To help you pass the test we have listed the questions that might appear, as well as provided a useful list of terms you need to be familiar with. In the written exam, we might use these exact questions, and/or versions of them.

One thing is very important, maybe not for the written exam but for your future career; these questions below highlight content in the book which is important, and possible to ask simple questions around. There is other content in the book that is equally important, but which is not practical to ask questions about in a written exam. That content is not tested with the written exam. It is tested – and practices – in the exercises and the projects.

Questions

The questions are not meant to be essay-questions; it should be possible to answer most of them with 1-3 sentences.

All questions are from Cooper et al About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design (4th edition, 2014), and the chapter below refers to the chapters in the book.

Chapter 01

1. What are the three types of goals that Cooper mentions, and what do they mean?

2. What is the relation between goals, activities, tasks, and functionalities?

3. What are non-user goals? Exemplify!

4. What is the difference between mental models, represented models and

5. implementation models, respectively?

6. Give a brief overview of the steps in the goal-oriented process.

7. One of the most important goals for the user is to not feel…?

Chapter 05

1. List the elements of an interaction framework and describe the main reason for each of them, respectively.

2. When are usability tests useful for the development process, and what can they validate?

3. Describe how to conduct a formative usability test.

4. Describe how to conduct a summative usability test.

5. What are one of the main drawbacks of usability testing, according to Cooper?

Chapter 07

1. List the four values that we should design for, according to Cooper et al.

2. What does “ethical interaction design” imply – give examples

Chapter 08

1. In terms of interaction design, what does “taking an interest”, “being consentious”, “failing gracefully”, “bending the rules” and “taking responsibility” really MEAN, respectively?

Chapter 09

2. What is typical for a sovereign posture?

3. What is typical for a transient posture?

4. What design solutions are used in a well-designed sovereign posture application?

5. What design solutions are used in well-designed transient posture application?

6. Which postures can we use for the web, and how do they differ, respectively?

7. Which postures can we – generally speaking – use for smartphones and tablets, respectively?

Chapter 10

1. Explain the differences between beginners, intermediates and experts.

2. How can we design sovereign softwares to support the needs of beginners, intermediates and experts, preferably at the same time?

3. How do we graduate users from beginners to intermediates?

4. When users behave stupidly, they are not really stupid, they are probably… ?

Chapter 11

1. Cooper et al provide a very long bullet list on how design for “harmonious interactions”. Please summarize, merging the points into bigger topics.

2. Why is it a good idea to separate the use of a function from the configuration of the function?

3. What use can animations have in a graphical interface, according to Cooper?

Chapter 12

1. What is excise and why is it bad?

2. List the three types of excise, giving concrete examples of each type.

3. How can we eliminate excise? Give five examples.

4. Why is mapping controls important?

Chapter 13

1. What is affordance?

2. What is pliancy, and why is it important to design pliant objects?

3. What is the difference between affordance and pliancy?

4. Describe the four types of pliancy hinting.

5. What does idiomatic mean in the context of interaction design?

Chapter 14

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages with automatic save?

Chapter 15

1. What is modeless feedback?

2. Explain why rich modeless feedback is so [insert numerous positive adjectives] useful. Provide an example.

3. When and how should audible feedback be used?

4. How can the conventional undo feature be made more powerful?

Chapter 16

1. Give examples of pedagogic, immediate and invisible commands respectively.

2. Providing help or hints to users as they try to learn a new interface is important. List five ways in which this can be done in graphical interfaces.

3. Give five design choices to consider when it comes to accessibility and graphical interfaces.

Chapter 17

1. Which visual attributes do graphic components have?

2. Why are all-caps texts more difficult to read?

3. What are the benefits of using a grid as basis for design

4. Apart from using a grid, which principles should be applied when laying out the components of an interface to create structure and flow?

5. Does a layout grid decrease or increase visual excise? Why?

6. How can you establish a visual hierarchy in a graphical interface?

Chapter 18

1. What does WIMP stand for?

2. In terms of “anatomy of a desktop application”, which are the main building blocks?

3. How should menus be designed to be “pedagogic vectors”? Give examples.

4. What is the difference between a toolbar and a tool palette and when should they be used, respectively?

5. What is cascading menus? What are the advantage and disadvantage with them?

6. What is a tool tips?

7. When is an action committed; on mouse down or mouse up? Why?

8. What are the advantages with an object-verb oriented selection sequence?

9. What types of selection are there and when and why do they apply?

10. What characterizes a well-designed drag and drop sequence?

Chapter 19

1. What are the advantages with touch interaction?

2. What are the disadvantages with touch interaction?

3. How can some of the disadvantages with touch interaction be minimized?

4. List the gestures that are used for touch interaction interfaces

5. How can the search interface on mobile (and other) applications be made more efficient and powerful?

Chapter 20

1. Cooper claims that desktop applications are only really needed for a specific kind of tools; which ones?

2. What is a hamburger menu?

3. According to Cooper, is scrolling something to avoid or to embrace?

4. How can we create a responsive web design?

Chapter 21

1. What is the difference between imperative controls, selection controls, and entry controls?

2. Which imperative controls are there, and when and why should they be used, respectively?

3. Which selection controls are there, and when and why should they be used, respectively?

4. Which entry controls are there, and when and why should they be used, respectively?

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages with bounded and unbounded entry controls?

6. What’s wrong with error messages?

7. How can confirmation dialogs be avoided?

List of terms

These terms may come in handy when discussing GUI design, or when trying to understand the questions in the theory test. You probably know several of them already. It is a good idea to know them all, both for the written exam and for your professional work as interaction designer.

Accelerator

Brightness

Cards

Carousels

Check box

Combo box

Combo icon button

Content pane

Daemonic (posture)

Drawer

Drop-down list

Excise

Expanding dialog

Flow

Formative evaluation

Function dialog

Hue

Hyperlink

Icon button

Implementation Model

Index pane

Intermediates

Key path

Memorization vector

Mental Model

Menu

Mnemonic

Modal

Modal dialog

Modeless

Modeless dialog

Modeless feedback

Negative space

Occlusion

Overlay

Pane

Platform

Pliancy

Pop up panel

Posture

Property dialog

Radio button

Satellite posture

Saturation

Scrollbar

Slider

Sovereign (posture)

Spinner

Squint, the squint test

Stack

State-switching button

Summative evaluation

Swimlanes

Swipe

Switch

Tab bar

Tabbed dialog

Tap

Tap-and-hold / long tap / press-and-hold

Tap-to-reveal

Toggle button

Tool palette

Toolbar

Transient (posture)