This document provides information about an interaction design course, including the course team, structure, assessment, and design brief. The course focuses on mobile device interaction design and will use a studio format. Students will complete four design reviews involving concept presentations, prototypes, and a final report and evaluation. The goal of the design project is to create a mobile application that empowers rural communities.

1. spring 2011- introduction

2. the course team
➝ Prof.Jeffrey Huang (responsible)
➝ teacher: Hendrik Knoche
➝ teaching assistant: Michal Fok
➝ guest lecturers – tba

3. course basics
➝ 6 credits
➝ 2 h lecture
➝ 4 h studio/lab
➝ 4 h home based preparation
➝ no written exam

4. the course structure
➝ 1 design brief
➝ 4 design reviews
➝ 14 interactive lectures/seminars
➝ 14 studio sessions
➝ reading assignments
➝ interactive exercises
all in English

5. assessment
the final grade is based on:
the grades of four mandatory reviews "
(submitted documentation and its presentation):
1. results and design ideas from requirements capture (i)"
through scenarios, storyboards and personas
2. design idea presentation through first (lo-fi) prototype (i)
5. interactive prototype / demonstrator (i)
6. final presentation, incl. video and UX evaluation report (i)"
and
7. optional video submission to Microsoft Imagine Cup (g)
8. individual participation in the class/studio "
(attendance is mandatory)
✱(i) = individual
✱(g) = group

6. assignment dates
➝ 22nd Mar
– 1st review (rc results + ideas)
➝ 12th April
– 2nd review (design solutions)
➝ 4th May
– Microsoft Imagine Cup "
round 1 competition deadline
➝ 10th May
– 3rd review (prototype)
➝ 31st May
– final review
documentation for each review is due on the
Monday before the review at 12:00
✱ late submissions are subject to penalty

7. how is your design evaluated?
by a panel of experts
Q:
how do you assess concepts or designs?
A:
Scott Jenson (former director of Symbian):
❝First I ll be asking what s the value of
this? , that is Will people really want
it? [… the] second is simplicity.❞ Jones & Marsden (2006)
❝…being humble as these [designs] are
evaluated and seen to fall short, and to need
refining.❞
Jones & Marsden (2006)

8. what is this course?
Personal Interaction Studio focuses on
➝ mobile devices as the platform (personal)
➝ interaction design
➝ studio as the teaching format
➝ the
idea is to generate, communicate, evaluate, iterate
and improve design ideas through synthesis by re-
defining problem and the solution

9. resources
➝ all communication and further readings, links etc.
will go through moodle
➝ please enroll with the key: persint
➝ http://moodle.epfl.ch/course/view.php?id=6881

10. syllabus
1. introduction
2. data collection
3. analysis
4. design techniques
5. mobile i/o
6. screen design
7. prototyping
8. -14. guest lectures and seminar

11. example

12. things you will learn (about)
➝ brainstorming, ice breaking
➝ interviewing
➝ qualitative analysis
➝ personas
➝ scenarios
➝ storyboarding
➝ elevator pitch
➝ lo-fi prototyping
➝ hi-fi prototyping
➝ designing, critiquing, re-designing
➝ communicating your ideas through various means – show
and tell, posters, presentation "
(if time permits – video)

13. topics addressed in this class
➝ design thinking
➝ interaction design
➝ user experience

14. design brief
Rain-fed farming provides the bulk of the world s food
supply and has tremendous potential to increase its
productivity to meet the 2015 hunger reduction target of the
Millenium Development Goal (MDG): "
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Innovations are needed in land, water and crop management
but the efforts required to achieve this need to focus on
increasing human and institutional capacity, build knowledge
and improve management and infrastructure. Large numbers
of people especially in rural areas are excluded from access
to relevant information either because information is not
available or inaccessible due to illiteracy. The mobile phone is
the only widely available programmable platform.
Your task is to design an application that empowers rural
people to improve their livelihoods.

15. more details…
attribution: parts of these slides are based on Angela Sasse and Sven
Laqua s course on interaction design at UCL

16. why mobiles?
❝The most profound technologies are those that disappear.❞ Mark Weiser

17. mobile life

18. why design?
➝ post WWII declining American manufacturing
quality disillusioned purchasers who, after being
attracted by external style, found products
unsatisfactory in use
➝ American industry got decimated from 1960s on
from imports from Japan and Germany where
greater attention to production quality and a more
holistic approach to design were the norm.
➝ key differentiator for products
➝ key skill in IT – differentiator for employees

19. why design digital products
digital products shortcomings:
➝ requirecomputer-centred thinking
➝ poor behaviour, rudeness
reasons
➝ ignorance about users
➝ conflicting interests
➝ lack of process

