Designing in the Large for the Small: Combining Aesthetics with Usability for a PDA Application

We describe the iterative design of LillyPad, a mobile PDA application for gathering data and supporting scientific inquiry activities intended to be used by scientists and students to assess and learn about environmental restoration sites. We show how a greater concern for the appearance of the interface in a subsequent iteration enhanced the way it was used, its usefulness and the overall user experience. We present a ‘before and after’ case study, showing how we moved from a functional/usability approach to a usabilityin-the-large one that includes aesthetics. Findings are presented showing how the redesigned application was more extensively used for learning and reasoning about aspects of the environmental restoration site. Finally, we discuss the importance of taking into account usability-inthe-large when designing for small screens. Author