OOUX- A foundation for Interaction Design

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Summary

Objected Oriented UX first describes the objects or entities in your system (e.g. a chef in recipe sharing social media network) and CTAs (Call to Action) that those entities can take within your system.

By defining these objects and actions at a high level in this way you aren’t jerked around with high fidelity user flows/stories from the get go. You can start to understand the whole system and even discover aspects of your system that need more clarity.

This is effectively creating an ontology for your designs moving forward.

Highlights

• I imagine many other user experience designers begin the same way, by designing how someone would use the thing. One interaction flow leads to the design of another interaction flow. Soon, you have a web of flows. Iterate on those flows, add some persistent navigation, and voilà!—you have a product design.

• We are designing our actions without a clear picture of what is being acted on .

• When we jump right into actions, we run the risk of designing a product with a fuzzy reflection of the user’s mental model . By clearly defining the objects in our users’ real-world problem domain, we can create more tangible and relatable user experiences.

• Calls to action (CTAs) are the main entry points to interaction flows. If an interaction flow is a conversation between the system and the user, the CTA is a user’s opening line to start that conversation. Once you have an object framework, you can add possible CTAs to your objects, basically putting a stake in the ground that says, “Interaction design might go here.” These stakes in the ground—the CTAs—can be captured using a CTA Inventory.

• Creating a CTA Inventory does two things. First, it helps us shift gears between the holistic nature of system design to the more compartmentalized work of interaction design. Second, it helps us: think about interactions creatively; validate those interactions; and ultimately write project estimates with greater accuracy.

• Simply understanding your objects will help you determine the things that a user might do with them.

• When we think about interactions in the context of an object, we give ourselves a structure for brainstorming. When we apply the constraints of the object framework, we’re likely to be more creative—and more likely to cover all of our bases. Brainstorm your actions object by object so that innovative features are less likely to fall through the cracks.