July 17: Interaction Design Concepts

Quote: " Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works" -Steve Jobs http://www.interaction-design.org/

 I started out by looking on the web for interesting interaction design outcomes, and quicly found http://www.interactiondesignblog.com/ which is a blog solely about interaction design.

http://www.interactiondesignblog.com/2008/10/20-cool-interaction-design-concepts/


Interesting concepts i found:

2 The liquid display

Designer Nicolas Büchi has designed an interactive display which is controlled by manipulating three cups of water. By entering your finger and moving around in the cup you control the size and frequency of the bubbles on the display.

In his bachelor project Nicolas shows how a physical interaction can operate a display. In his project it are the bubbles but this physical interaction can be brought back in many products. This could reduce the number of buttons while the interaction is playful and explorative. Does it have a good usability? Probably not, but it might be more joyful!

 

Although quite interesting, it isnt very useful, although it has created an usual method of interacting with an object.

4 Nokia 888

Although this design by Tamer Nakisci is already three years old, it is still actual this day. He won the design competition of Nokia with this concept phone.

Concept description

The concept is a phone that can be bend in any shape you want. This allows it to be carried wherever you want; around your wrist, in your chest pocket or in your bag. By sending each other messages that contain emotions the phone can change its shape to fit the message. It can for example change its shape to a hart when someone sends his love towards that person.

I really like this concept, as it is not only an innovative and tactile way of communicating, and is also practical as the phone will be more durable than most.

6 Ripple faucet

The ‘RIpple Faucet’ designed by Smith Newnam brings new interactions to faucets. The faucets that we are used to have to manipulators; hot and cold that also controls the flow of the water, or with a thermostat faucet, one for the temperature and one for the flow. The design eliminates this separation of controlling the flow and temperature, with one single movements both can be set. (article continues below)

More about the ripple faucet here

I not only want to think about interaction design, i also want to learn about user experience theory as i am not just interested in developing interestng concepts, but also working on real world solutions.

http://www.interactiondesignblog.com/2009/11/the-future-of-microsoft-or-stupidity/

This is a conceptual feature by microsoft which shows the future of interactive multi touch screens both wall-sized and palm sized. It shows functionality and technology, but although there are lots of fancy features it does not necessarily increase productivity. I've found myself that even on the iphone, i dont use any of the 'time saving' features as although they are very flashy, theyre not really useful in my day-to-day life. In some of my outcomes i have packed in lots of additonal features, such as social networking tools, it may not always necessary to improve the user experience.

These are some of the reflections:

Here are some reflections about the vision:

Productivity is browsing?

If you take a good look at the video you only see people browsing their calenders, charts, interactive tables and what not more. Is that working? Ever tried to type a letter on a touchscreen? I am sure it is not nearly as fast and accurate as a normal keyboard. So maybe multi touch applications are not the best means for entering data or typing a letter. I can image that text can be dictated with speech recognition, but why not operate the whole application with speech than? In my opinion working is creating new value in the form of documents, graphs, data, analysis or applications. Applications that increase the productivity are key in the future, but Microsoft failed completely in developing a vision on improving productivity.

Productivity is less intuitive?

Another aspect of the future vision is that the users know how to use the application. Is that because the design is more intuitive? In all aspects of the movie you see panels sliding open with more information, often without a menu! Are we supposed to smell where the content is? To me it does not seem to be more intuitive, only when one has learned this through experimentation. Is that the future, having a worse usability but more intuitive usage when a user went through the steep learning curve?

Productivity is simplifying the work?

All applications in the video show very clearly just a few options like menus or buttons on each screen. Therefore it looks very easy and simple but how does that relate the complex world today that will be a lot more complex in the near future. Microsoft is struggling to fit all options into Word and Excel, and they are growing! I was hoping that Microsoft would come up with a new way of navigating or using the interface but it seems they just left out 99% of the functionalities.

A glimpse ahead, I don’t think so?

Too sum up, this vision is not realistic and will not be realized for sure. Multi touch can of course be used in many ways but it seems the means are becoming more important then the goal of it. Everything just looks cooler, but what does it add? Also the idea of only having Microsoft programs is a sign of pure blindness, more and more applications will fulfill specific needs and Microsoft is already losing the battle of browsers and media players.
What the Microsoft vision excludes is how new applications and technology can change the way we work. What is considered work? Maybe working in virtual teams is well accepted and maybe we don’t sit behind a desk anymore. In my opinion this video shows what multi touch can be for us, but is far off from being a vision for productivity in the future!


My analysis

I found this criticism very useful. Simply adding new technology such as the touchscreen doesnt necessarily make it easier to use: it just looks fancier. Leaning on technology and navigation methods too much can decrease the actual practicality of the outcome as well as the ease and speed of navigation. 

 

For me, an example of this is the wii: yes, it has a motion sensor, but i find it highly irritating to use with it constantly falsely recognising actions, the menu screens are slow to navigate. The games rely heavily on the motion sensor interface, withthe main appeal of it solely being the interface. I find the games very one-dimensional and buggy and hard to use instead of being intuitive. I have aso tried the PS3 equivalent and found the same.

For me, this has been enlightening, and i will be more aware of being caught up in new technologies without stepping back and considering whether it increases the actual user experience. 

I want to also learn more about user experience theory and testing methods.