The first chapter begins with the introduction of how number associated with our life and user interface design. The motivation, the objective and the outline of this project will be defined in following pages.
1.1 Background
Numbers are indispensable and applied to wide range of our life to help us in thinking and communication. It could be invisible just like the mind, words even concepts. But it also could be visible and found easily in many objects such as calendars, clock, coins, and books…etc. Due to the high dependence of computers in recent decades, the digital world has already become one part of human life. In the same time, the importance of numbers is also shift from reality to digital life.
The user interface is the bridge between these two different worlds and also the medium to input the numbers. A keyboard is the most common numeric interface now and it is not only the accessory of PC but also applied to many electric products such as ATM, factory machines and cell phones. Besides, through the improvement of technology, there are other types of user interface which allow people to input numbers in different ways, such as touch user interface, voice user interface, motion tracking interface and tangible user interface.
In recent decades, the trends and issues of user interface design shifts from usability to user
experience. The main factors of measuring usability are effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
That means the specific goals could be successful accomplished by the fast and easy ways with the satisfaction of performances. But Andrew Dillon (2001) indicates that there are others factors of satisfaction such as personal experience, preferring and aesthetics of products.
The measure of usability has become insufficient in user interface design. That represent the human’s feelings are emphasized in human computer interactions. The thinking of designing user interface is moved from the engineer’s perspective to user’s perspective.
According to the reasons described above, the user experience design is kind of user-centered design, it starts from user’s perspective and focuses on user’s perceptions and feelings while using the interface, service and products. For example, iPhone is the first cell phone applied touch screens technology and designed by caring about user experience. There are no differences of basic functions with others phones such as calling, text messages and browse the photos. But it creates more Intuitive way to manipulate and accomplish these goals of functions. For instance, instead of browsing the photos by pressing the next button, iPhone provide the manipulation of flipping on screen. Both flipping and pressing are just one simple action and required for the demands of good usability. But contrasted with just pressing the button, iPhone creates the user experience of intuitive feeling to bridge the gap between technology and our life. The great success of iPhone has lead the revolution of cell phone design and supported the trends and importance of user experience.
1.2 Motivation and Objectives
The keyboard is the very common interface and convenient tool to input the number for
computers. But in recently years, the user experience became the hot topic in human computer interaction field. Besides, due to the improvements of technology, there are more probable ways to interact with the products and interface such as application of gestures on iPhone. Thus, how to interact with computer to create the proper and hedonic user experience became an important issue.
We found that context is the key factor of user experience (Effie L-C.Law, Virpi Roto, Marc Hassenzahl, Arnold P.O.S Vermeeren & Joke Kort, 2009) and Anind K. Dey (2001) define context as "any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity." Although the number have the fixed format, but it could represent different meanings at different contexts such as object, degree and concept. For example, the number 5 means the date of deadline, but it also could mean the temperature of whether. The number provides strong context to help realize the situation, just like previous example, it help people to know the loading today and how cold outside.
Therefore, why we design the inputting interface of number from the user experience perspective?
There is an obvious difference of feeling between the amount of $1000 and $10000 when we checkout. But why the difference on the keyboard is just to click a button?
In this project, the tangible user interface is the main design approach to create the inputting user experience. The objective is shown as follow.
Develop the exploration process.
Realize how user experience is created by interface.
Collate and analyze exploration results into design recourse.
Apply the design recourse into product design.
1.3 Scope and Outline of Thesis
This project contains the discussion of user experience, tangible user interface, context of number and product design. There are several chapters that will be provided for achieving this project process, including introduction, methodology, result and discussion.
Chapter 1 Introduction
This chapter is going to introduce the background of using number and numeric interface, description of motivation, objectives and scope.
Chapter 2 Literary Reviews
This chapter is to describe the method of designing user experience first, then decide tangible user interface to be our design tool.
Chapter 3 Exploration
This chapter contains the exploration structure, pre-experiment, further exploration and user interview to realize how user experience be created by tangible user interface and transfer the results into design recourse.
Chapter 4 Exploration results
This section will demonstrate the results of exploration and transfer to design recourse for designing products.
Chapter 5 Apply exploration results to product design
Demonstrating the design process of applying exploration results to product design and introduce the final design works..
Chapter 6 Discussion and Expectation
After the exploration with user interview, producing and design process, this chapter is going to discuss the whole process and suggestion afterward.
Chapter 7 References
The list of references, including books, essays, and periodicals.