Design Intrface

 Design Interface

The interface is basically what sits between you, the user, and a product. So, for example,we talk about a website or a mobile phone application, the interface is the screen, the buttons, and the things that you work with and slide to make that application/website work.

 There are three core design elements that will impact your interface. First one is information design, the second is interaction design, and finally, the visual design.  website as an example. So information design for a website, it's all about the content. It's all about the little pieces of information-- how they're grouped together, how the user will go about understanding the relationships between information(content). the interaction design is how the user actually accesses that piece of information. Are they clicking on buttons? Are they scrolling? How are they navigating to get to that information And finally, the visual design. That's where the interaction and information design are brought together to create the final look and feel for the website.

User Centered Design

User Centered Design

User Centered Design (UCD) is a design approach where the designer focus the end user needs, wants and limitation at all stage within the process of design and development of product(Website).


User-centered design is a common process in software development where typical UCD activities are broken down into 3/4 phases in the development lifecycle:  
"Analysis and Research, Design, Implementation and Deployment"

The benefits of user centred design is :

• Scalable.
• Flexible.
• Repeatable. 

The International Usability Standard, ISO 13407, specifies the principles and activities that underlie user centred design:

1. The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments.
2. Users are involved throughout design and development.
3. The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation.
4. The process is iterative.
5. The design addresses the whole user experience.
6. The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.

User Centered Design - 6 Method

1. Focus Groups.
2. Usability testing. 
3. Card sorting. 
4. participatory design. 
5. questionnaires.
6. interviews. 

Usability

Usability

Usability is a crucial component of the field of user experience design as a whole and is generally regarded as ensuring that products are efficiency of use, ease of use, and satisfaction or enjoyable from the users perspective.

Whether it be related to digital products such as websites and applications, electronic equipment appliances, or many other items that we may encounter during everyday life, usability involves optimizing the interactions people have with products to enable them to carry out their activities quickly and easily.
It's actually a subset of the user experience. So usability simply looks after the efficiency of a user, the ease in which the user can complete their task, and how satisfied they are with that task. It includes the experience the user has, the emotions and motivations that come with the user using the product. There's an international standard for usability. It's ISO 9241 part 11. So the standard talks about the user, the task, the equipment, and the environment. The most effective way of improving the usability of a product or service is involving users, There's a methodology known as user centred design, which is all about putting the user at the centre of the design process.

Usability can be broken down into the following aspects:

•     Effective to use
•     Efficient to use
•     Safe to use (e.g. prevention of user errors)
•     Have good utility (e.g. system provision of the right kind of    functionality)
•     Easy to learn
•     Easy to remember how to use

History / Evolution of User Experience

History / Evolution of user Experience:

The term user experience was coined in the mid-1990s by a gentleman, Don Norman, who is a usability and user experience expert. However, it actually dates back to the mid-1940s, when the design of interfaces was all to do with military equipment, designing assistant to fit the user. So things like human factors engineering and ergonomics played a big part. So ergonomics was about the study of the human, their physiology, and the system that they use and work with.  It was all about fitting the system to meet the user. Then came the age of computers in the 1980s, and ergonomics became obsessed with designing computers for humans.

Words of Don Norman:

 “I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person's experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning.”

 — Donald Norman