Samsung’s Official Global Blog site has some interesting ‘User interface elements’ to leverage usefulness of the navigation-purpose. This showcases, clever interaction design  in enriching user experience !

» Right Tabs at the right place – When user lands into the site, sub tabs in center content column leads him to content-grouping based on priority. The site has used clever large-header image to focus interesting eye-ball attention to subsequent tabs.

» Innovative pagination – This is surely an interesting ‘User interface’ to tame the ever growing content of the site.

User can scroll sideways using slider to view aggregated pages.

It’s very useful versus ‘typical pagination‘ because,  individual pages of the site don’t have tobe load every time user clicks on pagination numbers. It aggregates the needed content in the form of numbers inside wide-slider-control. Quite clever indeed !

Just with two  highly usable design elements site has succeeded in complementing the clever information architecture of the site !

» Experience the power of useful interaction design

The psychology of user experience design(UXD) involves a deep understanding of our mind’s ability to perceive and interact with smart surfaces.

Perhaps the most important advance in UX Design that is heavily based on previous psychology studies is the rise of augmented reality, touch-based interfaces and 3D environments simulated by mobile, home entertainment and game devices.

The rules of interaction in 3D environments and touch-responsive interfaces dig deep into cognitive psychology, information processing in humans given visual inputs, perception and hand-eye coordination.

The technologies used today to create more responsive and intuitive interfaces use a good amount of data about people’s limits in processing simple visual information and ability to modulate their own reaction and behavior accordingly.

The Gestalt laws of perception are actively used to define the maximum level of abstraction that an interaction designer can reach in creating icons and graphic elements to communicate basic instructions or options to users.

Also, the same rules are applied in interface design, where you would make use of white space to create visual boundaries between sections or group them together.

More recently, with the use of simple design elements in web apps, designers show a more elaborate understanding of perception as a top-down process, where meaning is already ascribed to the sign or icon before the user attempts to break it down to lines and simple geometric shapes.

Interestingly, the Weber-Fechner law is used in ineraction and UX design mainly to describe user-interface patterns of interaction for game devices and tablets where you need to tilt, pinch, press and move a motion controller/tablet to interact with the interface.

Engineers and designers need to find the right balance between the controller’s interpretation of movement and the human operator’s gesture intensity and amplitude. The goal is to build interfaces that simulate the effect of our action in a way that we would expect them to.

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I was redesigning the conventional signup form design recently, to eliminate two text fields for password confirmation while signing-up the user and providing only one password field with check-box or some UI interaction to view typed password. Which would be simple and don’t tweak user mind when he type password in star/asterisk text field.

I faced lot of questions from developers who are reeling under conventional UI mental models for ages. The problem working in design arena is not about producing new designs, but finding right brain to accept new ideas :)

Providing two text fields with asterisks is like playing neon football in dark :). How can you be perfect to get a right password when you don’t see what you are typing ?

I guess, two sign-up asterisks password fields are provided for security reasons. If a password field is starred out and you don’t see what you’re typing, which means you could easily make a mistake and submit the wrong password without knowing.

Usable form is when it’s aptly designed to mitigate the frustration of the user. As long as the design is intuitive and matches the real world scenarios of the user, he finds it more nearer to his thoughts. Two password fields are useful, but not necessary, somehow it looks unfriendly, like mistrusting the user.

The iPhone Password system is good. User can see the char as he types for 1 sec then it disappears. Even,  Nilsen suggests make password fields plain text :).  There have been many fruitful & futile discussions in this regard.

I didn’t get much support when I try to redesign unnecessary password confirmation field. The defense was; password confirmation fields minimize support calls.  My proposal was – the UI should make sure they actually did type in what they intended to. However, I found useful discussion on this regard in my favorite design site.

A more effi­cient approach is to ask users to type their pass­word in once, but then include a check-­box that allows them to unmask the pass­word, so that they can check the accu­racy of their pass­word. This option would reduce the num­ber of text fields and decrease the work users have to do to sign up.

>> Signup form simplifying

Most present day web applications often fail to consider end-user abilities and requirements such that users find it hard to complete their tasks or are unable to locate an information they desperately seek. Eventually the bad experience prompts them to switch off and they may never return again. Usability prevents overlooking the critical part of the software development life cycle — the end-user.

Usability as a methodology can improve development productivity as well – when developers consider the user needs and abilities they’ll not invest time and energy into building features which the users don’t need. This culminates into efficient coding and fewer revisions.

Usability provides for early testing with end-users to validate the functionality of the product. This eliminates over-design and puts the emphasis on the requirements of real users. Moreover it makes it easier to discover design problems early in the development life cycle, saving both time and money.

Lastly a usable product gives a satisfying experience to the end-user and a better reputation for the organization which developed it.

What is Usability?

ISO 9241-11 defines Usability as the extent to which a specified product can be used by a specified user with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction to achieve a specified objective. And it is my favorite definition. There are others who have defined usability as well, like Jakob Nielsen or you can go over to Wikipedia for a more in-depth insight on Usability Engineering. It is an area which is closely linked to human-computer interaction as well.

via | Bhooshan