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UX from 30,000ft

1. Email me with any jargon I haven t explained or that you think I should explain better Preamble iii In this environment there was little focus on the human aspects of computer science that would inevitably come to play an important role as the computer moved from the laboratory to the desktop and onward to be embedded in many more products and devices However some of the researchers at the School became increasingly aware that we were not addressing areas which would we thought become increasingly important In light of this perception this user experience text was developed to serve as a cohesive starting point for us to be able to teach HCI and UX to Technical Computer Science Software Engineering Hardware Engineering and Artificial Intelligence students It is therefore based on the human factors research activity already established within the School over the past 15 years in support of the embryonic teaching activities arising after 2010 Before we go any further it may also be useful to make one more point You will notice that I use the term User Experience Specialist usability specialist UX er etc throughout the book when referring to you the reader This is because I ve found it useful to reinforce your belief that this is what you can become as you learn more about the field I think using this terminology also makes you more likely to think of yourselves in a different way to the developers that you
2. Preamble iv you remembering anything in ZAMM however the critical and questioning skills developed from its analysis will be of use to you ZAMM is not really about Zen or indeed motorcycle maintenance it s about science quality and rhetoric the USA s Library of Congress describes it as da Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974 transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions This 25th Anniversary Quill Edition features a new introduction by the author important typographical changes and a Reader s Guide that includes discussion topics an interview with the author and letters and documents detailing how this extraordinary book came to be A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live The narrator s relationship with his son leads to a powerful self reckoning the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science religion and humanism Resonant with the confusions of existence Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life While Wikipedia says ZAMM is useful to us because it serves as framework for criticism while enabling us to apply UX principles rational thought and scien
3. Simplicity Again I think this is straight forward in that the constraint reduces complexity which reduces the load on short term memory and assists in interface simplicity 3 Control amp Freedom Support Shortcuts Provide Tailor ability Flexibility Support ing user control and user freedom all contribute towards Flexibility Tailor ability providing shortcuts is one additional way of providing the control we envisage Now I m not expanding on this one further in this chapter but instead I m going to refer back 4 Error Handling Simple Feedback Informative Singularity of Focus Attention Visibility Make Things Navigation amp Freedom Support Now we don t talk about it here but these four principles can all be subsumed to assist in Situational Awareness Situational awareness involves a perception of the environment critical to making decisions in complex and dynamic situations Indeed situation awareness involves being aware of what is happening in the vicinity to understand how information events and one s own actions will impact goals and objectives both immediately and in the near future 1 contend that simple error s informative feedback visible components and interactions coupled with a singularity of focus all go towards creating an environment which enhances situational awareness 5 Familiarity amp Metaphor Mappings R
4. 1QUIP S0 suzanne vega Figure Tom s Diner Tom s Diner is an a cappella pop song written in 1981 by Amer ican singer songwriter Suzanne Vega Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose a photographer who men tioned that in his work he sometimes felt as if he saw his whole life through a pane of glass and like he was the witness to a lot of things but was never really involved in them Image Credit Wikipedia department or usability company and will provide you with the overall knowledge to communicate with others and make sensible suggestions regarding UX work Further it will provide you with a basis for future self study within the UX domain or the wider human factors world In this case I ve decided to call the text more fully User Experience from 30 000 feet Our need to understand the user experience manifests itself in many and varied ways even in the most unexpected places Go listen to the song Tom s Diner by Suzanne Vega make sure it s the a cappella version now do a little Web searching and answer these questions 1 What is the significance Tom s Diner in your everyday life UX does have one advantage in that it is a new practical cross disciplinary subject No one has yet trained on a bespoke UX only degree programme and so everyone has their own background and leaning within the area There are many UX Industrial Departments Compa
5. Is it possible to understand the program functionality without recourse to the manual Is it possible to understand the interface widgets and interactivity without recourse to the manual 5 Is it possible to fully understand all dialogs messages and status wR WwW Ne Facilitate Simplicity Simplicity is a commonly espoused usability principle indeed many usability experts list this as a key principle to be followed However from work that my team and I have conducted building in simplicity treads a very fine line because it impacts on aesthetics pleasure and emotion An interface which is too simplistic will be seen as boring or only utilitarian one that is too complex will be perceived as being overly complicated and aesthetically displeasing Simplicity of the interaction on the other hand is a useful trait to develop and this can be done by hiding complex system functionality from the user often the novice user thereby presenting them with a constrained set of choices while still enabling the complexity to be accessed by expert users Questions to think about as you design your prototype Is your system presented simply Are the interactive elements simple to understand and use Can you understand the system behaviour without recourse to manuals of help systems Does your system exploit natural interactive constrains aw Q Ne Is complexity hidden from the novice user Principles of Efficient Experie
6. Software Engineering domain Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xvi 20 Emotional 22 Qualitative nG Subjectivity attachment approach M SD M SD M SD FI 3 98 87 2 64 1 13 3 89 84 USA 2 93 1 09 1 93 69 3 26 1 2 UK 3 71 1 02 2 03 88 3 2 1 16 NL 3 47 1 16 2 00 87 3 74 1 00 Table UX Country Differences Differences among countries of residence Credit Law 2009 Indeed purely by a cursory analysis of both sources we can see that there are major differences in understanding the subjectivity emotional attachment and qualitative approaches even at the coarse grained level of countries Indeed Table UX Country Differences shows us that the USA sees UX as less subjective than the other countries however all countries show a high degree of variance in the answers given further all countries agree on the emotional attachment aspects of user experience but see this as being reasonably low as a factor in the UX landscape However all countries seem to agree that UX can be characterised by its qualitative approaches as opposed to quantitative approaches to understanding the experience Statement N Response M SD 95 ci 1275 Rate lower upper 3 Fleeting and more stable aspects of a person s internal state e g needs 261 95 4 47 04 4 40 4 54 motivations affect a person s experience of something 5 UX occurs in and is dependent on the context in which the artefact is 265 96 4 32 05 4 22 4 42 experienced 8_ P
7. This obviously makes the software more difficult to develop but it removes the complexity from the user and places the onus on the software engineer and UX er This is important in a world where information and the requirement for its ma nipulation is increasing at an alarming rate requiring the user to respond to this infor mation and placing a premium on easy inter activity Often however these informational resources are centralised and therefore need to be tailored to the target audience at the time that they are delivered Complexity central isation and the need to enhance the perfor mance of the user means that the usability of the system or interface has become increas ingly important Figure Modern Thermostat Thermostat Modern Ther mostat with an Impenetrable Interface Image Credit Wikipedia XXV nest FRIDAY 8A 12P 4P 8P 12A 4A 78 CHANGE REMOVE DONE Figure Nest Thermostat Control Thermostat Showing Fine Heating Control Image Credit Nest Labs The human facing aspects of the system are based on an understanding of the interactive needs of the user and the way their psy chology and cognition effect their interaction This in general manifests itself as the ability to perform tasks and actions required by the interface in ways that are also easy for the user to comprehend and execute Indeed this is one of the primary driving forces of the graphical user interface and th
8. amp Metaphor Xerox Star Norman Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Raskin Feedback Informative Shneiderman Help amp Documentation Nielsen Remember usability principles sell books 22we 1 call them Principles from now on 23B Shneiderman and C Plaisant Designing the user interface strategies for effective human computer interaction Addison Wesley Boston 5th ed edition 2010 24D C Smith C Irby R Kimball B Verplank and E Harslem Designing the star user interface BYTE 7 4 242 282 1982 25D A Norman The design of everyday things Basic Books New York 1st basic paperback edition 1988 267 Nielsen Usability engineering Academic Press Boston 1993 Nielsen also lists Aesthetic and minimalist design 27ISO TR 9241 110 2006 Ergonomics of human system interaction part 110 Dialogue principles TC SC TC 159 SC 4 ICS 13 180 International Organisation for Standardisation ISO Geneva Switzerland 2006 28 A Dix J Finlay G Abowd and R Beale Human computer interaction Prentice Hall Europe London 2nd ed edition 1998 Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale describe Learnability as Predictability Synthesizablity Familiarity Generalizabilty and Consistency Flexibility as Dialog initiative Multi threading Task migratabilty Subsitutivity and Customizability Robustness as Observability Recoverability Responsiveness and Task conformance 29 Raskin The humane interface
9. while user experience came from the likes of Norman Cooper and Gerrett Although thinking also suggests these views are becoming increasingly popular closely coupled in practice with a deeply anti intellectual strain that wants to remove effort learning and expression from computing and that valorizes the new user to the exclusion of everything else Today s software marketplace exaggerates this what demos well sells and once you ve made the sale it s time to move on to the next user In this case the usability specialist would often be expected to undertake a certain degree of software engineering and coding whereas the user experience specialist was often more interdisciplinary in focus This meant that the user experience specialist might undertake design of the physical device along with a study of its economic traits but might not be able to take that design to a hardware or software resolution Indeed user experience has been defined as pertaining to the creation of the architecture and interaction models that impact a user s perception of a device or system The scope of the field is directed at affecting all aspects of the user s interaction with the product how it is perceived learned and used Therefore user experience is sometimes seen as less concerned with quantifiable user performance but more the qualitative aspects of usability In this way UX was driven by a consideration of the momen
10. Is error handling simple Is feedback informative Are all components needed for the interaction visible ES NY Do you maintain a single focus of interactive attention without distractors By understanding and following these simple design principles any software developer can begin to create user centric applications which will be implicitly friendly to users By applying these principles through requirements elicitation analysis user modelling and interface development user facing components can be enhanced and best practice can be implicitly included within the development Remember these are just the next ten of our total principles for the next batch you can skip ahead But just because you can maybe you shouldn t take your time to read the rest Summary We can see that designing and building usable and efficient interfaces is by no means a trivial task Even with the wealth of toolkits and accessibility API s currently available the software engineer and Principles of Efficient Experience xlv UX specialist should not underestimate the amount of work and testing required for a comprehensive interactive development Fortunately there are a number principles to assist in this process as well as the basic elements of the graphical user interface which can be assembled into a form which directly supports usability Some researchers see the ubiquity of the graphical user interface as being detrimental to the HCI
11. Mechanisms Long Term Memory Stores Automaticity Goals amp Objectives Preconceptions Expectations Abilities Experience Training Figure Endsley s Model of Situation Awareness Endsley s Model of Situation Awareness Image Credit adapted from Endsley 1995 Endsley s Model espouses a good perception of the elements in the current situation a compre hension of that situation and an understanding of the future status All of these factors enable you to make a decision as to the interaction perform these interactions which then alter the state of the environment in this case the interface or the interaction which then affects the perception of elements so on We can see that this kind of view is directly related to good usability Understanding the interface and its abilities are all part of the perception of interface elements a comprehension of the current interactive situation including your location in the interaction Principles of Efficient Experience xliv This is known as the user orientation or where ness detecting cyclic behaviour direction and distance and is important in interface design as it enables users to navigate with some degree of accuracy The environment however must be updated such that cues are provided in an appropriate manner giving explicit orientation information such that navigational information can be detected The similarities between real world movement
12. both text and files This was a very new departure previously files were sent using FTP or some other transfer protocol but this separation is not the case in the real world So in reality Star takes familiar real world concepts and maps them to the virtual world 2 Universal Commands Star also proposes the idea of universal commands Previously each application defined its own set of commands and shortcuts to those commands and expected the user to remember the specific operations without reference to those already present on the system Star does away with all this by defining a set of universal commands Principles of Efficient Experience Xxix such as move copy delete and the like having the same action and being controlled by the same shortcuts as every other program within the operating system This may seem obvious and normal to us now but it wasn t in 1980 Now universal commands are present in the standard operating system but there is sometimes tendency to change these commands in the application or define a new set of commands when an application is going to be written once had distributed to different platforms different platforms having different universal commands In this case you should think very hard about the rationale of breaking universality if you are writing for many platforms think about defining a set of commands to be used at runtime based on the kind of platform the applicati
