Direct Manipulation and Representation

What examples of this module’s design principles can you find in your world? Your job is to find design examples, one for each of the three key principles in this module: direct manipulation, world in miniature, and distributed cognition. For each example, find an interface that violates the principle, explain why the interface violates the principle, and sketch a redesign. Your examples can be drawn from the physical world, the digital world, or ideally both.

Direct-manipulation

Picture of a physical example of a direct manipulation violation:

Picture of a digital interface of a direct manipulation violation:

Explanation of the direct manipulation violation:

Physical Interface: Doesn't immediate feedback on actions.

The elevator floor number pad has violated the immediate feedback and visibility of representation in direct manipulation. The consistency key is very shame design. Users might be confusing to use this elevator keypad. Because the keypad design representation is not sorted. The representation of keypad is confusing.

Digital Interface: The visibility of the system is ugly and doesn't reliability.

Objects and designs have constantly presented in an ugly random way. http://arngren.net is a bad user interface e-commerce website that violates the Reliability (Events should not happen randomly) rules of direct manipulation. Interface objects are not properly represented. There is not a visible and continuous representation of the task objects and their actions. Consequently, there is no syntax to remember. Operations are not rapid and incremental. It's randomly designed.

Picture of the interface that has been redesigned to incorporate direct manipulation:

Please enter a description of redesign:

A direct manipulation interface allows a user to directly act on a set of objects (instruments) in the interface. While interacting with direct manipulation interfaces, users feel as if they are interacting with the domain rather than with the interface, so they focus on the task rather than on the technology. There is a feeling of direct involvement with a world of task objects rather than communication with an intermediary.

• In the physical example, I am trying to redesign sort the elevator floor buttons in the bottom to the top and left to right for immediate feedback on actions to the users.
• In the digital interface, I am trying to redesign set tidy design for good visibility and I think events should not happen randomly. Sketch design inspired by amazon and Alibaba.

World in miniature

Picture of a design that ought to use world in miniature:

Explanation of why world in miniature:

The gas stove model is inconsistent. The current practice and new technology should minimize the distance. The stove switch is designed on the other side of it. Maybe it's work fine, but the design model gas stove is not suitable. This can be lead to accidents.

Picture of the interface that has been redesigned to incorporate world in miniature:

Description of redesign: 

What users believe they know about a UI strongly impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new. I am trying to redesign this gas stove model. The stove switches can be controlled from close range. A good user interface should be simple think.

Distributed cognition

Picture of a physical example of a design that causes cognitive burden:

Picture of a digital interface that causes cognitive burden:

Explanation of what the user needs to remember or compute in the interface that constitutes a cognitive burden:

Physical Example: The electrical pole does not show differences wire. It has electrical wire, internet wire, telephone wire, and tv dish wire. Here all the wires together. Fatal accidents can happen in electrical pole places during rains.

Digital Interface: The pie chart does not convert slow calculation into fast perception. It's a poor representation.

Picture of the interface that has been redesigned to resolve a cognitive burden.

Description of redesign:

The total cognitive, or amount of mental processing power needed to use your site, affects how easily users find content and complete tasks.

• In the physical example, I am trying to redesign the electric pole wiring concept. The electrical wire will be on the electrical pole only. And all the other wires will enter the underground tunnel.
• In the digital interface example, I am trying to redesign the pie chart in a different design way. But the most important thing is, the pie chart is not suitable for huge data collection. It's better if you use a bar chart.

Author: Md. Imran Uddin

This assignment is part of Design Principles: an Introduction course offered by the University of California, San Diago, organized by Coursera.