Interactivity 1

User Centred Design

A Very Brief Introduction

Putting people in the centre of the design process and understanding their needs and behaviours will help the designer better understand the person who will be ultimately using their design artefact the user. ! The birth of the user comes from humancomputer interaction (HCI), engineering and psychology and usability studies most closely associated with interface design and interactivity. As graphic design changes in response to cultural and technological conditions, user-centreded design provides the potential for greater participation of graphic designers in expanding domains of interactive design and interdisciplinary teams.

As the world is becoming more and more suffused with interactive technologies, how can designers support an increasingly diverse range of activities? ! Computers can be used to send messages, gather information, write essays, draw, plan, calculate, play games through speech, touch, handheld devices. Interfaces are designed with menus, commands, forms, gestures, icons, scrollbars, card swipes. There are responsive environments, mobile devices, wearables and networked homes. What this amounts to is a multitude of choices and decisions for an ever increasing range of possibilities. So how can designers optimize and support the users activities in effective and enjoyable ways?

A designer could make a guess and rely ! on intuition - and then hope for the best. Or the designer could be more principled through a deeper investigation to more thoroughly understand the user - hence UCD. This involves:
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taking into account what peoples needs, wants, limitations, obstacles, goals, motivations consider what might help people with the way things are done or could be done listening to what people want and get them involved in the design process using refined methods and techniques to capture and analyse the design process

Interactivity 1

PACT Analysis
A Framework for User Experience Design!

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

PACT Analysis
People Activities Context Technology

Who are the users? What are they doing? Where are they doing it? How will do it?

Who are you designing for?

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

People have varying characteristics Physical differences

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Size - height and weight Senses - vision, hearing Disability - accessibility

Psychological differences
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Spatial ability - wayfinding Language - cultural interpretation Attention - memory, stress, tiredness Mental Model - association, memorability

Usage differences
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Novice or Expert- technical knowledge Homogeneous or Heterogeneous

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

What are the people doing? Why are they doing it? Frequency
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Regular - daily, yearly

Cooperation
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Alone or with others

Complexity
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Well defined or vague

Safety Critical
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Prevent injury/harm, errors

Nature of Content
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Amount of info, form

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

Where are the activities occurring? Physical

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Environment - weather, noise, location

Social
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Supportive, private, public

Organizational
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institutional, workplace

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

What are people using or will use? Designed to to support peoples requirements Medium
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Hardware, software

Input
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Mouse, touch, gesture, scan, speech

Output
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Display, audio, tactile

Communication
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networks, one-to-one, many accurate, relevant, understandable

Content
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People Activities Contexts! Technologies

Scoping a problem with the PACT Goal is to harmonize the PACT elements
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Useful to understand current state and

identify opportunities
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Scope as many Ps, As Cs and Ts as possible Observe and talk to people

People Activities Contexts! Technologies

Think about the user community How is this community defined ? People
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Stakeholders Physical, social, functional Some obvious others not Current and proposed

Contexts
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Activities
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Technologies
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