Interactive Design - Lectures & Exercises
Alya Rahima Zahra (0363588)
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Interactive Design
Lectures & Exercises
◈LECTURES
WEEK 1
Usability: Designing Products for User Satisfaction
What is Usability? 🤔
According to The Interaction Design Foundation, Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. Designers usually measure a design's usability throughout the development process, from wireframes to the final deliverable and ensure maximum usability.
Other terms:
▸ Usability refers to how effectively, efficiently, and successfully a particular user can utilise a product or design in a certain situation.
▸ It is a part of User Experience (UX) Design. It is the second level of UX Design.
▸ A design’s usability depends on how well its features accommodate users’ needs and contexts.
Fig 1. The importance of Web Usability by LinkedIn
1. Consistency
Consistency is a key factor in web design for both visual elements and functionality. It also ensures that your website looks coherent and works harmoniously across all its different elements, such as headers, footers, sidebars and navigation bars.
For example, if a website’s buttons are protruding boxes with labels on them, then all of the website’s buttons should look like that. Similarly, if a backward arrow denotes the back button, then it should not be changed to something else because that would be inconsistent with what the user has learned.
2. Simplicity
The principle that user interfaces should be “simple” for users.
Simplicity is used loosely to refer to the need to minimize the number of steps involved in a process, to use symbols and terminology that make the interface as obvious as possible, and to make it difficult to make mistakes.
Incorporating simplicity in a design will help design better user interfaces by helping the users achieve their goals faster and more efficiently, all while enjoying a great user experience.
3. Visibility
Visibility is the basic principle that the more visible an element is, the more likely users will know about them and how to use them. Equally important is the opposite: when something is out of sight, it’s difficult to know about and use.
Users should know, just by looking at an interface, what their options are and how to access them.
For example, the red Subscribe button on YouTube and the Blue follow button on Instagram.
4. Feedback
Feedback communicates the results of any interaction, making it both visible and understandable. Its job is to give the user a signal that they (or the product) have succeeded or failed at performing a task.
An example of feedback is when you’re on desktops or laptops, when you hover over navigation items, you expect them to change color or load a submenu.
5. Error Prevention
It involves alerting a user when they’re making an error, with the intention to make it easy for them to do whatever it is they are doing without making a mistake. The main reason this principle of error prevention is important is that we humans are prone to- and will always make mistakes.
Fig 1.2 A definite guide to Web Usability by Web Alive
◈EXERCISES
Week 1 - Web Analysis
Website 1: www.redis.agency
About the website:
Redis agency is an UI/UX Web flow company website. According to the website, Redis agency is about 15 years of design experience, concentrated in its people and divided into departments based on the value they bring to their clients. They add passion to brands and meaningfulness to bold products.
Here are the screenshots of the website:
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