Elaine Chen's Notes on User Interface Articles
Introduction/My basic impressions:
The articles seemed basically to state the obvious:
- If interfaces are confusing, they will confuse users
- Use readable fonts, etc.
- Not very different from what an author of a book/textbook
would have to keep in mind.
- "What is intuitive?"
- This is a hard question.
- What were your impressions of the articles?
Questions to consider:
- Old ones:
- who is your audience?
- what do they know?
- what are you trying to teach them?
- what/how will capture their interest?
- New ones:
- Everyone here has a different audience. Some groups are catering
to _drastically_ different types of people.
- What interfaces have you chosen and why?
- What makes that most effective?
- What is the purpose behind choosing game interfaces?
- Why is that so popular?
- Do you think most educational software will be in the
game-format?
- What captures people's interest?
- What about people of different ages?
- smaller kids attracted to objects, movement, observation
- looking for a sense of accomplishment
- older kinds attrated to challenges? a goal?
- looking for a purpose, distinction
- adults want convenience and clarity
- looking for a tool, something fast and easy to use
- If one piece of software is supposed to be available to people
of different ages and background, what role does the interface
have to play?
- Is this distinct from "teaching style" or do they do hand in hand?
I think they are very closely related. Just like a teacher's
own style.
Real life examples:
- Icons: relatively universal
good choices - disk --> save
bad choices - owl --> means smart in US, means death in
Germany
- buttons: relatively intuitive --> PUSH THEM.
- most applications are presented in "Windows".
do you think this is "intuitive" or a construct that
users should just learn like the way that you "just
learn" to navigate society, such as things like
etiquette or rules