DIS2002: Bill Moggridge of IDEO presents User-Centred Design at One Remove

It was a fascinating tour through the history of interactive design that Bill Moggridge of IDEO gave delegates at the opening of the 'Designing Interactive Systems 2002' conference, as he showed video clips of other prestigious designers.

Saying very little, but letting his editing of the footage do most of the work, Moggridge gave a presentation to explore where interactive design had come from and where he hoped it was going.

Starting with Stu Card, who was the 'supporting science' for the development of the mouse in the 70s, the conference heard how it was sold to the rest of the team as the 'optimal' device, allowing users to work as fast as their hand and wrist could co-ordinate. But, Card said, this working speed could have been doubled by an input device that used the fingers instead or another part with a large area of the cortex devoted to it, such as the tongue.

Next he showed Bill Verplank of Stanford and DIS2002 co-chair being interviewed about paradigms in computing. Verplank looked through historical metaphors for viewing the computer:
* as a person - smart and creative;
* as a tool - useful and able to directly manipulate data;
* as media - expressive and compelling;
before regarding it also as vehicle and clothing. By exploring the different paradigms he was able to show how linking them could make for meaningful interactivity, or a less interactive but emotional experience.

Brenda Laurel followed and her theme was 'Playing'. 'Games led interaction design,' she said, discussing how the freedom of players to adopt roles within a game situation could allow them to assume relevant abilities that the set-up of ordinary work, such as with a spreadsheet, never will.

She advocated 'monkeying around in the lives of characters' as a way of sustaining interest. The theme was picked up by Sims developer Will Wright, who regards his creations as the stuff of hobbies. In this way, commented Moggridge, play and enactment become integral to the design process: loops of interaction form the basis of entertainment as players progress by finding and moving on to the next step.

Other interviews included Rob Haitani, who developed the Palm OS. He argued that in an interface so small, consistency has to be sacrificed to 'doing the right thing first time'. This, he said, was putting things you do frequently on the desktop and not hiding them in drawers. 'Some decisions bubble to the top' he told delegates as he explained why adding addresses and removing them were not in the same place - we do the former far more often than the latter.

The pair of designers behind Google were also featured, talking about search and their simple interface: 'I just put the button up there,' said Sergey Brin. 'People don't want to spend a lot of time looking for the search box.' Subsequently they took even more off the home page to keep the clutter to a minimum.

And Takeshi Natsumo explained the challenge he overcame to create the success of i-mode in Japan: 'It's an internet way of thinking, rather than a telecom way of thinking', he said, detailing the interface design and supplier support for the service that one in four Japanese now use.

The last two interviews were on the subject of tangible interfaces and looked to the future. Durrell Bishop of IDEO talked about connecting physical things to virtual files so that digital material could be moved about in a 'small plastic object', while Hiroshi Ishii of MIT showed how tangible interfaces fed into the information/computation function of the system to become intangible representations.

Although each video snippet was brief, the overall impression was of a rich tradition of creativity using people's interests and abilities as a basic stimulus; a tradition that is continuing.

Increase data Usability, save Billions
Source: ZDNet, 6 September 2010
 
Data usability? less sexy than social emotional interfaces, more money than you can imagine.

Three Things Steve Krug Didn’t Tell You About Usability Testing
Source: George Saines, 2 September 2010
 
Don't make me think. Well, ok, maybe a little bit.

Trace exactly what Users are doing
Source: killerstartups, 30 August 2010
 
A new tool lets you watch all of your website activity, in real-time replays.

Google boosts Usability with Gmail revamp
Source: V3.co.uk, 28 August 2010
 
Long overdue improvements to Gmail may increase its appeal to business users.

Tech4Africa conference runs in Johannesburg
Source: bizcommunity, 26 August 2010
 
A new conference in Africa recognises usability as a central concept to IT uptake.

Top 3 Usability Tips for Building Better Blogs
Source: CMS Wire, 24 August 2010
 
If you're compelled to blog, may as well get it right.

Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain
Source: New York Times, 23 August 2010
 
Fascinating account of how heavy use of digital devices changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

Tips for International In-home User Research
Source: System Concepts Ltd, 20 August 2010
 
In-home user research can provide richer, more illuminating information than lab-based studies. Here are some tips for a successful in-home international research.

New Study- Gender differences in Web Usability
Source: Demystifying Usability blog, 18 August 2010
 
Comscore has released a new study (June 30 2010) entitled Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet.

UX Myths: Usability testing is Expensive
Source: UX Myths, 16 August 2010
 
Many organizations still believe usability testing is a luxury that requires an expensively equipped lab and takes weeks to conduct.