Introduction to HCI

Integration

Across application packages

What are the applications, requirements and difficulties in Office, home and entertainment?

Applications: E-mail, ATMs, games, education, search engines, cell phones/PDA Requirements: Ease of learning/use/retention, error rates, satisfaction Difficulties: cost, size

What are the applications, requirements and difficulties in Exploratory, creative, collaborative?

Applications: Web browsing, search engines, simulations, scientific visualization, CAD, computer graphics, music composition/artist, photo arranger (email photos) Requirements: remove the 'computer' from the experience, Difficulties: user tech savvy-ness (apply this to application examples)

What are the applications, requirements and not as important in Life-critical systems?

Applications: air traffic, nuclear reactors, military, emergency dispatch Requirements: reliability and effective (even under stress) Not as important: cost, long training, satisfaction, retention

What are the applications and requirements in Industrial and commercial use?

Applications: banking, insurance, inventory, reservations Requirements: short training, ease of use/learning, multiple languages, adapt to local cultures, multi=platform, speed

What are the applications and requirements in Socio-technical systems?

Applications: health care, voting, police Requirements: Trust, security, accuracy, veracity, error handling, user tech-savy-ness

Focus group

Best design to use for making interface for children

Usability Measures How can we measure the 'goodness' of an interface? What are good metrics?

Through the use of ISO 9241 and Schneiderman's Principle

1998 Amendment to Rehabilitation Act

Users with disabilities federal law to ensure access to IT, including computers and web sites.

Physical variation

- Ability - Workspace (science of ergonomics) - Lots of prior research - Field of anthropometry - Multi-modal interfaces

What are the three sectors of the HCI community?

- Academics/ Industry Research - Experimenters - Other areas ( Sociologists, Anthropologists, Managers)

Reliability

- Actions function as specified - Data displayed must be correct - Updates done correctly - Leads to trust! (software, hardware, information) - case: Pentium floating point bug - Privacy, security, access, data destruction, tampering

Examples of Standardization

- Apple - Web - Windows

Requirements Analysis

- Ascertain users' needs - Ensure proper reliability - Promote appropriate standardization, integration, consistency, and portability - Complete projects on schedule and within budget

Physical variation (Multi-modal Interfaces)

- Audio - Touch screens

Interface should handle diversity of users in terms of

- Backgrounds - Abilities - Motivation - Personalities - Cultures

Cognitive and Perceptual Variation

- Bloom's Taxonomy - Memory - Problem solving and reasoning - Decision making - Language and communication - Search, imagery, sensory memory - Learning, skill development, knowledge acquisition - Compounding factors

What are the two interfaces found at the Case Study: Library of Congress Database Design?

- Catalog New Books (3-6 hour training course - staffers) - Search Catalog of Books (General public - too complex, command language and complex cataloging rules)

Provide tools, techniques and knowledge for commercial developers

- Competitive advantage (think ipod)

What fields does HCI cover?

- Computer Science - Psychology (cognitive) - Communication - Education - Anthropology - Design (e.g. graphic and industrial)

Personality

- Computer anxiety - Gender - Style, pace, top-down/bottom-up, visual/audio learners, dense vs. sparse data - No simple taxonomy of user personality types. Ex. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - Weak link between personality types and interfaces Think about your application, and see if user personality is important!

Ascertain User's Needs

- Define tasks (tasks and sub-tasks) - Frequency ( frequent, occasional, exceptional, repair)

Things to consider when making an interface for user with disabilities

- Disabilites - Keyboard and mouse alternatives - Color coding - Font-size - Contrast - Text descriptors for web images - Screen magnification - Text to Speech (TTS) - JAWS (web pages) - Speech Recognition - Head mounted optical mice - Eye Gaze control

Physical variation (Ability)

- Disabled (elderly, handicapped, vision, ambidexterity, ability to see in stereo [SUTHERLAND]) - Speed - Color deficiency

Goals when making interface for children

- Educational acceleration - Socialization with peers - Psychological - improve self-image, self-confidence - Creativity - art, music, etc. exploration

What is ISO 9241?

- Effectiveness - Efficiency - Satisfaction

Sub-categories of Experimenters (HCI Community)

- Empirical data - Product design

Characteristics of Bad Interfaces

- Encumbering - Confusing - Slow - Trust (ex. windows crashing)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

- Extrovert vs. introvert -Sensing vs. intuition - Perceptive vs. judging - Feeling vs. thinking

Cognitive and Perceptual Variation (Compounding Factors)

- Fatigue - Cognitive load - Background - Boredom - Fear - Drugs/alcohol

Examples of Integration

- File formats

HCI Goals

- Influence academic and industrial researchers - Provide tools, techniques and knowledge for commercial developers - Raising the computer consciousness of the general public

Universal usability

- Interface should handle diversity of users - Question, how would you design an interface to a database differently - Does not mean 'dumbing down' - Goal: Address the needs of more users - unlike yourself! - Everyone is often not at full faculties at all times

What composes Bloom's Taxonomy?

