Chapter 7

INTERFACES
 Overview
• Interface types
 Highlight the main design and research
considerations for each of the different
interfaces
• Consider which interface is best for a
given application or activity

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20 interface types covered
1. Command
2. Graphical
3. Multimedia
4. Virtual reality
5. Web
6. Mobile
7. Appliance
8. Voice
9. Pen
10. Touch
11. Gesture
12. Haptic
13. Multimodal
14. Shareable
15. Tangible
16. Augmented Reality
17. Wearables
18. Robots and drones
19. Brain–computer interaction

20. Smart
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 Command line interfaces
• Commands such as abbreviations (for
instance, ls) typed in at the prompt to which
the system responds (for example, by listing
current files)
• Some are hard wired at keyboard, while
others can be assigned to keys
• Efficient, precise, and fast
• Large overhead to learning set of commands
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 Second Life command line-based
interface for visually-impaired users

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 Research and design considerations

• Form, name types and structure are key

research questions
• Consistency is most important design principle
 For example, always use first letter of command

• Command interfaces popular for web scripting

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 Graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
• Xerox Star first WIMP gave rise to GUIs
• Windows
 Sections of the screen that can be scrolled, stretched, overlapped,
opened, closed, and moved around the screen using the mouse
• Icons
 Pictograms that represent applications, objects, commands, and
tools that were opened when clicked on
• Menus
 Lists of options that can be scrolled through and selected
• Pointing device
 A mouse controlling the cursor as a point of entry to the windows,
menus, and icons on the screen

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Example of first generation GUI

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Simple smartwatch menus
with 1, 2, or 3 options

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 Window design
• Windows were invented to overcome the physical
constraints of a computer display
 They enable more information to be viewed and tasks
to be performed
• Scroll bars within windows enable more
information to be viewed
• Multiple windows can make it difficult to find
desired one
 Listing, tabbing, and thumbnails are techniques that
can help
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Window design: Thumbnails of top websites
visited and suggested highlights

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Selecting a country from a scrolling
window

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Is this method any better?

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 Menu styles
Flat list: Good for showing large number of options at the
same time when display is small
Drop down: Shows more options on same screen (for
example, cascading)
Pop-up: When pressed, command key for relevant options
Contextual: Provides access to often-used commands
associated with a particular item
Collapsible: Toggles between + and − icons on a header to
expand or contract its contents
Mega: All options shown using 2D drop-down layout
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Template for a collapsible menu

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A mega menu

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 Research and design considerations
• Window management
 Enables users to move fluidly between different windows (and
monitors)
• How to switch attention between windows without getting
distracted
• Design principles of spacing, grouping, and simplicity should
be used
• Which terms to use for menu options (for example, “front”
versus “bring to front”
• Mega menus easier to navigate than drop-down ones

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 Icon design
• Icons are assumed to be easier to learn and
remember than commands
• Icons can be designed to be compact and variably
positioned on a screen
• Now pervasive in every interface
 For example, they represent desktop objects, tools (for
example, a paintbrush), applications (for instance, a web
browser), and operations (such as cut, paste, next, accept,
and change)

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 Icons
• Since the Xerox Star days, icons have changed in their
look and feel:
 black and white
Color, shadowing, photorealistic images, 3D rendering,
and animation

• Many designed to be very detailed and animated

making them both visually attractive and informative
• Can be highly inviting, emotionally appealing, and
feel alive

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 Icon forms
• The mapping between the representation and
underlying referent can be:
 Similar (for example, a picture of a file to represent the object file)
 Analogical (for instance, a picture of a pair of scissors to represent
‘cut’)
 Arbitrary (such as the use of an X to represent ‘delete’)
• The most effective icons are similar ones
• Many operations are actions making it more
difficult to represent them
 Use a combination of objects and symbols that capture the salient
part of an action

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2 types of icon styles

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Flat 2D icons for a smartphone and
a smartwatch

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 Activity
• Sketch simple icons to represent the following
operations to appear on a digital camera
screen:
 Turn image 90-degrees sideways
 Auto-enhance the image
 Crop the image
 More options
• Show them to someone else and see if they
can understand what each represents
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Basic edit icons that appear on
the iPhone app

