breakdown - The interrupted moment of our habitual, standard, comfortable 'being-in-the-world.' Breakdowns serve an extremely important cognitive function, revealing to us the nature of our practices and equipment… New design can be created and implemented... in the space that emerges in the recurrent structure of breakdown. A design constitutes an interpretation of breakdown and a committed attempt to anticipate future breakdowns.

-- Winograd and Flores, Understanding Computers & Cognition

In this assignment, you will identify and articulate interaction design problems that disrupt your experience of an interactive environment, such as a system, device, or service. You will present your design analysis and synthesis as a quick 3 minute talk, in class, supported by 3 slides.

identify experience breakdowns

Identify an interactive environment in which you have experienced breakdowns, which result from interaction / interface design. Explain how the interaction design is disconnected from your experience of performing a task in the world.

Pick the experience that you address based on how it is distinctive. Make sure you can tell a good story about it.

Be extremely clear in the language you use to describe the shortcoming(s). MAKE SURE to ARTICULATE specific design problems in terms of specific principles from the readings, such as:

• making visible
• feedback
• affordances
• mappings
• constraints
• conceptual models: design model, user model, system implementation.
• knowledge in the world vs. in the head.
• consistency

Precisely use this terminology to critique the interactive environment. If the terminology is not suitable, this is a sign that you need to change the breakdown you are critiquing.

Tell a story that is incisive and engaging.

The interactive environment in which you identify experience breakdowns can be constituted by an information appliance, a mobile app, a software application (like a game or a word processor), or a service (If you have a question about what fits, ask the teaching team.). Do not use Norman's examples (doors, office phones, stove, ...). Also avoid commonplace examples, such as ceiling fans and showers. If (and only if) your problem environment is not familiar to everyone, include a brief description of what it does in your presentation.

The shortcoming(s) that you identify need to involve principles of interaction design. Examples include unclear state, unclear indication of what is possible to do, what the effects of particular controls are (affordance design), and unclear mappings. You need to apply these principles to explain how they result in being unable to accomplish specific goals in real world tasks and activities.

Problems like system crashes, limited system functionalities, and hardware malfunctions are not interaction design shortcomings.

presentation

Consider the design of your slides and your presentation. Communicate clearly. Design the slides and your oral presentation to complement each other, rather than to simply repeat the same information.

Your presentation will be strictly limited to 3 minutes. You must spend exactly one minute on each of your 3 slides. The timing of the slides will be automatically enforced.

Develop slides that visually support what you will be saying. Be thoughtful about how you make and use your slides. Don't just read them!

Be sure to show your full name on the first and last slide.

Use the last slide to suggest alternative designs. The alternatives may be other products that already exist, or ideas.

If it is portable, you may choose to bring the device, but realize that you probably won't have time for much of a demo.

Submit your slides using Google Sheets, as a .PDF, or in some other web browsable format, through this form the day before your presentation by 5:00 pm.

grading rubric

You will be graded based (1-5) on the following criteria:

• Engagement-factor: Have you identified a true Interaction Design Breakdown? How interesting and thoughtful is the breakdown you have chosen? What are the design issues?
• Principles: Articulation of breakdown, using principles from the readings. Counts twice as much as other criteria.
• Oral Presentation: focused, clear, concise. Make sure to introduce your team when you begin, and refer to each other by name during the presentation. Make sure everyone presents. Teach us your names!

• Visual Presentation: Slides are clear, concise about breakdowns and solutions, engaging, and full of visual evidence.
  They complement and support your Oral Presentation.

References

This assignment represents an evolution of Terry Winograd's Usability Breakdown assignment.

Winograd, T., Usability Breakdown, http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs147/2003/hw/hw1.html, last accessed 2007 (no longer available).