Ecological interface design of a photo camera display: Method and example

Ecological Interface Design (EID) is a framework for designing computer displays that has been applied predominantly to desktop displays. Extensibility of the framework to small format displays (defined by small physical dimensions of height and width) remains to be demonstrated through design and evaluation. This paper illustrates a specific design approach to the design of small format ecological displays as well as the process of the design, for a tractable but complex system: A manual photo camera. Small format displays present challenges for showing information in parallel. To meet this challenge, two methods based on elements of the EID framework were developed and used to integrate information so that it could be condensed to fit on small displays: one based on system functional relationships and one based on task requirements. The abstraction hierarchy model (AH) was used to guide integration of the system functional information. Requirements drawn from the decision ladder model (DL) were used to guide integration based on task requirements. The detailed description of the design approach and process provided here should help designers create small format ecological displays.