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 Research and design considerations
• There is a wealth of resources for creating icons
 Guidelines, style guides, icon builders, libraries,
online tutorials
• Text labels can be used alongside icons to help
identification for small icon sets
• For large icon sets (for instance, photo editing or
word processing) can use the hover function

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 Multimedia
• Combines different media within a single interface
with various forms of interactivity
 Graphics, text, video, sound, and animation
• Users click on links in an image or text
 Another part of the program
 An animation or a video clip is played
 Users can return to where they were or move on to
another place
• Can provide better ways of presenting information
than a single media can
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 Pros and cons
• Facilitates rapid access to multiple representations of
information
• Can provide better ways of presenting information
than can any media alone
• Can enable easier learning, better understanding,
more engagement, and more pleasure
• Can encourage users to explore different parts of a
game or story
• Tendency to play video clips and animations while
skimming through accompanying text or diagrams

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Multimedia learning app designed
for tablet

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 Research and design considerations
• How to design multimedia to help users
explore, keep track of, and integrate the
multiple representations
 Provide hands-on interactivities and simulations
that the user has to complete to solve a task
 Provide quizzes, electronic notebooks, and games
• Multimedia good for supporting certain
activities, such as browsing, but less
optimal for reading at length
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 Virtual reality
• Computer-generated graphical simulations
providing:
 “the illusion of participation in a synthetic
environment rather than external observation of
such an environment” (Gigante, 1993)
• Provide new kinds of experience, enabling
users to interact with objects and navigate in
3D space
• Create highly-engaging user experiences

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 Pros and cons
• Can have a higher level of fidelity with objects that they
represent compared to multimedia
• Induces a sense of presence where someone is totally
engrossed by the experience
 “a state of consciousness, the (psychological) sense of being in
the virtual environment” (Slater and Wilbur, 1999)
• Provides different viewpoints: first and third person
• Early head-mounted displays were uncomfortable to
wear and could cause motion sickness and disorientation
• Lighter VR headsets are now available (for example, HTC
Vive) with more accurate head tracking
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 Application areas
• Video games
• Arcade games for social groups
• Therapy for fears
• Experience how others feel emotions
 For example, empathy and compassion
• Enrich user’s planning experience for travel
destinations
• Architecture, design, and education
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Polygon graphics used to represent avatars
for the We Wait VR experience

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 Research and design considerations
• Much research on how to design safe and realistic VRs to
facilitate training
 For example, flying simulators
 Help people overcome phobias (for example, spiders or talking in
public)
• Design issues
 How best to navigate through them (for instance, first versus third
person)
 How to control interactions and movements (for example, by using
head and body movements)
 How best to interact with information (for instance by using keypads,
pointing, and joystick buttons)
 Level of realism to aim for to engender a sense of presence

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 Website design
• Early websites were largely text-based, providing
hyperlinks
• Concern was with how best to structure
information to enable users to navigate and
access them easily and quickly
• Nowadays, more emphasis is on making pages
distinctive, striking, and aesthetically pleasing
• Need to think of how to design information for
multiple platforms—keyboard or touch?
 For example, smartphones, tablets, and PCs
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 Usability versus aesthetics?
• Vanilla or multi-flavor design?
 Ease of finding something versus aesthetic and
enjoyable experience
• Web designers are:
 “thinking great literature”
• Users read the web like a:
 “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour” (Krug, 2014)
• Need to determine how to brand a web page to
catch and keep ‘eyeballs’

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 Breadcrumbs for navigation
Breadcrumbs are category labels:
• Enable users to look at other pages without losing
track of where they have come from
• Very usable
• Enable one-click access to higher site levels
• Attract first time visitors to continue to browse a
website having viewed the landing page

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 In your face Web ads
• Web advertising is often intrusive and
pervasive
• Flashing, aggressive, persistent, and
annoying
• Often requires action to get rid of
• What is the alternative?
 Use of ad blockers
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 Research and design considerations
• Many books and guidelines on website design
• Veen’s (2001) three core questions to consider
when designing any website:
1. Where am I?
2. Where can I go?
3. What’s here?

