{"id":547,"date":"2015-08-03T15:27:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T19:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/?p=547"},"modified":"2015-08-03T15:31:09","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T19:31:09","slug":"interaction-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/interaction-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"Interaction Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Word:\u00a0<\/strong>Interaction Cost<\/p>\n<p><strong>Definition:\u00a0<\/strong>An interaction cost\u00a0is equal to the physical effort plus the mental effort exuded by the user per a given task.<\/p>\n<p>In a perfect world, the interaction cost would be zero, in that the user would know exactly what she has to do and how she can accomplish her goals, all without any effort or strain. However, we know that this is\u00a0an impossible standard\u00a0to attain, so the point is to get close!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reference:\u00a0<\/strong>This term comes from the early days of Human Computer Interaction and is used to evaluate a product's usability. Tools such as <a href=\"http:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/heuristic-evaluation\/\" target=\"_blank\">heuristic evaluations<\/a>\u00a0directly influence and ultimately minimize the interaction cost for the user.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thoughts: \u00a0<\/strong>Examples\u00a0of efforts that can be minimized and ultimately lower the interaction cost are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reading<\/li>\n<li>Scrolling<\/li>\n<li>Clicking\/tapping<\/li>\n<li>Typing<\/li>\n<li>Page loading<\/li>\n<li>Way-finding<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now let's reduce the abstraction and look at a very basic example!\u00a0Image you are filling out a form on a mobile app. You are exerting effort every time you read a form field label, click into the field, type a value into that field, and then finally submit the value. When broken down in this manner, that is a lot of effort!<\/p>\n<p>Think\u00a0about the small things that we can do as UX designers that will help lower this effort. We can\u00a0automatically display the numerical keyboard on a phone number or zip code fields. We can allow the user to tab from one field to the next without exiting the keyboard display. We can display shortcuts to various form field sections for easy access. The possibilities are endless!<\/p>\n<p>These may seem like small interactions and mundane examples but it is through such details that the larger interaction cost is reduced and the usability of a product ultimately increases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Word:\u00a0Interaction Cost Definition:\u00a0An interaction cost\u00a0is equal to the physical effort plus the mental effort exuded by the user per a given task. In a perfect world, the interaction cost would be zero, in that the user would know exactly what she has to do and how she can accomplish her goals, all without any effort [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,114,11,23],"tags":[175,8,9],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interaction-design","category-strategy","category-terms","category-user-interface","tag-interaction-cost","tag-user-experience","tag-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}