Category: Interaction Design

When researching established workflows and user interface (UI) patterns, my assumptions are that familiarity often leads to same solutions. People often tend to stick to existing methods simply because they have become accustomed to them. The same appens with changing User Interfaces. This aversion to change something is a known phenomenon.

By investigating this further, I want to find out why certain approaches are been still used and if there are mor efficient alternatives. The basic questions that intersts me are: Why do we cling to established norms? Could there be a better way to accomplish tasks?

Moreover, this universal resistance to change, also in the context of UI modifications, adds another layer. The aversion to alterations in UIs and workflows might be a recognized aspect of human behavior. But, I think that this reluctance could bereduzed if the suggested changes are beneficial or more user-friendly. Similar to the adoption of innovations such as the social login feature.

My research is going to be mostly based on existing studies and will be pretty theoretical. Maybe I can have a more philosphical approach to it and approach and interviewing different types of users to understand what they think about specific UI patterns. To find out which patterns are known and what people think about them. To get some reliable data on a pattern it has to be tested and maybe compared with an alternative with a high amount of users to find out if the pattern is just useful because it is known or because it is realy intuitiv without explanation.

Recognizing that this study takes a highly theoretical stance, I plan to draw extensively from existing research while infusing a philosophical dimension to enrich the discourse. To gain a comprehensive understanding, I aim to conduct interviews with colleagues, power users, and individuals less experienced with the system. This approach should show the prevailing patterns, feelings and attitudes towards established UI norms.

To really understand a pattern, I’ll test it and maybe compare it to another approach with a lot of users. This will help me figure out if people like a pattern just because it’s familiar or if it’s genuinely easy to use without needing much explanation.

I’m not just interested in what UI patterns are out there, but I want to know why we use them and if there might be better ways of doing things. It’s all about understanding why things look the way they do on our screens and get a broader understanding of design pattern and user behavior.

Matt Corrall held a guest lecture at our institution at the FH Joanneum. He works as design director at the company Ultraleap which is known for their devices with handtracking controls.

As I am very interested in spatial design and VR as well, I found his talk at the atelier super inspiring and wanted to delve deeper into his work. On his website I found another speech he held at the Interaction 23 Conference in Zurich, Switzerland.

During his talk Matt mentioned a lot of interesting aspects designer need to consider when designing for interfaces for the future.

• Virtual environments with hand tracking is more intuitive as with controllers. Users do not need to remember which button does what. Also gestures have a natural variance.
• How user interact with certain objects is quite interesting. It depends of the size of the object. Is the object rather small the index finger and thumb is used, for bigger objects the whole hand is used and for really big objects, people use both hands.
• Objects needs to be signified if they are interactive e.g. by glowing or label when hovering/going over the specific object
• Objects have to have three dimensional aspects. A button is instantly know to be triggered when it has a physical appearance. In general UI components work best when they are in 3D.
• Wearable UI is really important for certain interactions. But they should only be triggered when needed
• Exaggerated feedback: To simulate haptics in VR is not possible (yet). That the user understands that a trigger/interaction was made, the feedback has to be clearly visible and in best case be exaggerated.
• In general every/most of the VR applications have their own interaction and process, a tutorial before first usage is very important to clarify the upcoming experience.

Generally speaking the talk and the website of Matt Corrall is very interesting to me and has a lot of helpful insights. Can recommend 10/10 😊

Links:

https://www.corralldesign.com/writing/how-to-get-into-xr-as-a-ux-designer

https://interaction23.ixda.org/online-schedule/day-1.html

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcorrall/?originalSubdomain=uk

For my future masterthesis I created the following research planning matrix which will guide me through my research/design process.

Ontology:

If I reflect on the nature of reality as it pertains in my research topic I assume, that teenagers often don’t know what they want to become nor where their professional journey is heading. One reason for this is the lack of opportunities to gain insights into different professions. This is also been examined in a survey conducted by Zukunft.Lehre.Österreich.(1)

I definitely view this assumption as objective facts as they were asked and examine in a broader field.

Epistemology:

The primary sources for my study are mainly from the WKO (chamber of commerce) as they conduct studies and surveys every year about apprenticeships in Austria. As well as other institutions in Austria which work for the Ministry of Education, other job seeking platforms or have any relation to education and employment. Also personal experience and subjective experience from people in my surroundings play a major role and give insights into for instance the change over time. The understanding is mostly empirical based on data and observation throughout the years as well as the material which is provided by the WKO.