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 Activity
• Look at a fashion brand’s website, for example,
Nike.com
• What kind of website is it?
• How does it contravene the design principles
outlined by Veen?
• Does it matter?
• What kind of user experience is it providing for?
• What was your experience of engaging with it?

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 Mobile interfaces
• Handheld devices intended to be used
while on the move
• Have become pervasive, increasingly used
in all aspects of everyday and working life
 For example, phones, fitness trackers, and
smartwatches
• Larger-sized tablets used in mobile settings
 Including those used by flight attendants, marketing
professionals, and at car rental returns

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iBeer app

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QR codes and smartphones

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 Research and design considerations
• Mobile interfaces can be cumbersome to use for
those with poor manual dexterity or ‘fat’ fingers
• Key concern is hit area:
 Area on the phone display that the user touches to make
something happen, such as a key, an icon, a button, or an
app
 Space needs to be big enough for all fingers to press
accurately
 If too small, the user may accidentally press the wrong key
 Fitts’ law can be used to help design right spacing
o Minimum tappable areas should be 44 points x 44 points for all
controls

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 Appliances
• Everyday devices in home, public places, or car
 For example, washing machines, remotes, toasters, printers,
and navigation systems)

• And personal devices

 For instance, digital clock and digital camera

• Used for short periods

 For example, starting the washing machine, watching a
program, buying a ticket, changing the time, or taking a
snapshot

• Need to be usable with minimal, if any, learning

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Simple toaster control

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 Research and design considerations

• Need to design as transient interfaces

with short interactions
• Simple interfaces
• Consider trade-off between soft and hard
controls
 For example, use of buttons or keys, dials,
or scrolling

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 Voice User Interfaces
• Involves a person talking with a spoken language
app, for example, timetable, travel planner, or phone
service
• Used most for inquiring about specific information,
for example, flight times or to perform a transaction,
such as buying a ticket
• Also used by people with visual impairments
 For example, speech recognition word processors, page
scanners, web readers, and home control systems

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Have speech interfaces come of age?

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 Modeling human conversations
• People often interrupt each other in a
conversation
 Especially when ordering in a restaurant, rather
than let the waiter go through all of the options
• Speech technology has a similar feature called
‘barge-in’
 Users can choose an option before the system has
finished listing all of the options available

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 Structuring VUI dialogs
• Directed dialogs are where the system is in control of the
conversation
 Where it asks specific questions and requires specific responses
• More flexible systems allow the user to take the initiative:
 For example, “I’d like to go to Paris next Monday for two weeks.”
• But more chance of error, since caller might assume that
the system is like a human
• Guided prompts can help callers back on track
 For example, “Sorry I did not get all that. Did you say you wanted
to fly next Monday?”

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 Voice assistants (for example, Alexa)
• Have become popular in many homes
• Allow all to use rather than being single use
• Support families playing games, interactive
storytelling, jokes, and so forth
• Can encourage social and emotional bonding
• Young children (under 4), however, find it
difficult to be understood by the voice assistants
 Frustrating for them

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 Research and design considerations
• How to design systems that can keep conversation on
track
 Help people navigate efficiently through a menu system
 Enable them to recover easily from errors
 Guide those who are vague or ambiguous in their requests
for information or services

• Type of voice actor (for example, male, female,

neutral, or dialect)
 Do people prefer to listen to and are more patient with a
female or male voice, a northern or southern accent?
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 Pen-based devices
• Enable people to write, draw, select, and move
objects at an interface using light pens or styluses
 Capitalize on the well-honed drawing skills developed
from childhood
• Digital ink, for example, Anoto, use a
combination of ordinary ink pen with digital
camera that digitally records everything written
with the pen on special paper

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The Anoto pen being used and its internal
components

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 Advantages
• Allows users to annotate existing documents
quickly and easily
• Can be used to fill in paper-based forms that
can readily be converted to a digital record
using standard typeface
• Can be used by remote teams to communicate
and work on the same documents