13. human factors HCI is used in areas of the computer science spectrum which may not seem as though they obviously lend themselves to interaction indeed even strategies in algorithms and complexity have some aspects of user dependency as do the modelling and simulation domains within computational science In this regard HCI is very much at the edge of discovery and the application of that discovery Indeed HCI requires a firm grasp of the key principles of science scientific reasoning and the philosophy of science These philosophy principles and reasoning are required if a thorough understanding of the way humans interact with computers is to be achieved In a more specific sense if you need to understand and show that the improvements made over user interfaces to which you have responsibility in fact real and quantifiable In reality it is impossible for a text such as this to give an all encompassing in depth analysis of the fields which are discussed indeed this is not its aim You should think of this text as a route into understanding the more complex issues of user experience from a practical perspective But you should not regard it as a substitute for the more in depth treatise presented as part of the further reading for each chapter In reality the vast majority of the work covered will enable you to both develop well constructed interfaces and systems based on the principles of user experience and run reasonably well designed eva
14. into a user s learned behaviour is the primary way of enhancing familiarity with a system which they are as yet unfamiliar with You can do this in many ways from mapping real world to virtual world concepts using common terms and jargon by making the look and feel of the new system similar to that of an old system or an old manual way of doing things such as forms which look similar However you decide to implement familiarity or enhance that familiarity within your system always make sure you are thinking if your concept of familiarity are likely to be the same as your users Remember the development is not for you but for your target users Questions to think about as you design your prototype 1 Does your system map real world concepts to the virtual world Such as those for the Mac OSX http developer apple com library mac documentation UserExperience Conceptual AppleHIGuidelines Intro Intro html Principles of Efficient Experience XXXIX 2 Does your system use terms the user is familiar with including Jargon 3 Does the system work in familiar ways with reference to itself and other comparable applications 4 Do you assuage intuition for familiarity 5 Does your system use easily understandable and therefore familiar messages Interaction Stability You won t find the principle of interaction stability in many other texts but it seems to me it is a reasonable summary of some of the aggregated princip
15. new directions for designing interactive systems Addison Wesley Reading Mass 2000 Principles of Efficient Experience XXXV Principle Appears in Source Interrupts Resumption Raskin Describing Self ISO 9241 110 Heuristic Evaluation Nielsen Learnability Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale ISO 9241 110 Sharp Rogers and Preece Mappings Real Virtual Norman Nielsen Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Memory Load Reduce Shneiderman Sharp Rogers and Preece Navigation amp Freedom Support Raskin Reversal of Actions Easy Shneiderman Nielsen Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Safety Sharp Rogers and Preece Shortcuts Provide Shneiderman Simplicity Xerox Star Norman Brooks Singularity of Focus Attention Raskin Task Suitability amp Conformance Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale ISO 9241 110 Tailor ability Flexibility Xerox Star Nielsen ISO 9241 110 Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Universal Commands Xerox Star Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Raskin Utility Sharp Rogers and Preece Visibility Make Things Norman Nielsen From a cursory view of Table Collated Usability Principles we can see that there are a number of principles which deserve greater investigation including learnability is it easy to learn or work out how the system operates efficiency how fast can tasks be accomplished memorability memory load is it easy to remember have system operates Errors how man
16. not on those held by the user Principles of Efficient Experience XXxi Consider the example of a spreadsheet application in which a visually impaired user may have difficulty in choosing cells and accessing spreadsheet functions because the user interface in this case a GUI display does not support their needs Another example concerns how to notify a deaf person working in a communal office that the application they are using has sound which may be set too high When mainstream computer systems were initially developed the overriding aim was focused on the creation of a computing resource and not on the interaction of humans with that resource Engineers and Systems Architects thought that they had overcome so many problems in the creation of computing resources that users would be thankful just for the computational ability and they were However as systems became more complex and machines spread to the desktop to be operated by non technical users interaction with these machines became more of a concern Some solutions collectively known as User Interface Management Systems were suggested These mainly focused on interface generation for large bespoke embedded systems aircraft avionics and the like which met with little success when moved to off the peg software development I think that system flexibility is the only way to overcome the constraints placed on users by the need to service the perceived interaction requirements of all
17. people cannot see this seems obvious this seems like common sense and in actuality it is incorrect The reality of the situation is that some blind people a very small percentage of blind people termed profoundly blind cannot see In reality the vast majority of blind people can see colours shapes blurred objects and movement in short most blind people can see something only 4 can see nothing at all and are profoundly blind Obviously Vision is Parallel Hearing is Serial It is often thought that vision is parallel in that we can see multiple objects all at the same time whereas hearing is serial because we can only hear one sound This is incorrect in reality the basilar membrane of the cochlear experiences different frequencies from its base to apex see Figure Basilar Membrane These nerve cells are connected to different areas within the brain which are responsible to different frequencies and those frequencies are also processed in parallel HIGH FREQUENCY LOW FREQUENCY AMPLITUDE 5000 DISTANCE BASE APEX 4 HIGHER FREQUENCIES f LOWER FREQUEI 7000 BASILAR MEMBRANE 4 MORE STIFF LESS STIFF gt Figure Basilar Membrane The Basilar Membrane Image Credit cueflash com 20000 Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong viii A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing All Brains Have the Same Organisation We all know that the brain has the same organisation indeed we can see th
18. probably are and the engineering domain you feel comfortable within Text Structure UX is an empirical discipline whereby established principles and guidelines are applied to a software development and the correctness of that software is established via experimentation in the form of user feedback In this case the UX specialist is mainly interested in questioning the development to ascertain its correctness This correctness normally exists along a number of different dimensions but briefly can be thought of as the primary utility of the development its effectiveness its efficiency and its affectiveness Both tangibly and intangibly represented by the concept of engagement In this case the text structure is intended to give you the principles tools and techniques needed for UX work along with a critical and questioning mindset to enable you to apply these techniques effectively Therefore you will learn the principles and tools needed for effective interaction with each dimension the scientific and empirical techniques to join and apply these principles and tools to a new bespoke development and the mindset to be critical of and to question the outcomes of this development to accurately establish the user experience Secondary Text Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ZAMM Pirsig 1974 may seem like a strange text to use for a Computer Science based UX course and it probably is In reality I am not interested in
19. real nature of the interface software or systems which they have built In UX there is often no 100 correct answer that we as UX specialists can derive when it comes to creating building and then testing a system The unique nature of the human individual means that there are many subjective aspects to an evaluation and that understanding whether the interface is correct is often based on anecdotal evidence and general agreement from users but is also based on a statistical analysis of quantitative measures This area of uncertainty can allow rhetoric to be applied whereby an argument may be proposed which seems stronger than your empirical evidence but which is not empirically supportable In addition there is also the danger that a sloppy or incorrect methodology will taint the empirical work such that the answers derived from a scientific method are incorrect There are many cases of bad science and incorrect outcomes from supposedly well conducted surveys For instance evidence suggests that 95 per cent of our decisions are made without rational thought So consciously asking people how they will behave unconsciously is at best simplistic and at worst can really mess up your study One of the most well known examples is the launch of New Coke Coca Cola invested in cutting edge customer research to ensure that New Coke would be a big success Taste tests with thousands 3see http www youtube com watch v vJG698U2Mvo see Be
20. research domain but rather that UX is the practical application of a particular combination of tools techniques methods principles and mindset pulled in from primarily human factors and therefore psychology social science cognitive science human computer interaction and secondarily product design and marketing I do believe that UX is a secondary field of study if the narrow definition of UX is mainly concerned with emotional indicators is used however I believe this is more properly defined as affective experience further I do not believe that UX is a layer in the software artefact route to development but rather describes that software artefact in and holistic way Indeed I see UX as a combination of the following properties Utility the software in development must be useful profitable or beneficial Effective in Use the software must be successful in producing a desired or intended result primarily the removal of technical barriers particularly in relation to accessibility Efficient in Use the software must achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense primarily the removal of barriers in relation to usability and interactivity Affective in Use the software must support the emotional dimension of the experiences and feelings of the user when interacting anticipating interaction or when remembering interaction with it and 15 and so this is how this text is structure
21. text has been written from scratch and represents an overview of UX as seen by the human factors and web science researchers I work with You don t need to panic the text is intended to provide you with an overview of the UX field an understanding of the key concepts within this field a method of assessing your understanding of the topics covered and finally a reference to reading material which will enable your deeper study both now and in your future work Finally I ve tried to keep the jargon and explain any I introduce to a minimum and I hope you ll see that the writing style is formally academic but clear and easy to read Origins To give you an idea of how this text arose it may be useful to give you an idea of it s origins Similar to many Computer Science Departments the School of Computer Science at Manchester has its roots in the Computer Group of the Electrical Engineering Department and the Computer Laboratory of the Department of Mathematics After its formation in 1964 it continued to focus on computational hardware and low level or embedded software This focus resulted in the world s first stored program computer the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine SSEM nicknamed Baby The School run in the early days by such luminaries as Frederic C Williams Tom Kilburn Geoff Tootill and Alan Turing continued to focus on the numerate applied and engineering aspects of Computer Science
22. the brain It has other characteristics of course trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade items are not fully permanent memory is transitory Yet the speed of action the intricacy of trails the detail of mental pictures is awe inspiring beyond all else in nature Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it In minor ways he may even improve for his records have relative permanency The first idea however to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection Selection by association rather than by indexing may yet be mechanised One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage This idea first proposed by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think is credited with being the inspiration and precursor for the modern World Wide Web But for most of his article Bush was not concerned solely with the technical aspects of his MEMEX system Instead as with most computer visionaries he was more concerned with how the computer system see Steve J Martin s http scienceofyes com Conducted by Wesley Schultz Behavioural Scientist Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong X and its interfaces could help humanity He wanted
23. then envisaged etc Does your system handle data and interaction within an acceptable time Do complex actions scale up in terms of data and user requirements Do your interfaces remain simple when information is being dynamically added oO ew WwW Ne Can new functionality be added to your system without negatively impacting on its current interactions and interfaces Principles of Efficient Experience xlii Facilitate Self Description The principle of self description is one which is pointed to by some usability experts and is implicit in other usability principles such as those which espouse good help and good documentation The difference with self description is that in the best possible circumstance the user should not need to refer to help or the documentation This is because it is very unlikely indeed normally only in extremes that a user will ever consult the manual One thing you should consider is that self description is not necessarily only about explicit textual descriptions Implicit descriptions based on the visual rendering the way something looks dovetailing into familiarity and simplicity are also important in the self description principle By visually suggesting a path the user should take you enhance the self description of that particular interface and interaction Questions to think about as you design your prototype Is your system well documented Is help present and informative
