Products for People Jones, M. and Marsden, G Mobile Interaction Design John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, London, Chapter 2 pp

What makes for a successful interactive product? Why some things are hits and others terrible misses? Overview  Useful  Usable  User Experience  Technology Acceptance

Useful: Function before Form  Function before feeling. –SMS (texting) case “People would walk over glass to send a text message” Scott Jenson, former Director, DesignLab, Symbian. Seemingly poor interface; but people txt all the time…. What’s going on?

Useful: Function before Form  Heckel’s Law: “The quality of the user interface of an appliance is relatively unimportant in determining its adoption by users if the perceived value … is high”  Inverse Law: “the importance of the user interface design in the adoption of an appliance is inversely proportional to the perceived value of the appliance” –(Derret 2004)

 Hold on…. –Are we saying the user interface is not important?

 Cappuccino and HCI –Interface issues like the sprinkling of chocolate on froth –Interaction issues like the process of infusing the expresso, creating that just-right froth…

 Interaction design –Prime role is to discover the key functions and features a user wants; i.e. what will they perceive as “useful”

Useful: Evolving Mobile Uses  What are mobiles for? –In past, seemed easy answer: “road warriors” –Indeed, in Nokia study cited in (Lauridsen & Prasad 2003): Top iMode services were indeed businessorientated ( and data comms)

But…  In terms of business use –Profile of workers being “mobile” is changing –Note the proliferation of mobile wireless cards for laptops –As base of mobile users broaden need to consider shift from “early adopter” culture.

And…  The Nokia study also surveyed growing non- business uses –ringtone downloads –entertainment –games & animations  The lesiure/everday uses are exciting and problematic for interaction designers. –Why?

Reflective and Creative Uses of Mobiles  “The old computing is about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users can do” (Shneiderman 2002).  Good example is blogging (both conventional and more recently, mobile)

Overview  Useful  Usable  User Experience  Technology Acceptance

Usable in itself  Lots of potentially very useful applications and services but soon disappoint  Usability – way you control and operate the system. The “how” of design. Often it is poor.  Two forms –Ease-of-use –Goodness of fit to users context

Mobiles That Are Intrinsically Useful…  To help designers, Norman sets down four principles of good practice that promote these ease-of-use essentials (Norman 1988): –Ensure a high degree of visibility – allow the user to work out the current state of the system and the range of actions possible. –Provide feedback – given continuous, clear information about the results of actions. –Present a good conceptual model – allow the user to build up a true picture of the way the system holds together, the relationships between its different parts and how to move from one state to the next. –Offer good mappings – aim for clear, natural relationships between actions the user performs and the results they achieve.

More Usability Guidelines  Ben Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design (Shneiderman 1998) –Strive for consistency –Enable frequent users to use shortcuts –Offer informative feedback –Design dialogues to yield closure (give users a sense of a beginning, middle and end in their interactions) –Strive to prevent errors and assist when errors are made –Allow “undo” –Make users feel they are in control of a responsive system –Reduce short-term memory load

Living up to the Ideals in the Mobile Context  Good Visibility and Feedback –How do you do this when the screen is so small? (Kamba et al., 1996) © 2005 ACM, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Good Conceptual Models?  “It doesn’t look like a camera” – getting the affordances right. –Many mobiles are now multi-purpose: they are camera, telephone and music player all in one. A team from the Ericsson Usability Lab studied whether such a multi-function device can give the sorts of clear affordances seen in simpler appliances (Goldstein, Nyberg et al. 2003) –Mobile they studied used stylus and menus instead of dedicated camera controls; it looked like a computer they used it like a computer –When did use controls were confused by their actions –One-handed design great for many mobile applications but led to blurred photos.

Careful Thought About Affordances… Reproduced by permission of Sony Ericsson

Mappings  In the Peepholes system the user lifts up the handheld towards them to see less detail, to zoom out that is, and moves the device away from them to zoom in, getting more detail.  In a map application then, raising the handheld towards your face would show you more of an area overview; lowering would allow you to see more of the street level information  Is that a good mapping?

Usable in Life  Even when a device is easy to operate and plainly communicates the effect of interacting with it, the test comes when it is deployed in the complex, messiness of real situations. When a user calls on its services in everyday use, it might still disappoint dramatically.  A system can appear impressive, reasonable and effective when watching an in-store demonstration; working carefully through a manual soon after a purchase; or, when playing with the device to discover features; but, when it has to be used in the wild, as it were, in tandem with the world around it, the usability can break down quickly.  In carrying out everyday activities, users will draw on a number resources… –Finding your way around a new town? –Deciding on what restaurant to eat at?

 Often, technology sold as a panacea…  Example: rfid tags and supermarkets

Information Ecologies (Nardi and O'Day 1999) “We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technologies”

Mobiles and the Myth of the Paperless Office  1987 – 60 million tonnes of paper  1997 – 150 million tonnes of paper  etc has increased paper use by 40% –(see Harper and Sellen 2001)  Realising clutter via mobile technology?

ParcTab Reproduced by permission of Palo Alto Research Centre Inc., a subsidiary of Xerox Corp

Overview  Useful  Usable  User Experience  Technology Acceptance

User Experience

Strong identity – Interaction as brand Excellent mappings. The movement used to scroll – rotating the finger clockwise or anticlockwise – gives a good sensation as your skin glides over the white solid-state wheel. The gesture also has what psychologists would describe as a direct and clear mapping. That is, the action and its results are obviously linked: moving your finger clockwise means “more”, anticlockwise “less”. The tap on the action button, like a click of a mouse, confirms a choice or makes a selection. Consistency. While the wheel is used to control a large number of features, the uncomplicated mapping always holds; there is a high degree of consistency in the way it works. If you are scrolling through a list of music, “more” means scroll forward; “less”, backwards; when you are listening to a track, “more” increases the volume and “less” decreases it, and so on.

Interaction as Brand  “With…the Navi-Key UI, we raised the visibility of the UI even further by naming and trade marking the NaviKey. An easy-to-remember name given to a tangible UI element let us transform the abstract concept of usability from something hard to understand into a concrete product attribute. The message to consumers was as follows: anybody can master this phone since it is operated with only one key”. (Lindholm and Keinonen 2003)

Interaction as Package “What’s important is the entire experience, from when I first hear about the product to purchasing it, to opening the box, to getting it running, to getting service, to maintaining it, to upgrading it.” Don Norman (Anderson 2000)  Costs.  Low intrusion.  Expressiveness and meaning..  Turn-taking.  Privacy.

Overview  Useful  Usable  User Experience  Technology Acceptance

Technology Acceptance Decision to adopt/reject Positive/negative attitude about the technology itself Positive/negative attitude using the technology in their social setting Individual beliefs about the benefits of the technology Relative advantage Compatability Complexity Trialability Observability Image Trust Opinions of others on the technology Friends Work group Family Opinion leaders

Technology Acceptance & IxD Trainability, observability; image; trust; reaction of friends, family & other groups User experience Compatibility (with life/culture); image; trust; opinion of friends, family & others Ecological usability Complexity; compatibility (with previous services/ technology); observability Intrinsic usability of the service Relative advantage Usefulness Technology acceptance model terminology Interaction Design Terminology