- Knowledge - Comprehension - Analysis - Application - Synthesis - Evaluation

Cultural and International Diversity

- Language - Date / Time conventions - Weights and Measures - Left-to-right - Directions (!) - Telephone #s and addresses - Names, titles, salutations - SSN, ID, passport - Sorting - Icons, buttons, colors - Etiquette - Evaluation (local experts/usability studies)

What are the Usability Motivations?

- Life-critical systems - Industrial and commercial use - Office, home and entertainment - Exploratory, creative, collaborative - Socio-technical systems

Characteristics of children that must be taken into consideration when making an interface

- Like exploring (easy to reset state) - Don't mind making mistakes - Like familiar characters and repetition - Don't like patronizing comments, inappropriate humor

Physical variation (Field of Anthropometry)

- Measures of what is 5-95% for weight, height, etc. (static and dynamic) - Large variance reminds us there is great 'variety' - Name some devices that this would affect. (note most keyboards are the same, screen brightness varies considerably, chair height, back height, display angle)

Sub-categories of Other Areas (HCI Community)

- Motor - Perceptual - Cognitive - Social, economic, ethics

Elderly have reduced

- Motor skills - Perception - Vision, hearing, touch, mobility - Speed - Memory

Teenagers are a special group with the following characteristics

- Next generation - Beta test new interfaces, trends - Cell phones, text messages, simulations, fantasy games, virtual worlds

Software and hardware evolution

- OS, application, browsers, capabilities - backward compatibility is a good goal

Age changes much (Children):

- Physical dexterity (double-clicking, click and drag, and small targets) - Attention span - (vaguely) Intelligence

Usability Requirements Achieved by

- Planning - Sensitivity to user needs - Devotion to requirements analysis - Testing

Learning what helps those with disabilities affects everyone

- Present procedures, directions, and instructions accessible to even poor readers - Design feedback sequences that explain the reason for error and help put users on the right track - Reinforcement techniques with other devices

Three major technical challenges

- Producing satisfying and effective Internet interaction (broadband vs. dial-up & wireless) - Enabling web services from large to small (size and resolution) - Support easy maintenance of or automatic conversion to multiple languages

Raising the computer consciousness of the general public

- Reduce computer anxiety (error messages) - Common fears: I'll break it I'll make a mistake The computer is smarter than me - HCI contributes to this!

Two types of Memory

- Short-term and working - Long-term and semantic

Physical variation (Workspace)

- Size - Design

HCI Tools

- Sound - 3D - Animation - Video - Devices = Size (small->very large) = Portable (PDA, phone) = Plasticity - Context sensitive/aware - Personalizable - Ubiquitous

Characteristics that must be possessed by a good interface

- Standardization - Integration - Consistency - Portability

Sub-categories of Academics/ Industry Research (HCI Community)

- Taxonomies - Theories - Predictive models

Other needs of elderly

- Technology experience is varied - Uninformed on how technology could help them - Practice skills (hand-eye, problem solving, etc.) - Touch screens - Larger fonts - Louder sounds

Why HCI is important?

- The study of our interface with information. - It is not just 'how big should I make buttons' or 'how to layout menu choices' - It can affect: Effectiveness Productivity Morale Safety

What are Schneiderman's Principles?

- Time to learn - Speed of performance - Rate of errors - Retention over time - Subjective satisfaction

What are the solution stated in the Case Study: Library of Congress Database Design?

- Touch screen - Reduced functionality - Better information presentation

Four things to remember at the Case Study: Library of Congress Database Design

- Two interfaces - Solution - Eventually Web based interface - Same database and services, different interfaces

What's wrong with each?

- Type of error - Who is affected - Impact

Influence academic and industrial researchers

- Understand a problem and related theory - Hypothesis and testing - Study design - Interpret results

Usability Requirements Goals

- Usability - Universality - Usefulness

What makes bad interfaces hard?

- Varies by culture - Multiple platforms - Variety of users

Disabilities

- Vision (blind or bill-reader, low-vision, color-blind - Hearing (deaf, limited hearing) - Mobility - Learning (dyslexia, attention deficient, hemisphere, specific)

Examples of Portability

- Word - HTML - PDF - ASCII

Consistency

Common action sequences, terms, units, layouts, color, typography within an application

Standardization

Common user-interface features across multiple applications

Portability

Convert data and interfaces across multiple hardware and software environments

Design Evaluation Implementation

Human Computer Interaction is a discipline concerned with the _________, ____________ and ___________ of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

Human Computer Interaction

It is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.