24. with longitudinal studies in the real world it is very unlikely you will have the budget for this This said it is up to you as the UX usability specialist to keep these concepts of novice expert and the transition between the two in your mind at all times As is the case for all user experience it can be difficult to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the usability principles you are design into your system It is often easier to see that a usability principle is not present that to see if a usability principle is present Potted Principles of Efficient User Experience Interaction design focuses on improving technologies that provide interaction with the user 9241 110 2006 2006 This is normally led by the UX interaction developers who are responsible for engineering software that shapes the user interface Technologies mainly include Windowing Toolkits Graphical User Interfaces and System operations etc Use of these technologies affect how people interact with the system both as creators and consumers of information Therefore in any effort to support the user it is crucial that the features and limitations of these technologies are clearly understood For the UX er current core principles that should run through all aspects of the development can be summarised as follows Facilitate Consistency Consistency is a key factor in usability and two major ways of attaining consistency is to follow standards and to develop s
25. Everything is Wrong vi message as a way of justifying small studies even when those small studies tested multiple and disjoint usability tasks Even user studies that do not try to generalise their results need to make sure that the kinds of tasks performed are both limited and holistic With these kinds of usability tests Faulkner Faulkner 2003 demonstrates that the amount of usability errors uncovered could be as little as 55 Further Schmettow Schmettow 2012 tells us that user numbers cannot be prescribed before knowing just what the study is to accomplish and Robertson Robertson 2012 tells us that the interplay between Likert Type Scales Statistical Methods and Effect Sizes are more complicated than we imagine when performing usability evaluations Shorthand The Moon Orbits the Earth More common misconceptions work their way into our understand ing usually because of a certain shorthand which makes the concepts more easily expressed at the expense of introducing some minor errors For instance the Moon does not orbit the Earth see figure Moon s Orbit well it kind of does but in actuality the Moon orbits the combined centres of gravity of both the Moon and the Earth which just so happens to be very near the centre of gravity exerted by the Earth because the Moon s centre of gravity is so small In general this misconception does not affect most people s normal everyday life however it is technically important h
26. UX from 30 000ft A Guide to User Experience for Software Engineers and Developers Simon Harper UX from 30 000ft A Guide to User Experience for Software Engineers and Developers Simon Harper This book is for sale at http leanpub com UX This version was published on 2015 04 14 ON Leanpub This is a Leanpub book Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing process Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in progress ebook using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do Q920 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 3 0 Unported License Tweet This Book Please help Simon Harper by spreading the word about this book on Twitter The suggested hashtag for this book is UX30000 Find out what other people are saying about the book by clicking on this link to search for this hashtag on Twitter https twitter com search q UX30000 Contents Preamble os Text Structure a a a A ir BO a A A ER EE BEES EE Secondary NeXt Vinh an ea A RARA Soy ys fa eed ee NRL ee Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong ici og Sie a ee oe ee AA UX TEC o A O O Heth The Importance of UX errada ds Ea A A a Ge Ree eae Modern UX 2 RA AA AA a a Ap a DAR AA Sunmaya yae Wah ot Ae A AN AAA Principles of Efficient Experience aaa o The Xerox Star caoba due sa ea alle bes e Y Universal De
27. and that surrounding the interface suggests that the provision of some form of explicit and appropriate orientation method are an advantage when navigating the interface This would mean that a user can make a choice as to whether they want to be at the current location and if not aid them in deciding how to best navigate to their perceived destination Finally situational awareness rests upon our ability to predict our future status this may be including familiarity as well as an understanding of how the system works As an example think of the last time you completed a credit card transaction or an order from the likes of Amazon In this case you are led through a sequence of events each step is given in graphical overview at the top of the page and as each step is accomplished so the colour is changed to highlight a stage has been satisfactorily completed see Figure Amazon Check Out This is all about enhancing your situation awareness by providing you with a stepwise overview of the current situation and an understanding of what will happen in the future amazon co uk WELCOME Figure Amazon Check Out Amazon Check Out Projection of Future Status Image Credit Amazon Questions to think about as you design your prototype Does your system facilitate orientation both within the interface and within the interaction Is orientation and navigation around and through the interface and interaction easy
28. as a cup toy or website up to larger integrated experiences such as a museum or an airport 9 Figure UX Five Definitions Five definitions used in the survey Image Credit Law 2009 Firstly take a look at the demographics Law et al 2009 it seems that this questionnaire was completed by far more industrial practitioners than academic ones this may have skewed the results Further only 27 people said they were educated in art and design therefore we may not be getting a full view of the arts and humanities area and how it is perceived from a non technical viewpoint One hundred and twenty three people said that they were interested in understanding UX in order to design better products suggests that product designers views and not software technologists may have also skewed the results In addition look at the countries the authors say people from 25 countries responded with larger groups of respondents from Finland 48 USA 43 UK 36 and the Netherlands 32 so obviously the views from these countries will dominate One of the main points to consider is the presumptions of the authors as expressed in the five definitions used in the survey see Figure UX Five Definitions The creation of these definitions implies the authors desire to elicit broad agreement or not and so their creation may introduce some degree of bias to some extent represents the authors view and implies that this view has some p
29. ching in the Appendix Now lets get on with understanding and shaping the User Experience Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong Or to quote Ted Nelson more fully most people are fools most authority is malignant God does not exist and everything is wrong The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information Miller 1956 is a very famous human factors research paper written in the mid Fifties and concerning Psychoacoustics The paper is interesting because it has spawned an often incorrectly understood usability principle being that our working memory can only handle seven items at any one time and therefore we should only make menus or lists a maximum of seven items long However paper is a summary analysis of research findings couched in the form of bits per channel He amusingly relates the fact that the number seven seems to be plaguing his every move because seven seems to appear repeatedly in regard to the amount of information that can be remembered or differentiated by humans However there are two caveats to this assertion firstly that the user is required to make absolute judgements of uni dimensional stimuli and secondly that that stimuli is not clustered This last point is quite important because using clustering means that we can remember or distinguish more than the unitary seven For instance we can remember seven characters in sequence seven words
30. d Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong Xxi Engaging in Use the software may exhibit an intangible dynamic deliciousness umami with regard to the fun a system is to use So my definition and this may evolve would be User Experience is an umbrella term used to describe all the factors that contribute to the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific software artefact or system It focuses on the practice of user centred design creation and testing whereby the outcomes can be qualitatively tested using small numbers of users In fact on 26th January 2012 it did evolve to User Experience is an umbrella term used to describe all the factors that contribute to the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific software artefact or system It focuses on the practice of user centred design creation and testing whereby the outcomes can be qualitatively evaluated using small numbers of users DI D2 D3 D4 DS Total 46 65 44 19 36 outof210 22 31 21 9 17 Figure Preferred Definitions Distributions of the preferred definitions Image Credit Law 2009 Summary As we can see HCI is one of the most important aspects of computer science and application development and UX is a mostly applied sub domain of HCI this is especially the case when that application development is focused on providing humans with access to the program functionality But this is not the on
31. d UX identify measurable aspects of UX drive further research and development provide a structure of UX scoping of UX serve as guidelines provide a concrete set of attributes that people can relate to provide pointers to select appropriate combination of methods for a product The Def says UX is Nature of UX layered lived experience socially constructed task achievement total brand experience user s internal state emotion cumulative impact of interactions between users and products services cognitive all feelings experienced quality xviii The Def bespeaks Key ideas about UX three dimensions person artefact and environment types of interactions un conscious e value in a set of affect intangible aspects of UX complexity of experience e actual usage entire user perceived experience examples a broad set of experiences with the company what causes UX not marketing related Figure UX Picked Definitions Analysis of the comments on the picked definitions Image Credit Law 2009 Caveat As we have already seen everything we discover should be looked at with a critical eye including definitions and understanding of the UX landscape So why may there be a problem with the landscape we have built in the previous section Indeed from an analysis of Law s paper the responses from the community seemed to be reasonably strong why should we then not believe them Chapter 1 Ev
32. e mouse and keyboard Often the usability of the system is measured by the performance the time to execute a task of a user enacting jobs over the system As we shall see the rationale is if the task is completed faster than it was before the interactive component was either altered or created when the interface design must be better as an enhancement has occurred Common performance measures include the time required by the user to complete a task the time spent navigating the interface the number of incorrect choices or errors created the number of jobs completed either correctly or incorrectly the number of observations of user frustration and finally the frequency of interface components or behaviour Principles of Efficient Experience xxvi that is never used The user centred design paradigm was created to assist in the construction of these usable interfaces In this regard part of the design process is driven by users who are conscripted on to the design team In this way it is hoped that user friendly systems can be built and the usability of systems increased Unfortunately it is often difficult to solicit a representative cross section of the possible user group and so usability for all is often missed This has led to the popularity of universal usability especially within the information society In this case universal usability refers to the design of information and communications products and services that are usable fo
33. eal Virtual By ensuring there is a cognitive mapping from real to virtual we can assist in the side goal of interactive familiarity 6 Help amp Documentation Describing Self It is my opinion that self description is the principle to which good help and good documentation contribute 7 Interrupts Resumption Reversal of Actions Easy Reversal and resumption of actions and interactions seem to be related to me This also feeds into user control but these are a little more specific and seem to me to me mainly about interaction stability Principles of Efficient Experience xxxvii 8 Learnability we ll get to this later on Before moving on to a discussion of our principles consider for a moment the usability requirements of the novice and expert user The usability principles as described in this section not straightforwardly applicable because there is some conflict between the requirements of different users at a course grained level these can be classed as the novice and the expert The thing to remember with all these principles is that you need to make provision for slow simplistic and constrained novice use provision for fast complex and unconstrained expert use and some learnability path which enables novices to become experts in the shortest amount of time possible This last requirement is most difficult because understanding if learnability is effective and efficient can only be done
34. er your background you should find that this text covers the principle areas and key topics that you will need to understand and manipulate the user experience This means that unlike other texts on UX I will mainly be focusing on the tools and techniques required to understand and evaluate the interface and system While I will spend one chapter looking at practice and engineering I feel it is more important to possess the intellectual tools and skills to understand any interface you work on as opposed to memorising a comprehensive treatise of the many different interfaces you may encounter now or in the future This is not to say that the study Defining Human science within the context of HCI is a difficult proposition especially for an empirical small p positivist such as myself However I see Human science as the investigation of human life and human activities that acknowledges the validity of data derived by impartial observation within an empirical framework It includes the subjects such as history sociology anthropology psychology and economics and while not able to validate the subjective aspect of human life and activity is able to contribute to an understanding of the human experience The up side is that this level of complexity makes the study of the user experience incredibly interesting and incredibly challenging if done correctly Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xii of past work or best practice is withou
