . Activity-Centered Design . Systems Design . . . . . Genius Design . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . .
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Chapr 3: Dsig Sragy What Is Desig n Strateg y? y? . . . . . . . . . . Design Strategy and Business Strategy . Framing the Proble Problem m. . . . . . . . . . . . raditional Resea Research rch . . . . . . . . . Desig n Brie . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stakeholder Interviews . . . . . . . . Metrics and Return on Investment (RO (ROI) I) Competitive Ana lysis . . . . . . . . . Determining Dierentiato Dierentiators. rs. . . . . . . . . Fighting Feature-itis . . . . . . . . . Pricing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visualization and Visioning . . . . . . . . . Vision Proto Prototypes types . . . . . . . . . . Project Planning and Roadmapping . . . . . Product Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapr 4: Dsig Rsarch What Is Design Research?. . . . . . . . . . Why Bother with Design Research?. . . Research Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . Costs and ime . . . . . . . . . . . Recruiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moderator Script . . . . . . . . . . . Conducting Design Research . . . . . . . . What Not to Do . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Research . . . . . . . . . . . What to Look For and How to Record It It.. Research Met hods . . . . . . . . . . . . . Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For Furt Further her Readi Reading ng . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapr 5: Srucurd Fidigs Preparing the Data . . . . . Ma ke ke the Data Physica l Manipulating the Data Analyzing the Data. . . . . Analysis . . . . . . . Summation . . . . . Extrapolation . . . . Abstraction . . . . . Conceptual Models . . . . Personas . . . . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . .
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Chapr 6: Idai ad Dsig Pricipls Creating Concepts . . . . . . . Getting Started. . . . . . Str tru uct ctur ureed Brai ain nstorm rmin ingg . Orga ni nizing Concepts . . . Creating Design Principles . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . . .
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Chapr 7: Rm Constra ints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Te Laws and Principles o Interaction Design . . . . Direct and Indirect Manipulation . . . . . . Aordances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Feedback and Feedorward . . . . . . . . . Mental Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fitts’s Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hick’s Hick ’s Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Te Magic Number Seven . . . . . . . . . . esler’s Law o the Conser Conservation vation o Complexity Te PokaPoka-Y Yoke Princ Principle. iple. . . . . . . . . . . Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Frameworks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . Postures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . Documentation and Methods o Renement Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sketches and Models . . . . . . . . Storyboards . . . . . . . . . . . . ask Flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mood Boards . . . . . . . . . . . Wirerames . . . . . . . . . . . . Service Blueprint . . . . . . . . . . Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-traditiona l Inputs . . . . . . . . . . Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gestures . . . . . . . . . . . . . Presence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Su mma r y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapr 8: Prypig, tsig, ad Dvlpm Interace Desig n . . . . . . . Sound Eects . . . . . Prototy ping . . . . . . . . . Low-Fidelity LowFidelity Proto Prototypes types . High-Fidelity High-Fide lity Prototypes Service Prototypes . . . esting . . . . . . . . . . . Heuristic Evaluation . . Development . . . . . . . . Agile . . . . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . .
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Chapr 9: th Fuur f Iraci Dsig Te Next Five Years o the Internet . ools or the Next Web . . . Intelligent Agents . . . . . . . . Spimes and the Internet o Tings . Human-Robot Interact Interactions ions . . . . Wearables. . . . . . . . . . . . U bi biquitous Computing . . . . . . Su m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . . . For Further Reading . . . . . . .
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Et hics in Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 212 Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Deliberate Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22113 Index 21 215
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Ab h Ah Although he wouldn’t hear the term “ interaction design” or another decade and a hal, Dan Saer did his rst interaction design work as a teenager in the mid-1980s mid-1980s when he designed a nd ran a dial-up game on his Apple IIe, a 2600-baud modem, two foppy disk drives, and a phon phonee line. A nd yes, it was in his parents’ basement. He’s worked ormally in interactive media a nd product design since 1995 as He’s a webmaster, inormation architect, copywriter, developer, producer, creative lead, creative di rector rector,, and, o course, interaction designer. Currently, he’s one o the ounders and principals o Kicker Studio, a product design consultancy in San Francisco. Dan has designed a wide range o products, rom Web sites to interactive V services, rom mobile and medical devices, to touchscreens, gestural interaces, and robots. His clients have included Fortune 100 companies, governmentt agencies, and startups. governmen He holds a Masters in Design, Interaction Design rom Carnegie Mellon University, Univers ity, where he also taught interaction design undamentals. He lives and works in Sa n Francisco and ca n be ound online at http:/ http://www. /www. odannyboy.com and on witter at @odannyboy.
