Developing intuitive UIs
The proliferation of computing devices requires intuitive user interfaces as each device serves a different purpose and comes with a customized user interface. The number of unset digital clocks in the home and car environment (e.g. microwaves, VCRs, DVDs and car stereos) reminds us that we are not there yet. The success of the iPhone shows that consumers are putting more and more focus on the lifestyle factor and smart interaction design than on mere functionality.
User interfaces to computer-driven devices – and these include cars – are cognitive in nature and require a good grasp of how the mind works to be able to design interfaces that are likely to work well with the majority of potential users. Aside from mechanical products, design guidelines for such devices are not obvious and the difference between superior and inferior design can be as small as the number of buttons on a computer mouse. But bad UI design is no longer acceptable in any product irrespective of price.
Multimodal interaction
A key characteristic of a human is the ability to adapt to changing environments in a flexible manner. A smart user interface should be able to take advantage of this ability by offering various modes of interaction.
Different input methods such as keyboard, mouse, touch screen, speech, pen, gestures or accelerometer signals, and different output methods such as display, speech and haptic feedback all provide enhanced usability and the redundancy to let the user choose the most suitable way of engaging for the given environment. If the user’s hands and eyes are busy (e.g. while driving), it is preferable to use speech while in a noisy environment speech modality is unsuitable. Combining different modalities may create synergies, like the combination of map display and audible navigation instructions in car navigation systems, or it may be used to simply transfer more information to the user in the same time.
A critical step in multimodal interface design is the mapping between information and suitable input/output modalities. The omni-directional nature of speech output is not particularly well suited to present sensitive information to the user in public places. The diagram below shows the challenge of modern experience design as we move from single-experience/single-interaction models to multi-experience/multi-interaction models.
UI design and development at Teleca
We have found the best setup for us to design and develop compelling user interfaces to be an interdisciplinary team consisting of UI designers, user experience experts, system architects, requirements engineers, software developers and verification engineers.
Starting with the early phases of ideation and concept creation, the team works its way through user studies employing early prototypes and system architecture analyses to software implementation and verification. By following this approach, we ensure choosing a solution that is feasible and user-centric, fit for purpose and taking into account the design context, i.e. system architecture and already existing software.
We partner with some of the most notable companies in the industry for excellence in user experience design and developments. Together with Adobe, we offer engineering and consulting services for Adobe’s flash technology. We have partnered with German based IconMobile Group for providing exceptional UI concept and design skills and Swedish user interface technology company TAT to offer attractive UI differentiation and user experiences on mobile devices. Together with Swiss based SVOX we are able to offer the complete range of speech technology products for user interfaces supporting voice modality in both input and output, i.e. speech recognition, text to speech, echo cancellation, noise reduction and voice dialog systems.
Figure 1: Interdisciplinary Development Model