35. erything is Wrong xix DI All aspects of the end user s interaction with the company Its services and its products The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer without fuss or bother Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own a joy to use True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want or providing checklist features 8 D2 A consequence of a user s internal state predispositions expectations needs motivation mood etc the characteristics of the designed system e g complexity purpose usability functionality etc and the context or the environment within which the interaction occurs e g organisational social setting meaningfulness of the activity voluntariness of use etc 7 D3 The entire set of affects that is elicited by the interaction between a user and a product including the degree to which all our senses are gratified aesthetic experience the meanings we attach to the product experience of meaning and the feelings and emotions that are elicited emotional experience 3 D4 The value derived from interaction s or anticipated interaction s with a product or service and the supporting cast in the context of use e g time location and user disposition 20 D5 The quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design This can range from a specific artefact such
36. es this view has become somewhat out of date UX Emergence Human Computer Interaction HCI or CHI in North America is not a simple subject to study for the Computer Scientist HCI is an interdisciplinary subject which covers aspects of computer science ergonomics interface design sociology and psychology It is for this reason that HCI is often misunderstood by mainstream computer scientists However as we shall see if HCI is to be understood and applied correctly an enormous amount of effort mathematical knowledge and understanding is required to both create new principles and apply those principles in the real world As with other human sciences there are no 100 correct answers everything is open to error because the human and the environments they operate within are incredibly complicated It is difficult to isolate a single factor and there are many extraneous hidden factors at work in any interaction scenario in this case the luxury of a simple yes or no answer is not available The HCI field of which UX is a part is disparate with each practitioner coming from a different specialism in some cases psychology or ergonomics in others sociology for us software engineering maybe the primary specialisation and in the context of UX product designers also feature This text has its roots firmly within the mainstream computer science domain but it is aimed at a much broader audience Therefore whatev
37. ests to most UXers and engineers that the solutions they come up with must best fit most of the population most of the time Many organisations follow the viewpoint that universal usability means design for all the argument often following thus A focus on designing products so that they are usable by the widest range of people operating in the widest range of situations as is commercially practical Paradoxically they also come up with a pointer to a workable solution As one might imagine there are no universally usable products There simply is too great a range of human abilities and too great a range of situations or limitations that an individual may find themselves 33 in But unfortunately do not take it Thus universal usability is more a function of keeping all of the people and all of the situations in mind and trying to create a product which is as flexible as commercially practical so that it can accommodate the different users and situations Vanderheiden 2000 While Universal Usability seems reasonable on first inspection it may not be supportable in practice By trying to address all user needs in one design the technologist is apt to address none Making software usable is not just about a utilitarian view of software use it is also about the personal choice of the user we have already touched on this Too often designs are implemented based on knowledge and aesthetics of the designers and engineers but
38. field in general They claim that focusing only on this kind of interaction means that there has been no novel work undertaken in the HCI domain since the heady days of Parc Xerox I have some sympathy for this view but in reality it is not completely correct With the development of gesture based interfaces and the upcoming use of haptics the interactive elements of interface design are alive and well I would agree however that the interactive displays used in these systems are stagnating to some degree But in the context of development building and designing interactive components which are tailored to the users need is difficult enough By leveraging the principles already undertaken and the toolkits which provide well understood and consistent components and metaphors the software engineer can be reasonably assured that the interface design will be very familiar to the user and in this way assist usability in a practical manner final Star scrollbar y e arrows point inwards s the way the text moves 0 modern scrollbar arrows point outwards gt the way the handle moves 4 a A o Figure Scrollbar Miss Design Xerox Star and Modern Mac OS X Scrollbars Image Credit Byte Before we finish a word of warning as always from Dix who suggests we may often ignore our fields previous work and start to reinvent the wheel When one builds the justification of why something should work the argument will not be watertigh
39. for different aspects of an interface to be studied and predicted Goals are what the user intends to accomplish Operators are actions that are performed to get to the goal And methods are sequences of operators that accomplish a goal There can be more than one method available to accomplish a single goal if this is the case then selection rules are used to describe when a user would select a certain method over the others The GOMS method is not necessarily the most accurate of all the usability measurement methods but it does have certain advantages An estimate of a particular interaction can be calculated with minimal effort in a short amount of time With a careful investigation into all of the detailed steps necessary for a user to successfully interact with an interface the time measurement of how long it will take a user to interact with that interface is a simple calculation The main drawback of GOMS is that it expects users to follow logical routines and is not resilient to user unpredictability and all of the techniques work under the assumption that a user will know what to do at any given point These aspect of user interaction are commonplace and are often what makes UX so challenging and interesting Keystroke Level Modelling sometimes referred to as KLM or KLM GOMS is an eleven step method that can be used by software engineers seeking ways to estimate the time it takes to complete simple data input tasks using a computer and mouse B
40. he programme logic and use a window toolkit to enable a more harmonious distribution across different platforms In either case standardisation to the underlying environment is critical to maintain the usability of the development and to reduce the additional cognitive overload on the user in switching between operating modalities In addition there are a number of pan system standards which should also be followed when building user centric software These guidelines and standards have been created so as to encapsulate knowledge and best practice into a format which can be easily applied by engineers who do not have an in depth knowledge of human factors or ergonomics The standards have been designed by both operating system manufacturers and international standards bodies and by following these standards the developer can be assured that their system will be usable by the most number of people Questions to think about as you design your prototype Am I developing a consistent interface Are the interactions consistent across the platform and development Is my command and event structure universal across the development and platform Am I following standards and best practice Am I following the platform design guide ae WwW DN Facilitate Familiarity Familiarity including via Metaphor is a key principle for enhancing usability As we have already seen from the Xerox Star team and from many usability experts dovetailing
41. here is broad agreement between experts and a smaller set of principles at work However usability has been a major topic in the understanding of user experience for a much longer period than has accessibility In this case it is appropriate to collate the different usability principles along with their proponents in an effort to identify the overlap which exist between them You will notice in Table Collated Usability Principles that the left column describes the principle guideline or rule these are sometimes used interchangeably between the different experts while on the right side the experts are listed along with a footnote pointing to the text from which the principle is derived In collating these principles I have not followed slavishly the nomenclature proposed by each author but have instead placed them in categories which I believe have the same conceptual value even if the naming of that principle does not follow that in the source it is derived from Table Collated Usability Principles Usability Principles Collated by Source Principle Appears in Source Closure Dialog Yields Shneiderman Consistency Standards Xerox Star Shneiderman Norman Nielsen ISO 9241 110 Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale Raskin Constraints Exploit Norman Control amp Freedom Support Shneiderman ISO 9241 110 Nielsen Error Handling Simple Shneiderman Norman ISO 9241 110 Nielsen Familiarity
42. ign of any successful user interface namely task analysis By this we mean the analysis of the task performed by the user or users prior to introducing the proposed computer system Task analysis involves establishing who the users are what their goals are in performing the task what information they use in performing it what information they generate and what methods they employ The descriptions of input and output information should include an analysis of the various objects or individual types of information entity employed by the user The purpose of task analysis is to simplify the remaining stages in user interface design The current task description with its breakdown of the information objects and methods presently employed offers a starting point for the definition of a corresponding set of objects and methods to be provided by the computer system The idea behind this phase of design is to build up a new task environment for the user in which he can work to accomplish the same goals as before surrounded now by a different set of objects and 46 employing new methods Principles of Efficient Experience xxviii XEROX 8010 Star Information System ir variety of type sizes and styles may be used NE tetas aa i sl page aries 21 58 gt aoe Si eee Figure Xerox Star Desktop Xerox Star Desktop for a system designed 40 years ago how different is this from our modern desktops Image C
43. ility Shneiderman 2001 Ben Shneiderman asks the question Can you design a text only interface that conveys the contents and experience of an animated Flash presentation It is an interesting problem but one that cannot be solved by designing one all encompassing solution Indeed there can only be a solution if the information in question provides the opportunity for universal access Once the opportunity is provided interfaces can be developed to access that information in the most appropriate way to the user and not to the information itself For instance if an audio file is created without the opportunity of both a graphical or textual expression then a driver interacting by audio only could not access that information source My point is you should think of Universal Design Design for All or Universal Usability less in terms of creating a physical design to be captured in programme logic but more about providing Principles of Efficient Experience xxxii the opportunity for universality The way to provide this opportunity is to support openness and consistency of the data and API and taylor ability of the interface Now it would be wrong to suggest there is no reason to provide an interface beyond an open API we have to interface with the system at some point but adding this separation of interface and programme logic will help you focus on supporting the users experience Further understanding the user and the u
44. in order or seven phrases In reality then we have trouble differentiating uni dimensional stimuli such as audible tones played without reference to each other but we can differentiate more than seven tones when played in a sequence or separately when multiple dimensions such as loudness and pitch are varied Further we are able to remember more then seven things within a list especially if those things are related or can be judged relatively or occur as part of a sequence So this well found psychological finding and very well written paper that working memory can handle seven 2 arbitrarily sized chunks of absolute uni dimensional stimuli becomes the often quoted but mostly incorrect usability HCI principle that you should only include seven items in a menu or seven items in a list and on and on Indeed this often incorrectly understood usability principle is a misconception that has become a firmly held belief This is the wrongness that Ted alludes to and there are plenty of others lets look at a few Buzz and Hype Jacob Nielsen famously suggests that usability evaluations can be conducted with only five people and this will catch over 80 of the usability errors present Nielsen 2000 In reality Nielsen added a lot of caveats and additional conditions to be met which have been lost from the buzz surrounding the five users evaluation work Eager usability practitioners hooked upon this five user Chapter 1
45. is in many diagrams of the brain in which there are specific areas devoted to specific jobs such as vision language hearing and the like But just how true is this In reality this is not as true as you may imagine the brain develops to the age of twenty one and within that time a concept called neuroplasticity is in effect stating that the brain can change structurally and functionally as a result of input or not from the environment This means that the brain can change and re purpose unused areas Burton 2003 For instance the visual cortex of a child who has become profoundly blind at say ten is overtime repurposed to process hearing and possibly memory and touch The brain develops in this way repurposing unused areas and adapting to its environment until development slows down at the age of twenty one One Final Thought Look at this famous video from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris which requires you to count passes of a Basketball try to count them now and then skip ahead for the result Be Curious Be Critical If there are two traits you should possessed as a UX specialist they are curiosity and the ability to be constructively critical As we have seen there are many reasons why errors and misconceptions can be embedded within both an organisation and the systems by which it runs We can also see that if people want to believe their software has a good user experience they often will do they are often blind to the
