ID Phase II Design--Design Principles, Usability and interaction design, Design Documentation

Focusing on design theories, Gould and Lewis suggest three principles in conducting system design; Norman in The Design of Everyday Things discusses design at a higher level and addresses seven insightful principles on user-centered design; and Saffer introduces the definition, different views and approaches and the pros and cons of them as well as the history of interaction design. As our project steps into the design process, these pieces help prepare us with design-thinking to better adjust ourselves to the role of a designer.

The three principles proposed by Gould and Lewis (1985) are "Early Focus on Users and Tasks; Empirical Measurement and Iterative Design", all of which have been mentioned in previous readings about instructional design. We are told to do learner analyses, do iterative prototyping, evaluate and promote the design. But how do we avoid acting like those participants in the research who neglected or failed to truly understand these principles? I believe that understanding what those designers think is of great help. As illustrated in the article, believes that the principles are not worth following or that users do not know what they need, or blind belief in technology itself and many other arrogant ideas stop designers from conducting the valid user-centered design, which we need to take lessons from and try to eschew when it's our turn to make designs.

Among the 7 principles claimed in The Design of Everyday Things, "design for error" and "when all else fails, standardize it" catch my attention. Designing for error allow us to be aware of potential errors and find solutions for it. It also reminds us of making system reversible since errors are unavoidable. Standardization, on the other hand, seems like an easy but stiff way to go. Actually, through standardization we could be more efficient and avoid going totally wrong directions. Due to publication time, the lack of standardization argued by the article is not very like our current conditions. Nowadays, standardization and innovation coexist in technological fields.

Last but not least, Saffer introduces four approaches in facilitating interaction design that are user-centered design, activity-centered design, systems design and genius design, which represent different views focusing on different elements of design, like technology, users behavior or social interaction. Understanding the strengthens and limits of each approach is important thus we could flexible apply and combine them when coming across certain design tasks.

References:

Gould & Lewis 1985

Norman 1988

Saffer 2007a

Saffer 2007b