Interface & Interaction Design Methods

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Abstractions about designing and modeling human-computer interaction, including design approaches centered on user activity or context (activity-centered design, ecological interface design, task-focused interface), models of the interaction cycle (GOMS, human action cycle, user modeling), and design methods and artifacts (design system, paper prototyping, usage-centered design).

20 abstractions in this family — domain-specific abstractions that sit near one another in structural-signature space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Activity-centered design — An interaction-design approach that organizes a product around the coherent activity users must accomplish rather than around isolated preferences or interface features.
• Context-sensitive user interface — Adapt available commands, presentation, or feedback to the application state, current object, user selection, mode, or task context.
• Crossing-based interface — A graphical interface in which moving a pointer across a target boundary triggers an action.
• Dark pattern — A deliberately deceptive interface design that steers users toward choices they would not otherwise make by obscuring, manipulating or asymmetrically presenting options.
• Design system — A governed collection of reusable interface components, design tokens, standards, and documentation that coordinates consistent digital-product design and implementation.
• Ecological interface design — An interface-design approach that visually exposes the invariant constraints and affordances of a complex work domain so operators can adapt across familiar and unforeseen situations.
• GOMS — A human–computer interaction modeling family representing skilled task performance through goals, operators, methods and selection rules.
• Human action cycle — A seven-stage human-computer interaction model linking goal formation, intention and action specification, execution, perception, interpretation and evaluation across the gulfs of execution and evaluation.
• Interface (computing) — A specified shared boundary through which hardware, software or human components exchange information and invoke services while hiding internal implementation.
• Natural user interface — A user-interface design approach making interaction feel direct and progressively learnable through familiar actions, perception and immediate feedback.
• Paper prototyping — A low-fidelity interface-design method in which hand-made screens and a human-simulated interaction expose usability problems before implementation.
• Switch access scanning — An indirect assistive selection method that presents choices in a predictable sequence or grouping and lets a user activate one or more switches when the desired item is highlighted or announced.
• Task-focused interface — A user interface that makes the current task and its dynamically inferred context the primary unit of interaction, filtering or emphasizing artifacts according to task relevance.
• Transgenerational design — A design approach creating products and environments usable and appealing across age groups, including changes in ability associated with aging, without stigmatizing adaptations.
• Usage-centered design — A user-interface design method that models user roles and essential task cases before deriving interaction structure and visual presentation.
• User analysis — A systems-design investigation that characterizes intended users, their goals, capabilities, contexts and workflows to constrain product and documentation decisions.
• User interface design — The design of perceptible controls, information and interaction behavior through which people operate a system.
• User interface plasticity — The capacity of a user interface to adapt across devices and environments while preserving its intended usability and task support.
• User modeling — The construction and updating of an internal representation of a user’s goals, knowledge, preferences, abilities or context to support system adaptation.
• Virtual body — A digitally mediated embodiment through which a person is represented, perceived and able to act in a virtual environment.