46. is removes the onus on software engineers and UX specialists to run Principles of Efficient Experience xxxiii their own experiments instead asserting conformance by applying the user model to their own development The model uses the cognitive perceptual and motor processors along with the visual image working memory and long term memory stores Each processor has a cycle time and each memory has a decay time Therefore by following input pathways and combining them with the associated cycle or decay times the time it takes a user to perform a certain task can be calculated Card et al define the method for determining processes as the following steps 1 write out main steps based on a working prototype simulation step by step walk through of all steps 2 clearly identify the specific task and method to accomplish that task 3 for each final step identify sub levels down to a basic process 4 convert into pseudo code 5 list all assumptions 6 determine time of each operation 7 determine if operation times should be adjusted 8 sum up execution times and finally 9 iterate as needed and check with prototyping Goals Operators Methods and Selection rules GOMS was also proposed in the same book as the Human Processor Model It reduces a user s interaction with a computer to their primary actions Using these primary actions as a framework an interface can be studied There are several different GOMS variations which allow
47. iscovery is important the significance of UX in the interface design and engineering domain should not be overlooked User facing aspects of the interface are often created by software engineers or application program mers While these are highly trained special ists they are often less focused on aspects of user interaction than they are on the programme functionality and logic In some cases the end user is often seen as a silent participant in the application creation process and is usually only considered once the system aspects of the development have been created and tested Indeed in many cases there is an implicit idea that the user will need to conform to the requirements of the system and the interface created by the developers as opposed to the design of the system being a collaborative activity between user and engineer Figure UX Periods UX over time with periods of use and non use Image Credit AllAboutUX The focus of the UX specialist then is to make sure that the user is taken into account from the start that participation occurs at all stages of the engineering process that the resultant interface is fit for purpose in its usability and accessibility and that as much as possible the interface is designed to fit the user and provoke a positive emotional response By trying to understand user requirements with Often as Universal Modelling Language UML Use Case Diagrams the abstract description of user task c
48. ity and individuali sation as it is known in the ISO standard but this level of adaptability was unheard of at the time and pointed the way to a deeper acknowledgement that all individuals are different This is what Star implies in its discussion of User Tailor ability individuals are different The concept of universal design or design for all was created to address this very ideas of individual differences and in reality means universal usability the design aspect being applied to signify that this universality must be thought of from the design stage through to inception Universal design can mean many things to many people Some discuss it in terms of the society at large by making reference to socio economics ethics and issues of general discrimination Others see design for all as a technological issue and a problem to be solved Still others link design for all to a way of thought that should encompass everyone In the context of computing and software development many suggest that technology must focus on designing products so that they are usable by the widest range of people Yet in reality every person is a unique individual and so this view may not be sustainable or achievable because to create universal usability by designing for all involves making generalisations about users and it is these exact generalisations which were the impetus for Universality in the first place However Universality sugg
49. les and guidelines which other usability experts purport When we are thinking of interaction stability we are trying to make sure that interactions are stable that they can be resumed if they break that data will not be lost that the place someone is at in an interaction the stage for the step can be returned to in the event of a failure For example a web form which times out after one hour and does not save the existing contents of that form does not exhibit interaction stability however a form which times out saves the data and allows the user to commence from this saved point does exhibit interaction stability One further way of enhancing interaction stability is preview A lack of preview of upcoming information is one of the major issues to be addressed when building interfaces and considering interaction stability Consequently preview is considered to be a primary component of good interaction stability This preview can be manually achieved by try operations and awaiting desired or undesired outcomes from the environment In an interface context the lack of previews of both the outcomes of specific actions and information relating to navigation of the interface itself suggests that some degree of foreknowledge should be implemented so that a limited preview can be obtained In this case a good interface design will remove the onus on the user by providing outcomes and descriptions of what will occur if a specific action is perf
50. logies such as the desktop see Figure Xerox Star Desktop However as UX ers we are more interested in the design methodology they used and the principles derived from the teams experiences designing and developing the interface and interactivity of the implementations These are some of the first usability principles to be mentioned in common computer literature dating back to the early 1970s and are still applicable today First of all let us look at the design methodology adopted by the Xerox Star team it needs no further discussion from me and so I reproduce it verbatim One of the most troublesome and least understood aspects of interactive systems is the user interface In the design of user interfaces we are concerned with several issues the 20PARC definitely Eat Their Own Dog Food Principles of Efficient Experience xxvii provision of languages by which users can express their commands to the computer the design of display representations that show the state of the system to the user and other more abstract issues that affect the user s understanding of the system s behaviour Many of these issues are highly subjective and are therefore often addressed in an ad hoc fashion We believe however that more rigorous approaches to user interface design can be developed These design methodologies are all unsatisfactory for the same basic reason they all omit an essential step that must precede the des
51. luations to test you developments Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xxiii Optional Further Reading e A Dix J Finlay G Abowd and R Beale Human computer interaction Prentice Hall Europe London 2nd ed edition 1998 e C Bowles and J Box Undercover user experience learn how to do great UX work with tiny budgets no time and limited support Voices that matter New Riders Berkeley CA 2011 R Unger and C Chandler A project guide to UX design for user experience designers in the field or in the making Voices that matter New Riders Berkeley CA 2009 e T Erickson and D W McDonald HCI remixed essays on works that have influenced the HCI community MIT Press Cambridge Mass 2008 S Self Assessment Questions Try these without reference to the text What is the key focus of HCI What is the purpose of the UX specialist What is User Experience and how is it applied If there are no 100 correct answers in UX how do we decide what is right and what is wrong What are the five key properties of UX Principles of Efficient Experience Efficient use or usability To my way of thinking both terms mean the same thing and in reality were going to be talking about usability However you should be thinking of usability in more general terms the more general terms of efficient use This is because the concept of usability is much broader than the narrow confines of Task Completion Time it is
52. ly complex If so simplify 2 Are there a lot of components displayed at one time If so clean it 3 Are there a multitude of possible actions available to the user If so focus on building one action for one interface element 4 Is there a tight logical hierarchy of actions 5 Is the user led along the interactive path Facilitate Scalability Again scalability is not a principle you will find in most usability texts however it is important in the real world If your system is not able to scale with regard to the way it displays data or the way interactions progress in a system which is being progressively overloaded then the efficiency of that system its usability is drastically reduced For example I once worked on a system which displayed data in interactive bubbles this worked well with small amounts of data and also looked supercool However as the amount of data was increased the interface was not scalable and so it became unusable the amount of interactive bubbles expanding exponentially making visual search very difficult The solution was to define the point whereby the display became unusable and then adapt the data back into a more traditional tabular format which was far easier to search and could efficiently display much more data than the interactive bubble format although it didn t look as cool Questions to think about as you design your prototype Does your interface scale to handle larger datasets
53. ly concern of UX indeed for many it is the augmentation of the interactive processes and behaviours of the human in an attempt to deal with an ever more contemplated world that is the focus This augmentation does not take the form of artificial intelligence or even cybernetics but by enabling us to interact with computer systems more effectively to understand the information that they are processing and to allow us to focus more completely on the intellectual challenges as opposed to those which are merely administrative or banal Indeed this objective has been Douglas C Engelbart s overarching aim since 1962 By augmenting human intellect we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation to gain comprehension to suit his particular Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xxii needs and to derive solutions to problems Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following more rapid comprehension better comprehension the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex speedier solutions better solutions and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 D1 D2 Industry B Academia O Both Between LZ D3 D4 D5 Figure Preference by Work Place Definition preference by the work place Image Credit Law 2009 In the context of
54. n Goldacre s http www badscience net Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong ix of consumers clearly showed that people preferred it The reality was somewhat different however Hardly anyone bought it In another set of studies people were asked what messages would be most successful at persuading home owners to make certain changes such as turning down the heating recycling more and being more environmentally friendly Most said that receiving information about their impact on the environment would make them change However this made very little difference at all In another study people who said that providing them with information about how much money they could save if they reduced consumption led to them to use even more Interestingly the message that most successfully changed their behaviour information about how neighbours were making changes was pretty much dismissed as unlikely to have any effect on them at all Remember quantitative instruments such as controlled field studies or field observations will often be cheaper in the long run than questionnaire based approaches In all case if you are not curious and you are not critical you will not produce accurate results HCI Foundations The human mind operates by association With one item in its grasp it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of
55. nce xliii Facilitate Situational Awareness Again situational awareness is not a principle you will commonly come across in many usability texts however I think it is a good way of describing certain aspects of a usable design Let us recap Situational awareness involves a perception of the environment critical to making decisions in complex and dynamic situations Indeed situation awareness involves being aware of what is happening in the vicinity to understand how information events and one s own actions will impact goals and objectives both immediately and in the near future Can increase our awareness of the situation and build this model then aspects which are common within the usability literature such as the desire for simple errors informative feedback visible components and interactions coupled with a singularity of focus all go towards creating an environment which enhances situational awareness but situational awareness is actually much more than this let us take a brief look at a model of situational awareness see Figure Endsley s Model of Situation Awareness System Capability Interface Design Stress amp Workload Complexity Automation Task System Factors Perception Com prehension State Of The Of Elements of Current Performance Environment In Current Situation Actions Situation Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Individual Factors H y Information Processing
56. nies there are few UX courses The combination of your technical Computer Science training coupled with this UX training will give you an advantage a software focused UX professional Preamble ii 2 Why is Tom s Diner significant for the User Experience 3 What properties of Tom s Diner makes it so significant 4 Why does the significance of Tom s Diner represent Good science Now don t panic I don t expect you to know the answers to all of these questions right now but humour me do some research and come up with some answers that seem plausible to you As we ll see later the UX domain is still very young and in the process of formation however it does bring together a number of already established areas within the human computer interaction field and as a place holder you may wish to think of UX as the practical application of research knowledge repurposed from other domains into the user facing software engineering process In this case suggesting a particular UX text would only serve to skew your education to a particular view of the UX domain although you may wish to check out some UX books as well Unger and Chandler 2009 Bowles and Box 2011 Lund 2011 I feel it is better for you to understand my view while realising there may be different ones out there and that in the end you will need to decide after reading this text the sort of UX you wish to do and how you think about the area Therefore this
57. often associated with 9241 100 2011 2011 usability in the context of UX seems to be simple but in reality can be quite taxing Complex computerised systems and interfaces are becoming increasingly widespread in everyday usage components of computerised systems are embedded into many commercial appliances Indeed the miniaturisation of computerised systems often found in mobile telephones and personal digital assistants is on the increase Let us take a case in point the Nest Learning Thermostat see Figure Nest Learning Ther mostat learns about the user and their home nest to balance comfort and conservation with out the hassle of programming or constant f CW re adjustments Nest programs itself based on the temperatures the user sets thereby learning the users personal schedule in a 7 2 week and starts automatically turning down S heating or cooling to save energy when that user is away Nest keeps refining its schedule over time and takes input by user rotation of the outer ring to adjust the temper ature the display turns blue when cooling and red when heating push down opens the very simple menu to enable temperature changes deletion and other fine control see Figure Figure Nest Learning Thermostat Thermostat Showing Nest Thermostat Control Heating Image Credit Nest Labs As we can see this interface is easy to understand and operate it uses a familiar modality in that it i
