Chapter

12 :

Design, Prototyping, and Construction

Web Resources

This site shows a set of bad designs for 'interactive' products, from filing cabinets to coffee machines, from car panels to traffic lights, and explains why they are bad. You might like to look at them yourself before reading the commentary, and see what you think of them. The site is quite old now, and several of these examples have been corrected in modern versions of the products, but it is no less interesting for that.

This one contains a range of methods, tools and basic explanations to support a wide range of interaction design activities. It specifically identifies government (specifically the US government) as its main audience, but the resources here are just as relevant to other sectors. There are many interesting resources and articles relevant to Interaction design, for example on equity and customer experience. There are also pages for the UK government’s design principles.

instructables.com is a community website all about the wild and whacky world of making. It is not restricted to interactive products, but includes areas such as jewelry, 3D printing, solar energy, up-cycling and reuse, robotics, and cooking. The site gives access to tools, ideas, instructions and products. makezine.com is a similar website for sharing ideas, products and tools, while arduino.cc contains news and updates for the Arduino toolkit.

Story mapping is a technique for creating a user journey from a series of user stories. Jeff Patton’s book provides an in-depth description of the technique and this presentation of his includes some useful information about agile development as well as story mapping; the visual quality isn’t good, but the audio is clear. There are two different (and shorter) introductions to story mapping here and here