Theory Chapter Critiques

[savannanoh]

• What does it mean to have the human world at the periphery? Aren’t humans central to the gulf of execution/evaluation?
• Visual diagram showing the difference between gulf of execution and gulf of evaluation
• Include an explanation of how mental model breakdowns are inevitable
• Why does this chapter not cover all 10 of Norman-Nielson’s 10 principles?
• Terminology:
  • Definition of “affordance” difficult to parse: "An affordance is a relationship between a person and a property of what can be done to an interface in order to produce some effect." +1
  • How the word “mappings” is used is confusing
  • physical, cognitive, and sensory affordances vs functional affordances
  • Signifiers vs cognitive and sensory affordances
  • Can you illustrate the gulf of execution and gulf of evaluation with the same example? +1
  • 'Gulf of execution', explains its background, content, and relevant theory very well. Other theories, not so much
  • Definition of affordances challenging to grasp and easy to confuse with signifiers. Examples like elevator button, chair, door handle would be nice +1
  • Connect signifiers, affordances, and gulf of execution
  • The word “goal” is defined and used inconsistently +1
  • Why does this chapter not cover representation models or implementation models? These concepts help explain friction and breakdowns
• Grammar/typos:
  • "mouse can be clicked. It’s Its physical shape"
  • "To use interfaces successfully, people must learn an interface’s affordances and how they can be used to achiever achieve their goals."
  • In the first paragraph “what user interface are”
  • In the paragraph about gulfs of evaluation “then the gulf is a small”
  • In the paragraph about conventions: “e-commerce sites.Alternatively,”
• 3rd paragraph disrupts flow and may not be necessary
• Expand on natural behaviors we have towards interfaces, explain why "There is nothing natural about it"
• Why is the user feeling dissatisfied with the tissues they bought the UI’s fault? How are designers supposed to design around this? What does realization of goals look like for designers? +1
• Student found this excerpt confusing:
  • “For example, rather than trying to vaguely identify the most ‘intuitive’ experience, you can systematically ask: ‘Exactly what is our software’s functionality affordances and what signifiers will we design to teach it?’ Or, rather than relying on stereotypes, such as ‘older adults will struggle to learn to use computers,’ you can be more precise, saying, ‘This particular population of adults has not learned the design conventions of iOS, and so they will need to learn those before successfully utilizing this application’s interface.’”
  • What does the stereotype with older adults have to do with technology? Seems like an example of effective communication/lack of instructions rather than good design. What should be conveyed to the older adults before they use the tech and will this tactic improve the design itself?
• “(They probably also had to teach you the goals, but that’s less about user interfaces and more about culture.)” What does this mean?? Is this implying that VUIs introduced latent needs? What do you mean by culture here? +1
• Might be good to say at the beginning this chapter introduces Norman’s main theories
• Elaborate on why breakdowns are blamed on designers rather than users, when do you attribute a breakdown to deliberate misunderstanding on the part of the user?
• Conventions:
  • Discuss more on conventions. There is no way you can predict what everyone expects from an interface when there are factors like culture and privilege. For example, someone who grew up in the US with smartphones and someone who is not from the US and who only saw a smartphone as an adult.
  • Why did GUIs become THE convention?
  • Expected to learn more about the differences in design conventions, and why conventions are the way they are at the moment. I.e, why does the menu in apps between Android and iOS differ, who made these decisions, and why did they make them?
  • More discussion of factors that influence natural mappings and mental models, like cultural norms, since conventions aren’t necessarily universal
  • How did conventions like login screen and hamburger menu get formed? Do they have inherent properties that make them helpful? Maybe introduce historical examples of these popular conventions?
  • Discuss bias in designs that can work their ways into conventions, becoming part of what’s accepted, leaving some behind, such as older adults or people with disabilities
• Include this quote from The Design of Everyday Things: “Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities.”
• Why be skeptical of terms like “intuitive” and “user-friendly” ? Expand more on this +2
• “Getting the low-level details of user interface design to be learnable is one challenge — designing experiences that support vague, shifting, unobservable human goals is an entirely different one.” This felt like a cliffhanger and is a confusing sentence
• What were the interfaces at the times when these theories were brought up?
• Were there any/are there any other theories brought up besides Norman’s? How does industry use these theories now?
• If we rely on signifiers to reduce breakdown, can too many signifiers lead to cognitive overload?
• What does it mean that the computer has "only forward motion"?
• Talk about related field of human psychology and how design uses knowledge from that field
• Have more terms from a broader range of sources