A Use - Qualities Approach to Judgements in Interactive Media Design

The activity of judging design alternatives is without doubt one of the key activities for successful design work, but the criteria used for judging goodness are often implicit. This article is about how to work with ‘use-qualities’ when judging the goodness of interactive media systems. Usequalities denote the attributes of artefacts in use (e.g. effectiveness, safety, awkwardness). A theoretical background to the concept of use-qualities is given, as well as examples of how to create criteria for judgements based on use-qualities. The examples are drawn from the design case a novel multimedia platform for domestic leisure use. During the design process three prototypes were developed, 56 hours of situated interviews were made in eight homes, and tests were performed with 21 users. This formed the empirical material used to identify desirable use-qualities that could be utilized as criteria for judging the goodness of design alternatives. The desirable use-qualities were also hierarchically organized to clarify them as design objectives that can be shared and discussed in a design team and among stakeholders in a project. It is finally argued that working explicitly with desirable use-qualities has the potential to increase the self-consciousness of judgement in interactive media design and that it can open up for challenge, examination, specification and revision of operative criteria.