HCI Design Manifesto
In this medium post, labeled as a ‘manifesto’, I will be sharing what I have learned this semester for my Human Computer Interactions class. It will include elements of design philosophy and HCI principles as a whole.
Below includes the work from projects and each of its distinctive approaches.
Introduction
Over the course of this semester, being introduced to the world of Human-Computer Interaction, I found that there are resonating principles here that are important to emphasize. HCI transcends the simplistic idea of the tie between the two parties; as computer scientists, we have to think about the input, output, and ethics of design as well as the impact it has on everyone.
Doctrines of Design
Here I will list the principles of design that came out of the concrete work that we have all done throughout the semester. From group projects to individual reports, each and every one had an intent and I feel that something has resonated with me.
Now we have to understand that these principles are more abstract and focus on the design process and being aware. This form of awareness helps marginalized groups and end up resulting in a more complex design. I don't want to linger too much on the ‘Design Principles’ that many infographics talk about, which consists mostly of visual aids and other visual UI attributes.
Design For All
HCI, with its strong background in investigating interdisciplinary challenges and proposing solutions, has unique qualifications to address issues related to inclusivity and inequality, both of which directly affect sustainability. — Bates et al.
HCI is one of the most human fields of computer science I have ever had contact with, the interactions of communities and their relationship with computers help raise awareness for their marginalization. This way, when designing for ‘all’, as researchers, we should try to understand the consequences for each of our design choices and who it impacts. There is no way to design for every single person, where each and everyone has their own idiosyncrasies. So that leaves us with optimizing the best while staying aware of the resulting effects.
So for this Design Principle, it focuses primarily on designing for all; what his phrase is trying to convey, is that many times when we start the design process, it is aimed at designing for the average-man. This is an extremely dangerous approach to understanding who is using the technology that is created. Is this service catered to a specific group? Or is it something that will leave marginalized groups by the wayside.
I bring this up because of the work that was put in the project this semester that lingered with me up to the point of writing this article. And that is the fact that sometimes we have to design for targeted groups. We did this as a team to redesign the Lewisburg Campus Theatre for a mobile setting, and in doing so, we were given the task to create it for a subgroup: movie fanatics. This idea that there exists no average-man is derived from the research concepts we have discussed throughout the class and was talked about by Amy Ko and various other designers.
Design For Fun
What is the point of design? Well, it can result in a product that increases productivity and maybe helps groups who needed a new way of interaction. But besides these noble motivations of design, another very important reason is for fun.
When we create something that brings us joy and also makes us engage with it even more, then we can say that, that is also a sign of success. This has been extensively documented by Overbeeke et al. in the article Make Things Engaging. This idea of engagement is a cornerstone of design that must be kept for the future of technological advancement. What is the point of innovation if it is just boring.
I bring this up as a design principle due to the fact that, there have been so many times where a creation of something new is viewed as gimmicky at first, but then is adopted by a group that the designers never even thought about. This is the beauty of design.
I want to bring up the example of what we have achieved in our group during one of the team projects: Posenet Youtube Controls. The resulting product of this project essentially captures the whole concept of fun in relation with design. When we started, watching how we can interact using our cameras and integrating it with machine learning was shocking. The engagement that it even had for us, in the shoes of the designers, was massive; imagine giving this to the hands of a preteen full of curiosity.
Anyways, the product was conceptualized and created, after the fact we started to brainstorm even more use cases rather than just focusing on the initial engagement motivation. What we came up with was quite interesting, basically we noticed how using the hand motions frees up the body to move where ever it pleases. This way, the user can be watching a video while simultaneously working in the real world on tangible things. Imagine in the future, where you would pull up a tutorial video on youtube, as many already do, and instead of tabbing or splitting the screen to control the player, you could do that with your body.
The idea of fun and engagement is already very alluring, but add in the fact that the creative and fun design process can being out modes of interaction that can help unthought-of groups makes it even better. This is one of the more important designing principles that I will carry with me in my future in design.
Design For Appropriateness
When creating a product, creativity might be an attribute to consider to elevate the final product. But in certain settings, a design has to be appropriate for the medium it is tackling. I bring this up as a design point from my individual work on Amazon’s Creative Jam.
