Interactive Design Practical Guide Series (ii): User information available

Can and, popular say is "can achieve", add subject and object, in "interactive design" this big context, the meaning should be "user can achieve own operation goal", this is not and "validity-user's operation is effective" repeat? In fact, in the practical Guide to Interactive design, "accessibility" is a narrow concept, is placed under the validity of, specifically interpreted as "color blindness, physical disabilities and other special people can complete the basic operation." To expand, this particular group should also include elderly children, illiterate people who are not good at using information.

In other words, the "accessible" definition of the interactive Design utility Guide is "information accessible". Specifically explained that in the product design application process, should take into account the special crowd's use condition, lets this partial user enjoy the barrier-free design to bring the convenience, in browsing, uses the webpage to be able to use this webpage to provide the related resources smoothly.

Interactive design is mainly considered by several special groups:

1. Color blindness

According to statistics, the world has about 8.65% of men and 0.43% of women, in the identification of some or all colors have difficulty. We generally refer to this defect as color blindness (color blindness). Among them, the mild color aberration is called anomalous trichromatism.

2. Physical disability

In China alone, the number of people with disabilities is about 83 million, accounting for 6.34% of the total population, 24.12 million of whom are physically disabled, accounting for 29.07%. Physically disabled persons in mental intelligence and normal people are not much different, this part of the group due to mobility inconvenience, for the computer, mobile terminals for the media network products have more urgent use of demand.

3. The elderly, children (5~12岁)

What is more noteworthy is that the aging trend in China is becoming more and more severe, with a forecast of 430 million of older people in China by 2050. The elderly retire, time is relatively abundant, in addition to from the traditional media access to information, the demand for information access to the network is also growing. Parents need to broaden their children's horizons and allow them to develop intelligence and entertainment at specific times on specific sites.

4. Illiteracy

In addition, from the cultural differences, the number of illiterate people in China still accounts for a considerable proportion of the total population, now our adult illiteracy accounted for 5.8%, although the basic knowledge of the network is almost zero, but once exposed to the network, they will have a high learning desire and enthusiasm, how to help them use the network as soon as possible, It is also a problem that web interaction designers should pay attention to.

5. Other

Other people who are not good at the use of information

Methods of interactive Design:

For so many special users, whether for professional or commercial interests, web product designers should pay attention to them, which is also as a designer of social responsibility. So how can the product be designed to meet the "availability" of special people, this requires designers in the design of a product, time to remind themselves not to forget the special crowd, transposition thinking, standing in the use of special people to design the overall layout of the Web products, the specific form of each element and operational behavior. In this section, the Interactive Design Practical guide also gives some basic ideas, the following are some of the design methods can be used for reference.

1. Use shape + color information tips

This is especially important for people who are color-blind, and their flaws are in color recognition, which means that if a designer uses only color as an informational cue in a place, it could be problematic, as in the following example:

The image above is an online tool provided by Apple's official website to help users find out which stores will be available tomorrow. The Apple designer uses the green filled circle to indicate the goods, the red circle indicates that the goods are not good, seemingly very clear, for ordinary people of course no problem. But for green color blindness users, it is not easy.

In fact, we only need to optimize the hint icon can solve the problem, modified as follows:

This example tells us that when using design elements, try to use shape + color to represent information, or use text hints. This will not affect the normal user and the special users who have difficulty in color recognition. There is a small trick to use, in the completion of the design, you can do their own design to color processing, and then an item to do interactive testing, so that can effectively avoid color recognition problems.

2. Simplified operation mode

Whether the elderly or illiterate for the operation of network products are not enough confidence in the situation, a simple way of operation, so that they quickly achieve the goal, to increase confidence is very helpful. For people with physical disabilities, the difficulty is that using interactive input devices, such as mice and keyboards, is more difficult than normal and requires simplifying the way they operate. For example, in the design of the operation as far as possible in the "choice" approach rather than "fill" (to avoid the finger disabled users to increase the burden). For example, the following design for the input date:

3. Fault tolerance and timely help

This is also a very important part of the interactive design Guide, which is all the more important for a particular group of people two points. The specific design method can refer to the following article http://ued.taobao.com/blog/category/ixd_guide/.

4. The use of visual, auditory, tactile and other means of diversification to convey the necessary information

In product design, for important operation and information hints can use voice prompts to match visual style to prompt user action status. For example, in some smartphone products, click on the touch-screen digital keyboard, not only the number of selected keys will change the background, and the screen has a touch of vibration hint.

5. Use of supporting tools

With the current technology, speech recognition can partly solve simple input problems, such as the Windows7 Voice command function, when the operator said "open Word", the computer can automatically start the software, but also for the elderly users of poor eyesight word to read the computer on the display of any article, But it takes a long way to make speech recognition completely to solve a lot of fast interactions between people and computers. In the future, perhaps the brain can directly control the computer, there have been some research results. The following image of Google mobile phone Chinese voice Search interface:

In addition can be built to assist disabled tools, WINDOWS7 has a new function, called OSK, that is, on-screen keyboard. People who are not accustomed to using the keyboard can use the mouse to click on this screen keyboard, limb is not very convenient users, you can turn on the keyboard on the screen to enlarge the keys to improve the accuracy of the elderly users with poor eyesight, you can enlarge the word on the button to read.

6. Easy to browse and reasonable information structure

For the elderly, looking at the Internet will feel dizzy, they feel all the words are too small, not easy to browse. So when you design it, you can switch to the fonts and web styles that fit the older people. For example, Baidu launched the elderly search to meet this demand, the larger font and highlight the elderly commonly used functions, the following figure:

Summary:

The above mentioned several points for the "information can be" designed to consider the method, for the special population barrier-free design needs to be more in-depth excavation of the needs of special populations, according to their physiological and psychological conditions, targeted to carry out the design work.

With the improvement of social civilization, interactive design of the special People's attention is also more and more high, and the concept of barrier-free design is more and more to be advocated by the majority of designers. In China, the Internet Association website recently officially opened the information barrier-free model column, the column introduced the barrier-free industry standard content and links, including some of the design specifications, interested, you can download, for the website design has a certain reference value.

According to a study published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, only 3 of the world's 100 major web sites have a long way to go to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

Author: Dragon

Article Source: Taobao ued