ACTIVITY DESIGN, FEEDBACK, USER IN CONTROL

Activity Design

The key element in interactive design is to create effective things for users to do.

Objective
Learn to evaluate activity design.

[see sample links]

Feedback

Feedback is what the system does after each user action. Without feedback, interactivity would be impossible.

Objective
Learn to evaluate the quality of a piece's feedback.

[see sample links]

Putting the User in Control

Interactivity has several factors. A main one is putting the user in control.

Objective
Learn what it means to put the user in control.

[see sample links]

DEFINITIONS

Activity design

What does it mean for an activity to be WELL-SUITED TO THE USERS?

To answer this question, you need to know who the audience is, AND, what their reasons for using the piece are.

For example, imagine that you're interviewing a typical user. You ask "Why would you want to use this piece?"

Their answer might be "I would use this piece in order to..." The ellipses (the dots) indicate the user's reasons.

If the piece's activities don't directly help the user do that "in order to..." stuff, then the activities aren't well suited to the audience! The activities must match the users' aims.

It's like going on a blind date. If your date is interested in the same things you are, he (or she) just might be well-suited to you. If she only wants to go bowling and you only want to watch Star Trek reruns, then your reasons for being together don't match the activities you have to offer each other -- you aren't well suited! Unless there's a sexual attraction - but that's another course.

DON'T FORGET that you, as the designer, have to present activities that work for BOTH the client AND the user! You can't do that until you understand their objectives -- both of them!

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How does a piece BUILD COMMUNITY?

Pieces that use the Internet can bring users together into communities. It's the net's 3 directions of information flow that make this possible (from server to user, user to server, and user to user.)

Pieces can use these 3 directions to help users connect with each other in various ways, and even collaborate in building the website (this is called "co-creation").

A group of people in a community do the following kinds of things together:

• Group information gathering
• Group information sharing
• Group learning
• Group problem solving
• Group events

In any specific piece that builds community, you'll be able to find specific examples of these "activities of community". Take a look at some of the examples listed in the Links section of the assignment.

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Feedback

Feedback's quality makes or breaks a piece's interactivity.

Feedback can be measured and characterized in a variety of ways. One useful way to categorize feedback is in terms of the different purposes its used for. For example:

Yes I'm listening!

When a computer moves the on-screen cursor in response to mouse movements, the system is telling the user, "I'm listening."This requires instantaneous and sensitive response by the computer. Rollover responses are a slightly more complex example of this yes-I'm-listening feedback.

Confirmation

When users make a selection, it is important to provide confirmation feedback, as if to say "Yes, Ma'am! I'll get right on it!" Audible clicks, highlighting selected areas, and cursor changes can all confirm that the system has heard the user.

Status

Whenever the user must wait for the system to process a request, status feedback is useful. The simplest status feedback, used for short waits, doesn't move. For example, a small text box on screen -- "Please wait".

Simple animation can give the user a sense that something is happening while they wait. The Macintosh cursor changes to a watch with spinning hands, suggesting a brief wait. The watch doesn't work well if the delay goes over a few seconds because the spinning hands don't show how long the wait will be. In such cases, a progress bar is useful.

Guidance

Users often need guidance from the system. Such feedback can be as simple as moving the cursor when the user moves the mouse, or as complex as in a flight simulator. Any sequence of instructions is guidance feedback.

Remember the Hotter-Colder game? A child leaves the room while an object is hidden. The child returns, and is given feedback depending on how close she gets to the object. The guidance runs from cold, to warm, warmer, hot, hotter, to boiling. The child uses the feedback to guide herself to the object.

In addition to nearly instantly changing visual displays of the view from the airplane cockpit, some flight simulators include engine roar and other sounds. In a real plane, an extreme dive causes excessive vibrations, which can damage it. Many simulators mimic these vibrations with sound effects so pilots-in-training can learn to recognize and avoid them.

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Putting the User in Control

What makes a piece EASY TO LEARN?

Ease of learning is an important part of ease of use. Imagine a complete novice, Joe, starting to use your piece. For Joe, ease of use begins with ease of learning. A steep learning curve will discourage him and limit his productivity while he learns. Here are two general rules for ease of learning:

• There should be no learning curve whatsoever for pieces designed for casual, occasional users (like many websites.)
• Users should be able to see how to do everything they want to do, and they should find it easy to remember how to do them.

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What makes a piece POWERFUL?

A powerful piece offers users a lot of flexibility and subtle control across a comprehensive range of features. Photoshop, for example, is powerful; You Don't Know Jack is not.

