About Face Chp. 12 - Chp. 13
Chp.12
Digital products require unnecessary work for users, though every interface involves users input/work, it is the designer’s job to lessen the workload for the user. Developers and designers need to pay cheerful attention to how difficult the user’s experience is when actually going through their imagined software. Types of work when interacting with digital products: Cognitive work, Memory work, Visual Work, and Physical work. Excise tasks, is the designers/developers goal to get rid of so that users can be more effective and productive.
Navigational Excise:
Navigation through the functions or features of a digital product is largely excise. Unnecessary or difficult navigation is what causes most frustration for users. Navigation occurs at multiple levels:
windows, views, or page; panes, view, or page
having to shuffle through different windows is frustrating and overwhelming for the user
Too many panes open in a menu can cause clutter, disorganization or an overwhelming feeling for a user.
Tabbed panes can be used in appropriate functions when going into details about a function, like choosing colors.
Split panes into different sections, so the menu isn't cluttered.
tools, commands, menus
Navigation results from user’s using different tools needs to be simple and easy
Photoshop combines its tools together in their palettes making it more difficult if two tools under one tab are used frequently. It would be best if customizing palettes was an option.
scrolling, panning, zooming, following links.
Make sure to make navigating different pages of text easy for the user
If scrolling is involved, have lil thumbnails that show up when moving form pages
Have options where a bar and mouse scroll is possible
Have two zooming options with use of laptop mouse pad zone, short cuts, or easy to access buttons.
Skeuomorphic Excise:
We tend to use old-style mechanical representations in our new digital environments, which is a practice called skeuomorphism. Though we should not be bringing our mechanical representations into the making of digital products. These representations result in excise and unnecessarily limit interactions that could be far more efficient than those allowed for by the old models. Mechanical procedures are faster by hand than by digital. Trying to copy the effects of a book onto a screen can sometimes be difficult or wasteful, scrolling can be hard or confusing for some. Also shouldn’t take up screen space with visual skeuomorphic representations like news-stands for a news app being overly detailed.
Modal Excise:
Don't disrupt flow with idiocy. Poorly designed software makes assertions that no self-respecting individual would ever make. Error messages and confirmation messages dialogs, these are annoying and difficult to get rid of, often slowing down people’s processes for no reason. Sometimes these error messages are unnecessary, the user does not need to be questioned for every little action they complete. Also, constantly asking the user for permission for every little thing bothers the person, since they can't use the feature as fast as they would like. Should just be a simple go to setting if the user really wants to change what is being shared.
Stylistic Excise:
Visual style can certainly create mood and reinforce brand, but
it shouldn’t do so at the expense of utility and usability by forcing users to decode visual elements to
understand which represent controls and critical information and which are merely ornamental.
Eliminating Excise:
Reduce the number of places to go
Provide signpost
Provide overviews
Properly map controls to functions
Avoid hierarchies.
Don't replicate mechanical models.
Chp. 13
Metaphors in UI, was making interface design similar to office setting actions done. Modern UI is stepping away from the skeuomorphisms and overly visual metaphors to minimizing cognitive footprints. This needed push allows the digital world to be less restricted by the bounds of the real world.
Interface Paradigms:
Went from a heavy focu on tech to an idiomatic focus. Though examples of all three interface paradigms, the idiomatic one is the most common.
Implementation-centric interfaces:
Understanding how things actually work under the hood. Used is enterprise, medical, and scientific software. Software shows precisely how it is built. Side effect is that one must learn how the software works internally before successfully understanding the interface. Are the easiest to build, easy to debug, and easy to troubleshoot. Satisfying for engineers because they get to see how everything works, they like being able to understand that, compared to people who just want to be successful and get stuff done, and not see why this does that.
Org chart centric interface- not organized according to how users are likely to think about info. Instead it's divided by who owns the information they are trying to access.
Metaphoric interfaces:
Intuiting how things work. Rely on the real-world connections users make between the visual cues in a n interface and its functions. When we talk about a metaphor in the context of user interface and interaction design, we really mean a visual metaphor that signals a function: a picture used to represent the purpose or attributes of a thing. Instinct, intuition and learning. Intuitive is often used to mean easy to use or easy to understand. Inference, mentally connect them with other things we have previously learned in the world. Takes advantage of the human mind. Most significant problem with metaphors is that they tie our interfaces to mechanical Age artifacts. Metaphors don’t scale very well, and work for simple processes, but not a large one. Expectations are video games, since most are storytelling mode or where the user must explore around the world.
Idiomatic interfaces:
Learning how to accomplish things. The designs of principles are based on how we learn and use idioms. We understand the idiom simply because we have learned it and because it is distinctive, not because it makes subliminal connections in our minds. The human mind has a truly amazing capacity to learn and remember league numbers of idioms quickly and easily. Windows, title bars, close boxes, screen splitters, hyperlinks, and drop-downs are things we learn idiomatically rather than intuit metaphorically. Good idioms must be learned only once. Marketing and advertising professionals understand well the idea of taking a simple action or symbol and imbuing it with meaning.
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