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=Basics of Psychology= | =Basics of Psychology= | ||
Interaction Design is heavily influenced by psychology. No wonder - we are dealing with creating things that are used because of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation motivations] of the users and are easy to use because it maches the way they [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science think.] | Interaction Design is heavily influenced by psychology. No wonder - we are dealing with creating things that are used because of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation motivations] of the users and are easy to use because it maches the way they [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science think.] | ||
What you should be aware of is that there are some things that are "expensive" regarding our cognition. One of thiese things is learning new things and getting them into our long-term memory e.g. how you do a certain action in a program. An other is keeping things in short term memory. An example for this would be to remember which function you triggered previously or which item you copied into the clipboard. | |||
==Mental Models== | ==Mental Models== | ||
The way real world things work is represented in our mind as a so-called mental model. The whole world with all its properties can't get in our mind. It would be too much data and what we percieve is heavily filtered anyway by our senses. | The way real world things work is represented in our mind as a so-called mental model. The whole world with all its properties can't get in our mind. It would be too much data and what we percieve is heavily filtered anyway by our senses. | ||
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=Basic Principles& Best Practices= | =Basic Principles& Best Practices= | ||
There are some principles in interaction design that should be followed. It is no crime to break the rules – but you should have a good reason to do so. During the years quite may of them emerged. I collected and explained the ones that I consider as important and easy to apply. | There are some principles in interaction design that should be followed. It is no crime to break the rules – but you should have a good reason to do so. During the years quite may of them emerged. I collected and explained the ones that I consider as important and easy to apply. | ||
==Metaphors== | |||
One way to ease the dealing with a something new is to suggests that it works similary to something the user already knows. This is often done to transfering real world principles to software interfaces and is also known as using a "metaphor". Like metaphors in language the metaphor transfers some aspects while some are not transferred - thats often good: if you do otherwise and try to transfer every single aspect you often end up with a use that has no advantages over the real world thing the metaphr is drawing from but is far more difficult to use. | |||
There are many metaphors around when you take a look at your computer's applications. The most times you will use metaphors by choosing a suitable name or icon for a function or desinging the workflow like a well known process. Though here are two examples of well known metaphers that almost rule the way we deal with the applications they are used in: | |||
* '''The Desktop'''<br> | |||
A classic Metaphor. Like in you real desktop you can put documents you currently deal with, on your desktop and organize your workspace. Many aspects of a real world desktop were not transferred for good reasons. The recycling bin e.g. is usually not seen on top of your real world desktop. But it is pretty useful that it is on your computer's desktop. | |||
[[File:http://web.uni-weimar.de/medien/wiki/File:Tools_GIMP.png|thumb]] | |||
*'''tools'''<br> | |||
You hardly notice this metaphor. Its pretty good. We use tools all the time in our real life and we easyly know how to use the tools on the toolbar in our image editing program: The eraser deletes stuff, the brush paints with color etc. | |||
Metaphors seem to be simply great at the first glance. But they can cause a lot of problems too. They can constrain the user because real world constrains do not apply in the computer. In bad cases the whole interface just follows the metaphor instead of the users needs. This happened in "Microsoft Bob" which was a desktop replacement using a house as metaphor. To access different kinds of applications you needed to go to different rooms. To start the word processor you clicked on a sheet of paper on the desk in the living room etc. The use was cumbersome and unintuitive, so Bob did not succeed. Not as bad as Bob but worth mentioning is the interface of QuickTime 5 that used a wheel to change the sound intensity. So... how do you turn a wheel using your mouse? It turned out that it the usual linear movement worked as well - the same you do when you use a normal slider. | |||
Metaphores can ease interaction - but bad metaphors can cause a lot of trouble. It is often better go see if any standard exists - thats what the following chapter is about. | |||
==Standards and Consistency== | ==Standards and Consistency== | ||
[...] | |||
Like metaphors standards ease learning because you can build on something the user already knows. | |||
==Visibility== | ==Visibility== | ||
==Modeless Design== | ==Modeless Design== | ||