Designing Interactions. Chapter 10: People and Prototypes
Bill Mogridge
"When we are designing connected systems of products,services, and spaces, which are used in real time, the brain of any designer who tries to absorb all of the constraints is likely to explode."
The reading stresses the importance of comprehensively understanding all the tasks associated with an experience in order to better design interactive products and experiences.
The importance of understanding the user experience
Understanding relevant constraints; the latent needs and wants of the users, their preconceptions, mental models and expectations is best achieved through observational research of a user experience and the acting out or simulating the experience by the design researcher. Designers have the ability to harness tacit knowledge rather
than being limited to working with explicit knowledge. The constraints of a
design problem can be absorbed by the subconscious mind of the designer so find
solutions.
Often, the designers tacit knowledge and understanding of the problem can help them conceptualize design ideas, make creative leaps, and find first solutions.
Experience prototyping for design development
Prototyping an experience is
focused on the conceptual experience of the user, it is used to explore, evaluate and communicate design ideas during the
development process, and to gain a more informed development of the user
experience and the tangible components which create it.
Experience prototyping lets a client, design colleague, or a
user understand the subjective value of a design idea by directly experiencing
it, and prototyping with the
intended user group also helps the designers avoid the trap of designing
for themselves.
Human factors trials with
experience prototypes allow quick evaluations of a wide range of design
concepts, and the combination of user testing and rapid prototyping is a key to
successful experience design.
"An effective
experience prototype requires a level of resolution and functionality such that
it can be “let loose” into an everyday context and more fully integrated into
people’s lives."
Applicable to this semester project;
- Successful interaction design is dependent on understanding the perceptions, circumstances, habits, needs, and desires of the ultimate users.
- The practice of designing interactions is enabled by prototyping early and often by trying out ideas as quickly and frequently as possible, and by taking them to the users for responses and evaluations.
- Using Arduino to prototype, we are able to quickly develop and test subtle iterations of product behaviours and user experiences.
- Constraints will be identified through looking at the full context of the design problem, not just the people involved.
- Prototype early and often, making each iterative step a little more realistic but minimizing the time and effort invested each time, relying instead on the learning that feeds your subconscious each time you try.
- When designing a new version of something that is already there, the designer can research what has been done before, learn the lessons from previous attempts, discover guiding principles, and extract knowledge from the precedents.
"We can generalize the
interaction design process with these ten elements: constraints, synthesis, framing, ideation,
envisioning, uncertainty, selection, visualization, prototyping, and
evaluation."
-Darcy Storr
