Interaction design

User interfaces that satisfy the user´s needs and desires.
Interaction design is about how people experience the use of your product. Good interaction design adapts the product so that the user experiences mastering, motivation, and pleasure.

KADABRA has experience with both pure interaction design, and combinations of product design and interaction design – where the user interface is part of a physical product. Interaction design is always a process consisting of much iteration where we design and build prototypes quickly in order to test on people. User centered development is central to the working method. The quality of the user experience is often proportional to the number of test-iterations – therefore, the art of building efficient, economic and quick prototypes is important.

Contact us to see what activities should be a part of your project.

Insight

We work our way through documentation searching for the essence. This creates the starting point of the project.
In this phase, we as designers get to know all the accumulated knowledge about the subject at hand. We look at users, context, market, etc, as well as the business goals of the project. In addition, technical constraints are mapped out. The documentation is gathered and synthesized, forming the project brief.

Result: Documentation forming the project brief.

User workshop

In everything we make people are in focus. A user workshop is about talking to those who will use the product.
This concerns the most important factor of the project – the user. Through discussions and observation of users we get a deeper understanding of their motivation, context, and needs. In order to get good insight, it is necessary to look at specific user needs, how the user thinks in different situations, and what they wish to accomplish. These are the first and most important questions in an interaction design project.

A user workshop gives us as designers an essential first-hand experience of the user context – which gives us empathy and often directly inspires solutions. Therefore we see this phase as an intense creative phase rather than a documentation phase.

Result: Document with written and illustrated observations with conclusions for the project.

Task analysis

We create the overview of all the functions of the user interface.
At the heart of all good user experiences lies a good task analysis. After having considered user needs, we start by defining the tasks and functionality of the system. Then, the optimal sequence and order of these tasks is found. A common way of representing this is by using “flow diagrams” – which constitute the information hierarchy (or the “DNA”), of the interface.

Result: Flow-diagrams illustrating the tasks and sequences of the interface.

Competitor study

Conventions are your best friends, but differentiation is the key to a strong position in the market.
Conventions is a expression of “what people are used to”. By using known conventions, your interface will be perceived as intuitive – as the user have been accustomed to it by using similar products or services. In order to know existing conventions and how to differentiate yourself, it is necessary to map out everything on the market. We like to think that competing products and services are the cheapest and most convenient prototypes you can get.

Result: Document with written and illustrated observations of competing products with conclusions for the project.

Style references

We point out directions for the “Look and Feel” of the interface.
What graphic and interactive elements should characterize your product? Here we find visual references that are summarized in style directions. This is a creative exercise, and we can just as well find references among fish, astronomy, or fine arts as among digital graphics, interactive products, or other user interfaces.

Result: Mood-boards with different style references, with implications for the project.

Interaction principle

Should the user “scroll”, “press”, “click” or “turn”?
How should the user interact with the elements in the interface? Being precise and consequent is important in good usability, and therefore clear rules for interaction principles should be established.

Result: Sketches and references for interaction principles in the project.

Design proposals

Here you get to see the screen shots!
This deliverable summary raises all earlier activities into concrete examples of interface layout. Different proposals are developed for evaluation. The screen shots provide the first possibility of testing the interface on users in the form of paper prototypes. Through iterative jumps between design and testing the interface gets gradually more precise and realistic, finally approaching the final proposal.

Result: Sketches, visualizations and prototypes with increasing level of details in each iteration.

Paper prototype

A quick and inexpensive method for testing the user interface.
Paper prototypes are by far the quickest and cheapest way of prototyping interaction. Simple representations of information, screen shots, etc are showed to the users for evaluation and feedback. The facilitator changes sheets continuously to simulate the systems reactions. Through this technique, testing is made easy and affordable. This is the most important success factor for the development of good user experiences.

Result: Paper prototype ready for testing.

Flash prototype

We use the software “Flash” to realistically visualize and test the user interface.
Flash prototypes can be made as complex and complete you wish. In KADABRA, we use Flash prototypes as a tool for illustrating and simulating diverse aspects of the interface on a more detailed level than paper prototypes. The extent of the interface that is modeled is a continuous cost-time-need consideration. Often, the flash prototypes are used as presentations of the interface to different external parties even before the implementation begins.

Result: Flash prototype ready for testing.

Expert evaluation

Let the experts speak up!
An expert evaluation is a thorough walk-through of the whole interface by one or several interaction designers. The interface is evaluated according to a set of interaction heuristics, where aspects such as consequence, conventions, logic, work-flow, etc are evaluated and reported.

Result: A test-report with important findings and recommendations for improvements and further development.

User test

User testing is the core of all interaction projects.
Setting up and facilitating user tests that give concrete, correct, and relevant feedback is a demanding exercise in discreteness and empathy. User tests come in all sizes. KADABRA has carried out valuable user tests with everything from our own employees on their desk, to fully documented tests in the usability laboratory of NTNU. Nothing is as useful and insightful as seeing users struggle with your prototype!

Result: A test-report with important findings and recommendations for improvements and further development.