Exploring the Effects of Different Levels of Formality (Beautification) on the Design Process

1. Exploring the Effects of Different Levels of Formality (Beautification) on the Design Process Louise Yeung (MSc student - Psychology) Supervisors: Dr Brenda Lobb, Dr Beryl Plimmer, Dr Douglas Elliffe

2. Overview: • Background • Purpose of study • Experimental Design • Results • Future research areas • Questions..

3. Design research Design Activities • Sketching is important in design (Goel, 1990; Goldschmidt, 1991) especially in early stages in design process (Do, 2005; Lim, et al., 2004) • Transfer from paper prototypes (Sketches) to the computer BUT…

4. During Transfer... • Clumsy • Error-Prone • Unproductive • Inefficient….

5. Informal Sketch-based tools • Increasing research and development • e.g. PDA, digital whiteboards… Inkit (on-going project since 2002) • Increase of demand and usage by designers(Pomm & Werlen, 2004) • Many advantages of sketch-base (informal) design tools: • “Getting the best of two worlds” • “Bridges the gap”

6. “Beautification” • Challenge = the need to “beautify” sketched content(Plimmer & Apperley, 2003; Plimmer & Grundy, 2005) • Beautification = process of tidying a hand-drawn diagram (Sketch) into a more ‘formal looking’ diagram

7. Interaction difference… hand-drawn (informal) VS computer-rendered (formal) • Research: more functional changes and comments if working with a hand-drawn diagram rather than a formal (computerized) diagram (Bailey and Konstan, 2003; Black, 1990; Goel, 1995; Plimmer and Apperley, 2002) • What happens in between when a diagram is more or less formal? • design decisions, cognition, perception?

8. Purpose of my study • To explore the different types and levels of beautification (formality) • To evaluate the effects of levels of beautification (formality) on how people interact with the design • Research question: Does the level of formality of a prototype design affect the number (and quality) of changes designers make during iterative design?

9. Method • Participants:14 female, 16 male • Experiment design: within-subject design • IV:Levels of formality - 5 Levels (5 conditions) • Latin Square design to counterbalance • S1 1 2 3 4 5 • S2 2 3 4 5 1 • S3 3 4 5 1 2 • S4 4 5 1 2 3 • S5 5 1 2 3 4…etc • S1 5 4 3 2 1 • S2 4 3 2 1 5 • S3 3 2 1 5 4 • S4 2 1 5 4 3 • S5 1 5 4 3 2…etc

10. 5 conditions – 5 designs • Given 5 equivalent designs of web (HTML) forms in terms of: • 1) the purpose of the forms – requiring users to fill in personal information • 2) order of elements in the design • 3) the balance of types of element • 4) the number of elements in each design (i.e. total of 58). • 5) each design had 23 ‘mistakes’ (according to design guidelines) for participants to ‘correct’

11. Method • Taxonomy of beautification Hand drawn form ------------continuum ----------- Computer-generated form

12. (A) (A) (B) (B) (C) Vertical Alignment  Horizontal Alignment Snap to grid

13. (A) (B) (C) (D) Shape standardization

14. Fully Hand-Drawn 33.33% smoothed Fully smoothed (Straight Lines) 66.66% smoothed

15. Low formality Medium-low formality

16. Medium-high formality High formality

17. LOW formality (Paper & pen) LOW formality (Tablet PC) LOWformality (Tablet PC) HIGHformality (Tablet PC) • Dependent variable: Number of changes made (Total functional changes & Quality functional changes & expected functional changes) • Preliminary results: • One-way repeated measures ANOVA • Significant Main effect (formality) • Significant Linear trend • Pair-wise comparisons showed some interesting differences: VS VS • Group differences: Design experience

18. Mean Expected functional changes made across levels of formality

19. Mean Expected functional changes across Levels of Formality according to design experience: none/non-CS/SE & CS/SE

20. Future research • Exploring more dimensions and levels of formality (i.e. aspects of beautification) • E.g. color (combination?), look-and-feel..etc • Exploring the effects of beautification at different stages in the design process • e.g. early vs refinement • design-decisions • At different levels of beautification: • Novice vs Expert designers • Individual vs group decision making in the design process at different stages • Evaluation of different levels of beautification for different groups of people e.g. ? • Pen and Paper VS Tablet PC

21. Implications • Software development • Types of beautification at different stages • Improvements in the design process • Increase in efficiency (motivation?) • More time for other design activities • Practical Real world situations e.g. client presentation - photoshop is commonly used. • However, during early stages… Suggestions/Questions?

22. References • Goldschmidt, G. (1991). The dialectics of sketching. Creativity Research Journal, 2(2), 123–143. • Goel, V. (1995). Sketches of Thought. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA • Lim, et al. (2004). A study of sketching behaviour to support free-form surface modelling from on-line sketching. Design Studies, 25(4), 393-413. • Do, Y.E. (2005). Design sketches and sketch design tools. Knowledge-Based Systems, 18(8), 383-405. • Plimmer, B. E., & Apperley, M. (2004). Interacting with Sketched Interface Designs: An evaluation study. Proceedings of SigChi, Vienna, 1337-1340. • Plimmer, B. E., & Grundy, J. (2005). Beautifying sketching-based design tool content: issues and experiences. Proceedings of AUIC2005, Newcastle. • Pomm, C., & Werlen, S. (2004). Smooth Morphing of Handwritten Text, Proceedings of AVI 04, Gallipoli, 328-335.