Intro

In a broad sense, an interactive technology is any technology intended to help people complete a task, achieve their goals.
Look and feel come second, what people need to do comes first.
“Design is not about how things look. Design is about how things work.” – Steve Jobs

Usability

“The user” dehumanizes your users, making them abstract, and slippery to get a hold of in terms of knowing what their goals are and how they will act.
Understanding that gives a first step to being able to conceptualize what the system should do.
Are realistic representations of skills and attitudes towards technology.
At their best when based on data and observation.
A robust cast of characters that can be drawn on during design meetings and activities.

The persona briefing captures different aspects of the user and collects them under broad categories.
- e.g. A day in the life • Work actvties • Household & leisure activities • Goals, fears & aspirations • Computer skills, knowledge & abilities • Market size & influence • Demographic attributes • Technology attributes • Technology attiudes • Communicating • Quotes

Scenario Based Design: Elaborate the design by writing scenarios (=stories) about the current domain and existing interactions.
Problem scenarios - Describes current practice.
Activity scenarios - Describes ideas of how to meet the users needs.
Claims Analysis: Examine features of existing practice looking for good and bad aspects.

There is a pervasive myth of the ‘dumb user’ in computing – that users are essentially incompetent knuckleheads who intentionally screw up the system.
In reality, almost always, it is dumb design – the system has been constructed in such a way that it not only doesn’t take the human into account.
The reason we can play any sport is because we have a clear view of the concepts (e.g. bat, ball, pitch), the relationships between those concepts (e.g. ball is bowled down the pitch to the bat), and the rules of how they work together (e.g. you can have two batters, one at each end).
Concepts – tell us what types of things the person will need to know.
Using out scenarios we can identify things that users need to know about
If the list of concepts is really long, or seems at odds with our personas, then we might need to rework our concept load on the user.
Some concepts we can borrow from other applications and use them (the ones that the user is familiar with) : because they match the mental model about how the world works for the user.
Mental Models – are the understanding that people have about concepts and rela9onships in the real world that they use to make decisions or react to events.
What happens when a system violates the mental model of the user?
- The person will not know what to do next (unable to form the next goal)
- The person will make an error (provoked or unprovoked).