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Irduci
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xiv
IntroDuctIon
In the last decade, and especially in t he three years since the rst edition o Designing or Interaction was published, interaction design as a discipline has come into its own. Even people who have never heard o interaction design—which is to say, most people—understand that how their devices work is as important as how they look. A beautiu l mobile phone phone that uncu nctions poorly will cause months o rustration. We know, and the popular press has celebrated, that the best products are those that a re unctionally— unctional ly— and aesthetically—beautiul. Te past several years have also brought us some absolutely wonderul examples o interaction design that have sparked the imagination: Apple’s iPhone, Nintendo’s Wii, iRobot’s Roomba, Microso’s Surace, witter, and social networks like Facebook. More and more, previously “dumb” products are being outtted with microprocessors, sensors, and networking capabilities, whi le the Web has matured to a sophisticated platorm platorm or applications applicatio ns o a ll sorts. Desktop applications applications have become interwoven with the Internet or interesting combinations. Devices can locate themselves in physical physi cal space and provide geo-located inormation. Exploding processing power, cloud computing, and cheap digital storage make all sorts o new products possible. All o these t hings mean the ru les o interaction design (such (such as they are) are being rewritten. Te paradig ms o how we interact with computing computing devices, such as the desktop metaphor that we’ve used or around 40 years now, are changing a nd being added to. We relate to our products—and thus, to each other—in new ways. It’s It’s an exciting t ime to be in this eld. Tis book is about the discipline that denes how digital products behave. behave. It doesn’t contain any code; indeed, I’ve tried to be as technology and platorm agnostic as possible. I’ve written this book or both new designers who are just getting started, as well as more advanced designers who might want to rene their processes or add to their set o design tools.
Wha’s nw i this edii Tis book addresses a airly serious faw in the rst edition, namely that while there was a lot o good inormation, there was no process to help new designers put all that inormation into an order, into practice. In this edition, Chapters 3 through 8 step through a general design process that can be used or a wide variety o projects. Not every step needs to be ollow ollowed, ed,
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IntroDuctIon
xv
and the process is in an ideal order that seldom happens in designing. But at least there is a process. Additionally, several signicant new topics have Additionally, have been added. Design strategy (Chapter 3) is brand new in this edition and I daresay does the best job I’ve seen in distilling this step (and growing eld unto itsel) down to its essentials. In the rst edition, the translation o research into models and then into concepts was poorly done; done; this edition addresses that crucia l stage. Likewise, t here was no mention mention o design principles, and this was a n unortunate oversight. Service design, which was its own chapter in the rst edition, has been more integrated into the book or two reasons. Te rst is that ser vice design has become its own area o study. Te second reason is that the line between services and products has gotten blurrier. It is dicult to nd products, and especially the networked products interaction designers work work on, that aren’t part o a service o some ki nd. Readers o the rst edition also a sked or reerences and recommendations recommendations to dive deeper into the various topics, so each chapter now has a “For Further Reading” sect ion at the end as well as ootnotes to specic art icles. I hope this book is a starting point or your work in interaction design. It is, however, only a book, and books alone can’t make you a great designer. Only designing will do that. I urge you to try out everything in this book or yoursel, change it as necessary to t your working style, your company, company, your users, and the project you’re on. So get to it—there’s much to be designed. San Francisco June 2009
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We become what we behold We shape our tools, and thereafer our tools shape us —Marshall McLuhan
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1 What Is Interaction Design?
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chapter 1
What Is InteractIon DesIgn?
Every moment o every day, millions o people send e-mail, talk on mobile phones, instant message each other, record V shows on digital video recorders (DVRs), and listen to music on MP3 players. All o these things are made possible by good engineering. But it’s interaction design that makes them usable, useul, and un. You benet rom good interaction design e very time you: .
Go to an automa automatic tic teller machine (AM) and withdraw cash w ith a ew simple touches on a screen.
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Become engrossed in a compu computer ter game.
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Cut and paste cells on a spreadsheet.
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Buy something online.
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witter rom your mobile phone.
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Update your status on Facebook.
But the reverse is oen a lso true. We suer rom poor interaction design all around us. us. Tousands o interaction design problems wait to be solved— such as when you: .
ry to use the sel-checkout at a grocery store and it takes you hal an hour.
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Can’t get your car to tell you what’s wrong with it when it breaks down.
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Wait at a bus stop with no idea when t he next bus wil l arrive.
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Struggle to synchronize your mobile phone to your computer.
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Can’t gure out how to set the clock in your microwave oven.
Any time behavior—h behavior—how ow a product works—is involved, interaction designers could be involved. Indeed, or the best experience, t hey hey should should be be involved. Back in 1990, Bill Moggridge (Figure 1.1), a principal o the design rm IDEO, realized that or some time he and some o his colleagues had been creating a very dierent kind o design. It wasn’t wasn’t product design exactly, but they were denitely designing products. Nor was it communication design, although they used some o that discipline’s tools as well. It wasn’t computer science either, although a lot o it had to do with computers and soware. No, this was something dierent. It drew on all those disciplines, but was something else, and it had to do with connecti ng people through the products they used. Moggridge cal led this new practice interaction design.
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3
What are InteractIons anD InteractIon DesIgn?
