DT Topic 7

Affinity diagramming

A tool used to organise ideas and information.

Affordance

Property of an object that indicates how it can be used. Buttons afford pushing, knobs afford turning.

Attitude

The perceptions, feelings and opinions about a product by a user.

Behavioural design (3 mark)

Focussed on use and understanding, this considers how people will use a product, focussing on functionality.

Characteristics of a good user-product interface (9 or 6 mark)

These include: simplicity and ease of use; intuitive logic, organization and low memory burden; visibility; feedback; affordance; mapping; and constraints.

Constraints

Limitations on how the product can be used.

Design for emotion

A design strategy that focusses on increasing user engagement, loyalty and satisfaction with a product by incorporating emotion and personality into product design.

Dominant Design

The design contains those implicit features of a product that are recognized as essential by a majority of manufacturers and purchasers.

Empathetic

When the designer takes the place of the user to see who potentially could use the product and the object could be better suited for the empathetic consumer.

Enhanced usability

Enhanced usability increases product acceptance, user experience, and productivity while decreasing user error and required training and support.

Environment

The place where a product is likely to be used.

Feedback 

The provision of information as a result of an action. This can be a audio, visual or aesthetic response.

Field research

A first hand observation of customer's user experience. It is essential for the research to be conducted in the user's environment.

Ideo-pleasure

Pleasures linked to our ideal, aesthetically, culturally and otherwise.

Inclusive design

The design of mainstream products and/or services so that they are accessible and usable by as many people as possible without the need for adaptation or specialised design.

Iterative

Act of repeating a process with the aim of approaching a desired goal, target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an iteration, and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.

Iterative design

Developed through user centred evaluation and based upon the six principles of iterative design.

Learnability

The extent to which a user can operate a product or system at a defined level of competence after a pre-determined period of training.

Mapping

Relates to the correspondence between the layout of the controls and their required action

Method of extremes

A common sampling method where users are selected to represent the extremes of a user population, typically the 2.5th and 97.5th percentile. Products are then designed and/or tested to ensure that they function efficiently for those users.

Natural environment

The monitoring of the user interacting with the product in their homes, place of work or other natural product usage environments.

Observation 

A collection of responses from users, a trail of observation of users interacting with the product

Participatory design

When users representing the target market for a product perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the user-product interface manipulated by a person acting as a computer who does not explain how the interface works.

Personae

A profile of the primary target audience for a product.

Physio-pleasure

A sensual pleasure that comes from touching, smelling, hearing or tasting something. It can also be derived from a feeling of satisfaction that comes from the effectiveness of an object in enabling an action to be performed

Population stereotype

Responses that are found to be widespread in a user population.

Product acceptance

The knowledge that a product or service paid for will meet up to its defined expectations

Productivity

Developing products and services with the user in mind so that they can reduce time wasting and simplify complex aspects of the product

Prototype testing session

A session where a test product is made and tested - all experiments are conducted before making the final product, making all changes necessary that can be seen when the prototypes are used.

Psycho-pleasure

Types of pleasure that comes from cognition, discovery, knowledge and other things that satisfy the intellect.

Reflective design

Design that evokes personal memory focusing on the message, culture and the meaning of a product or its use.

Scenario

An imagined sequence of events in the daily life of a persona based on assumptions.

Secondary personae

A profile of those who are not the primary target audience for a product, but whose needs the product should meet.

Socio-pleasure

Pleasures that come from a feeling of belonging to a social group, social-enablers, and other ways that one can identify oneself with social groups.

Sympathetic

The decisions required for the product to be the most helpful for the user given certain conditions.

Task

The thing that the product is supposed to do, however the user may have several sub uses for the product

Testing house

Typically a company that will test products on their site.

The attract/ converse/ transact (ACT) model

A framework for creating designs that improve the relations of users with a product and intentionally trigger emotional responses.

The four-pleasure framework

A framework devised by Professor Lionel Tiger that encourages design for pleasure and emotion. It comprises of four areas: Socio-pleasure; Physio-pleasure; Psycho-pleasure; and Ideo-pleasure.

Training and support

Help and guidance such as tutorials or instructions on how to use the product

Usability

The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals effectively and efficiently, while functioning in a predictable and consistent manner.

Usability laboratory

A lab in which usability testing is carried out, and test users are monitored by another group of observers in a different room.

Usability objectives

Usability objective include usefulness, effectiveness, learnability and likeability.

Usability testing session

The testing of a product with potential users to find out how usable the product is.

Use case

A set of possible sequences of interactions or event steps between a user and a product to achieve a particular action.

Usefulness

The extent to which a product enables the user to achieve their goals.

User

Person utilising the product, person who is being affected by the product or who is reaping benefits/drawbacks

User error

Mistakes and slips when using the product due aspects such as complexity or inefficiency

User population

The range of users for a particular product or system.

User-centred design

A design process that pays particular attention to the needs of potential users of a product by involving them in all stages of the design process.