20. what is design?
hard to grasp – industrial design, graphic design,
software design, interface design, product design
…
in interaction design (Fallman 2003) :
➝ scientific/eng. process (conservative)
➝ art form (romantic)
➝ ad-hoc activity (pragmatic, bricoleur)
none are adequate – design is unfolding "
both problem and solution evolve through
sketching (prototyping)

21. what is interaction design (IxD)?
➝ it s about the design of behavior"
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/behaving-badly-in-vancouver.html
➝ designing the mechanisms for interacting with a
product (Cooper 2007)
➝ …designing interactive products to support
people in their everyday and working life
(Preece et al, 2002)

22. interaction design within a company
➝ management
➝ marketing
➝ engineering
➝ design team
How to achieve buy-in for your ideas? How do you
communicate your ideas to them? What’s the
language – same as yours?
Scott Jenson: ❝Design is about semantics and
syntax. First you need to see what people do and
want – the semantics and then you have to find a
way to make that possible – the syntax.❞

23. jobs - interaction design
responsibilities include:
• lead interaction design (entire product lifecycle), tools and deliverables,
including:
- persona development
- use cases, user task flows
- user interface concepts and interaction models
- annotated wireframes
- information architecture
- documentation of design concept in detailed UI specs
• effectively communicate interaction models and design ideas to the
team, leveraging above tools / documents
• identify appropriate user research techniques and metrics for gauging
success
• guide product direction and set UI requirements based on user
research, functional requirements, and business goals
• recommend concepts for testing and interpret consumer feedback /
results

24. design philosophy
➝ centred on human needs
➝ individualor group
➝ support goals and activities
➝ design technology to fit human needs and
characteristics
➝ involve users whenever possible
➝ mix analytical, creative and pragmatic approaches
➝ pick from range of design tools
➝ use existing best practices but not uncritically
➝ monitor design process and reflect on it

25. what is UX?
❝User experience encompasses 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. In
order to achieve high-quality user experience in a
company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of
the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering,
marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface
design.❞
Nielsen, Norman Group

26. user-centred
❝User experience and interface design in the
context of creating software represents an approach
that puts the user, rather than the system, at the
center of the process. This philosophy, called user-
centered design, incorporates user concerns and
advocacy from the beginning of the design process
and dictates the needs of the user should be
foremost in any design decisions.❞
Microsoft

27. product centred
❝The user experience for Mac OS X applications
encompasses the visual appearance, interactive
behavior, and assistive capabilities of software. With
the Aqua graphical user interface, Universal Access
features, and user-assistive technologies like the
Address Book framework, Apple Help, and
VoiceOver, you can deliver the cohesive and
professional user experience that Macintosh users
have come to expect. It's easy to leverage the user
experience technologies of Mac OS X to make great
Macintosh software.❞
Apple

28. bad UX
➝ ❝Technology that does not work the way they
expect makes people feel stupid.❞
➝ ❝if you intend to drive people away from your
site, it’s hard to imagine a more effective
approach than making them feel stupid.❞
➝ JJ Garrett: Elements of User Experience

29. impact on users’ lives
➝ User: ❝… so I have all these files and documents, all over
my desktop, different versions of documents in different
folders, and documents I don’t need any more. I never get
round to tidying up. I keep emails because I might need
because of the address, or the content. But I never get
round to putting them into the address book and deleting
the mails, so they just pile up. My electronic workspace is
a mess.❞
➝ Q: How does that make you feel?
➝ User: [thinks] ❝It makes me feel that I am a bad person.❞
From Richard Boardman’s (2005) PhD thesis on
Improving Tool Support for Personal Information Management

30. user experience (UEX, UX)
industrial/graphic
design
form
behaviour content
information architecture,
interaction designer animation etc.
Cooper 2006

31. lived experience
Any account of what is often
called the user experience
must take into consideration
the ❛felt❜ experience:
emotional, intellectual, and
sensual aspects of our
interactions with technology.
❝We don't just use technology, we live with it.❞
John McCarthy, Peter Wright 2004: Technology as experience. MIT Press

32. framework for design
and interaction takes place in a
has general & specific characteristics CONTEXT
physical
incl. other
USER SYSTEM technologies
interacts with
to attain social
cultural
GOAL
temporal

33. Garret’s planes of UX
➝ strategy – what user wants to achieve
➝ scope – what functions and features are required
➝ structure – navigation – how are screens linked
and grouped
➝ skeleton – placement of buttons, tabs, blocks of
text, pictures
➝ surface – series of pages in high fidelity