58. omposition and flow Scenarios Sequence Diagrams and Narrative Text the concrete description of user tasks along with Class Diagrams the description of user domain concepts you probably already have experience of this from your second year software engineering course Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xiv regard to both the system and the interface the UX specialist contributes to the overall application design lifecycle in a very practical way which often belies the underlying scientific processes at work As we have seen both requirements analysis and requirements elicitation are key factors in creating a usable system which performs the tasks required of it by the users and the commissioners of the system Typically however requirements analysis and elicitation are performed by systems analysts as opposed to trained UX human factors or ergonomic specialists Naturally this means that there is often an adherence to set modelling techniques usually adapted from the software architecture design process This inflexibility can often be counter productive because adaptable approaches of inquiry are often required if we are to better understand the user interaction In reality user experience is very similar to usability although it is rooted within the product design community as opposed to the systems computing community of usability Indeed practical usability is often seen as coming from the likes of Nielson Shneiderman and lately Krug
59. on is being run upon 3 Consistency Consistency or pragmatic consistency as the Star Team suggest is best is another important principle for usability By making sure that consistent actions occur across the programme functionality we can assist the user in learning the correct outcomes for the same action over different applications reinforce the users understanding of what these outcomes will be match a user s expectations with real world actions and dovetail into the familiarity of actions in the user s conceptual model Consistency should also be considered specifically with regard to the dominance of real world physical metaphors when compared to virtual ones and the pragmatics of maintaining consistency even when that might go against the users understanding of what should happen In should you need to think very carefully about how to maintain consistency within your applications 4 Simplicity Simplicity is incredibly important but it s not a clear cut principle we can make a simple interface but it may not fill the desired outcomes required by the user What is simple to one user might be verbose and tedious to another user especially when the first user might be a novice while the second an expert We can overcome some of these problems of simplicity by enabling expert access to system complexity similar to the Nest Thermostat we can choose to use the technique of progressive disclosure or we can separate o
60. ormed as well as suggesting paths to certain information of functional outcomes Questions to think about as you design your prototype Are you able to resume interrupted actions Are you able easily reverse an action incorrectly taken Are you able to understand your location in the interaction Does your system recover well from an unexpected event ak W Ne Does your interactions including dialogs exhibit stable non cyclical behaviour and closure Facilitate Learnability Learnability is a key aspect for interface design Indeed this is why large computer systems and operating environments often come with a series of rules and best practices for software development which describe the standard ways of interacting on that specific system Application menus which normally have file and edit to the left and help to the far right all the way through to common Principles of Efficient Experience xl dialogues for picking colours or interacting with files systems all try to enhance learnability I have not yet met a user who has read the user manual for any large system In reality users prefer to investigate and orientate themselves to the system Therefore interface development should assist the user in self directed learning of the interface components as opposed to relying on the reading of the user manual or help text It is only by helping make your system easily learnable that you will be able to red
61. ow celestial bodies interact with each other is a major area in the study of Astronomy MOON om Apogee EARTH Ee Oot S Moo Figure Moon s Orbit The Moon s Orbit Image Credit sciencebrainwaves com Sounds Right The Earth is Closer to the Sun in the Summer than in the Winter Let s look at another misconception the Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer than in the winter and it is this closeness which accounts for the seasons Again this is kind of right part of the Earth is nearer to the Sun in the summer than in the winter however the Earth as a whole is not The seasons are accounted for Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong vii by the Earth being tilted on its access by 23 4 As the Earth orbits the Sun difference parts of the world receive different amounts of direct Sunlight and this accounts for the warming or cooling But this warming or cooling is based upon the angle and therefore the nearness of either the southern or the northern hemisphere to the Sun not the Earth as a whole In your work as a user experience specialist you often find there are many un said or shorthand s expressed by users which are technically incorrect but are satisfactory to their everyday work but may introduce large problems with your technical solutions Common Sense Blind People Can t See Certain facts seem to be common sense you should always question common sense pronouncements For instance blind
62. pared across similar or competitive 263 96 3 50 06 3 38 3 62 artefacts 7 There is a definite need for a standardized definition of the term UX 268 97 3 49 07 3 34 3 63 10 UX should be assessed after interacting with an artefact 255 93 3 33 06 3 20 3 45 19 Only an individual person can have an experience An experience is something 265 96 3 16 08 3 00 3 32 A something within a person aaa 9 People will never have comparable UX each and every interaction with a 268 97 271 07 2 57 2 84 product results in a unique experience 21 UX is not new it is already covered by existing engineering approaches 263 96 2 56 07 2 42 2 70 2 UX is equal to emotional attachment 261 95 227 06 2 15 2 39 4 UX is best viewed in terms of marketing 262 95 1 90 06 1 79 2 00 Table Twenty three Statements About UX Twenty three statements about UX sorted by mean agreement M Credit Law 2009 We can also infer see tables taken from Law et al 2009 that the community sees user experience Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xvii as a lens into a person s internal state which affects their experience of the software or system that this experience must take place within the presence of the software or system they are interacting with and that it is dependent on their prior exposure to that software or system including it s longitudinal aspects see Table Twenty three Statements About UX and that their responses are based on their percep
63. r every citizen discussed to some extent and expanded upon later In reality there is little consensus regarding the relationship of UX ergonomics or human factors to usability Indeed some think of usability as the software specialisation of the larger topic of ergonomics Others view these topics as tangential with ergonomics focusing on physiological matters e g turning a door handle and usability focusing on psychological matters e g recognising that a door can be opened by turning its handle However a number of experts have written separate but overlapping frameworks for aspects of usability which should be taken into account when designing and building systems interfaces well discuss these further However before we start on these comparisons let s look at work which gave rise to some of the earliest principles by which we should design interfaces The Xerox Star The Xerox Star was a commercial version of the prototypical Xerox Alto if one thousand fully working systems used internally at PARC day in day out over seven years can be said to be prototypical While the system itself is an interesting development in computer science the interface and the mode of user interaction is truly visionary Star adopted novel technologies such as the mouse the Alto had both a mouse and a portrait monitor operationalised developments such as the graphical user interface and created novel techno
64. raction Wiley Chichester 2nd ed edition 2007 e B Shneiderman and C Plaisant Designing the user interface strategies for effective human computer interaction Addison Wesley Boston 5th ed edition 2010 http www guidebookgallery org articles handsacrossthescreen Principles of Efficient Experience xlvii International Standards e ISO TR 9241 100 2011 Ergonomics of human system interaction part 100 Introduction to standards related to software ergonomics TC SC TC 159 SC 4 ICS 13 180 35 180 International Organisation for Standardisation ISO Geneva Switzerland 2011 e ISO TR 9241 110 2006 Ergonomics of human system interaction part 110 Dialogue principles TC SC TC 159 SC 4 ICS 13 180 International Organisation for Standardisation ISO Geneva Switzerland 2006 S Self Assessment Questions Try these without reference to the text What is the significance of the Xerox Star interface What are the five main principles proposed by the Xerox Star team What does GOMS stand for and what does it involve What are the ten main principles of efficient design NM WwW Ne How do these principles differ from Shneiderman s rules
65. re and the ideas which are key to its understanding and application can be summarised from the comments Law received We could say that the nature of UX is multi layered and concerns the user s total experience including their emotions and feelings based on their current changeable internal state UX is often socially constructed and represents the cumulative impact of interactions between users and the software or system these interactions can be qualitatively and quantitatively measured Key concepts through the UX landscape include the idea that not only the person but also the artefact and environment are equally important and that interactions contain un conscious components intangible aspects actual and perceived interactions and that the users entire and broad experiences are valuable Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong How is the Def Characteristics Positive comprehensive easy to understand simple clear concise accurate neutral open specific direct scientific structured system oriented usable vague descriptive dictionary like high level integrative memorisable Negative ambiguous circular hard to sell non scientific too academic too broad for practice too cognitivistic too detailed too dogmatic too esoteric too logical too many examples too strictly focused wordy The Def is for Potential Uses identify all the important factors to be studied enable general public to understan
66. redit http toastytech com DDI As the prototyping proceeded the team evolved a number of principles familiar user s conceptual model seeing and pointing versus remembering and typing what you see is what you get universal commands consistency simplicity modeless interaction and user tailor ability We have already seen that the Nest Thermostat exhibits familiar user s conceptual mode in the use of the turning and pressing knob both consistency and simplicity of operation in the movement of complexity from the user domain and tailor ability in the learning algorithms of the underlaying programme logic We ll further expand upon the core Star principles next with the exception of seeing and pointing what you see is and modeless interaction as these three can be taken for granted my the modern UX er their integration in to the operating system being complete and invisible 1 Familiar Conceptual Models Star equates familiar conceptual models specifically with the idea of the desktop and the items that you might find on it It exemplifies e mail and suggests that because e mail is similar to postal mail then icons which describe e mail in the form of in baskets and out baskets letter icons being added to each to represent the incoming and outgoing mail In addition Star tailors these to the users familiar conceptual models by sending
67. rior exposure to an artefact shapes subsequent UX 257 BA 4 25 05 416 434 18 Designing for UX must be grounded in user centred design 265 96 4 11 07 3 98 4 24 23 UX can change even after a person has stopped interacting with the artefact 259 94 3 93 06 3 82 4 03 11 UX is based on how a person perceives the characteristics of an artefact but 251 91 3 89 07 3 75 4 03 ral DOLO AAA rc A A A A A A A a a A E ot A Ht 17 UX should be assessed while interacting with an artefact 260 95 3 87 06 3 75 4 00 14 Measuring UX implies determination of merits values and significance of an 249 91 3 84 06 313 3 96 artefact in relation to a person s goals and needs 13 We cannot design UX but we can design for UX 249 91 3 82 07 3 68 3 96 l UX is highly dynamic it changes constantly while interacting with a product 264 96 3 76 07 3 63 3 89 12 Usability is a necessary precondition for good UX 269 98 3 70 07 3 56 3 84 2 Imagined use of a product can result in real experiences 235 85 3 66 06 3 53 3 78 15 UX refers to affective states i e any combination of valence good bad 252 92 3 60 06 3 48 3 72 pleasant unpleasant and physiological arousal calm excited 22 UX must be approached qualitatively 265 96 3 59 07 3 46 3 72 6 UX is not about people s performance ability to understand and use in their 266 97 3 58 07 3 44 3 73 relation with an artefact but about the person s perception of that performance 16 UX can be quantified and thus com
68. riority as opposed a choice made by the UX participants This said it is still my opinion that the authors have done everything possible to be inclusive and to represent the communities view of UX however disjoint that may be in an accurate and informative way By investigating the domain more fully taking into account other sources we too can make more accurate appraisals of the UX landscape and come to our own definition and understanding of what it means to be a UX specialist within that landscape Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong XX My View I ve previously written about my idea of UX having seen and read a number of definitions which suggest that UX is more about emotion and may be layered on top of other aspects of software engineering and development such as usability However the more I dig the more I realise that I really do not believe any of the definitions as presented either via the excellent work of Effie Law or those parties coalesced around AllAboutUX and led primarily by Virpi Roto So what do I believe rm UO DH I believe that UX is primarily about practice and application I believe it is an umbrella term for a multitude of specialisms I believe it is a phenomenon in that it exists and is observable I believe that this phenomenon collects people methods tools and techniques from the wider human factors domain and combines them for practical application I do NOT believe that UX is a primary
