Tai lieu About face 3 0

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About Face 3
The Essentials of
Interaction Design

Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and Dave Cronin


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About Face 3


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About Face 3
The Essentials of
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Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and Dave Cronin


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About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2007 Alan Cooper
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-0-470-08411-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222
Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis,
IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at />Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties
with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties,
including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or
extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for
every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal,
accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of
further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or

Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites
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For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (800) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Cooper, Alan, 1952About face 3 : the essentials of interaction design / Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and Dave Cronin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-470-08411-3 (pbk.)
1. User interfaces (Computer systems) 2. Human-computer interaction. I. Reimann, Robert. II. Cronin, Dave,
1972- III. Title. IV. Title: About face three.
QA76.9.U83C6596 2007
005.4’38--dc22
2007004977
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley
& Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated
with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be
available in electronic books.


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Page v

For Sue, my best friend through all the adventures of life.
For Maxwell Aaron Reimann.

For Gretchen.
And for Cooperistas past, present, and future;
and for those visionary IxD practitioners who
have helped create a new design profession.


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About the Authors
Alan Cooper is a pioneering software inventor, programmer, designer, and theorist.
He is credited with having produced “probably the first serious business software
for microcomputers” and is well known as the “Father of Visual Basic.” For the last
15 years his software design consulting company, Cooper, has helped many companies invent new products and improve the behavior of their technology. At Cooper,
Alan led the development of a new methodology for creating successful software
that he calls the Goal-Directed process. Part of that effort was the invention of personas, a practice that has been widely adopted since he first published the technique
in his second book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, in 1998. Cooper is also a
well known writer, speaker, and enthusiast for humanizing technology.
Robert Reimann has spent the past 15 years pushing the boundaries of digital
products as a designer, writer, lecturer, and consultant. He has led dozens of interaction design projects in domains including e-commerce, portals, desktop productivity, authoring environments, medical and scientific instrumentation, wireless,
and handheld devices for startups and Fortune 500 clients alike. As director of
design R&D at Cooper, Reimann led the development and refinement of many of
the Goal-Directed Design methods described in About Face. In 2005, Reimann
became the first President of IxDA, the Interaction Design Association
(www.ixda.org), a global nonprofit professional organization for Interaction

Designers. He is currently manager of user experience at Bose Corporation.
Dave Cronin is the director of interaction design at Cooper, where he’s helped
design products to serve the needs of people such as surgeons, museum visitors,
marketers, investment portfolio managers, online shoppers, hospital staff, car drivers, dentists, financial analysts, manufacturing planners, the elderly, and the
infirm. At Cooper, he has also contributed substantially to the ongoing process of
developing and refining the Goal-Directed Design methods described in this book.


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Credits
Executive Editor
Chris Webb
Development Editors
Sara Shlaer
Sydney Jones
Production Editor
Eric Charbonneau
Copy Editor
Foxxe Editorial Services
Editorial Manager
Mary Beth Wakefield
Production Manager
Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group
Publisher
Richard Swadley
Vice President and Executive
Publisher
Joseph B. Wikert
Project Coordinator
Erin Smith

Graphics and Production Specialists
Sean Decker, Brooke Graczyk,
Stephanie D. Jumper,
Jennifer Mayberry, Barbara Moore,
Ronald Terry
Quality Control Technician
Christy Pingleton
Book Designers
Rebecca Bortman and Nick Myers
Illustrators
Rebecca Bortman and Nick Myers
Proofreading and Indexing
Aptara
Anniversary Logo Design
Richard Pacifico
Cover Design
Rebecca Bortman and Nick Myers


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Contents
About the Authors

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Foreword: The Postindustrial World

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Acknowledgments

xxv

Introduction to the Third Edition

xxvii

Part I

Understanding Goal-Directed Design

1

Chapter 1

Goal-Directed Design
Digital Products Need Better Design Methods

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The creation of digital products today
Why are these products so bad?