In the decades since then, interaction design has grown rom a tiny, specialized discipline to one practiced by tens o thousands o people all over the world, many o whom don’t call themselves interaction designers and may not even be aware o the discipline. Universities now oer degrees in it, and you’ll nd practitioners o interaction design at every major soware and design rm, as well as in banks such as Wells Fargo, hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic, and appliance manuacturers such as Whirlpool. Te rise o the commercial Internet in the mid 1990s and the widespread incorporation o microprocessors microprocessors into machines such as cars, c ars, dishwash di shwashers, ers, and phones where previously they hadn’t been used led to this explosive growth in the number o interaction designers because suddenly a multitude o serious interaction problems needed to be solved. Our gadgets became digital, as did our workplaces, homes, transportation, and communication devices. Our everyday stu temporarily became unamiliar to us; the conusion we once collectively had about how to set the clock on the VCR spread to our entire lives. We had to relearn how to dial a phone number and work the stereo and use our computers. It It was the in itial practitioners o interaction design—mostly coming rom other disciplines— who helped us begin to make sense o our newly digitized world and the Internet, and these same people, now aided by new interaction designers, continue to rene and practice the cra as our devices, a nd our world, grow ever more complex.
e G D i R G G o M l l i B y s e t R u o C
Figure 1.1 B Mggrdg, ar f Designing Interactions and ndra dgnr fr n f r app cmpr, GRD Cmpa, cnd rm “nracn dgn” afr bng akd f rm “f-fac.”
W a Ii d Ii Di? Although we experience examples o good and bad interaction design every day, interaction design as a discipline is tricky to dene. In part, this is the result o its interdisciplinary roots: in industrial and communication design, human actors, a nd human-computer human-computer interaction. It’s also because a lot o interaction design is invisible, unctioning behind the scenes. W hy do the Windows and Mac operating systems, which basically do the same thi ng and can, with some tin kering, even look identical, feel so feel so dierent? Interaction design is about behavior, and behavior is much harder to observe and
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4
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What Is InteractIon DesIgn?
understand than appearance. It’s much easier to notice notice and discuss a garish color than a subtle t ransaction that t hat may, may, over time, d rive you crazy. Figure 1.2 Dgnd b Marc Andrn, Mac brwr (wc vna vvd n Ncap Navgar) wa a
An interaction, grossly speaking, is a transaction between two entities, typically an exchange o inormation, but it can also be an exchange o goods or services. Tis book is called Designing for for Interaction because it is this sort o exchange that interaction designers try to engender in their work. Interaction designers design for design for the the possibility o interaction. Te interaction itsel takes place between people, machines, and systems, in a variety o combinations.
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Three Ways of Looking at Interaction Design Tere are three major schools schools o thought when it comes to dening interaction design: .
A technology-centered view.
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A behaviorist view.
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Te Social Interaction Design v iew.
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What is common about all three views is that interaction design is seen as an art—an applied art, like urniture making; it’s not a science, although some tried and true rules have emerged (see Chapter 7). Interaction design is by its nature contextual: it solves specic problems problems under a par ticular set o circumstances using the available materials. For example, even though a 1994 Mosaic browser (Figure 1.2) was an a n excellent piece o interaction design, you wouldn’t install it on your computer now. It served its purpose for its time and context . Like other applied arts, such as architecture, interaction design involves many methods and methodologies in its tasks, and ways o working go in and out o vogue and oen compete or dominance. Currently, a very usercentered design methodology in which products are generated with users is in style, but this hasn’t always been the case, and recently these methods
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have been challenged (see Chapter 2). Microso perorms extensive user testing and research; Apple, known or its innovative interaction design, does very little.
The Technology-Centered View Interaction designers make technology, particularly digital technology, useul, usable, and pleasurable to use. Tis is why the rise o soware and the Internet was also the rise o the eld o interaction design. Interaction designers take the raw stu produced by engineers and programmers and mold it into products that people enjoy using. The Behaviorist View As Jodi Forlizzi and Robert Reimann succinctly put it in 1999 in t heir presentation “Interaction Designers: What we are, what we do, & what we need to know,” 1 interaction design is about “dening the behavior o artiacts, environments, and systems (or example, products).” Tis view ocuses on unctionality and eedback: how products behave and provide eedback based on what the people engaged with them are doing. The Social Interaction Design View Te third, and broadest, view o interaction design is that it is inherently social, revolving around acilitating communication between humans through products. Tis perspective is sometimes called Social Interaction Design. echnology is nearly irrelevant in this view; any kind o object or device can ma ke a connection between people. Tese communications communications can take many orms; they can be one-to-one as with a telephone call, one-tomany as with a blog, or many-to-many many-to-many as with t he stock market.
W Ii Design? Te term “design” can be dicult to get a handle on. Consider this inamous sentence by design history scholar John Heskett: “Design is to design a design to produce a design.”
1 Dwnad nn a p://gdgr.cm/ gdgr.cm/dc/ dc/AiGAFrzz_Rmann2001.pdf AiGAFrzz_Rmann2001.pdf
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People have many preconceived notions about design, not the least o which is that design concerns only how things look: design as decoration or styling. And while there is nothing wrong with appealing aesthetics, design c an be more than that. Communication (graphic) and industrial design bring ways o working that interaction designers embrace as well. Here are some o the approaches that interaction design employs:
Focusing on Users Designers know that users don’t understand or care how the company that makes a product is run and structured. Tey care about doing their tasks and achieving their goals within their limits. Designers are advocates or end users.
