Design Principles: An Introduction

Direct Manipulation

By only asking what people want you can miss important things

Find problems and opportunities by going into the field to discover what people actually do

Get extra power of observation by bringing prototypes with you

We have two main questions:

Know?

Do?

First we need to DO what is supossed that the system has to do, and then we get the feedback.

How I KNOW that the system actually did what It was expected.

The main questions we have to make us is How easily can someone...

Determine the function of the device?

Tell what actions are possible?

Perfome the action?

Tell what state the system is in? If it's in the desired state?

Determine mapping from system state to interpretation?

We have to use Mental representations for creating analogies.

The representations come from experience

"Nest thermostat" is like a classic "Honeywell thermostat"

"A text proccesor is a typewriter"

"Electricity is like water"

When we change our representation, thats learning!

Design should beacon user's model, User's representation develop through interaction with

the system and Designers often expect user's representation to be the same as their... But often
they are not. Mismatch leads to slow perfomance errors, and frustations

So the model or representation of this is the next one:

The designer idea (representation of the design and the interface) has to give that idea to the

user mind.

We also have to determine the diference between the slip and a mistake. A Slip is a little

mistake that the user made, and a Mistkake is an error that the designer or the producer

commited and it make people fail using the interface.

Mental Models

What makes an interface learnable?

What leads to errors?

The goal: design beacons the right model

User's model develops through interaction with the system

Designers often expects user's model to be the same as theirs

But often it isn't

Metan models arise from experience. metaphor and analogical reasoning

We have models aboyt our own behaviors of others, objects and software

Our models are incomplete, inconsisntent unstable in time, and often rife with superstition

Direct Manipulation Provides

Leverages real-world metaphors

Good idea of how each object works and how to control it

Interface discloses how to use it

If techonology is to provide and advantage the correspondence to the real world must

break down at some point

-Jonathan Grudin