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The Evolution of Design in Manufacturing
Planning and Designing Behavior
Recognizing User Goals

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Goals versus tasks and activities
Designing to meet goals in context

The Goal-Directed Design Process

Chapter 2

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Bridging the gap
A process overview
Goals, not features, are the key to product success

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Implementation Models and Mental Models
Implementation Models
User Mental Models
Represented Models
Most Software Conforms to Implementation Models

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User interfaces designed by engineers follow the implementation model 32
Mathematical thinking leads to implementation model interfaces
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Mechanical-Age versus Information-Age Represented Models

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Mechanical-Age representations
New technology demands new representations
Mechanical-Age representations degrade user interaction
Improving on Mechanical-Age representations: An example

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Chapter 3

Beginners, Experts, and Intermediates
Perpetual Intermediates
Designing for Different Experience Levels
What beginners need
Getting beginners on board
What experts need
What perpetual intermediates need

Chapter 4

Understanding Users: Qualitative Research
Qualitative versus Quantitative Research
The value of qualitative research
Types of qualitative research

Ethnographic Interviews: Interviewing and Observing Users
Contextual inquiry
Improving on contextual inquiry
Preparing for ethnographic interviews
Conducting ethnographic interviews

Other Types of Research
Focus groups
Market demographics and market segments
Usability and user testing

Card sorting
Task analysis

Chapter 5

Modeling Users: Personas and Goals
Why Model?
Personas
Strengths of personas as a design tool
Personas are based on research
Personas are represented as individual people
Personas represent groups of users
Personas explore ranges of behavior
Personas must have motivations
Personas can also represent nonusers
Personas and other user models
When rigorous personas aren’t possible: Provisional personas

Goals
Goals motivate usage patterns
Goals should be inferred from qualitative data
User goals and cognitive processing
The three types of user goals
User goals are user motivations
Types of goals
Successful products meet user goals first

Constructing Personas
Step 1: Identify behavioral variables
Step 2: Map interview subjects to behavioral variables

Step 3: Identify significant behavior patterns

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Step 4: Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals
Step 5: Check for completeness and redundancy
Step 6: Expand description of attributes and behaviors
Step 7: Designate persona types

Other Models
Workflow models
Artifact models
Physical models

Chapter 6

The Foundations of Design: Scenarios and Requirements
Scenarios: Narrative as a Design Tool
Scenarios in design
Using personas in scenarios
Different types of scenarios
Persona-based scenarios versus use cases

Requirements: The “What” of Interaction Design
Requirements Definition Using Personas and Scenarios
Step 1: Creating problem and vision statements
Step 2: Brainstorming
Step 3: Identifying persona expectations

Step 4: Constructing context scenarios
Step 5: Identifying requirements

Chapter 7

From Requirements to Design: The Framework
and Refinement
The Design Framework
Defining the interaction framework
Defining the visual design framework
Defining the industrial design framework

Refining the Form and Behavior
Design Validation and Usability Testing
When to test: Summative and formative evaluations
Conducting formative usability tests
Designer involvement in usability studies

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Part II

Designing Behavior and Form

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Chapter 8

Synthesizing Good Design: Principles and Patterns
Interaction Design Principles

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Principles operate at different levels of detail
Behavioral and interface-level principles minimize work

Design Values
Ethical interaction design
Purposeful interaction design
Pragmatic interaction design
Elegant interaction design

Interaction Design Patterns
Architectural patterns and interaction design
Recording and using interaction design patterns
Types of interaction design patterns

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Chapter 9

Platform and Posture
Posture
Designing Desktop Software
Designing for the Web
Informational Web sites
Transactional Web sites

Web applications
Internet-enabled applications
Intranets

Other Platforms
General design principles
Designing for handhelds
Designing for kiosks
Designing for television-based interfaces
Designing for automotive interfaces
Designing for appliances
Designing for audible interfaces

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Chapter 10 Orchestration and Flow
Flow and Transparency
Designing Harmonious Interactions

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Chapter 11 Eliminating Excise
GUI Excise

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Excise and expert users
Training wheels
“Pure” excise
Visual excise
Determining what is excise

