Okay, I know, I've been busy. I promised you something that I haven't delivered. So here I am, making good on my threat. Back in part 1 of this thread, I shared with you my frustration at trying to get this new model published. In part 2, I showed you the design hierarchy that comprises my new model. And, now, today, I'm going to put some more words around it.
The only thing that I need to preface this discussion with is a little bit of credit. This model was originally presented as a talk that was given by me and a fellow graduate of my MS program, Jen Hocko, who is a Senior Usability Specialist at the MathWorks. While the model is mine, Jen and I worked closely over several months to craft the explanatory text below, so I'm not sure that I could tell you immediately where my words end, and hers begin. In addition, we had several reviewers of this work: Beth Loring, Chauncey Wilson, Joe Dumas, and Bill Gribbons. As a result, this discussion has been influenced by their review comments. That said, here it is.
A Model for Creating Intuitive and Innovative Designs
One of the aspects that we (Jen Hocko and Jen McGinn) had discussed privately, is that prior knowledge and experience play a significant role in whether users perceive designs as intuitive or innovative. Any useful model would need to account for these factors.
Like the model proposed by Hancock, McGinn’s model advocates an approach to design that incorporates attentiveness to the many factors influencing a user's perception of a design as intuitive and innovative. The old phrase "perception is everything" is the basis for this model: essentially, what affects our perception of any design?
Starting at the base, we believe that designers should rely on the physiological bits of HUMAN SENSORY PERCEPTION, which are reasonably consistent despite changes in subsequent layers. These physiological responses include how humans perceive light and sound, as well as the Gestalt principles of visual organization. Our designs should take advantage of what is common across humans, and those similarities should be codified in all our design guidelines.
The bottom layer is pre-cognitive, and accounts for what is physically similar across humans, while each of the subsequent layers describes what we have learned based on our experience.
The next layer of the McGinn model has to do with the user's CULTURE. Hofstede defines four dimensions of national culture: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. In addition, other culture-related factors that should be taken into account when attempting to design any interface include reading patterns, cultural aesthetic preferences, and concepts of time. The mental models that we have for what is "normal" come from our experiences living in a particular culture.
For example, suppose we are working for an airline company. The passenger from Israel will have a set of expectations of how that experience will go, from passing through security, to the timeliness of the flight, to the ultimate experience of the flight itself. Compare that to the Russian traveler on Aeroflot, which was notorious for taking off within a day or two of the scheduled flight time. And then, compare those to the expectations of the American traveler, who believes that a flight should be on time within a few minutes, and that security checks should be minimally invasive.
CONTEXT is also an important consideration when designing intuitive and innovative user interfaces. The context in which a person operates is rarely static. For example, when a person who is an expert Windows XP user tries to accomplish the same things on another operating system, he can instantly become a novice. His age and economic status haven't changed, but some aspects of the task at hand have. It is these task-based characteristics that determine a person’s user group; his needs for information and support have just changed, because the context in which he tries to accomplish his goals has changed.
As a result, context and USER GROUP (the next layer) are very tightly coupled. Given the context, the same person may fit several different user profiles: she may be a homeowner with a mortgage, a wife with three children, or a technical professional with an advanced degree. The user group a person belongs to depends on the context in which they are being categorized. A person’s goals and resulting information needs will change with their user group, depending on the context that person is in. Take, for example, the expert user of the Windows XP operating system. When he needs to eject a CD from a system that runs the Mac OS or Linux, he requires different mental models and knowledge for how that task will be accomplished.
Lastly, we can design for the INDIVIDUAL. We don't have to, but there are certainly markets to be exploited this way. Gateway and Dell built successful business models by customizing systems for each person who ordered their products. The Bentley College masters program in Human Factors in Information Design (which both authors completed) is similar in that regard. Virtually no two people take the same ten classes. Some get credit for work study, some for having completed the certificate program, some for taking a negotiating class as an elective, and some for taking a course in statistics. Each course of study is designed to fit the needs of the individual.
But what does all of this mean for the designer or usability practitioner? How can it be applied to what we do? ... Hang on ... I'll post that on Friday :)