| The purpose of Interaction Design
is to articulate how the site will work.
User Control
A few Web sites are like watching a movie: once the show begins
the visitor's only option is to watch or leave. The vast majority
of sites give visitors more control than that: they determine
which links to follow, at what pace. Some provide even more control
than that: interaction among visitors, manipulation of objects
like shopping carts and products for purchase. A few sites give
visitors a great deal of control: visitors are actors in a virtual
reality space with other people and even empowered to change the
space if they wish. What degree of control will visitors have
over your site?
Orientation
How will you orient your visitors to the site? This largely depends
on how the content is organized. Hierarchical or categorical organizations
correspond to a table of contents. Spatial organization corresponds
to a map. Introductory text may be helpful. If a metaphor can
be devised that implies functionality and operation, it can be
one of the most effective ways of making a complex system accessible
to a new or casual visitor. Commonly used metaphors in computing
are the desktop and office metaphors, but the best metaphors will
have a close correspondence with the tasks or information that
the site supports. And poorly chosen metaphors can cause problems:
are there conflicts between the content and the metaphor or does
the metaphor create expectations that the site cannot meet?
Navigation
Most navigation on Web sites is done through linked text or graphics.
This approach fits well with information structured categorically,
hierarchically or relationally. Information structured spatially
corresponds to maps with active hot spots. These are common approaches
to Web site navigation. Another approach, orthogonal to these,
is a search facility that pulls up pages based on content. Another
is pages generated from a database on the basis of query parameters.
The right approach depends on the information and the assumptions
that visitors are likely to bring to the site.
Behavior
Basic Web sites present static pages connected to one another
through a series of links. Newer technologies such as scripting
languages and Java applets provide the opportunity for pages to
become active programs that react to the visitor's actions (it
now becomes appropriate to think of the visitor as a "user"
or "agent". She is no longer passive.) These sites may
be more oriented to producing an experience rather than simply
presenting information. What would be design flaws in conventional
sites might be features on these sites: surprises, getting lost,
imposed obstacles and challenges. The addition of programming
to Web pages is likely to change the nature of what we know of
as the Web.
Useability
A little user testing often reveals a great deal about bad assumptions.
As the Interaction Design takes shape, there begins to be enough
detail available to start exercising the design with prospective
users. Is the content coverage about right? Is the information
organized in an appropriate way? Do these prospective users seem
to know how to use the site to find what they're looking for?
How much user testing should be done? None is too little. When
new prospective users contribute few new insights, you've probably
tested enough.
Storyboard
The Storyboard is the integration of content and functionality.
What's going to be there? Where and how will changes occur? The
stylistic elements of the Storyboard are approximate and the layout
of pages is approximate. But the Storyboard provides a first glimpse
of the scope of the site and how it will work.
Project Plan
The Interaction Design step reveals new requirements and tasks.
Will we need a search capability? Will we need to generate scripts
or applets? Will all or part of the site be driven from a database
requiring some software development on the server? Add the new
tasks, their cost and time requirements to the Project Plan. |
