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PACT: A Framework for Designing Interactive Systems

Md. Saifuddin KhalidAssistant Professor

KANDIDATUDDANNELSEN I INFORMATIONSTEKNOLOGI, IT OG LÆRING, MED SPECIALISERING I

ORGANISATORISK OMSTILLINGModulets placering: 8. semester

Modulets omfang: 5 ECTSMonday, 06 February, 2017

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Interaction Design Course Session 1: Lecture 2

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About PACT FrameworkAn essential part of our approach to

designing interactive systems is that it should put people first; it should be human-centred.

We use the acronym PACT (People, Activities, Contexts, Technologies) as a useful framework for thinking about a design situation.

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(Benyon, 2010, p. 26)

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Scoping a problem with PACT analysisA PACT analysis is useful for both analysis and design

activities: understanding the current situation, seeing where possible improvements can be made or envisioning future situations.

To do a PACT analysis the designer simply scopes out the variety of Ps, As, Cs and Ts that are possible, or likely, in a domain.

PACT analysis can be viewed as the “preliminary requirements analysis”, which is used as part of the first phase in traditional software engineering process or “product vision” in Scrum or Lean.

This can be done by using various methods and tools. E.g. brainstorming, observations, interviews and workshops.

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Activities and TechnologiesTechnologies support a wide range of people to undertake various activities in different contexts. Activities (and the contexts/‘domain’/‘sphere of activity’ within which they take place) establish requirements for technologies that in turn offer opportunities that change the nature of activities. And so the cycle continues as the changed activity results in new requirements for technologies and so on.

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The changing nature of interaction design product

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Figure. The changing nature of telephoning activity as technology advances (Benyon, 2010, p.28)

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PEOPLEInteraction designers begin with the differences

among the users and their interactions.Physical DifferencesErgonomicsMental modelsPsychological differencesSocial differences

Benyon (2010) discussed these in part IV of the book in details. This lecture will cover these briefly.

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People: Physical differencesPeople differ in

Physical characteristics, e.g. height and weightFive senses, i.e. sight, hearing, touch, smell

and taste.Case: International approaches to bicycle and pedestrian facility design.URL:http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/pedbike/05085/chapt23.cfm

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People: ErgonomicsThe term ‘ergonomics’ was coined in 1948 to

describe the study of the relationships between people and their environment.

People: Anthropometrics, the measurement of man/people. Example

The environmentAmbient environment (temperature, humidity,

atmospheric pressure, light levels, noise and so on)

Working environment (the design of machines, health and safety issues – e.g. hygiene, toxicology, exposure to ionizing radiation, microwaves, etc.).

Ergonomics draws on anatomy and physiology, various aspects of psychology (e.g. physiological and experimental), physics, engineering and work studies among others.

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People: Ergonomics (Cont.)Ergonomic designs include but not limited to

office furniture: chairs, desks, lights, footrests and so forth)

office equipment, for example keyboards, monitor stands and wrist rests.

Search “ergonomic devices” in images.google.com for examples.

Possibilities are redefined with finding on ergonomics. E.g. interactions with mobile resulted the use of thumbs to ring doorbells, push doors and point.

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People: Psychological differencesLanguage differences: In the USA a tick is used

for acceptance and a cross for rejection, but in Britain a tick or a cross can be used to show acceptance (e.g. a cross on a voting paper).

Individual differences. E.g. OCEAN: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Attention and memory in relation to individual needs and abilities.

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People: Mental modelsA person’s ‘mental model’ (e.g. Norman,

1998) of a device: If something goes wrong they will not know why and will not be able to recover.

Designer must design things so that people will form correct and useful mental models of how they work and what they do.

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People: Mental models (Cont.) Mental models are incomplete. People

will understand some parts of a system better than others.

People can ‘run’ (or try out) their models when required, but often with limited accuracy.

Mental models are unstable – people forget details.

Mental models do not have firm boundaries: similar devices and operations get confused with one another.

Mental models are unscientific, exhibiting ‘superstitious’ behaviour.

Mental models are parsimonious. People are willing to undertake additional physical operations to minimize mental effort, e.g. people will switch off the device and start again rather than trying to recover from an error.

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The nature of mentalmodels of interactive systems (Norman, 1983)

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People: Social differencesNovice and expert users of a technology will

typically have very different levels of knowledge and hence requirements for design feature

Designing for homogeneous groups of people – groups who are broadly similar and want to do much the same things – is quite different from designing for heterogeneous groups.

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Activities10 important characteristics of activities that

designers need to consider. First and foremost, the overall purpose of the activity. Temporal aspects, e.g. how regular or

infrequent activities are.CooperationComplexitySafety-criticalThe nature of the content.

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ContextActivities in contexts can be analyzed by three types of contexts.Physical environmentSocial contextOrganizational context

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Figure. Interactions in different working contexts

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TechnologyLast, analyzing technology requirements as part of PACT analysis Input (i.e. data and instructions)Output (i.e. mainly vision, hearing and touch)StorageConnectivityContent (i.e. data and its forms)

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ReferencesBenyon, David. (2010). Designing

Interactive Systems: A Comprehensive Guide to HCI and Interaction Design. 2nd ed. Harlow, England ; N.Y: Addison-Wesley.

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Discussion

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Source: https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/d/discussion.asp