Microinteractions
Books | Computers / User Interfaces
Dan Saffer
It’s the little things that turn a good digital product into a great one. With this practical book, you’ll learn how to design effective microinteractions: the small details that exist inside and around features. How can users change a setting? How do they turn on mute, or know they have a new email message? Through vivid, real-world examples from today’s devices and applications, author Dan Saffer walks you through a microinteraction’s essential parts, then shows you how to use them in a mobile app, a web widget, and an appliance. You’ll quickly discover how microinteractions can change a product from one that’s tolerated into one that’s treasured. Explore a microinteraction’s structure: triggers, rules, feedback, modes, and loops Learn the types of triggers that initiate a microinteraction Create simple rules that define how your microinteraction can be used Help users understand the rules with feedback, using graphics, sounds, and vibrations Use modes to let users set preferences or modify a microinteraction Extend a microinteraction’s life with loops, such as “Get data every 30 seconds”
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Author
Dan Saffer
Pages
170
Publisher
"O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Published Date
2013-04-30
ISBN
1449342795 9781449342791
Community ReviewsSee all
"This book is full of common sense advice. Be brief. Be consistent. Keep things simple. Yawn frequently. (That last one was my reaction, not actual advice from the book.)<br/><br/>A refrain repeated throughout the book is "don't start from zero." Microinteractions are about using the bits of information you already have about users to provide a more personalized interaction, such as using a device's location and a weather API to customize entertainment search results based on local weather.<br/><br/>Saffer also repeatedly emphasizes the importance of bringing data forward and of attaching additional information to often overlooked interface elements. For example, you could show the current temperature on a button used to launch a weather app.<br/><br/>Some other things this book says are:<br/><spoiler><br/>*It's a good practice to place the status of a trigger on the trigger itself (p. 38). For example, show how much of a song has played on the play button itself (39) or show the current weather when hovering over an icon that launches a weather app (37).<br/>*Tesler's Law of the Conservation of Complexity states that each activity has an inherent complexity. The complexity can be handled by the system or the user. It's best to err on the side of handling complexity within the system at the cost of taking control from the user (67).<br/>*By constraining interaction so that a user cannot do anything wrong, you should only need to present error messages when the system itself encounters a problem (75).<br/>*Feedback is a good element of an interaction to add a bit of personality too, but adding too much feedback may push the application toward the uncanny valley (95).<br/>*Mode switches can cause confusion, but "spring-loaded" modes (which require a continuous physical action to maintain) and one-off modes (which switch back after completing a microinteraction) are quick ways of changing functionality without causing confusion (113-4).<br/></spoiler>"
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