Stopping the Proceedings
Errors, notifiers, and confirmation messages
Making users ask permission

Common Excise Traps
Navigation Is Excise
Navigation among multiple screens, views, or pages
Navigation between panes

Navigation between tools and menus
Navigation of information

Improving Navigation
Reduce the number of places to go
Provide signposts
Provide overviews
Provide appropriate mapping of controls to functions
Inflect your interface to match user needs
Avoid hierarchies

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Chapter 12 Designing Good Behavior
Designing Considerate Products
Considerate products take an interest
Considerate products are deferential
Considerate products are forthcoming
Considerate products use common sense
Considerate products anticipate human needs
Considerate products are conscientious
Considerate products don’t burden you with their personal problems
Considerate products keep us informed
Considerate products are perceptive
Considerate products are self-confident
Considerate products don’t ask a lot of questions

Considerate products fail gracefully
Considerate products know when to bend the rules
Considerate products take responsibility

Designing Smart Products
Putting the idle cycles to work
Smart products have a memory
Task coherence
Actions to remember
Applying memory to your applications

Chapter 13 Metaphors, Idioms, and Affordances
Interface Paradigms
Implementation-centric interfaces
Metaphoric interfaces
Idiomatic interfaces

Further Limitations of Metaphors
Finding good metaphors
The problems with global metaphors
Macs and metaphors: A revisionist view

Building Idioms
Manual Affordances
Semantics of manual affordances
Fulfilling user expectations of affordances

Chapter 14 Visual Interface Design
Art, Visual Interface Design, and Other Design Disciplines
Graphic design and user interfaces

Visual information design
Industrial design

The Building Blocks of Visual Interface Design
Shape
Size
Value
Hue

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Orientation
Texture
Position

Principles of Visual Interface Design
Use visual properties to group elements and provide clear hierarchy
Provide visual structure and flow at each level of organization
Use cohesive, consistent, and contextually appropriate imagery
Integrate style and function comprehensively and purposefully
Avoid visual noise and clutter
Keep it simple
Text in visual interfaces
Color in visual interfaces
Visual interface design for handhelds and other devices

Principles of Visual Information Design
Enforce visual comparisons
Show causality
Show multiple variables
Integrate text, graphics, and data in one display
Ensure the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content
Show things adjacently in space, not stacked in time
Don’t de-quantify quantifiable data

Consistency and Standards
Benefits of interface standards
Risks of interface standards
Standards, guidelines, and rules of thumb
When to violate guidelines
Consistency and standards across applications

Part III

Designing Interaction Details

Chapter 15 Searching and Finding: Improving Data Retrieval
Storage and Retrieval Systems
Storage and Retrieval in the Physical World
Everything in its place: Storage and retrieval by location
Indexed retrieval

Storage and Retrieval in the Digital World
Relational Databases versus Digital Soup
Organizing the unorganizable

Problems with databases
The attribute-based alternative

Natural Language Output: An Ideal Interface for
Attribute-Based Retrieval
Chapter 16 Understanding Undo
Users and Undo
User mental models of mistakes
Undo enables exploration

Designing an Undo Facility

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Types and Variants of Undo
Incremental and procedural actions
Blind and explanatory Undo
Single and multiple Undo
Redo
Group multiple Undo

Other Models for Undo-Like Behavior
Comparison: What would this look like?
Category-specific Undo
Deleted data buffers
Versioning and reversion
Freezing

Undo-Proof Operations

Chapter 17 Rethinking Files and Save
What’s Wrong with Saving Changes to Files?
Problems with the Implementation Model
Closing documents and removing unwanted changes
Save As
Archiving

Implementation Model versus Mental Model
Dispensing with the Implementation Model
Designing with a Unified File Model
Automatically saving
Creating a copy
Naming and renaming
Placing and moving
Specifying the stored format
Reversing changes
Abandoning all changes
Creating a version
A new File menu
A new name for the File menu
Communicating status

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Are Disks and File Systems a Feature?

