Chapter 1: What is Interaction Design?
Chapter Introduction | Web Resources | Assignment Comments | Teaching Materials
Below is additional material associated with the topics covered in chapter 1.
Interaction Design
An article called the “Complete Beginner’s Guide to Interaction Design” by Andrew Maier (2009) can be found at:
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/complete-beginners-guide-to-interaction-design/
It presents an overview of all aspects of interaction design including the history, guiding principles, noted designers, and their methods.
There are many blogs on interaction design. We have selected some of our favorites that appear on our starters page. O’Danny Boy (www.odannyboy.com/) also has a summary of his favorite articles on design on his website (see http://www.odannyboy.com/2010/12/my-favorite-design-articles-2010/). Take a look at a sample chapter that is free to download from the second edition of his book on interaction design.
See: http://www.designingforinteraction.com/designingforinteraction2_sample.pdf
Good and bad designs
Don Norman has written a number of essays and books on this topic. For a number of thought provoking examples see: http://www.jnd.org/GoodDesign.html
Bad designs is an online scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow user-centered design principles, compiled by Michael J. Darnell. Some of them are included in the accompanying overheads. See: http://www.baddesigns.com/
Design principles
There are a number of articles discussing design principles on the web. Visit Don Norman's website and take a look in particular at the papers on affordances and constraints: Norman, D. A. (1999). Affordance,conventions, and design. Interactions 6, 3 (May. 1999), Pages 38 - 43 Copyright 1999, Donald A. Norman. All rights reserved. Can be found at http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html
Ask Tog has a large collection of usability principles that are clearly explained and which are also in Dutch, German and Spanish. See http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html
Accessibility
Web accessibility initiative (WAI) develops guidelines that are the international standard for web design: http://www.w3.org/WAI/