Week 7 Overview

Welcome to Week 7

 So far we've focused on the process for developing a good user experience, and how to research how users use and/or will use a software application.  Now it's time for the rubber to meet the road, so to speak.  How do you take that research and design a UI to support or exploit the user experience?  

The specific method may vary between individuals and/or organizations.  For the class we pick one for you to understand and apply.  The attention investment model  If you work for a company designing software with a significant user component you'll probably have the choice made for you.  If you understand the basic process then learning a specific tool will be much less challenging! 

Key Questions: 

7.1  Why is it important to understand user problem-solving behaviors on computers?  

7.2  Why must you make user-related decisions at design time?  Why not just sort it out in alpha and beta testing?  

7.3  What are the advantage of enticing users to behave in a certain way?  Are there any downsides or difficulties in doing that?   

Details for Week 7:

Topics

• 7a Foundations and strategies for UI design

Learning Objectives: 

• Describe the attention investment model
• Use attention investment model to understand user problem-solving behaviors on computers.
• Use attention investment model as a design-time mechanism to make informed design choices.
• Describe the surprise-explain-reward strategy
• Use surprise-explain-reward strategy to entice users to behave in a certain way.

 

Videos for Week 7: 

• Attention Investment
• Surprise-Explain-Reward

Things to get done:

• Project 7 Evaluation (Group Assignment - Canvas - 1 per group)
• Continue working on your Reflective Journal C