Interaction design

When sound design fails

'Unpressable buttons' has written a nice post about sound design in products. There are numerous examples where companies spend tons of money just to get the sound right. Volvo is known for testing endlessly just to get the typical Volvo sound for closing the door. A second example are the coffee machines that use beans. Nowadays the beans can be grind without any noise but that coffee machine would not sell at all. The customer wants to hear heas beans being grinded; it is part of the coffee brewing experience. Unpressable buttons use the example of artificially created shutter sound of a pocket sized digital camera which you still have with modern SLR's.These camera's work so silent that they use this sound for either enhancing the user experience or (more importantly) to give audible feedback to the user about the status of the product. [Continue reading...]

Microsoft surface at Shariton Hotels

The Microft surface table is introduced in the Shariton hotels. Earlier we wrote about the unveiling of the new surface table and the introduction at AT&T. As with the surface tables at AT&T the ones for the Shariton are specially programmed for this hotel chain. But the working principle remains the same: navigating through the menu by touch or multi touch. [Continue reading...]

Interactive foil

The company 'Visual Planet' has developed interactive foil that can be used as a touch screen. One major advantage is that it can be glued on every surface that is not metallic. Consider the possibilities. Now displays in public will get vandalized less easy as the display (read foil!) can be glued on the inside of windows / plastics. Two configurations The foil comes in two configurations; a see through window configuration or an interactive poster configuration. Especially the see through configuration has a lot of potential as it keeps working with a glass thickness of 25 mm. This more 'vandalize proof' display could open doors for such displays at buss stops, shopping centers that lack the social control at certain times during the day. [Continue reading...]

Brushing all you can see

The people at MIT have developed a brush that allows you to brush whatever it can see. The brush scans the surface of an object by putting the brush on the object. The brush turns this scan into a texture which can be used to brush on a wall. But not only can the brush use stills for brushing it can also capture movements of the object that is being scanned. Likely with a camera this is captured and after brushing this texture the movement stays alive and is displayed on the wall as well. In the video one example is shown of capturing 'blinking eyes' which are then brushed on the wall. Also on the wall the eyes keep blinking, that is cool! [Continue reading...]

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 as we wrote earlier about the media cubes. [Continue reading...]

ease of use defined in ISO

Our colleagues at 'the product usability weblog' have written a nice article about the new ISO standard 20282. Why is this interesting? Because now usability experts have a common platform to judge whether, and to what extent a product is 'usable'. Said thing is we have to pay for getting the ISO standards, while their goal is to 'standardize'. By limiting the availability their reach is less, and it will take longer before it is a standard, see the paradox? But that is another discussion. The new ISO is built out of four sections;

An especially interesting section was; "The purpose of the test is to provide a basis for predicting the ease of installation of a consumer product, including measures of its effectiveness and efficiency of installation, and the satisfaction of the intended user population in the intended context of its use" All usability experts and industry guru's proclaim that in order to judge the usability you have to test this with users and working prototypes. This ISO claims to have a standard that can 'predict' to which extent 'ease of installation' both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, and satisfaction! I am suspicious that they have developed a standard that can 'predict' this. But I haven't read it so if any has used the new standard I would certainly like to hear your experiences. [Continue reading...]

It took some time but Bill finally got it

You might have read the email that Bill Gates send to his employees. It shows that Bill Gates finally understands why people are not particulary fond about the usability of windows. Everyone knows the dialogboxes that continuously ask if you really want to do this or that. "Didn't I just told so by clicking on it, do you think I am stupid?" In the email Bill put his experience in trying to download and install Windows movie maker on paper. He describes how the search engine on the website cannot find the query moviemaker, it has to be movie maker an engineer explains! Also he describes how he has to fill in a form that clears all the contents when there was an error. This goes on and on and we never get to know if he managed to install the program. Guess what that means for all users who are not into computers? Honestly, you could write such experiences for most of the windows applications / services. [Continue reading...]

Inclusive design in public restrooms

Most products are only designed for the majority, by using for instance the P95 rule. Although this includes the majority it explicitly excludes a large group of people as well; the P5. Especially user groups that have a disability such as blindness or hearing loss are ignored almost continuously by today's product designers. The field 'inclusive design' tries to develop products that include as many people as possible. A hearing device or glasses are no products of inclusive design, they are specially made products to reduce or solve a disability. But a cellular phone that also can be used by blind people is a good example of inclusive design. Designer Kim Changduk and his team have developed a toilet that not only can be used people without a disability but also by people that are in a wheelchair. With existing toilets the transfer from wheelchair towards the toilet is a problem as there is often a lack of space to place the wheelchair next to the toilet as well as the lack of supports. The common solution is to have a separate toilet for people who are in a wheelchair. In the end this is quite expensive as only a few people use this toilet. [Continue reading...]

Interface vs. Interaction design

What is actually the difference between interface and interaction design? The term ‘interface design’ suggests that in web design the coding, users and how a message is relayed (interface) can be regarded separately. One major problem of isolating design at the interface level is that it allows programmers, or product designers to reason that an interface will be glued on it afterwards. It postpones design after programming or sketching. If you want to offer a carefully designed user experience all three components support the user experience. ‘Behavioural design’ tells how the product (website or consumer product) should respond and communicate to users. Like behavioural designers interaction designers also work from the inside out. Interaction designers start with the goals user want to achieve and distillate that into broader goals. ‘Conceptual design’ takes it even one level deeper; instead of looking at the goals it looks at the what is valuable for the users. The way to fulfil this is still open, it could be a new product, but suits better to the needs of users. Where does the interaction designer belong? In all of them! The interaction designer first investigates what is most valuable for users by thinking conceptually, after that the behaviour gets detailed; how should the user fulfil his goals and finally at an interface level. How should the interface look like to get this particular user experience? [Continue reading...]

Magical light control

What if you could operate your light by your hands but not actually touching it? Only pointing at it would be enough, or what about blowing the light out like a candle? In the following video you can see that someone is operating the light switch. But this is technically possible, as we wrote earlier about controlling games with your body. Costs and the relatively low advantages are the problem for bringing such products to market. It would probably require twice as much energy, but for disabled people this is certainly a solution. Imagine someone without hands having to turn off and on his lights with has feet all the time, while he can just blow out the light! For the smarter guys among us, turning the light on could be achieved by whistling? [Continue reading...]