Finding Alternatives Designing isn’t about choosing among multiple options—it’s about creating options, nding a “third option” instead o choosing between two undesirable ones. Tis creation o multiple possible solutions to problems sets designers apart. Consider, or example, Google’s AdWords. Te company needed advertising or revenue, but users hated traditional banner ads. Tus, designers came up with a third approach: text ads.
Using Ideation and Prototyping Designers nd their solutions through brainstorming and then, most important, building models (Figure 1.3) to test the solutions. Certainly, scientists and architects and even accountants model things, but design involves a signicant dierence: design prototypes aren’t xed. Any particular prototype doesn’tt necessarily doesn’ necessar ily represent the solution, only a only a solution. It’s not uncommon to use several prototypes to create a single product. Je Hawkins, designer o the original PalmPilot, amously carried around small blocks o wood, pretending to write on them and storing them in his shirt pocket until he came upon the right size, shape, and weight or the dev ice.
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Figure 1.3 inracn dgnr d pan cra (and rw awa) a var f prp f var d r cncp.
l e D e i R l y R e h C y s e t R u o C
Collaborating and Addressing Constraints Few designers work alone. Designers usually need resources (money, materials, developers, printers, and so on) to produce produce what they dream up, and these resources come with their own constraints. Designers seldom have carte blanche to do whatever they wa nt. Tey must address business goals, compromise with teammates, and meet deadlines. Designing is almost always a team eort.
Creating Appropriate Solutions Most designers create solutions that are appropriate only to a particular project at a particular point in time. Designers certainly carry experience and wisdom rom one project to the next, but the u ltimate solution should should uniquely address the issues o that particular problem. Tis is not to say that the solution (the product) cannot be used in other contexts—experience tells us it ca n and wi ll be—but that the same exac t solution cannot (or (or shouldn’tt anyway) be exact ly copied or other projects. shouldn’ projects. Amazon Ama zon has a great e-commerce model, but it can’t be exactly replicated elsewhere (although pieces o it certainly can be) be);; it works well within the context o the Amazon site. Design solutions have to be appropriate to the situation.
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Drawing on a Wide Range of Inuences Because design touches on so many subject areas (psychology, ergonomics, economics, engineering, architecture, art, a nd more), more), designers bring to the table a broad, multidisciplinary spectrum o ideas rom which to draw inspiration and solutio solutions. ns.
Incorporating Emotion In analyt ical think ing, emotion is seen as an impediment to logic logic and making the right r ight choices. In design, products without an emotional component are lieless and do not connect with people. Emotion needs to be thoughtully included in design decisions. What would the Volkswagen Beetle be without whimsy?
a (V) Bi hi Ii Di Tere’s a tendency to think that interaction design began around the time that Bill Moggridge na med it, in 1990, but that’s that’s not really tr ue. Interaction design probably began, although obviously not as a ormalized discipline, in prerecorded history, when Native Americans and other tribal peoples used smoke signals to communicate over long distances, and t he Celts and Inuit used stone markers called cairns or inuksuit as landmarks, to communicate over time (Figure 1.4).
Figure 1.4 A mdrn carn. in ancn m, carn wr d fr man prp: mark mnan mm, a drcna markr, and a ndcar f bra .
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1830s to 1940s Many centuries later, in the mid 1830s, Samuel Morse created a system to turn simple electromagnetic pulses into a language o sorts and to communicate those words over long distances. Over the next 50 years, Morse code and the telegraph spread across the globe ( Figure 1.5). Morse not only invented the telegraph, but also the entire system or using it: everything rom the electrical systems, to the mechanism or tapping out the code, to the training trai ning o telegraph operators. Tis didn’t happen overnight, naturally, but the telegraph was the rst instance o communication technology that, unlike the printing press, was too sophisticated or or a small smal l number o people to install and use. It required the creators to design an entire system o u se.
Figure 1.5 Mr cd ranmr. t grap wa r cng m a wrd wrd— -cad “Vcran inrn.”
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Similarly, other mass communication technologies, rom the telephone to radio to television, required engineers to design systems o use and interaces or the new technologies. And these systems and interaces were needed not only or the receiving devices—the telephones, telephones, radios, and tele vision sets—but also or the devices used to create and send messages: the telephone switches, microphones, television cameras, control booths, and so on. All o these components components required interaction design, although it certainly wasn’t called t hat at the time. Indeed, it is very common or the rst
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practitioners o interaction design in any new platorm or medium to be the engineers who created the technology itsel. But the machines that ueled these technologies were, or the most part, just that: machines. Tey responded to human input, certainly, but not in a sophisticated way. Tey didn’t have any awareness that they were being used. For that, we needed computers.