69. sability Models because in reality that is just what they are They see the users as a very one dimensional entity analogising them to a processor or processing entities These models say nothing of the non task related traits such as effective use emotion or pleasure but see the best outcome only as measurable and efficient Keep this in mind when you are applying them because they are my no means complete or rich enough to do a human full justice However they can be very useful for predicting usability In reality you re unlikely to come across these kinds of user models in your UX work they are used more widely in research and at the very edges of development This said you may come across them in some unlikely cases and it may also be useful for you to have a brief understanding of the key points of their application just in case The Human Processor Model is a cognitive modelling method used to calculate how long it takes to perform a certain task This method uses experimental times to calculate cognitive and motor processing time The value ofthe human processor model is that it allows a system designer to predict the performance with respect to the time it takes a person to complete a task without performing experiments directly In reality this means that empirical work already undertaken is captured as a set of principles which are so general that they can be applied to any usability problem within their scope and domain Th
70. sability of your system will also help you build a flexible but coarse grained interface while understanding which aspects most require the ability to be personalised Usability Models Models of the user have existed for a number of years Some of the first where developed by Miller in an attempt to apply information theory to the human Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information Historically information theory was developed by Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data Miller extended this model into the psychology domain by defining a model of the bandwidth that people could cope with calling it a channel This lead to the historic and still quoted 1955 work The magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information as we have already seen Extending this idea of modelling the user Card et al s famous 1983 work The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction Card et al 1983 proposed the Human Processor Model which is also still referred to today User models are in continued development with a number of active researchers trying to add knowledge and principles to the field You re likely to see these models variously described as User Models Cognitive Models or User Simulators I ve listed them here as U
71. sign and Design for All oi ete dd a Usability Models erez redadas ei R EOS LBB S S Collated Usability Principles Guidelines and Rules 000 Potted Principles of Efficient User Experience o o ooo o E E EB te Rte teen Bee xliv Preamble Welcome to User Experience For many of you this will be your first exposure to the wider discipline of Hu man Computer Interaction HCI and Human Factors Some of you may have already experienced some basic HCI work as part of the software engineering lifecycle however this text takes a far more in depth look at the tools techniques and knowledge you need to under stand the user experience within software engineering It is worth noting that while this text is more in depth than those to which you may already have been ex posed it is by no means intended to teach you ev erything you need to know about human facing soft ware engineering Indeed entire undergraduate degrees are built around the subject of human factors and er gonomics and you should not confuse this high level overview of the domain with the knowledge you would acquire in a full three year degree programme This said the aim of this text is to give you the reader the tools techniques and the mindset necessary to competently approach your first user testing and user experience job The text is designed from a practical perspective and will enable you to take a junior role in a user experience
72. sley Pub Co Reading Mass anniversary ed edition 1995 Principles of Efficient Experience XXXvi have a dialog which opens another further in some cases such as a wizard this principle isn t helpful 2 Next Pll discard Nielsen s Heuristic Evaluation not because there is anything wrong with it but because I m going to cover this in more detail later 3 Next Preece Rogers and Sharp s Safety is for the chop while safety at the interface level maybe useful I think it is a little too niche to be included in a general set of UX principles 4 Now I think Task Suitability amp Conformance proposed by Dix Finally Abowd amp Beale and ISO 9241 110 can actually be referred to earlier it has already been addressed as part of the UCD aspect of the design 5 Finally Pm discarding Preece Rogers and Sharp s Utility Utility is obviously important but if you ve gone to the trouble of starting the development Pd imagine you expect the software to have some utility and if the utility is about the interface under construction well that can only be assessed after evaluation Now the carnage is over let s look at the principles which will stay and or be amalgamated 1 Consistency Standards Universal Commands This seems pretty obvious to me in that universality is directly related to standards to provide consistency 2 Constraints Exploit Memory Load Reduce
73. solid succinct definition enables everyone to know where they re going and in some regard predicts the road ahead So why is it such a problem It seems to me that there is no clear definition of user experience because it is not yet a distinct domain Everyone is an immigrant to UX and there are no native UX practitioners or indeed first generation educated practitioners who share a common understanding of what the phenomenon of UX actually is This is always the case with new cross disciplinary or combinatorial domains but this does not help us in our efforts to describe the domain such that we all understand what it is we do where it is we are going and what falls inside or outside that particular area The UX Landscape Why am I so concerned with Law s CHI 2009 paper and the work coalescing around AllAboutUX The positive point about both of these sources is that they are created based on a community under standing of the area which implicitly defines the landscape of the user experience domain In other definitions created by experts in the field you are asked to subscribe to the author s interpretation Both Law and AllAboutUX base their work on the populous view making little interpretation and allowing others to see the large differences within the comprehension understanding and definition of the UX field Indeed if you re reading this you are probably an immigrant from the technical Computer Science
74. system failure a eR WwW Ne How does your system handle abnormal input Facilitate Progressive Disclosure Progressive disclosure is a tricky concept to discuss It was perviously thought that usability was enhanced when the number of selections required of a user was reduced to the bare minimum This created interfaces that were very complex having as much functionality as possible on the screen at the same time In reality quantitative measures showed that this decreased performance because it took the user longer to make a decision about what to select as opposed to the selections themselves Progressive disclosure is an antidote to this kind of information and operation overload and suggests Principles of Efficient Experience xli that a hierarchy of operations moving through simple selectable steps is faster and easier for the user to understand than counting the selections required to achieve a specific action Of course progressive disclosure can lead to problems because there may be multiple levels of disclosure in which case the functionality can be hidden in the depths of the computer system such that it is never used The interface developer therefore needs to understand these complexities and try to mitigate them by providing progressive disclosure but limiting the hierarchical nesting of the activities that are being disclosed to a minimum Questions to think about as you design your prototype 1 Does your interface look over
75. t in the way that a mathematical argument can be The data on which we build our justification has been obtained under particular circumstances that may be different from our own we may be bringing things together in new ways and making uncertain extrapolations or deductions Some parts of our argument may be strong and we would be very surprised if actual use showed otherwise but some parts of the argument may involve more uncertain data a greater degree of extrapolation or even pure guesswork These weaker parts of the argument are the ideal candidates for focusing our efforts in evaluation Why waste effort on the things we know anyway instead use those precious Principles of Efficient Experience xlvi empirical resources our own time and that of our participants to examine the things we understand least well This was precisely the approach taken by the designers of the Xerox Star There were many design decisions too many to test individually let alone in combinations Only when aspects of the design were problematic or unclear did they perform targeted user studies One example of this was the direction of scroll buttons should pressing the up button make the text go up moving the page or the text go down moving the view If there were only one interpretation it would not be a problem but because there was not a clear justification this was one of the places where the Star team did empirical evaluation it is a pity tha
76. t the wrong answer was used in subsequent Apple Lisa design and carried forward to this day see Figure Scrollbar Miss Design Indeed in conversations with David Smith at CHI98 Dix described how in the first version of the design documents for the Star the scrollbar arrows pointed outwards as they do in modern interfaces However unsure of the correct orientation the Star design team performed user studies with both orientations Whereas the software designers were quite happy with the outwards form the non computing users were uniformly confused by this direction of arrows hence the inwards pointing arrows were adopted for the final Star design Unfortunately when the Star design documents were passed on to the later design teams for the Lisa and Macintosh the initial wrong version of the scrollbar designs was used Hence we came by our current scrollbar arrow direction by accident and it is precisely the opposite of what was found to be easy to use Optional Further Reading e S K Card T P Moran and A Newell The psychology of human computer interaction L Erlbaum Associates Hillsdale N J 1983 e J Johnson GUI bloopers 2 0 common user interface design don ts and dos Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Amsterdam updated and rev edition 2008 e J Nielsen Usability engineering Academic Press Boston 1993 e H Sharp Y Rogers and J Preece Interaction design beyond human computer inte
77. t value but it should not be the focus of a compressed treatise such as this In this case as technically literate readers I expect that you will understand computational terminology and concepts such as input and output conventions Graphical User Interfaces GUIs conventions and other general terminology I also assume that you will know next to nothing about UX of HCI HCI can normally be divided into three broad stages that of the creation of the principles theories and methodologies the application of those aspects into a development and the testing of the outcomes of that development While this may sound disjoint techniques used for the investigation and discovery of problem areas in HCI are exactly the same techniques that can be used to evaluate the positive or negative outcomes of the application of those techniques within a more production focused setting Normally this can be seen as pre testing a system before any changes are made the application of those changes in software or hardware followed by a final post testing phase which equates to an evaluation stage in which the human aspects of the interface can be scientifically derived This pre testing is however often missed during requirements analysis in some cases because there is no system to pre test and in others because there is an over inflated value given to the implicit understanding of the system already captured As a UX specialist you will be concerned wi
78. t works similar to a turnable knob and removes what has become a complicated interaction IN 25 MIN Productive of effects effective adequately operative The cause which makes effects to be what they are esp of a system or machine achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense OED The fact or quality of being usable That can be used that can be readily put to practical use OED The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use ISO There are other more aesthetic considerations which we will look at later in that the brushed stainless steel dial frames the display while the ring s curved neutral silver finish creates a chameleon effect that grounds Nest within its environment by picking up the colour of the wall upon which it s mounted This combination of sleek design elements and premium materials makes Nest a thermostat a user can feel proud to display in your home 12 not least because the requirement to interact with the thermostat is sporadic therefore reducing the familiarity which would become a learned behaviour to a bespoke interface Principles of Efficient Experience see Figure Modern Thermostat into a very simple one This occurs because the complexity of the program functionality has been removed from the end user and into the system itself
79. th the practical aspects surrounding the application of principles and guidelines into a development and the testing of the outcomes of that development This means that you will need to take into account the incremental nature of both the development and the experiences of the individual Indeed we see that the user experience changes with time and in some ways is linked with our own memory and emotional state see Figure UX Periods and Figure Time Spans of User Experience taken from Roto et al 2011 In this way we can see that it is possible to counteract an initially bad systems experience in a system that possibly must be complicated such as an aircraft cockpit by increasing the learnability of the controls and their layout In this case the initial momentary and episodic user experience may be complex and in some cases seen as negative however the cumulative user experience my resolve as simple equating to a positive user experience especially in the case of the cockpit whereby the instrumentation systems and their layout are often replicated between aeroplanes regardless of manufacturer or type In this case how does UX relate to the standard software engineering domain of requirements analysis The definition of requirements in the IEEE standard 610 is given in three specific points 1 a condition or capacity needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective 2 a condition or capabilit
80. tific argument to a well understood and well respected text As for my thoughts on ZAMM well I might not agree with everything the book has to say but I do think it is an important and interesting topic and discussion which needs to be had At this point you need not worry too much about the book itself other than the fact that you should read it All will become obvious as the text progresses but you may like to read a longer discussion on Zen and The book describes in first person a 17 day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to California by the author though he is not identified in the book and his son Chris joined for the first nine days by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions referred to as Chautauquas by the author on topics including epistemology ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science Many of these discussions are tied together by the story of the narrator s own past self who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus after Plato s dialogue Phaedrus a teacher of creative and technical writing at a small college became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing and what in general defines good or quality His philosophical investigations eventually drove him insane and he was subjected to electroshock treatment which permanently changed his personality the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its usefulness for UX Tea