You might ask, if creative is in the name of the contest, why might creativity itself be something I acquiesced. This is because the goal of the contest was to create a design that was targeted to a certain group. And in doing so, this group would use the product that is designed; if creativity is taken too far, the design will misalign with what the target group is comfortable and used to. The semantics of creativity matters in the sense that, whatever it may be, it should not override the goal of an appropriate product for the appropriate users.
We can see this idea taken in my design on a tablet app for the Amazon Creative Jam contest of design. I wanted a clean look that matched with the design choices for an iOS tablet theme. The colors are all neutral and what a user would expect from using an app. All of the buttons have drop shadows to highlight its click-ability i.e. signifiers.
With all of this in mind, it resulted in a clean product that doesn't necessarily need to conform to traditional ideas of creativity. This produces a nice smooth experience for the end-users.
Many UI experts also agree on the fact that UI doesn't need to be extremely crazy to end up resulting in a good UX for the users. Rollins also explains that it can be disheartening to hear, but it is a necessary factor to consider.
Companies are increasingly adopting Design Systems that all but eliminate a designer’s ability to express their creativity. But this is a good thing. With less focus on the “I” in “UI,” designers have more time to focus on the “U.” At the end of the day, the user is what really matters.
This design principle may sound controversial on the surface, but once we dig deeper it is a trivial and commonly understood approach used by many real designers. With this in hand, we build up our ideas of design in a way that still keeps users first.
Design For Clarity
When we talk about clarity, we also want to mention intent. These ideas of motivation matter a lot about the concept of data and how it is represented. When data visualization is created, there is mostly always a deeper meaning behind them, and if not explicit still serves as a mode of information exchange.
I bring up this design principle because I have personally never thought about the meaning that data visualization really had until working on the redesign of a Steph Curry data graph where even the smallest format can change the perception of the data itself. When I first started to take a look at the different ways to make this data into something workable, I came across the various numerical semantic differences in the idea of cumulative score versus a mean average. What are the purposes of each category in and of itself, should the average put more emphasis on the whole, or don't average them and give more power to the individual categories of scoring. These small details completely blew past me if I were not carefully trying to understand the implication of data visualization and so I think it should be a part of the design process for everyone that wants to do output visuals.
Manipulation can be rampant and this idea has been well documented throughout. So the main takeaway here is to assess the deeper meaning of data when it is presented to you in any manner. Having a clear goal when designing a form of data representation helps immensely when trying to pick from the thousands of different ways to visualize it.
Design For Immersion
When we are building an environment, immersion is the name of the game. Once the user is immersed in the world that is created, then it makes the whole experience better. This is one of my personal favorite design principles, because the idea of being entranced in a fictional scope, that was painstakingly created by hand, is always rewarding to see.
A VR world is the best example of a medium where it can allow for the users to be in a state of sheer awe, only if it is created well. By taking the design methods of feature film foley artists and sound designers, it allows for the creation of a scape that essentially feels like when a movie takes you out of reality for a moment.
I had so much fun working on the audio portion of our team effort in trying to build up the underwater decrepit and eerie VR world. The visuals are nice and dark, but the way that the background hums pair with the creepy sudden impact and screeches really let the user feel like they are in the setting. All of the positional audio also make it so they can pan around and see the source of the sudden sound.
This was by far the most fun I have had in the class, and the immersion really felt real, for me personally, so I hope that would transfer to all of the other users that got to test it out.
Conclusion
After the grueling and quite honestly difficult semester, we have all overcome the out individual hardships. With all that out of the way, we can take the time to reflect on what resonates with us; the hard tasks are out of the way so we can actually appreciate the knowledge we've gained. I can now say that I actually have learned so much on a topic that I have absolutely no interest in, a field that I would have never thought about. Doctrines of design that are so important in how the technologies we use every day were designed are now something I can say I understand. Even if a topic is of no interest while in university, having a diverse perspective is imperative in the concept of understanding. And I can say that these principles have indeed achieved that goal for me.