1940s to 1960s Te rst wave o computers—ENIAC and its ilk—were engineered, not designed. Humans had to adapt to using them, not vice versa, and this meant speaking the machines’ language, not ours. Entering anything into the computer required days plugging in cables or, in later machines, hours preparing statements on punch cards or paper tape or the machine to read. Tese paper slips were the interace (Figure 1.6). Engineers expended very little design eort to make the early computers more usable. Instead, they worked to make them aster and more powerul, so the computers could solve complicated computational problems. At the same time as these developments were occurring in the computing eld, other disciplines that eventually inormed interaction design were Figure 1.6 Pnc card—n f r nrfac w cmpr, a w a a man f daa rag. B 1980, am a f m ad bn pad b cmmand-n r Gui nrfac.
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growing, too. Engineers and industrial designers such as Henry Dreyuss created the new eld o human actors, which ocused on the design o products or dierent sizes and shapes o people. Te eld o ergonomics ocused on workers’ productivity and saety, determining the best ways to perorm tasks. Cognitive psychology, ocusing on human learning and problem probl em solving, experienced a resurgence, led by such academics as Allen Newell and George Mi ller. In 1945, Atlantic Monthly published a seminal article titled “As We May Tink”2 (repo (reportedly rtedly written w ritten in 1936) by Vannevar Vannevar Bush, i n which he introduced the Memex, a microlm-based device or storing books, records, and communications, which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and exibilit y. It consists o a desk, and while it can presumably be operated rom a distance, it is primarily a piece o urnitu re. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected or convenient reading. Tere is a keyboard, and sets o buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk. Te Memex (Figure 1.7) was Bush’s concept or augmenting human memory. While just a concept, it was the rst imagining o hypertext, and one o the rst or a desktop computing system. It has inuenced generations o interaction designers since, starting with Douglas Engelbart and ed Nelson in the 1960s.
Figure 1.7 on f drawng f Vannvar B’ Mmx dvc a appard n Life magazn n 1945. N —an np dvc dcad aad f m.
1960s to 1970s As computers computers became more powerul, engineers began to ocus on t he people using computers computers in the 1960s, a nd began to devise new met hods o input and new uses or the machines. Engineers added control panels to the ront o computers, computers, allowing al lowing input through a complicat complicated ed series o switches, usually in combinatio combination n with a set o punch cards that were processed as a g roup (batch processing).
2 Rad nn nn a p: p:/ //www.a anc anc.cm/dc/194507/b .cm/dc/194507/b
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In 1960, ed Nelson started his Project Xanadu, with the goal o creating computer compu ter networks with simple user interaces. W hile it never real ly came to ruition, it was the rst attempt at a hypertext system. Nelson, in act, coined the term “hypertext” i n 1963. Figure 1.8 ivan srand’ skcpad. on f skcpad’ nnvan wa mar drawng f wc r cd cra dpca. if r cangd mar drawng, a nanc f drawng wd cang a w.
1963 also brought Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad (Figure 1.8), the rst computer program to utilize a ully graphical user interace and a light pen or input. Using Sketchpad, users could draw both horizontal and vertical lines and combine them into gures and shapes. Sutherland in 1968 created Te Sword o Damocles, which is widely considered to be the rst virtua l reality system. (Te head-mounted display display worn by the user was so heavy it had to be suspended rom the ceiling , thus inspiring t he name.) Sometime around 1965, the rst “killer application,” e-mail, was invented as a way or multiple users o a time-sharing mai nrame computer to communicate. By 1966, e-mail had expanded to allow users to send messages between dierent computers. By 1971, e-mail was being sent across ARPANE, the precursor to the Internet. Ray omlinson, who created the e-mail standards still in use (such as the @ symbol in e-mail addresses), sent the rst e-mail between dierent host systems, reportedly something insignicant like “QWERYUIOP.” Te ARP AR PANE (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was developed by ARPA o the United States Department o Deense and was the predecessor o the global Internet. Conceived as the “Intergalactic Computer Network” in 1962 by J.C.R. Licklider, the rst two links o the network (UCLA and Stanord) connected on November 21, 1969. While ARPANE certainly wasn’t a design milestone, its creation lead to the platorm and medium that caused interaction design to ourish: t he Internet. In 1968, Doug Engelbart did a 90-minute presentation that is now known as “Te Mother o All Demos”3 (Figure 1.9). In it, Engelbart showed the work he’d been doing or the previous several years, essentially creating the next two decades o i nteraction design. As well as being the rst public
3 Wac nn a p://an.anfrd.d/Ms/1968Dm.m
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demonstration o the mouse, Engelbart demonstrated an incredible variety o interaction design paradigms we now take or granted, such as point and click, hyperlinks, cutting and pasting, and networked collaboration.
Figure 1.9 Dcmbr 9, 1968, wa Dg engbar’ “Mr f A Dm” a Fa Jn Cmpr Cnfrnc n san
Many o these paradigms were to nd a home at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), ounded in 1970. Te head o Xerox PARC, PARC, Bob aylor, aylor, urged employees to think o computers not as just processing devices, but instead as communication devices. CouRtesy MARCiN WiChARy
Xerox PARC remains legendary. Its contributions to the eld, many o which are contained in its signature products the Xerox Alto (Figure 1.10) and the Xerox Star, are everything rom windowing and icons and the desktop metaphor to WYSIWYG text editing. Employees included Alan Kay, who conceived o the rst laptop computer, the Dynabook, in 1968; Larry esler and im Mott, who conceived o the desktop metaphor and such now-standard interactions as cut-and-paste; and Robert Metcale, who invented Ethernet networking in 1973.