34. Garret’s planes of UX
concrete
surface
❝When designers make choices
that do not align with planes above
and below, you end up with a
skeleton jumble of components that don’t fit.❞
structure
scope
Garrett’s planes
Of UXP
strategy abstract

35. levels of interaction
User’s/corporate goals GOAL
Output in the Real World LEVEL
Userʼs knowledge! Computerʼs representation! TASK!
of task domain! of task domain! LEVEL!
! ! !
! ! !
! ! DIALOGUE!
Userʼs knowledge! Computer command! LEVEL!
of language! language! !
! ! !
! ! !
! ! !
Userʼs hands,! Computer keyboard,! INPUT / OUTPUT!
eyes! display! LEVEL!
Human Structures! Computer Structures!

36. personas
➝ represent user groups
➝ system may be used by
one or several personas
➝ different characteristics
➝ different goals
➝ e.g. buyers of a new car
➝ Jean-David (playboy): "
go fast, impress women
➝ Aurelie (soccer mum): "
fit in many kids, be safe
➝ Bob (the Builder): "
haul big loads, be reliable

37. scenarios
➝ persona-based scenarios "
concise narrative description of how persona
interacts with system to achieve goals
➝ context-based scenarios "
how product can serve needs of persona, created
before any design is done
➝ to key path scenarios – refined with design
➝ to validation scenarios – based on ❛what … if❜"
focus on illustrate requirements (the what), "
top-down decomposition to functionality (the how)

38. storyboards

39. scenarios vs. use cases
❝… scenarios are an interactive means of defining
the behaviour of a product from the standpoint of
specific users (personas). This includes not only the
functionality of the system, but the priority of
functions and the way those functions are
expressed in terms of what the user sees and how
she interacts with the system.
use cases, on the other hand, are based on
exhaustive descriptions of the functional
requirements of the system, often of a transactional
nature, focussing on low-level user actions and
accompanying system response.❞
Cooper 2006

40. eliciting UX requirements
➝ in-depth qualitative data
➝ interviews
➝ in-depth analysis such as Grounded Theory and
Discourse Analysis
➝ ethnographic methods
➝ mostly observational
➝ can be combined with surveys, interviews, qualitative
studies

41. general reading
recommended books (available at EPF-BIB)
Cooper, Reimann & Cronin (2007) "
About Face 3, Wiley
Jones & Marsden (2004) "
Mobile Interaction Design, Wiley
Scott McCloud (1993)"
Understanding Comics, Harper Perennial (on order)
Schneiderman & Plaisant (2010) "
Designing the User Interface. Addison-Wesley.
Preece, Rogers & Sharp (2002)"
Interaction Design, Wiley

42. summary
➝ focus on design approaches, methods and tools
➝ learning by doing
➝ interaction design is a relatively young and rapidly
developing field
➝ interaction designers have to address new
technologies and adapt their methods and tools
➝ collect artefacts: "
paper, pictures, audio, video

43. practical part – design techniques

44. brainstorming
➝ group size <10 – ideally between 5-7 + facilitator
➝ find and set up comfortable space
➝ appoint recorder - up-coming ideas on shared
display, flip chart, whiteboard
➝ ice-breaking exercise – to familiarize members of
groups
➝ define problem clearly
➝ goal: generate as many ideas as possible
adapted from www.mindtools.com/brainstm.html

45. brainstorming – how to
➝ address what, how, when, where and why
➝ give people time on their own at beginning then
ask to share them
➝ encourage
➝ todevelop ideas of others further or use as new seeds
➝ enthusiastic, fun, uncritical attitude,
➝ include everyone to contribute (practical and
impractical ideas) and develop
➝ ensure no criticism or evaluation – riskless
atmosphere

46. ice breaker
➝ effective to start a training, team-building event
➝ goal:
➝ get to know each other
➝ get into the event
➝ become comfortable contributing to event
➝ establish level playing field
➝ create common sense of purpose
➝ ingredients: ice, a breaker (method), a facilitator

47. ice breaker - when to use
if participants
➝ come from different backgrounds
➝ need to bond quickly to work on common project
or goal
➝ are unfamiliar with topic at hand
➝ don t know the facilitator but should and vice
versa

48. the ice
participants have
➝ not met before
➝ different age, status or levels in an organization
➝ different backgrounds – different perceptions of
each other
choose method accordingly &
➝ don t try to uncover the whole iceberg

49. ice breaker – methods (introductory)
➝ everyoneshares name, nationality, focus of study
and one human element, e.g.:
➝ one little known fact about me
➝ true/false - three to four short statements – the group
guesses which one is false, or
➝ pair interview – interview and then introduce partner to
the group