Iterative User Interface Design

Overview

This paper is about general iterative user interface design and it shows the successes of using this process. The improvement in overall usability was shown to be 165% from the first to last iteration, and the median improvement was 38%. They found that there should be 3 iterations since more iterations could actually decrease the usability if the usability engineering process was focused on improving other parameters.

The Benefits of Iteration

Nielsen presents a graph that shows that usability increases directly after each iteration until it eventually hits a plateau. A con is that sometimes after an iteration, usability decreases since new usability problems maybe introduced. The pro is that they can usually be ironed out shortly after. He suggests that interface reconceptualizations have not been studied on projects that were completed by an individual.

An example from later in the paper (Table 5) saw a dramatic decrease Time on Task, Subjective Satisfaction and increase in Errors Made and Help Requests from version 2 to 3 and 3 to 4. However, by version 5 they were all improved by the final version. A big con could be if a project can’t be updated before the final version and it would be better to have version 1 versus having version 3.

From my perspective, iterative design is natural, and projects will follow this without even the designers trying to. Building several different designs and comparing them side by side and then choosing the best will also work, but the chosen version would be improved through an iterative process. Choosing between multiple designs then using iterative improvements on the chosen design, using features from the different versions is the best method for design.

Conclusions

The number of iterations cannot be chosen in advance since the version from iteration 3 might be worse than the first but with two more iteration could be much better than the first. It would be a big con to try to chose the exact number of iterations before hand and a large pro to allow this number of iterations to be dynamic.

Discussion

• Iterative usability design for individuals instead of teams
• Alternative to iterative design: iteration is natural
• Nielsen writes about iPad & touches upon multi-touch in the paper:
• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html

Multi-touch: Analysis of Natural Gestures for Controlling Robot Teams on Multi-touch Tabletop Surfaces

Overview

This paper is about a study of users using natural gestures for controlling robot teams with multi-touch input. The authors developed 26 tasks for the users to complete and recorded the gestures that they attempted while trying to perform the tasks. Finally, they classified these gestures (selection, position, rotation, viewpoint, user interface elements) and did some analysis on them resulting in some discussions & conclusions.

Related Work

Common tasks that are performed with a pointer tend to be favored to be executed with one finger. This would make it difficult to use multi points for these common tasks. Since users have learned to perform them with a single point, it would be very difficult to reteach users to use multiple points to perform these same tasks. Additionally, users typically control a computer with a single hand and users would have to learn to use two hands. Koskinen proved this in a study.

Results and Discussion

One interesting finding, is that users did not prefer to use one finger from hand hand. Further, they showed that when users confront an unfamiliar multi-touch UI, they are more willing to use multiple fingers and multiple hands. When multi-touch becomes more widespread, I think that it will be more commonly known to use multiple fingers and multiple hands. Additionally, this pro shows that when users are encountered with real life-like objects in a virtual environment, they are more likely to use real-world type interactions (multi-hand & multi-finger).

Discussion

• Multi-finger, multi-hand contradiction:
• It was interesting to see they found a contradiction to the belief that users prefer to use one hand and one finger.
• Users exploring multi-touch UIs:
• It was interesting to see the natural reaction to users encountering a multi-touch UI
• Bias from past learned behavior from mouse pointers:
• What can be done to unteach users of the single point paradigm? Or, should multi-touch UIs design be changed, from a possibly better UI, to adhere to users familiarity with single point driven interaction?

Random Thoughts - From Around the World!

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts is a web site located at http://randomthoughts.club/ where people can express their random thoughts. It is a micro-blog where users can share their thoughts with other people from around the world.

Strategy

The strategy behind this web site is to make content that is user generated. Each entered random thought generates a new web page. The search engines can crawl the website and find each page and all of the content on the page. The comments are typically relevant to the original post and generate more content. The website encourages linking back to the website from other web sites. There is a link to get the HTML to link back to the site and there is a link to automatically create a blog with a link back to the site.

Applications

Random Thoughts is also an application on some of the popular social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Here is a list of all the Random Thoughts Applications:

Facebook - add the Random Thoughts Facebook Application to your Facebook profile. click here >>>





MySpace - add the Random Thoughts MySpace Application to your MySpace profile. click here >>>





Google - add the Random Thoughts Google Gadget to your iGoogle home page. click here >>>





Bebo - add the Random Thoughts Bebo Application to your Bebo profile. click here >>>





hi5 - add the Random Thoughts hi5 Application to your hi5 profile. click here >>>





WidgetBox - add the Random Thoughts WidgetBox Application to your social networking profile. click here >>>





Link Here (HTML) - Copy and paste this code into your website's HTML source:

<a href="http://randomthoughts.club">Random Thoughts</a>

Link Here (BBCODE) - Copy and paste this code into your forum signature:

[url=http://randomthoughts.club/]Random Thoughts[/url]

Blogger - Copy and paste this code into your blog at Blogger (sample). You can also paste this code in any web page where you have access to the HTML:

<div><a href="http://randomthoughts.club">Random Thoughts</a></div>

<iframe src="http://www.randomthoughts.club/" width="450" height="500" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 align="center"></iframe>

URL - Copy and paste this URL to give to your friends or put into your profile:

http://randomthoughts.club

Web - visit the Random Thoughts web page. click here >>>





Bookmark - CTL+D





RSS Feeds - Subscribe to the Random Thoughts on your RSS Reader. click here >>>





RSS Feeds on Blogger - Show the most recently added items on your Blogger blog. Follow these instructions: (opens in new window). Use this RSS feed URL on your blog:

http://randomthoughts.club/rss_recent.php?lim=true

Viral

The website, in general, was built to be viral. Most all the user's actions will result in the application spreading further into the web. The theory behind this is that it will help the website grow.

User Experience

The website was built with user experience in mind. It is easy to use and the user is free to browse and use all the features on the website without having to log-in or provide their e-mail address.