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Figure 1.10 Xrx A. on f r prna cmpr, and r dkp mapr.
Famously, Steve Jobs got a demo o the Xerox Star and proceeded to include its innovations into Apple’s subsequent computers, the Lisa and, eventually, the Macintosh. In the mid-to-late 1970s, experiments like Myron Krueger’s VIDEOPLACE explored virtual reality experiences and gestural interaces, and the rst touchscreen touchscree n devices became commercially available. Te 1970s also began the computer gaming industry with games such as Pong (1972) and the Atari 2600 gaming console (1977). Tis reected another major trend in the 1970s: the shiing ocus rom the computer
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itsel—the hardware—to the soware that runs it, particularly soware that was not designed by computer scientists and engi neers or themselves or trained operators. Designers and engineers in the 1970s rened and expanded the command-line interace (which had begun in the 1950s) into such industry-dening soware, as VisiCalc, the rst spreadsheet soware, introduced in 1979, and WordStar, a popular word-processing program introduced in 1978 (Figure 1.11).
Figure 1.11 Wrdsar and k wr m f r pc f cmmrca fwar a wrn’ dgnd b prgrammr fr prgrammr. Wrdsar dmnad wrd prcng mark frm ra n 1978 n ar 1990, wn wa rpad b Mcrf Wrd.
1980s Tis new emphasis on users came to ruition in the early 1980s with the explosion o the graphical user interace—spearheaded by Apple Computer, rst in the Lisa (Figure 1.12) and then in the Macintosh—to a mass audience. Like at Xerox PARC, the interaction design o t he Lisa and Macintosh was a group eort, eaturing designers such as Joy Mountord, Je Raskin, and Bill Atkinson. Te 1980s was the era o the personal computer. For the rst time, most people working working with compu computing ting devices were working with their own, and thus had a more one-to-one one-to-one relationship with one than in previous decades. 1981 also saw some o the rst portable computers, such as the Osborne 1. Te increasing memory and power o the devices a llowed or more more sophisticated soware such as Mitch Kapor’s Lotus 1-2-3 (1983).
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Figure 1.12 App la wa a prcrr (f r) Macn, ag mr pwrf and, n man wa, mr advancd. i wa, wvr, a cmmrca far.
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Tis increasing sophistication and power was demonstrated most capably in the surge o so-called “video” or “arcade” games. Gaming consoles such as the Sega Genesis (1989) (1989) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment Enterta inment System (1990) brought unprecedented graphics and computing power to a mass audience. Tis era also eatured game designers such as the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, the “Father o Modern Video Games” and creator o Mario, Legend o Zelda, and Donkey Kong. Gaming provided a new set o parallel interaction design paradigms that exist alongside the more “traditional” or “proessional” ones or the desktop. (Mobile and touchscreen devices are other similar parallel tracks.) In the mid-1980s, bulletin board systems (BBSs) like Te WELL (1985) and Prodigy (1988) sprung up so that people could leave e-mail and messages or one another on remote computers using dial-up modems. In the late 1980s, Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown at Xerox PARC began putting together the rameworks and denitions or what would become known as ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp. It’s taken about two decades, but the era o ubicomp has likely already begun (see Chapter 9).
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1990s Te era o networked computing, and the beginning o interaction design as a ormal discipline, began in earnest during the 1990s. Te World Wide Web, which allowed anyone to easily publish hypertext documents accessible to anyone with a modem worldwide, and the mass adoption o e-mail, brought the need or better interaction design to the oreront. Marc Andreessen’s Mosaic browser (1993) was an important piece o interaction design, introducing such paradigms as t he back button. It is no exaggeration to state that the advent o the commercial, public Internet changed the world and the relationshi relationship p o humans to computing devices and even to inormation. Te early Web was as much a sandbox or new interactions as was the desktop a decade beore, i not more so. Te Web, along with technolo technologies gies such as Adobe’ Adobe’ss Flash, a llowed or experimentation on a grand scale, and or a time, everything—including general controls like scrollbars and buttons— buttons—were were up or grabs. Eventually, in the late 1990s, standards began to emerge and t he Web Web stabilized as a platorm. At the same time, engineers and designers began building sensors and microprocessors, which were getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerul, into things that weren’t considered computers: cars, appliances, and electronic equipment. Suddenly, these physical objects could demonstrate kinds o behavior that they previously couldn’t; they could display an “awareness” o their environment and o how they were being used that was previously inconceivable. Cars could monitor their own engines and alert drivers to problems beore they occurred. Stereos could adjust their settings based on the type ty pe o music being played. Dishwashers Dishwashers could lengthen their wash cycles depending on how dirty the d ishes were. All these behaviors needed to be designed and, most important, communicated to the human beings using the objects. Other pieces o technology acilitated interactions among people, mostly in the entertainment space. Karaoke spread rom bars in China and Japan to the United States (Figure 1.13). Arcade video games like Dance Dance Revolution allowed expression in ront o crowds. Multiplayer games on computers compu ters and game consoles like the Sony PlayStation acilitated competition and collaboration in new ways. Online communities like EverQuest and Te Sims Online incorporated sophisticated economies that rivaled those o ofine countries.
