Dan Saffer - Microinteractions: Designing with Details

Microinteractions

Dan Saffer

Beijing Cambridge Farnham Kln Sebastopol Tokyo

Praise for Microinteractions

Microinteractions is a book Ive wanted for a very long time. Ive needed a thoughtful, insightful, and concise understanding of how to look at interaction design at the atomic level. Dans delivered that in spades.

Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering

Microinteractions is an essential guide to designing in todays world where a typical person touches a hundred different user experiences each day, and only the clearest interactions will turn a new user experience into a cherished product.

In this book, Dan Saffer turns the Cognitive Walkthrough on its head and takes it to the next level, creating a new model for defining interactions and illustrating the strength of designing for moments rather than systems.

An easy, jargon-free read and an invaluable reference, Microinteractions is packed with vital principles backed up by a wide spectrum of useful real-world examples of what to do and what not to do. Youll get something out of reading any two pages and even more out of reading them again. The book is an example of its own teachings. Approachable, but with deeper insights as needed.

Kevin Fox, designer, Gmail

Saffer has written an excellent, compact, and eminently readable volume on a subject under-valued and under-discussed in our industry: the art and science of creating small, delightful moments in our daily interactions with technology. I recommend it to any designer or programmer looking to enhance the desirability and polish the utility of their apps, sites, or services, one interaction at a time.

Robert Reimann, Founding President, Interaction Design Association (IxDA); Principal Interaction Designer, PatientsLikeMe; co-author, About Face 3 (Wiley)

Dariel Fitzkee, the famous magicians magician, once stated, Magic is both in the details and in the performance. Interaction design is just like that. It is in reality creating a user illusion out of many tiny, nuanced, interesting moments. Dans book, Microinteractions, shines a magnifying glass on these moments and teases out how to go from a good to a great user illusion. I highly recommend this book to every designer and implementer of user experiences in any medium.

Bill Scott, Senior Director UIE, Paypal

I have never before seen a book drill down to this level of detail into how interactions (let alone microinteractions) actually work. It is one of the better books on interaction design Ive read. Im going to give copies to my designers and product managers and require that they read it and explain it back to me.

Christian Crumlish, Director of Product, CloudOn

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I first encountered Dan Saffers interest in microinteractions at a conference in Brazil. I was immediately captivated. Dan started his talk with the story of the ringing cellphone at a symphony concert that forms the opening pages of . It was very clear that by focusing upon the small, Dan had discovered something very big.

I next encountered the importance of getting the details right through my own frustrations with Apples photo cataloging and editing application, Aperture. I was putting together the illustrations for a book when suddenly my computer froze and I had to force a reboot. But when I tried to open Aperture, it announced that the database was corrupted and promptly shut down. Huh? What is the use of an error message that provides no remedy? What was I supposed to do?

I searched the Aperture help files. No luck. I searched Apples support website. No luck. I was annoyed and concerned: How could I get the photos back? The program wouldnt even launch. I keep a backup on another computer, but my synchronization program was far too efficient: the corrupted file had been transferred to the other computer.

Finally, after much travail, an Internet search yielded the solution, described in a very nicely formatted set of instructions from Apple. I followed the instructions and 15 minutes later, all my photos were restored. (Note that I couldnt find this from the Apple site: I found a discussion group where someone had posted the link to the proper location at Apple.)

Why am I telling you this? Because if only Apples programmers had read this book, I wouldnt have had to go through any agony. Microinteraction. Get the details right.

Why didnt that error message contain the solution as well as identifying the problem? After all, Apple had a very nice message explaining the problem and saying just what to do about it. Suppose the error message had said, The database is corrupted: to correct this, follow these steps (with active buttons on the message dialog box that would initiate the process). Why didnt Apple do this? Was it because the programmers for this part of the program didnt consider it part of their responsibility? Was it because these programmers came from a different group that maintained the database, so they only knew there was a problem but not how to fix it? Or was it because it is not in the culture of error-message writers to also provide the solution? (My best guess is that all three factors played a role.) Whatever the reason, the result is an inferior user experience, one that now has me extremely unhappy with Aperture, searching for a better alternative. This cant be the response Apple wants to produce in its customers. If only they had been able to read this book.

Are microinteractions details? Damn right: the magic is all in the details.

The micro in microinteractions implies it is about the small things. Small? Yes. Unimportant? Absolutely not! Microinteractions is about those critical details that make the difference between a friendly experience and traumatic anxiety. As Dan Saffer points out in his , designers love to get the big picture right. Its a wonderful feeling. No problem is too large. But even if the big picture is done right, unless the details are also handled properly, the solution fails: the details are what control the moment-to-moment experience. It is timely details that lead to seamless interaction with our products. Alternatively, it is the lack of attention to those details that lead to frustration, irritation, and eventually an intense dislike of the product. Yes, the big picture matters, but so too does the detailed picture. It is attention to detail that creates a smooth feeling of accomplishment.

There are several steps to great microinteractions. The first, and for many developers, the hardest, is to identify the situation properly. This requires great observational skills: watching people interact, watching yourself interact, identifying the pain points, identifying logical sequences, and then determining which things make sense to bring together. Obvious candidates can be found in error messages and dialog boxes. Each presents some information, thus implying the next step to be performed. Why not make that next step part of the present step?