Principles of Interaction Design

According to Nielsen Norman Group, there are several important fundamental principles of interaction design that are completely independent of technology:

·       Visibility (also called perceived affordances or signifiers)

·       Feedback

·       Consistency (also known as standards)

·       Non-destructive operations (hence the importance of undo)

·       Discoverability: All operations can be discovered by systematic exploration of menus

·       Scalability. The operation should work on all screen sizes, small and large.

·       Reliability. Operations should work. Period. And events should not happen randomly.


The first principle visibility need to be extended to hearing with same fundamental awareness.


Distictive Non-intrusive Non-speech Audio Design

Non-speech audio is part of everybody's daily life. It contains rich information. You may not notice it but it's vital for evironment awareness. The design would definitely take this virtue. The difficulty is distictive but non-intrusive sound design. It requires unique non-nature sound to isolate itself from environment. It also requires non-intrusive except alert sound to comfort user as background information. How hard it is!


Instant Interactive Audio Feedback Design

Instant interactive audio feedback design is the key element. Just like scratching sound on the surface of an objetc, user can percieve the attribute of the object. The sound is generated by user interaction with the object in the fashion of instant feedback. User may adjust the action in "no time". It's the closed loop of interaction. Machine provides this means only without involve into interpreting the user action, make decision and then send feedback. However, machine can retrieve the user action from the closed loop. This is the design guidline.