The interface of a powerful piece is usually more complex and takes longer to learn. As a result, different users of such pieces are at different points on the piece's learning curve. Some will be beginners, others will be in between, and some will be power users.

Ideally, the design of a complex piece gives the novice easy access to initially simple activities, which can form a gateway to the piece's more complex interactions. This enables the novice to "get the point" of the piece and proceed with some confidence. A beginner's grasp of layers and tools in Photoshop is a good start.

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What's wrong with COMPLEXITY?

Confusion can easily discourage anyone. With so many choices on the Internet, frustration will send users elsewhere. For software design, a beginner's learning curve can be damaged and a power user's productivity can be slowed by a complex design.

Complexity is subjective: A piece that is complex to a beginner may be easy to a power user.

Short-term memory can hold up to seven items reliably; a screen with more than seven choices becomes difficult for beginners. Power users prefer more choices, which allows interfaces with less hierarchy -- these require less navigation and are thus faster. Novices prefer fewer choices at once, which is easier to learn and remember, but requires more screens, more hierarchy and navigation, and is thus slower to use.

Complexity can be evaluated by asking

• How many steps does it take to accomplish the task?
• At each step: How many choices confront the user?
• How hard are these choices to make (given the user's skill level)?

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What's a SMOOTH TRANSITION, and why does it help put the user in control?

As a user increases her skill in using a piece, her reward is being able to do more with it. If the incremental learning steps are small enough, the learning process will be easy, pleasant and quickly connected with rewards. Designing a piece to offer such gradual, smooth transitions between steps in increasing complexity promotes ease of use and flow.

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What's TRANSPARENCY?

Without having to think about it, a user should be able to see exactly how to guide herself through the activity or information she's chosen. A transparent interface does not distract users from the activity they are pursuing. When an interface 'gets in the way', users spend unnecessary time struggling with it. A transparent interface makes all the piece's features and functionality visible and apparent. If a user has to read a manual to accomplish his desired task, he's the victim of an opaque or obscure interface!

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What is DIRECT MANIPULATION and why is it important?

The idea behind direct manipulation is to represent each user activity in a way that allows the user to feel that she is directly manipulating the process and the items involved in it.

In the Macintosh OS, Drag and Drop is the name given to a style of interaction that characterizes the entire OS: Users drag files and folders into other folders, files onto printers, files onto applications, and anything into the trashcan. Then, the system does something logical in response. For example, the trashcan bulges or looks full. When a document is dragged over an application and the application is capable of opening the document the application highlights. If the user releases the document over such a highlighted application, the application begins to run, and opens the document.

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What is CONSISTENCY?

If an interface has consistency, then users can more quickly learn (and forget) about the mechanics of the interface and focus on the experience that they want to have. Pieces which are consistent will

• Help the user become absorbed: Users will find it easier to concentrate and focus on the piece (instead of the interface.)
• Help the user learn and remember how to use it: Consistency is about predictability -- when an interface is structured and behaves predictably, users find it easier to learn and use.
• Reduce design costs: Reusing design elements means not having to design alternative elements.

Consistency comes in two flavors: media and behavioral.

When an interface uses media consistently, users are able to construct expectations about where things are located and what these things look like. They will, for example, learn to expect that the exit button looks like the exit sign in a theater, or that the global controls are located in a strip along the lower-right corner.

If an interface behaves consistently, its interaction patterns are predictable. Users will, for example, be able to predict that: The OS will protect me: I will be queried before I can do any real damage, or if I can't remember where a file is, I can find it if I know its name.

You Don't Know Jack is is an excellent example of a piece with great behavioral consistency.

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What is ANTICIPATION?

An interface is a participating partner in the user's activities. A good example is a word processor that corrects spelling errors on the fly. In the Mac OS, examples of such active assistance are seen in type-ahead, balloon help, and the way the OS helps the user install new extensions and control panels. In Quicken, repeated checks automatically assign categories and amounts from that check’s previous entry.

Anticipation aims to make the computer more like a human and less like a machine. The goal is to make a system anticipate the needs of its human user.

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Why are we concerned about letting users make any CHOICES they want to?

Part of being in control is being able to make choices. If a piece offers only a limited set of choices, the user may feel arbitrarily constrained. A piece that lets users make all the choices they want to is offering them 'completeness'.

Here are some examples:

• There are numerous ways to complete most tasks in Photoshop. Power users can develop the sequence of activities that best fit their style.
• Let people do things in any order. Include links to help them travel easily throughout the site.
• If you put a symbol or object into a screen, think of what would be a logical or rewarding thing that should happen if the user clicks on the object. What if they drag it onto another object? What should happen then?

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