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Figure 1.13 Ag b f jk n us, karak macn a rprng rc xamp f nracn dgn. i prvd a wa cmmnca mna w o t o h P k C o t s i y s e t R u o C
frnd.
Mobile phones and devices—which had existed since the 1980s—enjoyed explosive market growth in the 1990s. oday, billions o customers carry these devices with them. Starting as simply a means o making calls on the go, mobile phones can now contain myriad digital eatures that rival those o desktop computers. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) got o to a shaky start with the ailure o Apple’s Newton in 1995, but by the end o the decade, they had gained traction with devices like the PalmPilot and BlackBerry PD PDAs. As.
2000s to Present Te turn o the millennium millenn ium also coincided with the era o social soware and the beginning begin ning o the t he era o ubiquitous computing. computing. No longer did many ma ny people have a one-to-one relationship with devices, but instead had access to many devices able to interact with each other and the Internet over a network. By 2003, laptops had started outselling desktop systems. As o this writ ing (2009), nearly as many people access the Web Web via a mobile device as with a traditional tr aditional desktop or laptop, laptop, and that number is likely l ikely to be surpassed shortly. As the Internet matured, so did the technologies creating and driving it. Since the end o the 1990s, t he Internet has become less about about reading content than about doing things: executing stock trades, making new (and
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nding old) acquaintances, selling items, manipulating live data, sharing photos, phot os, making personal connections between one piece o content and another. Te Internet also provides several new ways o communicating, among them instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) (Figure 1.14), and witter. Te Internet has become a platorm or applications, in much the same way that Microso DOS once was, but these applications can take advantage o the many eatures o the Internet: collective actions like the SEI@Home project in which people compete to see who can nd extraterrestrial activity rst, data that is collected passively rom large numbers o people as with Amazon’s “People who bought this also bought... bought...”” eature, a r-ung social communities such as that o online photography site Flickr, aggregation o many sources o data in XML and RSS eeds, near real-time access to timely data like stock quotes and news, and easy sharing o content such as blogs and Youube. Access to the Internet, through broadband connections and w ireless networks on portable devices, is changing the types o interactions we can have and where we can have them. Our cities and towns are becoming platorms and data sources or geo-located services. Services themselves are being aected by interaction design (see “Products and Services” l ater in this chapter). Gestural interaces and touchscreen devices such as Nintendo’s Wii and Apple’s iPhone have ushered in a new era o interaction design, where taps on a screen or gestures in space are becoming a new set o commands or our devices. Tere’s never been a better time to be an interaction designer. Te discipline’s uture (see Chapter 9) contains both many challenges and many possibilities.
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Marc Rettig on Interaction Design’s History and Future Marc Rettig is a designer, educator, and researcher, as well as founder and principal of Fit Associates. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Design (where he held the 2003 Nierenberg Distinguished Chair of Design) and the Institute of Design, IIT, in Chicago. Marc served as chief experience ofcer of the user experience rm HannaHodge, and was a director of user experience at Cambridge Technology Partners. Wn dos isoy of inion dsign bgin? i’ pck wrk a Xrx PARC n sar nrfac a a vr ar xamp f f-cnc nracn dgn, pbcan f wc nncd r bgn wrkng n a mar wa. A j n xamp, da f acang a prgram w a pcr wa brn r. W ca m cn, and frg wa a brakrg cnncn bwn nrfac mn and ndrng manng a nc wa. ta wa ar--md 1970, and sar papr ar gra radng. W lds v d gs inun on inion dsign? A crrn praccd? W, fwar dvpmn and grapc dgn. t m xn, ndra dgn. A dab f pcg and man facr. A dab f bn. Wa i magn w nd mr f: mmakng and ar, bg, cnng and rap ( prfna a acqrng and cckng an mpac pn f vw), mab anrpg. And pca ngc—m nw branc f ngc a nbd carvng : ngc f dgnd nracn. W n inion dsigns ln fom noniniv noniniv ools? i’d k pn qn g b brvng a an nracn dgnr, wacng a n am a brvng a cnvr cnvran. an. evrng, n a n, a np and p. Frm a pn f vw, bndar bwn “nracv” and “nnnracv” ar dv. inracn dgn arg ab manng a pp agn ng and vn, and w pp r xpr manng. s arn frm an , nracv r n, g wac
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Marc Rettig on Interaction Design’s History and Future (continued) pp ng . y’ ar m ak . y’ y’ m agn a r f rprng nrpran ap, cr, pnng, dng, dn, and bavr. y’ y’ m fa n v w a ng a bcm gan wrn. y’ m cm a a ng and c gnr , , r vn ma . And i garan wn’ av d mc f bfr ncnr mn w mak a mna mappng wd nvr dram pb. And ’ arn frm a. i’v bn ng a k a an xamp n m f m acng, bca n n and k ar famar , and ’r n nracv nracv n a brdrn, prdcab, mcanca r f wa. B nc ar xamn manng nvvd w k n , raz av ng a a pp wd v knw, b m dgn dn’ aw m b ad. “i’m gng , b i av n war n m.” “M war a gd mprar fr a cd’ cca.” “i’m c.” “i nd b cand.” And n. i’d v canc ak a r nracn dgn apprac mng k a a k.
