Designing Interactions, Bill Verplank

Designing Interactions, Bill Verplank- Notes

Bill Verplank's ideas of interaction design have evolved over the years. He has a PhD from MIT in man-machine systems, applying information and control theort to measuring human operator workload in control tasks.

He summarizes interaction design by answering three questions; how you act, how you feel, & how you understand.

Paradigms serve as explanation  for the way people think about interaction design and it's history.

How do you do?
How do humans affect the world?
Handles- user has hands on/continuous control
Buttons-delegating control to machine

How do you feel?
Fuzzy, cool/Distinct, hot
Cool media draw a person in.
Hot media is immutable, or cannot be touched or changed.
What are the sensory qualities of the media?

How do you know?
Maps give knowledge needed for designing complex systems.
Path offers understanding.
It is the designers responsibility to help people understand- a tool for this is a map.

Design Interaction Paradigms:
Tool
Doug Englebart (inventor of computer mouse) thought of the computer as a tool. We use it with direct manipulation

Media
How is this medium compelling? An expression?
Life
Artificial Intelligence... computer virus, computer evolution, artificial life computer programming is capable of evolving over time.

Vehicle
Infrastructure; rules to the road as all computers have underlying infrastructure- there are limitations and opportunities for design.

Fashion
Computers are products. Many products are fashion products. People want the "right" products, as they are defined by their possessions, culturally speaking. Aesthetics can dominate this- as people move from a style interaction to another.

Design Interaction; The Process:
1. Motivation- errors or ideas
understanding the problems, ideals, ideas
2. Meaning- metaphors and scenerios
-for understanding
-a clear metaphor is a strange idea that connects two things
3.Modes- models and tasks
-create conceptual model that users will understand- a clear picture
-mode depends on what the task is and goal
-conceptual cognitive science of understanding what is to be done and the information needed to do it

4. Mapping- displays and controls
-interaction designer designs some kid of display and controls
-display is representation of things that can be manipulated
-map controls to display
-mappings, in computers, can be very complicated; remap instantaneously, giving powerful modes that can select or delete everything