Time for Change

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Chapter 18 Improving Data Entry
Data Integrity versus Data Immunity

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Data immunity
What about missing data?
Data entry and fudgeability

Auditing versus Editing
Chapter 19 Pointing, Selecting, and Direct Manipulation
Direct Manipulation
Pointing Devices
Using the mouse
Mouse buttons

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Pointing and clicking with a mouse
Mouse-up and mouse-down events

Pointing and the Cursor
Pliancy and hinting

Selection
Command ordering and selection
Discrete and contiguous selection
Insertion and replacement
Visual indication of selection

Drag-and-Drop
Visual feedback for drag-and-drop
Other drag-and-drop interaction issues

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Control Manipulation
Palette Tools

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Modal tools
Charged cursor tools

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Object Manipulation
Repositioning
Resizing and reshaping
3D object manipulation

Object Connection
Chapter 20 Window Behaviors
PARC and the Alto
PARC’s Principles
Visual metaphors
Avoiding modes
Overlapping windows

Microsoft and Tiled Windows
Full-Screen Applications
Multipaned Applications
Designing with Windows
Unnecessary rooms
Necessary rooms
Windows pollution

Window States
MDI versus SDI
Chapter 21 Controls
Avoiding Control-Laden Dialog Boxes
Imperative Controls
Buttons
Butcons

Hyperlinks

Selection Controls
Check boxes
Flip-flop buttons: A selection idiom to avoid
Radio buttons

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Combutcons
List controls
Combo boxes
Tree controls

Entry Controls
Bounded and unbounded entry controls

Spinners
Dials and Sliders
Thumbwheels
Other bounded entry controls
Unbounded entry: Text edit controls

Display Controls
Text controls
Scrollbars
Splitters
Drawers and levers

Chapter 22 Menus
A Bit of History

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The command-line interface
Sequential hierarchical menus
The Lotus 1-2-3 interface
Drop-down and pop-up menus

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Menus Today: The Pedagogic Vector

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Standard menus for desktop applications
File (or document)
Edit
Windows
Help

Optional Menus

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View
Insert
Settings
Format
Tools

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Menu Idioms

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Cascading menus
Menus
The ribbon
Bang menus
Disabled menu items
Checkmark menu items
Icons on menus

Accelerators
Access keys
Menus on other platforms

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Chapter 23 Toolbars
Toolbars: Visible, Immediate Commands
Toolbars versus Menus
Toolbars and Toolbar Controls
Icons versus text on toolbars
The problem with labeling butcons

Explaining Toolbar Controls
Balloon help: A first attempt
ToolTips
Disabling toolbar controls

Evolution of the Toolbar

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State-indicating toolbar controls
Menus on toolbars

Movable toolbars
Customizable toolbars
The ribbon
Contextual toolbars

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Chapter 24 Dialogs
Appropriate Uses for Dialog Boxes
Dialog Box Basics
Modal Dialog Boxes
Modeless Dialog Boxes

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Modeless dialog issues
Two solutions for better modeless dialogs

Four Different Purposes for Dialogs
Property dialog boxes
Function dialog boxes

Process dialog boxes
Eliminating process dialogs
Bulletin dialog boxes

Managing Content in Dialog Boxes
Tabbed dialogs
Expanding dialogs
Cascading dialogs

Chapter 25 Errors, Alerts, and Confirmation
Error Dialogs
Why we have so many error messages
What’s wrong with error messages
Eliminating error messages
Aren’t there exceptions?
Improving error messages: The last resort

Alert Dialogs: Announcing the Obvious
Confirmation Dialog
The dialog that cried “Wolf!”
Eliminating confirmations

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Replacing Dialogs: Rich Modeless Feedback
Rich visual modeless feedback
Audible feedback

Chapter 26 Designing for Different Needs
Command Vectors and Working Sets
Immediate and pedagogic vectors
Working sets and personas

Graduating Users from Beginners to Intermediates

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World vectors and head vectors
Memorization vectors

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Personalization and Configuration

Idiosyncratically Modal Behavior
Localization and Globalization
Galleries and Templates
Help

