exploring the effects of different levels of formality (beautification) on the design process

Exploring the Effects of Different Levels of FormExploring the Effects of Different Levels of Formality (Beautification) on the Design Processality (Beautification) on the Design ProcessLouise Yeung (MSc student - Psychology)Louise Yeung (MSc student - Psychology)Supervisors: Dr Brenda Lobb, Supervisors: Dr Brenda Lobb,

Dr Beryl Plimmer, Dr Beryl Plimmer, Dr Douglas Elliffe Dr Douglas Elliffe

Overview: • Background • Purpose of study• Experimental Design• Results• Future research areas • Questions..

Design research

Design Activities– Sketching is important in design

(Goel, 1990; Goldschmidt, 1991) especially in early stages in design process (Do, 2005; Lim, et al., 2004)

– Transfer from paper prototypes (Sketches) to the computer

BUT…

During Transfer...• Clumsy• Error-Prone• Unproductive• Inefficient….

Informal Sketch-based tools

• Increasing research and development – e.g. PDA, digital whiteboards…

Inkit (on-going project since 2002)

• Increase of demand and usage by designers (Pomm & Werlen, 2004)

• Many advantages of sketch-base (informal) design tools:

• “Getting the best of two worlds” • “Bridges the gap”

“Beautification”

• Challenge = the need to “beautify” sketched content (Plimmer & Apperley, 2003; Plimmer & Grundy, 2005)

• Beautification = process of tidying a hand-drawn diagram (Sketch) into a more ‘formal looking’ diagram

Interaction difference…hand-drawn (informal) VS computer-rendered (formal)

• Research: more functional changes and comments if working with a hand-drawn diagram rather than a formal (computerized) diagram (Bailey and Konstan, 2003; Black, 1990; Goel, 1995; Plimmer and Apperley, 2002)

• What happens in between when a diagram is more or less formal?

• design decisions, cognition, perception?

Purpose of my study1) To explore the different types and levels of beautification (formality) 2) To evaluate the effects of levels of beautification (formality) on how people interact with the design

Research question: Does the level of formality of a prototype design affect the number (and quality) of changes designers make during iterative design?

Method• Participants: 14 female, 16 male • Experiment design: within-subject design• IV: Levels of formality - 5 Levels (5 conditions)

• Latin Square design to counterbalance• S1S1 1 2 3 4 51 2 3 4 5• S2S2 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 • S3S3 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 • S4S4 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 • S5S5 5 1 2 3 4…etc5 1 2 3 4…etc

• S1 5 4 3 2 1S1 5 4 3 2 1• S2 4 3 2 1 5 S2 4 3 2 1 5 • S3 3 2 1 5 4S3 3 2 1 5 4• S4 2 1 5 4 3S4 2 1 5 4 3• S5 1 5 4 3 2…etcS5 1 5 4 3 2…etc

Conditions Formality level Medium1 Low formality (totally hand-drawn) Paper (and pen)

2 Low formality (totally hand-drawn Tablet PC

3 Medium low Tablet PC

4 Medium high Tablet PC

5 High formality ([totally] computer-rendered) Tablet PC

5 conditions – 5 designs• Given 5 equivalent designs of web (HTML) forms in

terms of:– 1) the purpose of the forms – requiring users to

fill in personal information– 2) order of elements in the design– 3) the balance of types of element– 4) the number of elements in each design (i.e.

total of 58).– 5) each design had 23 ‘mistakes’ (according to

design guidelines) for participants to ‘correct’

Method• Taxonomy of beautification

Hand drawn form ------------continuum ----------- Computer-generated formVARIABLESSmoothness (objects, lines or characters) rough

Smoothed, formal

Size Variable Exact, standardised

Alignment, verticalInexact Exact,

standardisedAlignment, horizontal

Inexact Exact, standardised

Spacing, vertical (between objects) irregular

Exact, standardised

Spacing, horizontal irregular

Exact, standardised

(A)

(B)

(C)

Horizontal AlignmentHorizontal Alignment

Vertical AlignmentVertical Alignment

(A) (B)Snap to gridSnap to grid

(A) (B)

(C) (D)

Shape standardizationShape standardization

Fully Hand-DrawnFully Hand-Drawn 33.33% smoothed33.33% smoothed

66.66% smoothed66.66% smoothed Fully smoothed (Straight Lines)Fully smoothed (Straight Lines)

Low formality Medium-low formality

Medium-high formality High formality

• Dependent variable: Number of changes made (Total functional changes & Quality functional

changes & expected functional changes)

• Preliminary results:– One-way repeated measures ANOVA– Significant Main effect (formality)– Significant Linear trend– Pair-wise comparisons showed some interesting

differences:

VS

VS

– Group differences: Design experience

LOW formality (Tablet PC)

LOW formality (Paper & pen)

LOW formality (Tablet PC)

HIGH formality (Tablet PC)

Mean Expected functional changes made across levels of Mean Expected functional changes made across levels of formalityformality

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

Low formality(paper)

Low formality Medium-lowformality

Medium-highformality

High formality

Levels of formality

Mea

n E

xpec

ted

Cha

nges

Mean Expected functional changes across Levels of Formality Mean Expected functional changes across Levels of Formality according to design experience: none/non-CS/SE & CS/SEaccording to design experience: none/non-CS/SE & CS/SE

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Lowformality(paper)

Lowformality

Medium-lowformality

Medium-highformality

Highformality

Levels of formality

Mea

n ex

pect

ed c

hang

es

None to some (non-CS/SE)design experienceCS/SE design experience

Future research • Exploring more dimensions and levels of

formality (i.e. aspects of beautification)– E.g. color (combination?), look-and-feel..etc

• Exploring the effects of beautification at different stages in the design process– e.g. early vs refinement– design-decisions

• At different levels of beautification:– Novice vs Expert designers – Individual vs group decision making in the

design process at different stages– Evaluation of different levels of beautification

for different groups of people e.g. ?– Pen and Paper VS Tablet PC

Implications• Software development

– Types of beautification at different stages

• Improvements in the design process– Increase in efficiency (motivation?) – More time for other design activities

– Practical Real world situations e.g. client presentation - photoshop is commonly used.

• However, during early stages…

Suggestions/Questions?Suggestions/Questions?

References

• Goldschmidt, G. (1991). The dialectics of sketching. Creativity Research Journal, 2(2), 123–143.

• Goel, V. (1995). Sketches of Thought. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA• Lim, et al. (2004). A study of sketching behaviour to support free-

form surface modelling from on-line sketching. Design Studies, 25(4), 393-413.

• Do, Y.E. (2005). Design sketches and sketch design tools. Knowledge-Based Systems, 18(8), 383-405.

• Plimmer, B. E., & Apperley, M. (2004). Interacting with Sketched Interface Designs: An evaluation study. Proceedings of SigChi, Vienna, 1337-1340.

• Plimmer, B. E., & Grundy, J. (2005). Beautifying sketching-based design tool content: issues and experiences. Proceedings of AUIC2005, Newcastle.

• Pomm, C., & Werlen, S. (2004). Smooth Morphing of Handwritten Text, Proceedings of AVI 04, Gallipoli, 328-335.