- Motion: The way that products behave in response to the way people behave; motion is often a trigger for action; without motion there can be no interaction.
- Space: Provides a context for motion; all interaction takes place in a space.
- Time: The rhythm of the interaction. (digital time is not equal to human time)
- Appearance: Provides indication of how to interact with an object, often implies emotional context.
- Texture: The sensation of an object can provide clues as to how it is to be used, as well as when and where.
The Laws of Interaction Design:
- Moore's Law: Designers can conceive of devices that are faster, smaller and more powerful than could have feasibly been considered before. (Basically technology is always getting getting better)
- Fitt's Law: The time it takes to move from a starting position determined by the distance to the target and the size of the target.
- Hick's Law: States that the time it take for users to make decisions is determined by the number of possible choices they have.
- Magical Number 7: The human mind is best able to remember information in chunks of seven items, plus or minus two.
- Tesler's Law: There is a point beyond which you can't simplify a process any further. Therefore designers substitute processes that have elements that can't be simplified. "Share the burden of complexity"
- Poka-Yoke Principle: "proofing-avoiding" Preventing problems from occurring in the first place, by putting constraints on products.
- Direct and Indirect Manipulation: 2 ways of interacting with digital objects. Directly: closely mapped to our physical experience. Indirectly: use a command or menu that isn't a part of the digital object to alter that object.
- Feedback and Feedforward: feedback-some indication that an action has succeeded; feedforward-knowing what will happen before you perform an action.
Characteristics of Good Interaction Design:
- Trustworthy: If users trust that a tool can do the job required, they are more likely to deeply engage with it.
- Appropriate: Solutions have to be appropriate to the culture, situation, and context they live in.
- Smart: Tools need to be smarter than us to accomplish a task we cannot do ourselves.
- Responsive: Good design provides a mechanism to let the user know that the system has heard the request and is doing something about it. (provides feedback)
- Clever: Clever products and services predict their users needs and fulfill those needs unexpectedly.
- Ludic: Providing the environment and means for users to play with a product or service; users need to feel relaxed instead of trapped.
- Pleasurable: "Beautiful products work better" BUT for a product or service to be appealing it has to work well.
