St. Louis had a user experience conference last month (yes, I am very timely) called STLUX, and I’m starting a series of blog posts to recap some of the sessions I attended. Instead of the typical essay type of blog post, these will be a more in depth breakdown of my notes, which come in a bulleted format. Enjoy!
This is the first in the series, covering the session by David Ortinau called “Practical Interaction Design for Developers.”
- Interaction design is defined as the structure, behavior and the meaningful relationships between people and products.
- In interaction design, people are the focus, not the code.
- EVERYONE (on the team) needs to be informed about what the design is trying to do. Designers and developers need to work together.
- Developers don’t know everything, and should constantly be questioning themselves and their solutions.
- “How did I come up with this answer?” Question yourself. Your brain can often trick you with your first answer.
- It is the duty of the machines and developers to understand people and how they think. We can absorb the pain, so our users have a better experience.
- Bill Verplank’s Three Questions (for interaction designers to answer in regards to their users)
- How do you do?
- Push that button
- How do you feel?
- I messed up
- How do you know?
- Way finding
- How do you do?
- Don’t make your user figure out and understand how your product’s system works. Your system should understand how your user thinks and expects the system to work, and your system should work accordingly.
- Slow is a bug
- Cognitive dissonance is a bug
- Cognitive dissonance is when the user expects one thing to happen, and something else happens instead.
All in all it was a great presentation. I always enjoy listening to David speak, because he has a fantastic presence and passion for the topics he presents.
Stay tuned for my next session summary on fixing your website’s performance!
