UX - PACT Framework

User Experience
1.Essentials of User Experience

1.2 PACT
1
PACT: A framework for designing
interactive Systems
▪ People use technologies to undertake activities in
contexts. For example:
▪ Teenagers use mobile (cell) phones to send text messages
to their friends while sitting on a bus.
▪ People use Facebook to make contact with other people
when sitting in an Internet cafe.
2
If technology is changed, nature of
activities change!
▪ Designers need to keep

this cycle in mind as they
attempt to understand
and design for some
domain.
3
Example : Evolution of Email
▪ As personal computers have become more common, so

the domain of e-mail has changed.
▪ Originally e-mail was all in text only, but now it is in full
colour with pictures and video embedded.
▪ Other items can be attached to e-mails easily.
▪ This has led to a need for better facilities for managing it
for organizing pictures, documents and addresses.
4
PACT
▪ People
▪ Activities
▪ Contexts
▪ Technologies
5
People
▪ People differ from one another in a variety of ways

▪ Physical differences
▪ Psychological differences
▪ Mental models
▪ Social differences
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1.Physical Differences
▪ Physical differences have a huge effect on how accessible, how

usable and how enjoyable using a technology will be for people in
different contexts.
▪ Main Physical characteristics such as height and weight
▪ Variability in the five senses –
▪ sight
▪ hearing
▪ touch
▪ smell
▪ taste
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2.Psychological Differences
▪ Psychologically, people differ in a

variety of ways.
▪ For example, people with good
spatial ability will find it much easier
to find their way around and
remember than those with poor
ability
▪ Designers should design for people
with poor ability by providing good
signage and clear directions.
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2.1 Individual differences
▪ There are often large differences in the psychological

abilities of people.
▪ Some people have a good memory, others less so.
▪ Some people can find their way around environments better
than others, or mentally rotate objects more quickly
accurately.
▪ Some are good at words, others are good at numbers.
▪ There are differences in personality, emotional make-up
and ability to work under stress.
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3.Mental models
▪ The understanding and knowledge that we possess of

something is often referred to as a ‘mental model’.
▪ If people do not have a good mental model of something,
they can only perform limited actions.
▪ If something goes wrong they will not know why and will not
be able to recover.
▪ A key design principle is to design things so that people will
form correct and useful mental models of how they work and
what they do.
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4.Social differences
▪ People make use of systems, products and services for

very different reasons.
▪ They have different goals and motivations in using systems.
▪ Some people will be very interested in a particular
system,others will just want to get a simple task completed.
▪ These motivations change at different times.
▪ e.g. Two people may use a smart phone in two different
ways
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Activities
▪ The term is used for very simple tasks as well as highly

complex, lengthy activities. Designer needs to focus on
the purpose of the activity, after which these features
should be considered:
▪ Temporal aspects
▪ Cooperation and Complexity
▪ Safety-critical
▪ Data and media requirements
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1.Temporal Aspects
▪ Temporal aspects covers how regular or infrequent activities are

▪ Something that is undertaken every day can have a very different
design from something that happens only once a year.
▪ E.g. People will quickly learn how to make calls using a mobile phone,
but may have great difficulty in changing the battery
▪ Designers should ensure that frequent tasks are easy to do,

but they also need to ensure that infrequent tasks are easy
to learn (or remember) how to do
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2.Cooperation and complexity
▪ Another important feature of activities is whether they

can be carried out alone or whether they are essentially
concerned with working with others.
▪ If a task or activity is well defined it can be
accomplished with a simple step-by-step design.
▪ A vague activity means that people have to be able to
▪ browse around
▪ see different types of information
▪ move from one thing to another and so on.
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3. Safety-critical Activities
▪ Some activities are ‘safety-critical’, in which any

mistake could result in an injury or a serious accident.
▪ Clearly where safety is involved designers must pay
every attention to ensuring mistakes do not have a
serious effect
▪ In general it is vital for designers to think about what
happens when people make mistakes and errors and to
design for such circumstances.
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4. Data and media requirements
▪ If large amounts of alphabetic data have to be input as

part of the activity (recording names and addresses,
perhaps, or word processing documents) then a
keyboard is almost certainly needed.
▪ In other activities there may be a need to display video
or high quality colour graphic displays.
▪ A library, for example, just needs to scan in a bar code or
two, so the technology can be designed to exploit this feature
of the activity.
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Contexts
▪ Activities always happen in a context, so there is a need

to analyse the two together. Three types of contexts are:
▪ The organizational context
▪ The social context
▪ Physical circumstances under which the activity takes place
▪ Let's take cash withdrawal from an ATM for example…
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1.Organizational Context
▪ The impact on the bank’s ways of working and its
relationships with its customers.
2.Social Context
▪ The time spent on a transaction or the need to queue.
3.Physical Context
▪ the location of the device.
▪ the effect of sunshine on the readability of the display
▪ security considerations
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Technologies
▪ The final part of the PACT framework is the

technologies: the medium that interactive system
designers work with.
▪ Focus is drawn to:
▪ Input
▪ Output
▪ Communication
▪ Content
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PACT Analysis: way to do it
▪ 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.
▪ This can be done using brainstorming and other
envisionment techniques and by working with people
through observations, interviews and workshops
▪ The designer should look for trade-offs between
combinations of PACT and think about how these might
affect design.
20
Summary
▪ What is PACT?
▪ Main Components of PACT
▪ PACT Analysis: way to do it
21
Thank you…
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User Experience

1.Essentials of User Experience

▪ Designers need to keep

▪ As personal computers have become more common, so

▪ People differ from one another in a variety of ways

▪ Physical differences have a huge effect on how accessible, how

▪ Psychologically, people differ in a

▪ There are often large differences in the psychological

▪ The understanding and knowledge that we possess of

▪ People make use of systems, products and services for

▪ The term is used for very simple tasks as well as highly

▪ Temporal aspects covers how regular or infrequent activities are

▪ Designers should ensure that frequent tasks are easy to do,

▪ Another important feature of activities is whether they

▪ Some activities are ‘safety-critical’, in which any

▪ If large amounts of alphabetic data have to be input as

▪ Activities always happen in a context, so there is a need

▪ The final part of the PACT framework is the

▪ To do a PACT analysis the designer simply scopes out the

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