Divergent thinking is a critical part of the creative design process during which we generate a large number of different ideas, such that we are able to get a better sense of the boundaries of the solution space we’re working with. This differs from convergent thinking, which requires an understanding of the domain in...
Consistency and Standards is the idea that products should be 1.) consistent with industry standards and 2.) with other versions of the product (on different platforms, for example). Sometimes these two different types of consistency can come in conflict and designers will have to choose whether to prioritize consistency with the industry or consistency...
Motivation: Does the system provide a physical representation that users can directly perceive and interpret? Definition: Whether the goal of the user has been achieved as a result of their interaction with the system. According to Don Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things, “The Gulf of Evaluation reflects the amount of effort that...
Motivation: Does the system provide actions that correspond to the intentions of the person? Definition: According to Don Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things, “The difference between the intentions and the allowable actions is the Gulf of Execution” (51). Norman argues that we can measure this gulf by assessing how well a system...
Definition: Basic mechanism through which we make artificial intelligence systems predictable and controllable . Importance: Increasingly prevalent given the increasing complexity and deployment of AI technologies in fields such as healthcare, education, and criminal justice. Examples: Google attachment reminder. Professor Gajos, COMPSCI 179 Lecture (02/08/2018) Contributed by Michelle Vaccaro and Auriel Wright
According to Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is the “shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking”. Edmondson makes the claim that team performance is affected by a team’s psychological safety and efficacy rather than the specific team type. She proposes the following model : If a team is committed...
While the difference between red and green is blaring to most of us, it is imperative in good design to think about users who aren’t like us– say, users with color vision deficiencies. This is where redundant cues come in, a specific method for adding accessibility to a product. Redundant cues give a user multiple ways to take...
In the context of needfinding, hacks refer to situations where an informant repurposes something designed for one purpose to satisfy a very different need. For example, using a screen of a phone as a source of light or using a phone book as a foot rest. We saw in class how hard it is...
One of the original 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by Jakob Nielsen, error prevention is probably the most important design principle for everyday interactive systems. Better than tutorials or awesome error messages, your system should make it very unlikely that the user will ever commit an “error”. Further reading Here’s a recent...