The evoluation of interface design process

"Design, even just the usability rquires a team of people with extremely different talents" - Donald Norman (1996)



The problem mapped in producing a good interface design of interactive multimedia courseware is to understand what users require from a product and how to provide effective engagement. In this context for example, interface design needs to consider carefully on graphic visual and navigation to engage learners in meaningful authentic tasks.

In the past, user interface design were totally driven by the current technologies and the current systems on which the courseware was built. This is call system driven or technology driven. Therefore since early 1980s the focus has been on user centered design where users are somewhat invovled in the design process but as a passive role. Further as part of the Human computer interaction (HCI) it was moving to new methodologis called user involved design or learner centered design.

For today's trend in designing interface design for computer application, the current approaches are participatory design, ethnographic techniques and field research techniques are adequate. This new approaches seek to improve requirement defination by creating a new relationship between designer and user.