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 Touchscreens
• Single touchscreens are used in walk-up kiosks (such as
ticket machines and ATMs) to detect the presence and
location of a person’s touch on the display
• Multi-touch surfaces support a range of more dynamic
finger tip actions, for example, swiping, flicking, pinching,
pushing, and tapping
• They do so by registering touches at multiple locations
using a grid
• Now used for many kinds of displays, such as smartphones,
iPods, tablets, and tabletops
 Supports one and two hand gestures, including tapping, zooming,
stretching, flicking, dwelling, and dragging

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A multi-touch surface

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 Research and design considerations
• Provides fluid and direct styles of interaction involving
freehand and pen-based gestures for certain tasks
• Core design concerns include whether size, orientation,
and shape of touch displays effect collaboration
• Much faster to scroll through wheels, carousels, and bars
of thumbnail images or lists of options by finger flicking
• Gestures need to be learned for multi-touch, so a small
set of gestures for common commands is preferable
• More cumbersome, error-prone, and slower to type using
a virtual keyboard on a touch display than using a physical
keyboard

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 Gesture-based systems

• Gestures involve moving arms and hands to

communicate
• Uses camera recognition, sensor, and
computer vision techniques
 Recognize people’s arm and hand gestures in a
room
 Gestures need to be presented sequentially to be
understood (compare with the way sentences are
constructed)

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 Gestures used in the operating theater

Recognizes core gestures for manipulating MRI or CT images using Microsoft Kinect
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 Research and design considerations

• How does computer recognize and

delineate user’s gestures?
 Start and end points?
 Difference between deictic and hand waving

• How realistic must the mirrored graphical

representation of the user be in order for
them to be believable?
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 Haptic interfaces
• Provide tactile feedback
 By applying vibration and forces to a person’s body,
using actuators that are embedded in their clothing or
a device they are carrying, such as a smartphone
• Vibrotactile feedback can be used to simulate the
sense of touch between remote people who want
to communicate
• Ultrahaptics creates the illusion of touch in midair
using ultrasound to make the illusion of 3D shapes
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 Realtime vibrotactile feedback
• Provides nudges when
playing violin incorrectly
• Uses motion capture to
sense arm movements that
deviate from model
• Nudges are short vibrations

on arms and hands

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Exoskeleton with artificial muscles that uses
bubble haptic feedback

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 Research and design considerations
• Where best to place actuators on body
• Whether to use single or sequence of ‘touches’
• When to buzz and how intense
• How does the wearer feel it in different contexts?
• What kind of new smartphone/smartwatch apps can
use vibrotactile creatively?
 For example, slow tapping to feel like water drops meant
to indicate that it is about to rain, and heavy tapping to
indicate a thunderstorm is looming
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 Multimodal Interfaces
• Provide enriched user experiences
 By multiplying how information is experienced and detected using
different modalities, such as touch, sight, sound, and speech
 Support more flexible, efficient, and expressive means of human-
computer interaction
 Most common is speech and vision
• Can be combined with multi-sensor input to enable
other aspects of the human body to be tracked
 For example, eye gaze, facial expression, and lip movements
 Provides input for customizing user interfaces

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 Tracking a person’s movements

• Kinect camera can detect multimodal input in real time using RGA camera for facial
recognition and gestures, depth camera for movement tracking, and microphones
for voice recognition
• Used to build model of person and represented as avatar on display programmed to
move just like them

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 Research and design considerations
• Need to recognize and analyze user behavior, for
example, speech, gesture, handwriting, or eye gaze
• Much harder to calibrate these than single modality
systems
• What is gained from combining different input and
outputs
• Is talking and gesturing, as humans do with other
humans, a natural way of interacting with a
computer?
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 Shareable interfaces
Designed for more than one person to use:
• Provide multiple inputs and sometimes allow
simultaneous input by co-located groups
• Large wall displays where people use their own
pens or gestures
• Interactive tabletops where small groups interact
with information using their fingertips
• For example, DiamondTouch, Smart Table, and Surface

