May 27, 2002

SI688 Psychology and Information Systems, Final Paper

Download Paper Here

My final paper in SI688 focused on tools for non-programmers to design interfaces. Much of this research seemed academic at the time of writing, but in these past few years, we've seen a surge of designers who have incorporated Flash technology into their skillset. As a result, what used to be a theoretical problem has now become an industry-level market: how to build a UI design environment which accomodates a wide range of programming skill levels. The final assignment required the interpretation of HCI research to a real-world technology, and I chose Flash MX as the most promising UI design tool in our industry.

Note: We had a 2000 word limit for the final paper, otherwise I would have written much, much more. Since graduation, I've continued reading and researching along the same lines of thought. One day, I hope to contribute to Flash, or some kind of UI design technology, so that the general populace, rather than a small niche of specialists, will have the ability to design powerful interfaces within their own abilities.

Posted by samuel at May 27, 2002 05:14 PM
Comments

Interesting paper Sam. Couple of things:

It's "Dag Svanaes" not "Das Svanaes" (see http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~dags/) (Your biblio entry is correct.)

I know you're a bit biased :-), but your position here towards Flash is pretty uncritical. For instance, you point out that some aspects of Flash's interface work with users' mental models of how interfaces should work (drag and drop components), but that in general "the components architecture still favors developers with more programming knowledge."

I take your point that Flash is evolving towards a system that meets both non-technical designers' and advanced programmers' needs. What seems missing to me is an acknowledgement that programming concepts like encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, etc. are *also* metaphors, but (usually) not literaly embodied as manipulable objects in a GUI. (i.e. there's no "polymorphism" drag-and-drop widget.) You sort of place "non-programmers' metaphors" and "programmers' concepts" at opposite ends of a beginner-advanced user scale, which is false: advanced users also rely on the same "timeline" metaphor within flash, for example.

Also, do you know more specifics of any usability testing that MM did with Flash? The components metaphor is pretty similar to, but not exactly like, Director's behaviors. Behaviors have been around for years; I'd imagine that some usability testing has been done on those to refine them, but Flash components behave fairly differently.

Posted by: Andrew at May 28, 2002 09:18 AM

I'm not sure what I find more interesting, your topics or your approach to learning something new. It appears that you have a very organized why of taking on, or teking in, new material.

Posted by: steve at May 29, 2002 12:07 AM

Just finished reading your paper Sam. Very interesting concepts. I love your apporach to analyzing how first time users and power users can use the same interface to accomplish their goals. What a fun field of research. I also loved your presentation at Dev Con in Orlando it was the best I've see yet, I actually caught two session to not miss anything. I'm half way through your book also. I've searched your site to a link to your grad project where you built the dream application with the range sliders effecting the realestate map. Is that projects available for presentation? I'm implementing the sliders on a car search website, they are so much more intuitave than two combo boxes in HTML representing a high and low value thanks again for your insight and tireless effort for improving HCI.

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