Assignment 1: Interaction Breakdown

breakdown – The interrupted moment of our habitual, standard, comfortable ‘being-in-the-world.’ Breakdowns serve an extremely important cognitive function, revealing to us the nature of our practices and equipment… New design can be created and implemented… in the space that emerges in the recurrent structure of breakdown. A design constitutes an interpretation of breakdown and a committed attempt to anticipate future breakdowns.

– Winograd and Flores, Understanding Computers & Cognition

For this assignment, you will identify, analyze, and articulate usability issues associated with an interface with which you are familiar. You will submit a written report as an outcome.

Identify Interaction Breakdown #

Start by thinking of a number of different interfaces where you experienced one or more interaction breakdowns due to poor design that fails to make proper use of design principles or concepts from the readings:

  • Discoverability
  • Understanding
  • Affordances
  • Signifiers
  • Feedback
  • Consistency
  • Constraints
  • Mappings
  • Conceptual Models: design model, user model, system image

After you have come up with a few possibilities, choose one to focus on. Pick a breakdown based on how it is distinctive. Make sure you can tell an engaging story about it.

Appropriate interfaces can be a computer application, such as a word processor or spreadsheet, an interactive web page, such as a registration page for some service, an information appliance, such as a TV, alarm clock, or microwave oven, or anything else you can think of. Please do not use Norman’s examples (door, stove, or telephone) or any found in the textbooks.

The problem should be one that comes up as a barrier to getting to do what you want, due to flaws in the design of the interaction. You should NOT consider cases based solely on system crashes or broken devices. An example of a breakdown can be a situation where you did something that created a problem (e.g. unintentionally erased or destroyed something) or failed to be able to find the way to do something.

Deliverable: Report (3 pages max) #

The written report (3 pages max) should consist of three sections: Breakdown, Analysis, and Alternatives. Spend time in considering how information is presented in your report. Make use of image figures, not just text, to communicate your ideas.

The report PDF must use US Letter (8.5 x 11 in) pages with between 1 - 1.5 inch margins. Font size for body text should be between 10 - 12 pt. Heading font sizes should be no larger than 16 pt.

Submit your report as a PDF through Moodle by Monday, September 11 at 11:59 PM.

Breakdown Section (1 page max) #

Describe the interaction breakdown in detail. What activity were you performing when it happened? What interface or application was being used? What type of devices were involved? What was your experience? How did it breakdown? What was frustrating or problematic? Use images to communicate a narrative of the breakdown experience.

Analysis Section (1 page max) #

Analyze the interaction breakdown with respect to the usability principles above. Clearly characterize the general issue that was at the root of the breakdown. Avoid overly vague and general language (“The interface is badly designed”), rather be precise. Look for a level of description that could apply to a family of breakdowns of which your case was an example. Make use of terminology from the readings (e.g., affordances, feedback, mappings, mental models) in your analysis.

Alternatives (1 page max) #

Provide at least two examples of either existing alternatives or ones designed by yourself that have similar functionality but avoid the breakdown through better interaction design. Explain what aspects of their interaction design avoids the same breakdown and why they do. Alternatives can be a different part of the same system, a competitor, or a description on how you would fix the problem and how your solution is better grounded in principles discussed in class and the textbooks.

Grading Rubric #

You will be graded based on the following criteria (100 total points):

  • Principles [50 points]: Articulation of breakdown, analysis, and alternatives using principles from the readings.
  • Engagement-factor [20 points]: Have you identified a true Interaction Design Breakdown? How interesting and thoughtful is the breakdown you have chosen? What are the design issues?
  • Written Presentation [15 points]: Focused, clear, and concise. Stick to page limits.
  • Visual Presentation [15 points]: Figures illustrate breakdowns and solutions with visual evidence. They complement and support the text.

References #

This assignment represents an evolution of Andruid Kerne’s Experience Breakdown and Terry Winograd’s Usability Breakdown assignments.

Kerne, A., Experience Breakdown, last accessed 2021.

Winograd, T., Usability Breakdown, last accessed 2021.