KristianTDigital Design Solutions

7th November 2009
Posted in Blog
Tagged in: Internet, Usability, UX Design, Web

Up until very recently the concept of user interaction (UX) design has either been unheard of ur greatly undervalued. However recently the practice of user interaction design has gathered a lot of momentum and has become a service in demand. This article will look into the fundamentals of user interaction design to provide you with a basic understanding of this emerging practice and how it can be useful in your web design pipeline.

Designing for user interaction is about looking into the relationship between man and machine and how the two interact with eachother. In the world of interface design the idea of user interaction design is about understanding what your user wants and developing an interface with interactions that allow them to easily acheive their goal. At the same time it is about not getting carried away with visual candy and showing off all of the technical features that your interface has. By understanding what your user is looking for you can design an interface which anticipates this user need and offers a solution.

In user interaction design the most important starting point is understanding your user and being able to predict the way in which they will interact with an interface. The idea of predicting a user’s interaction is the key skill in being a succesful user interaction designer. However there is much to learn before a young designer can make accurate and justified predictions on user interactions. One of the most common ways in which user interaction designers guide their users through the interface is through the use of well established graphical patterns or cues. A common example of this is applying a blue and underlined style to web links. When you visit a website and you see blue text which is underlined you immediently recognise this pattern and associate it with a single click interaction. In learning about usability and user interaction design at The University of Sydney our professor used doors as a great example of design patterns and exploiting the brain’s ability to connect design patterns to interactivity. Nearly every house has a different style door, it may have a different color, handle, frame, glass type or finish to the house beside it. In fact there is a good chance that many doors you come across in your life are unique doors that you have never used before. Despite these doors being completely new to you the collection of visual elements that the door features communicates to you “I am a door, open me!”. In this case, the form of the object drives the interaction, just like the underlined blue text on the website screamed out “I am a link!” and invited the user to click on it.

So in essence the idea of user interaction design is he creation of digital form which evokes the users the interact with the interface in a predictable way. Through this predictable interaction a user experience can be designed to esure that all of your user types meet their objectives.