Interface usability is more than just a tool or a tool designed to accomplish a task.
Interfaces and Usability Is an environment of interaction in which different human and technological actors maintain different types of relationships (First Law). The distance between the tool and the environment should be clear to the reader: the tool is used as long as the environment is alive.
The best interface disappears.
When we drive a car, we pay attention to the road and traffic signals, not to gear changes, accelerator or brake pedals. If we focus on these devices, we are likely to run into a pedestrian.
Remember Don Norman, Website Usability Developer: “I don’t want to focus my energy on the interface. I want to focus on my work. "
The world of digital interactions does not elude this dynamic: at this particular moment, my mind is thinking in a sentence that I am writing, not on a keyboard. Every designer's dream is to create transparent interfaces. This is a logical consequence of considering design as an instrument (First Law).
However, what is good for the designer and especially the user is not necessarily good for the researcher. The disappearance of the interface is every designer's utopia, but it is the nightmare of the interface theorist.
Obvious usability of interfaces.
Even the simplest example of interaction - for example, pressing a button to turn on the light or moving a document to the trash - hides a complex a network of interpretive negotiations and cognitive processes between participants participating in the exchange.
UX Interface, like any other place where the processes of production and interpretation of meaning take place, is never neutral or transparent. Like reading a book or watching a movie, interaction is a game of interpretation.
Umberto Eco (1979) believes that text - a novel, a film, a picture - is the place where two strategies collide: the strategy of the author and the strategy of the reader. Mutatis mutandis, we can say that the interface is a place where two strategies challenge each other: the strategy of the designer and the strategy of the user (Ninth law).
Sentences, contracts and interaction grammars.
We can say that everyone UX the interface presents an interaction proposal that the user can accept or not. These contractual relationship between designers and users are challenging the interaction design transparency hypothesis.
When we introduce a new video game, software or website, we examine the surface of the user interface and interpret it.
First, we identify interactive and non-interactive elements; secondly, we try to define their functions and the possible consequences of interacting with them: What is this icon for? Happens What happens if we click on it?
In short: the design enters into a dialogue with the user. Or, better, the user makes the interface talk, explores it, reconstructs its code, and interprets it during interaction (Scolari, 2001, 2009).
But designers never do what designers expect of them. A system for receiving messages can be used to create virtual communities, and digital animation software can be turned into a multimedia production platform.
Users design the interface together and use it in their own way, even overestimating it, frustrating the intentions of designers who try to dominate the process and get the user to do what they want.
In this context, the user may or may not accept the design interaction proposal. If accepted, the user will install interaction agreement with design. This contract is similar to the "suspension of disbelief" defined by literary theorists (Coleridge, 1817): when an interaction contract is signed, the user accepts the rules and interacts with the interface, making it work.
Now, after the liaison proposal and liaison agreement, let me introduce you to grammar of interaction. What is grammar? It is a set of rules and principles that govern the creation of meaning in verbal and non-verbal languages.
Custom designs need to have a grammar to govern user exchanges. In 1984, the Macintosh popularized a number of principles that were later incorporated into the rest of the computer's user interfaces. For example:
- One Click> Select Element
- Double Click> Open Item
- Drag'n'drop> Move Element
This grammar remained the same for over twenty years, at least until the advent of smartphone touchscreens and laptop touchpads.
Interaction grammars are not as complex as verbal or audiovisual grammars, but designers must respect their principles like any other speaker or writer if they want to be understood.
Violating the rules of interface usability development.
While most custom designs have been designed for things like writing text, sending emails, retouching photos, changing TV channels, driving a car, or setting the oven temperature, sometimes designers create opaque interfaces.
In other words: in some cases, the best design is not the most transparent.
This means you don't have to follow the guru's recommendations. usability: if the interface designer is looking for emotional experience and with deeper user engagement, a better solution might be to explode conventions and create an entirely new grammar of interaction.
The user experience contract will be much more intense and the user will receive a long term contract.
From micro to macro interactions in the user interface.
Interfaces are where complex processes of perception and interpretation take place. In the interfaces you can find conflict, cooperation and tension.
This activity can be described as constant interaction of interaction and interaction sentences in the context of interaction grammar.
If we consider design as tool or device, these processes remain invisible to the analyst.
The interactions that we have identified in the micro-interactions of individual actors can also be found at the macro-social level.
Usability interface embodies conflict and cooperation at both levels. If at the micro level, conflict / cooperation is mainly perceived and cognitive, then at the macro level, conflict / cooperation is caused by economic, social and political problems.
Interfaces are political devices, and they carry certain ideologies and ideas about the world (Ninth Law).
✔️ What is an interface?
This is the link between man and computer. Using the interface, a person interacts with electronic systems.
✔️ What is interface interaction?
This is sending commands to an electronic device.
✔️ What is the best interface?
This is an interface that you do not pay attention to when interacting with it. For example a computer mouse.
✔️ What is interface usability?
This is the usability of the interface. When the user is not experiencing difficulties.
✔️ What are the guidelines for user interface design?
Interface development rules.
The interface should be simple.
It should use common elements familiar to users.
It is necessary to think over and choose the color and texture in advance.
It's important to use typography to create hierarchy.
✔️ Why is user interface design so important?
User interface design is important because it can create or destroy a customer base. It helps increase user engagement, improves functionality, and creates a strong bond between your customers and your website.
✔️ What types of user interface are there?
There are five main types of user interface.
Command line (cli).
Graphical user interface (GUI).
Menu driven (MDI).
Form-based (fbi).
Natural language (nli).
✔️ What are the characteristics of a good user interface?
8 characteristics of a successful user interface.
Simplicity and affordability.
Conciseness.
The presence of familiar elements.
Susceptibility.
Sequence.
Condescension.
Attractiveness.
Efficiency.