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A smartboard and an interactive tabletop
interface

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 Benefits
• Provide a large interactional space that can
support flexible group working
• Can be used by multiple users
 Can point to and touch information being
displayed
 Simultaneously view the interactions and have the
same shared point of reference as others
• Can support more equitable participation
compared with groups using single PC
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 Research and design considerations
• Core design concerns include whether size, orientation, and
shape of the display have an effect on collaboration
• Horizontal surfaces compared with vertical ones support
more turn-taking and collaborative working in co-located
groups
• Providing larger-sized tabletops does not improve group
working but encourages more division of labor
• Having both personal and shared spaces enables groups to
work on their own and in a group
 Cross-device systems have been developed to support seamless
switching between these, for example, SurfaceConstellations

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 Tangible Interfaces
• Type of sensor-based interaction, where physical
objects, for example, bricks, are coupled with
digital representations
• When a person manipulates the physical object/s,
it causes a digital effect to occur, for example, an
animation
• Digital effects can take place in a number of media
and places, or they can be embedded in the
physical object
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 Examples
• Flow Blocks
 Depict changing numbers and lights embedded in the blocks
 Vary depending on how they are connected together
• Urp
 Physical models of buildings moved around on tabletop
 Used in combination with tokens for wind and shadows
Digital shadows surrounding them to change over time

• MagicCubes
 Connect physical electronic components and sensors to
make digital events occur (for example, change color
depending on how much shaken)

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Learning to code and create with the tangible
MagicCubes

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 Benefits
• Can be held in one or both hands and combined and
manipulated in ways not possible using other interfaces
 Allows for more than one person to explore the interface
together

 Objects can be placed on top of each other, beside each other,

and inside each other
 Encourages different ways of representing and exploring a
problem space
• People are able to see and understand situations
differently
 Can lead to greater insight, learning, and problem-solving than
with other kinds of interfaces
 Can facilitate creativity and reflection
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 VoxBox
A tangible system that gathers opinions at events through playful
and engaging interaction (Goldsteijn et al., 2015)

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 Research and design considerations
• What kinds of conceptual frameworks to use to help identify novel and
specific features
• What kind of coupling to use between the physical action and digital
effect
 If it is to support learning, then an explicit mapping between action and effect is
critical
 If it is for entertainment, then it can be better to design it to be more implicit and
unexpected
• What kind of physical artifact to use
 Bricks, cubes, and other component sets are most commonly used because of
flexibility and simplicity
 Stickies and cardboard tokens can also be used for placing material onto a surface
• With what kinds of digital outputs should tangible interfaces be
combined?

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 Augmented Reality
• Augmented reality: Virtual representations are
superimposed on physical devices and objects
• Pokémon Go made it a household game
 Used smartphone camera and GPS to place virtual
characters onto objects in the environment as if they
really are there
• Many other applications including medicine,
navigation, air traffic control, games, and everyday
exploring
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 Other examples
In medicine
• Virtual objects, for example, x-rays and scans, are overlaid
on part of a patient’s body
• Aid the physician’s understanding of what is being
examined or operated
In air traffic control
• Dynamic information about aircraft overlaid on a video
screen showing the real planes, and so on landing, taking
off, and taxiing
• Helps identify planes difficult to make out
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Augmented reality overlay on a
car windshield

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AR that uses forward facing camera
• Enables virtual try-ons (for example, Snapchat filters)
• AT mirrors set up in retail stores for trying on make-
up, sunglasses, jewelry
 Convenient, engaging, and easy to compare more choices
 But cannot feel the weight, texture, or smell of what is being
tried on
• Can be used to enable users to step into a character
(for example, David Bowie, Queen Victoria)

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Singers trying on the virtual look of two
characters from the opera Akhnaten

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 Research and design considerations

• What kind of digital augmentation?

 When and where in physical environment?
 Needs to stand out but not distract from ongoing
task
 Needs to be able to align with real world objects
 What happens if the AR is slightly off?

• What kind of device?

 Smartphone, tablet, head up display or other?