81. tions of the software or system they are interacting with as opposed to the true properties of that system Further the community sees that UX must be grounded in user centred design we cannot design UX but that we can design for UX We can also see that the community do not think that UX is best viewed in terms of marketing or that UX is only equal to emotional responses affective or that UX is so individual that there will never be an overlap between people and products Indeed extrapolating from these results we can see that most UX specialists do not see the need for a high number of users in their testing and evaluation phases or the need for quantitative statistical analysis Instead they prefer a low number of users combined with qualitative output and believe this can be extrapolated to a large population because people have comparable user experiences When Before usage During usage After usage Over time What Anticipated UX Momentary UX Episodic UX Cumulative UX How Imagining Experiencing Reflecting on Recollecting multiple experience an experience periods of use Figure Time Spans of User Experience Time spans of user experience the terms to describe the kind of user experience related to the spans and the internal process taking place in the different time spans Image Credit AllAboutUX It seems that the most important parts of the UX landscape see Table Twenty three Statements About UX its natu
82. ts of engagement known as touchpoints between people and the ideas emotions and the memories that these moments create This was far more about making the user feel good about the system or the interface as opposed to purely the utility of the interactive performance User experience then fell to some extent outside of the technical remit of the computer science trained HCI specialist While once correct these views do not represent the current state of UX in the computer engineering domain In this case it is the objective of this text to provide you with an overview 13 i Mark Bernstein s Creator of TinderBox view Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong XV of modern UX along with the kinds of tools and techniques which will enable you to conduct your own well formed scientific studies of human facing interfaces and systems within the commercial environment Modern UX Defining UX is akin to walking on quicksand there is no firm ground and you re likely to get mired in many unproductive debates indeed to me it seems debates on definitions are currently stuck in the muck But why is defining UX important or even necessary Well it must be necessary because everybody seems to be doing it indeed All About UX AllAboutUX have collected many definitions see the Appendix with multiple and different perspectives Further it s important because it provides a common language and understanding and a
83. uce the amount of support required by the user and therefore reduce long term costs while enhancing user satisfaction Questions to think about as you design your prototype Is your system behaviour predictable Can users easily transit from novice to expert Can you understand the system behaviour without recourse to manuals of help systems How easy is it to learn any bespoke system functionality Does your system facilitate self learning and functionality investigation ae W Ne Facilitate Robustness As with all aspects of a computer system speed of service balanced with robustness of the system is critical for the user In most cases users prefer systems to be more robust because the effect of a faster service speed balanced against a system which crashes frequently This scenario costs more time in the long run and introduces a lack of trust in the user s perception of the interface and therefore the quality of the end product Obviously robustness is a systemwide concern however because the interface elements are often developed as one of the last things in the development lifecycle robustness is sometimes sacrificed for a speedy development which ends on time Questions to think about as you design your prototype Does your system recover well from an unexpected event Are errors easily dealt with Are incorrect user actions easily recoverable Is the user state saved between sessions in the event of a
84. und to cover but it is very small in relation to the wider Human Factors HCI domain For instance we won t cover e Adaptation Customisation e Personalisation e Transcoding e Document Engineering e Cognitive Science e Neuroscience e Systems Behaviour e Interface Evolution e Emergent Behaviours e Application and User Agents e Widget Research amp Design Software Ethnography Protocols Languages and Formats Cognitive Ergonomics e Memory Reasoning and Motor Response Learnability e Mental Workload e Decision Making amp Skilled Performance e Organisational Ergonomics e Socio Technical Systems e Community Ergonomics Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xi e Cooperative Work e Inferential Statistics e Formal Experimental Methods and e Mobility and Ubiquity User experience UX or UE is often conflated with usability but some would say takes its lead from the emerging discipline of experience design XD In reality this means that usability is often thought of as being within the technical domain Often being responsible for engineering aspects of the interface or interactive behaviour by building usability paradigms directly into the system On the other hand user experience is meant to convey a wider remit which does not just primarily focus on the interface but other psychological aspects of the use behaviour We ll talk about this in more detail later because as the UX field evolv
85. us to understand that instead of fitting into the way a computer interacts and presents its data the human cognitive and interactive processes should be paramount In short the computer should adapt itself to accommodate human needs not the reverse Since the early days of computer science with the move from punch cards to QWERTY keyboards from Doug Englebart s mouse and rudimentary hypertext systems via work on graphical user interfaces at Xerox PARC to the desire to share information between any computer the World Wide Web the human has been at the heart of the system Human computer interaction then has had a long history in terms of computer science but is relatively young as a separate subject area In some ways its study is indivisible from that of the components which it helps to make usable however as we shall key scientific principles different from most other aspects of computer science support and underlay the area and by implication its practical application as UX We will discuss aspects of the user experience such as rapid application development and agility people and barriers to interactivity requirements gathering case studies and focus groups stories and personas We ll look at accessibility guidelines and usability principles along with emotional design and human centred design Finally we ll touch on the scientific method experimentation and inferential statistics This seems like quite a lot of gro
86. users Design for all is only needed if that design is trying to fulfil all the gaps in technology provision created by an inappropriate user interface We need a way to make the user interface bespoke to the individual user and I think that universal access to software applications does not truly exist because the user interface and the system application logic are con joined Further a stable and usable interface specification between these parts does not exist and this means that separation cannot occur Interaction design Heuristics that support a separation between the user interface and the code that implements the functionality of the application are ably demonstrated in the Mozilla User Interface XUL implementation which allows a different Look and Feel to be used over different applications and operating systems also see Skins By this separation universal access to applications can be accommodated because the interface can adapt to the task without the need to change any part of the other functionality We can see that this kind of design thinking supports the utilitarian user requirement user activity and users personal choice It provides a halfway house coarse grained interface and a method of fine tuning to a specific user Even though the rendering is still visual Mozilla points the way to component separation and therefore interface adaptability In his article Bridging the Digital Divide with Universal Usab
87. ut novice and expert interfaces such that shortcuts and accelerated behaviours are accessible by experts if they know how while slower more progressively disclosed interactions which support learnability and familiarity are available for the novice user 5 User Tailor ability Usability is all about customisation personalisation and system adaptation this means flexibility We have briefly discussed the principle of flexibility already The Star system is reasonably straightforward in its customisability and individualisation as it is known in the ISO standard but this level of adaptability was unheard of at the time and pointed the way to a deeper acknowledgement that all individuals are different It is my opinion that these five principles are so important and timeless that their formulation and practical application as part of the Xerox Star user interface was without doubt revolutionary Without this interface there would be no Apple Mac or Microsoft Windows well at least not as we know them However not everything is down to the Star team some of the knowledge particularly regarding human cognition and behaviour even predates its development and now exist as user models to be applied before development in an attempt to uncover the usability of an as yet unknown system Principles of Efficient Experience XXX Universal Design and Design for All The Star system is reasonably straightforward in its customisabil
88. y errors are made and can may easily be recovered from and satisfaction do users like the overall feel the system In addition I would add the following information flow is feedback fast appropriate and not too detailed but detailed enough granularity is the interface sectioned enough so that progressive disclosure of the interface can occur and egocentricity is there user specific feedback and guidance but we will get to these later For now however consider Table Collated Usability Principles in more detail and I will try to explain my rationale for the grouping and discarding of the principles within it to form a smaller aggregate set So I m going to discard some of these principles because I think they are very niche because I don t agree with them because I don t think they are helpful or because there seems to be little consensus in the community 1 First Pm going to discard Shneiderman s Closure Dialog Yields I think this is pretty obvious and is now a well understood software engineering practice you wouldn t normally 30H Sharp Y Rogers and J Preece Interaction design beyond human computer interaction Wiley Chichester 2nd ed edition 2007 Preece Rogers and Sharp also lists Satisfying Enjoyable Fun Entertaining Helpful Motivating Aesthetic Supports creativity Rewarding and Emotionally fulfilling 31F P Brooks The mythical man month essays on software engineering Addison We
89. y that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract standard specification or other formerly imposed document and 3 a documented representation of a condition or capability as in 1 or 2 Such as the keyboard mouse trackpad or trackball 10Such as the monitor 11Such as windows panes panels and the like Chapter 1 Everything is Wrong xiii We can therefore see that UX directly ap plies to condition 1 indeed without access Experiences with to or the usability of a system or compo ar ane nent by a user this condition cannot be met In the requirements analysis domain work Information about MM often progresses in a software engineering eae q fashion The methodology for requirements is First encounter with coalesced around a set of modelling principles di E Momentary UX often initiated by a wave of interviews dis cussions systems analysis and modelling as well as focus group participation leading to a formal specification or model of the systems and interaction requirement requirements elicitation These requirements have to be validated and modelled however as we shall see in later chapters there are a number of problems with current approaches N Episodic UX Cumulative UX nformation about this system brand or other systems m Periods of non use The Importance of UX Periods of use Time While the use of HCI as a tool for knowledge gt d
90. y using KLM individuals often find more efficient or better ways to complete a task simply by analysing the steps required in the process and rearranging or eliminating unneeded steps thus 1 obtain a working prototype of computer interface or a step by step operational description of a task 2 identify the goals or the desired outcome of work 3 for each of these goals find subgoals or tasks that achieve the main goals 4 identify methods to main goals and all subgoals 5 convert description of methods to pseudo code 6 state any and all assumptions used in the making of pseudo code and goals 7 determine appropriate mental or keystroke operators for each step 8 assign time values to mental or keystroke operators 9 add up execution times for operators 10 adjust total time of task to be sensitive by age of expected this step was initially implied but is explicit as a later extension and finally 11 verify the validity of the results the method id designed to be much easier than GOMS and especially useful in the evaluation of time specific tasks that require on average less than 5 minutes to complete Principles of Efficient Experience XXXIV Collated Usability Principles Guidelines and Rules The first thing to notice about usability principles is that there are many of them and many different ones are proposed by many different usability luminaries This is different in some regard to those previously proposed where t
91. ystems which apply the same command control and interface structures universally across the development While standards and universality are two key elements of consistency the concept of consistency can exist upon its own and you should also think at all stages of development Am I developing a consistent interface are the interactions consistent across the platform and development The use of standardised components is a major aspect when designing for the user In this way the developer can be assured that look and feel of the software will be harmonious with the best practice of the operating system and dovetail into the guidelines of the underlying environment This is often difficult if the design is to be accomplished on different platforms because the look and feel changes Principles of Efficient Experience xxxviii for instance there is a significant difference between the operating modality and look and feel of Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X However there are some ways to address the problems of standardisation across the interface The developer can design for the interpreter platform or by choosing a cross platform systems such as Java or Qt which has adapts to the base operating system environment In this way the development cost is removed from the developer to the language or framework engine In addition the developer may wish to use techniques such as Model View Controller MVC to separate the presentation from t

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