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The index
Shortcuts and overview
Not for beginners
Modeless and interactive help
Wizards
“Intelligent” agents

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Afterword: On Collaboration

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Appendix A Design Principles

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Appendix B Bibliography

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Index

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Foreword: The Postindustrial
World
The industrial age is over. Manufacturing, the primary economic driver of the past
175 years, no longer dominates. While manufacturing is bigger than ever, it has lost
its leadership to digital technology, and software now dominates our economy. We
have moved from atoms to bits. We are now in the postindustrial age.
More and more products have software in them. My stove has a microchip in it to
manage the lights, fan, and oven temperature. When the deliveryman has me sign
for a package, it’s on a computer, not a pad of paper. When I shop for a car, I am
really shopping for a navigation system.
More and more businesses are utterly dependent on software, and not just the obvious ones like Amazon.com and Microsoft. Thousands of companies of all sizes that
provide products and services across the spectrum of commerce use software in
every facet of their operations, management, planning, and sales. The back-office
systems that run big companies are all software systems. Hiring and human
resource management, investment and arbitrage, purchasing and supply chain
management, point-of-sale, operations, and decision support are all pure software
systems these days. And the Web dominates all sales and marketing. Live humans
are no longer the front line of businesses. Software plays that role instead. Vendors,
customers, colleagues, and employees all communicate with companies via software or software-mediated paths.
The organizational structures and management techniques that have worked so
well in the past for manufacturing-based companies are failing us today in the
postindustrial age. They fail because they focus on the transformation and movement of things made out of atoms. There are only finite amounts of desirable atoms
and it takes lots of energy to transform and transport them. Software—made out of
bits, not atoms—is qualitatively different. There is an infinite quantity of bits and
virtually no energy is needed to transform, transport, or even replicate them.


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Foreword: The Postindustrial World

The people who make software are different as well. The average computer programmer and the average assembly line worker are qualitatively different in their
aptitude, attitude, training, language, tools, and value systems. The most effective
ways of supervising, tracking, and managing programmers are dramatically different from those used so successfully with blue-collar workers of an earlier age. Getting programmers to do what is best for the company requires skills unknown to
the industrial-age executive.
Reducing the cost of manufacturing was the essential contribution of industrialization. Thus the best and brightest minds of an earlier age applied themselves to
reducing the amount of money spent creating products. In the postindustrial age,
the costs of raw materials, product assembly, and shipping are equally low for all
players. The only significant leverage to lower manufacturing costs comes through
automation, planning, and business intelligence: that is, software. In other words,
instead of saving a dollar on the construction of each widget, you save a million
dollars by making the precisely needed quantity of the most desirable product.
Once a software program has been successfully written, it can be reproduced an
unlimited number of times for virtually nothing. There is little benefit in reducing
the cost of writing it. Reducing the amount one spends on software construction
usually means compromising the quality, so the primary business equation of the
industrial age is reversed today. The best and brightest minds of today apply themselves to increasing the effectiveness of software and the quality of its behavior.
Keep in mind that all modern financial accounting systems focus on tracking manufacturing costs and no longer accurately represent the state of our software-dominated businesses. Making executive decisions on these erroneous numbers causes
significant waste of time, money, and opportunity.
It’s no wonder that companies struggle with software. Very capable executives find
that their intentions are subtly but significantly altered somewhere along the path

from conception to release. What appeared to be a sound plan turns out to be inadequate for shepherding the software construction process. It’s time to let go of
obsolete industrial-age management methods and adopt interaction design as the
primary tool for designing and managing software construction.
Since About Face was first published in 1995, the practice of interaction design has
grown and matured enormously. Dominated for so long by simple ex post facto,
trial-and-error methods, interaction design—along with its many siblings and
variants—has matured into a clear, dependable, effective tool for determining what
behavior will succeed. The invention and development of personas, the refinement
of written behavioral blueprints, and the entire practice of Goal-Directed™ Design,
have made high-quality software behavior achievable by any organization with the
will to create it.