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 Wearables
• First developments were head- and eyewear-
mounted cameras that enabled user to record
what was seen and to access digital information
• Since then, jewelry, head-mounted caps, smart
fabrics, glasses, shoes, and jackets have all been
used
 Provides the user with a means of interacting with
digital information while on the move
• Applications include automatic diaries, tour
guides, cycle indicators, and fashion clothing
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 Google Glass (2014)

Why was there so much excitement and concern about people

filming what they could see right in front of them?

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 Research and design considerations
• Comfort
 Needs to be light, small, not get in the way, fashionable, and
preferably hidden in the clothing
• Hygiene
 Is it possible to wash or clean the clothing once worn?
• Ease of wear
 How easy is it to remove the electronic gadgetry and replace it?
• Usability
 How does the user control the devices that are embedded in
the clothing?

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 Robots
Main types
• Remote robots used in hazardous settings
 Can be controlled to investigate bombs and other dangerous
materials
• Domestic robots helping around the house
 Can pick up objects and do daily chores like vacuuming
• Pet robots as human companions
 Have therapeutic qualities, helping to reduce stress and loneliness
• Sociable robots that work collaboratively with humans
 Encourage social behaviors

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 Social robots: Mel and Paro
• Cute and cuddly
• Can open and close eyes and make sounds and
movements

Source: Images courtesy of Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

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 Drones
• Unmanned aircraft that are controlled remotely and used in
a number of contexts
 For example, entertainment, such as carrying drinks and food to
people at festivals and parties
 Agricultural applications, such as flying them over vineyards and
fields to collect data about crops, which is useful to farmers
 Helping to track poachers in wildlife parks in Africa
• Can fly low and and stream photos to a ground station where
images can be stitched together into maps
• Can be used to determine the health of a crop, or when it is
the best time to harvest the crop
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Drone being used to survey the
state of a vineyard

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 Research and design considerations
• How do humans react to physical robots designed to exhibit
behaviors (for example, making facial expressions) compared
with virtual ones?
• Should robots be designed to be human-like or look like and
behave like robots that serve a clearly-defined purpose?
• Should the interaction be designed to enable people to
interact with the robot as if it was another human being or
more human-computer-like (for example, pressing buttons to
issue commands)?
• Is it acceptable to use unmanned drones to take a series of
images or videos of fields, towns, and private property
without permission or people knowing what is happening?

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 Brain-computer interfaces
• Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) provide a communication
pathway between a person’s brain waves and an external
device, such as a cursor on a screen
• Person is trained to concentrate on the task, for example,
moving the cursor
• BCIs work through detecting changes in the neural
functioning in the brain
• BCIs apps:
 Games (for example, Brain Ball)
 Enable people who are paralyzed to control robots

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A brain-computer interface being used by a
woman who is paralyzed to select letters
on the screen

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 Smart interfaces
• Smart: phones, speakers, watches, cars, buildings, cites
• Smart refers to having some intelligence and connected to
the internet and other devices
• Context-aware
 Understand what is happening around them and execute
appropriate actions, for example, a Nest thermostat
• Human-building interaction
 Buildings are designed to sense and act on behalf of the
inhabitants but also allow them to have some control
and interaction with the automated systems

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 Which interface?
• Which interface to use will depend on task, users, context,
cost, robustness, and so on
• Is multimedia better than tangible interfaces for learning?
• Is speech as effective as a command-based interface?
• Is a multimodal interface more effective than a mono-modal
interface?
• Will wearable interfaces be better than mobile interfaces for
helping people to find information in foreign cities?
• Are virtual environments the ultimate interface for playing games?
• Are shareable interfaces better at supporting communication and
collaboration compared with using networked desktop PCs?

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 Summary
• Many innovative interfaces have emerged in last 30
years, including speech, wearable, mobile, brain, and
tangible
• This raises many design and research questions as to
decide which to use
 For example, how best to represent information to the
user so that they can carry out ongoing activity or task
• New smart interfaces that are context-aware and
monitor people
 Raising new ethical issues concerned with what data is
being collected and what it is used for

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