ABSTRACT
Microinteractions focused us on actions and responses in terms of a user’s flow, but interfaces are more likely built out of objects, not user flows. And any single object may comprise several microinteractions. Behavior design allows us to factor our microinteractions into the design of interactive objects and detail how these objects behave.
To do this, we employ a methodology of designing behaviors derived from engineering: The state machine and the state diagram. We use this to depict interactive objects and their behaviors in detail so designers can have greater control and authorship in how our system behaves at its finest level of interactive granularity.
We point out the importance of assessing how things work at this stage and how we need to either animate behaviors well, code them ourselves, or get front end developers involved so that we can determine through user testing if our solutions work.
In terms of our aesthetic effort, we recognize that our results may not be as inspired as we would like them to be at this stage, and we illustrate ways to inject a little disruption into our process to challenge complacency. We realize that this may be a little uncomfortable for many. Regardless, we address how this is the time to explore aesthetics and make adjustments. Any later will be too late.
