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Intelligible Interaction Design -Developing a design tool to help designers find the problems in existing product interaction and reduce the mental effort exertion

Song, Jianzhou

Abstract Details

2012, MDES, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design.
People need to interact with many different products everyday to make sure all their needs are satisfied. A product should explain itself instead of forcing users to seek help from the product instructions or other people. A key role of design is to reduce user effort. However, identifying problems in the product-user interaction scenario is complicated and difficult. This thesis attempts to develop a design tool to help designers find the problems more efficiently so that they can improve the design of the user experience. This thesis is focused on user interactions, which are result-oriented, and the goal is to design a methodology to reduce the mental effort exerted by the user. In analyzing the anatomy of existing interaction and human perception models, it was determined that none focused specifically on the consideration of mental effort. This research and analysis led to the conclusion that a mental effort evaluation model would be of value to designers. MEE Model was developed and presented here, which examines where and how mental effort is exerted in an interaction process. The two major causes of mental effort exerted are interaction complexity and interaction difficulty. Complexity refers to the number of phases in a process, and difficulty refers to the mental effort exerted in completing a single step in the process. MEE Model is intended to help designers determine in more detail why complexity and difficulty happen, and how to avoid them by simplifying the user interaction. MEE Model is designed to allow designers to observe the users engaged in the interaction and then through interviewing the users, systematically evaluate the users’ experience and use that data to improve that experience. In this way, they can locate and prioritize the problem areas, and then try to reduce the exertion of mental effort. As an example, this model is applied in the actual interaction design process to help find the problems and also give potential solutions about how to make better interaction in terms of reducing mental effort exerted. MEE Model was tested by 24 design students, who were chosen because they might offer criticism and insight for improving the design of this model. The results of that test are shown and discussed.
Peter Chamberlain, MFA MPhil (Committee Chair)
Dale Murray, MA (Committee Member)
59 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Song, J. (2012). Intelligible Interaction Design -Developing a design tool to help designers find the problems in existing product interaction and reduce the mental effort exertion [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342104081

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Song, Jianzhou. Intelligible Interaction Design -Developing a design tool to help designers find the problems in existing product interaction and reduce the mental effort exertion. 2012. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342104081.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Song, Jianzhou. "Intelligible Interaction Design -Developing a design tool to help designers find the problems in existing product interaction and reduce the mental effort exertion." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342104081

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)