How does real world architecture influence interactive designs? ***
How does real world architecture influence interactive designs

A HCI presentation by #533706, #330612, #533933, #530995 and #537907
Introduction

The real world itself has had a great influence on many interfaces and interactions between users and computer based designs. The idea is that people will be able to quickly adapt to new surroundings as they already have associated with the analogy. A term that is frequently used amongst HCI specialists is standardisation. Essentially, standardization facilitates learning and reduces errors by taking advantage of knowledge the users have gained from other products or from other parts of your product.

HCI Standards Explained

For instance, as James mentions in one of his previous posts, the key reason to why Firefox has recieved such appraisal is due to the look and feel being identical to the industry standard (Microsoft's Internet Explorer), thus people don't need to reaclimatise to a new surrounding. Good HCI revolves around this ease of use, whereby a well-designed interface will encourage users to reuse a program or revisit a site at a later date.

The main question for designers is how can we apply real world architecture, like buildings, offices, etc to interactive information systems. Would implementing this architecture have a positive effect on its users?

To answer this question we will investigate into the many instances of where real world architecture has had an influence on the designs of current interactive-based systems. As James, Lauryn, Emma, Rick and I will highlight these range from the obvious, such as how the computer desktop has evolved of late into a more 3 Dimensional environment and how may real world ideas such as virtual online-shopping and chatting in web-based environments, to the more obscure, like a program created by Professors (or students?) at Reading University which allows users to take a walkthrough a human body. It is also important to consider that real world architecture has also had a large influence on non-computer based design, which we will also discuss into more depth.

- posted by Adam @ 1:06 pm 2 comments