a sw Diii Interaction design as a ormal d iscipline has been around or less than t wo decades. It’s a young eld, still dening itsel and guring out its place among sister disciplines such as inormation architecture (IA), industrial design (ID), visual (or graphic) design, user experience (UX) design, and human actors. In addition, some o these other disciplines are also new and still discovering their boundaries as well, or are radically changing to accommodate changing design landscape. Figure 1.15 attempts to clariy the relationships between them. As you can see, most o the disciplines all at least partially under the umbrella o user-experience design, the discipline o looking at all aspects— visual design, interaction design, sound design, and so on—o the user’s encounter with a product, and making sure they are in harmony harmony..
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Figure 1.15 t dcpn USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE
Content
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
(Text, Video, Sound)
HUMAN FACTORS VISUAL DESIGN INTERACTION DESIGN
SOUND DESIGN
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
Inormation architecture is concerned with the structure o content: how to best organize and label content so that users nd the inormation they need. Yahoo, Yahoo, with its dozens o labeled and categorized content areas, oers an excellent illustration o in ormation architecture. Visual design is about creating a visual language to communicate content. Te onts, colors, and layoutt o user interaces and printed materials l ike this book provide examlayou ples o visual design. Industria l design is about orm—shaping orm—shaping objects in a way that communicates their use while also making t hem unctional. Physical objects like urniture, kitchenware, and mechanical objects illustrate industrial design. Human actors ensure our products products conorm to the limitations o the human body, both physically and psychologically. Humancomputer compu ter interaction is closely related to interaction design, but its met hods are more quantitative, and its methods are more those o engineering and
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computer science than o design. Architecture concerns itsel with physical computer spaces: their orm and use (“pr (“program”). ogram”). Sound design denes a set o noises, spoken word, word, or music to create a n aural landscape. It’s easy to see why people are conused! Although these disciplines are separate, as the gure illustrates, they still overlap a great deal. In act, where the disciplines overlap can be major areas o practice, such as interace design, where visual and interaction design meet; or navigation, where visual and interaction design meet inormation architecture. Te best products involve multiple disciplines working in harmony. What is a laptop computer except a blend o the ruits o many o these disciplines? Separating them ca n be nearly impossible. You’ll also notice that many o these disciplines have parts that lie outside the user experience realm. Tis is because many o these disciplines have tasks that have to do with getting their designs produced, developed, and built, and those tasks may have little to do with what the user ex periences. It is also important to note that not every organization needs a specialist working in each discipline; wit hin an organization, one person, who might be called anything rom an inormation architect to a user-interace engineer,, can—and probab neer probably ly will—shi back and orth as needs require. It’s the role that is important, not the title. Te “imagineer” at Disney might do a job similar to that o the “user“user-interace interace architect” at a startup start up company. company.
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a steW of DIscIplInes
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Case Study: Microsoft Ofce 2007 The Company Mcrf, wrd’ arg fwar cmpan. The Problem in ar 2000, wa car man nd Mcrf a mng ad b dn ab r b-ng, nar bq fwar Mcrf ofc. t rgna nracn and nrfac dgn, crad a dcad bfr, wa n cang w. Nw far wr bng ddn b nrfac, and vn far r ad rqd and ad bn p n nw vrn f prdc cdn’ b fnd b vr am r. t fwar appard bad, nfcn, and nwd. Fr xamp, 50 mn m and 2 bar frm Mcrf Wrd 1.0 ad band 260 mn m and vr 30 bar b Wrd 2003.
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Case Study: Microsoft Ofce 2007 (continued) The Process t Mcrf dgn am ard b anazng annm daa ccd ab w pp wr ng ofc 2003. t kd fr w mpran ng: drab far w w ag nmbr (wc man pp cdn’ nd m) and frqn-d far a wr ard g (wc man pp ra wand m). t fcd n dgn prncp ( Capr 6) “u f a bradr f ” and dd vra ar f rav prpng cm p w a nw f nracn dgn paradgm fr r. The Solution Mcrf ofc 2007 a ra 1000 nancmn nancmn , a f wc ak p crn pac an prv vrn. on man (and cnrvra) ui cang wa Rbbn (pcrd), wc cr pc f fncna a p f crn n arg, a-cck arg. Anr nnvan wa knwn a “ Mnbar,” wc appard nar bjc a wr ggd and awd r qck mdf cn w avng dd w mn r Rbbn. t nw dgn a bn a b-r, b-r, and adn fr rvw n New York Times rad “Frm Bad sk.”
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