Possible limitations could be that I have already delved too deeply into the topic and do not see other relevant information or my own biased interpretation of certain aspects.

Source:

(1) https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1229681/umfrage/hinderungsgruende-fuer-eine-lehre-in-oesterreich/

As the start of my Master’s thesis is now getting closer and closer, I am now looking more closely at existing literature and studies in this area. I came across a very interesting paper that covers many of the areas relevant to my research. It also refers to many studies that support the statements and I intend to make a note of these for a more detailed analysis in the psychological field. This paper is therefore a good starting point and an overview of important points that need to be considered and examined in more detail.

It is about the growing challenges in the area of children’s and young people’s mental health. It emphasizes that the use of social media and online platforms could play a potential role in these problems. The paper emphasizes the long-term effects of children’s interactions with social media on mental and physical health. I think the parts that deal with neuroscientific principles, the behavior of children and adolescents in social media and the effects this has on brain development are particularly exciting. Various areas and features of social media are highlighted here and how they affect a teenager’s brain. This is definitely a very exciting point and my plan is to delve more into studies in this area so that I can use this data as the basis for my master’s thesis.

Testimony

APA article

Today I had the opportunity to have a nice chat with Mrs. Frank from the company Mediasquad in Innsbruck. The company is specialized in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and they created the application “Berufe-VR” for the chamber of commerce.

Mrs. Frank gave me some insights about the implementation of the application and other useful tipps I need to consider when creating my VR project for my masterthesis. She also told me about their process when starting a new project and what to consider with working with clients. Furthermore she empathized how important it is to have feedback for the user especially when there is no haptic involvement e.g. handtracking, gaze control, etc. Another important hint was the iterative process and always including user testing throughout the project. Also to test the application on users which are not experts in the field – rather use rookies to get helpful criticism.

In conclusion the conversation with Mrs. Frank was very valuable and I am thankful for the opportunity to gain insights and expertise from people in the field.

Links:

https://www.berufe-vr.at

This week I had a few more discussions about my approach to the Master’s thesis. I was able to take away some valuable points that I hadn’t really considered before. One important point is data protection. I will be working with children and teenagers and in this respect I have to pay attention to guidelines and, above all, parental consent. To do this, I need to carry out detailed research in advance, contact people who are familiar with this if necessary and ensure that I protect myself adequately. Another point, more related to the content, is literature research. There is still a lot that can be done here and existing data can be extracted. As my project is very extensive, this is definitely a valuable point, as I can save myself time by referring to existing studies and literature. In addition, it can be helpful to include the EU directives regarding the protection of minors and use these as a framework. Another point to consider is a gradual structure of the Instagram Youth version. This would mean that features would be activated for each age group and the platform would be adapted to the respective age group. This would mean that teenagers would not be thrown into the deep end of the “real” Instagram version when they reach the age of majority, but would be gradually guided there and introduced to age-appropriate features. With regard to my own studies, I was advised to distribute the questionnaires widely in order to obtain quantitative data. For qualitative data, I could consider a preliminary study with, for example, 5 teenagers to roughly define the project design and then ask targeted questions to the general public. Assuming that the app is divided into age groups, it would also be important to survey teenagers of different ages and see where there are differences between the age groups. This could serve as a good basis for defining the activation of various features.

All in all, I can say that the discussions only motivated me even more for my topic. I was also reminded that I have a lot planned and that it is important to have a well-thought-out schedule. I will draw this up over the next few weeks so that I can get straight to work at the official start of my Master’s thesis. It’s nice for me to see that my topic is also well received by the outside world, that the problem and my goal are immediately understood and that everyone is looking forward to the result. This confirms that I have chosen an important topic that relates to current social problems.

In October, I took an intensive week-long zerocoding course. We learned how to make a working application for mobile devices using the Glide software. The assignment was to create an app for tracking personal finances so that users could more easily control their daily expenses. I found this quite interesting, especially in the context of my topic, as it directly relates to new technologies and how they can make our lives easier. If the concept of zerocoding is developed further, application development will be ten times faster.

In the course we developed the application interface, several functions such as for example filtering and categorizing expenses, and worked with the database.