Human-Computer Interaction

Voice Recognition

A user can speak to Siri in natural language, just as he or she would talk to a friend Unlike older voice recognition systems, Siri does not need to be taught to respond to your voice commands

Touchpad

Touch-sensitive tablets operated through finger movements

Query Notation

V is value, E is entity, A is attributes, variables in parentheses are given: - Query type 1: V ß (E, A) - Query type 2: E ß (V, A) - Query type 3: A ß (V, E) - Query type 4: all V ß (E, all A) - Query type 5: all E ß (V, all A) - Query type 6: all A ß (V, all E)

Physical Considerations in HCI Design

Vision: • length of the distance from the display to the person performing a task • the angle of the display in rela@on to the person viewing it • the size and uniformity of the characters, the brightness, contrast, balance, glare and whether a display is blinking or stable Hearing: • noisy laser printers and phone conversations can lead to overload on human hearing Touch: • keyboards • direct manipulation • using a stylus • a mouse • touch screens

Performance

• A combination of the efficiency involved in performing a task and the quality of the work that is produced by the task

Usability

• A way for designers to evaluate the systems and interfaces they create with an eye toward addressing as many HCI concerns as thoroughly as possible • Usability standards • Usability heuristics

Alerts, Notices, and Queries

• Alerts, notices, and queries are forms of output on smartphones and tablets • Alerts are for critical information that the user needs to know in a timely manner • Notifications convey non-critical information to a user • Queries ask questions of the user

Feedback

• All systems require feedback to monitor and change behavior • Feedback compares current behavior with predetermined goals and gives back information describing the gap between actual and intended performance • Acknowledging acceptance of input • Recognizing that input is in the correct form • Notifying that input is not in the correct form • Explaining a delay in processing • Acknowledging that a request is completed • Notifying that a request was not completed • Offering the user more detailed feedback

Pivot Tables

• Allows a user to arrange data in a table in any way they choose • Gives users greater control over how they look at data in different ways within a table

Alternatives for Input Entry

• Alphanumeric keyboards - QWERTY • Phone pad • T9-algorithm: large dictionary to disambiguate words • Handwritten recognition • Speech recognition • Gesture based UIs

What is HCI?

The design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them

Meaningful Communication

The system should present information clearly to the user • Users with less skill with a computer require more communication • Easy to use help screens

Gestures

The three main gestures that can be used to interface with touch-sensitive smartphones and tablets are: - Tapping - Swiping - Pinching

Interface Design Objectives

• Match the user interface to the task • Make the user interface efficient • Provide appropriate feedback to users • Generate usable queries • Improve productivity of computer users

Guidelines for Dialog Design

• Meaningful communication • Minimal user action • Standard operation and consistency

Eye Tracking

• Measures where the user eye is focused or the motion of the eye as an individual interacts with a system • To inform: - Where users are looking - How long they are looking - How their focus moves from item to item on the interface - What parts of the interface are missed or skipped - How users are navigating the length of the page - How size and placement of items on the interface affects attention

Interaction

• Models of Interaction - Domain - Task - Goal - Intention - Task analysis - System language - User language - System

Types of User Interfaces

• Natural-language interfaces • Question-and-answer interfaces • Menus • Form-fill interfaces • Command-language interfaces • Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) • Web interfaces

IRB. Institutional Review Board

- Committee used in research designated to approve, monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans - To assure that appropriate steps are taken to protect the rights and welfare of humans participating as subjects in a study

Mashups

Combine two or more application programming interfaces (API) • An API is a small set of programs and protocols • A building block approach to building websites

CITI Training

Group 1 - Social & Behavioral Research - Basic Course

Minimal User Action

Keying codes instead of whole words • Entering data that are not already stored on files • Supplying the editing characters • Using default values for fields on entry screens • Designing an inquiry, change, or delete program so that the user needs to enter only the first few characters of a name or item description

Understanding Human-Computer Interaction

Knowledge about the interplay among users, tasks, task contexts, IT, and the environments in which the systems are used comprises the basis of humancomputer interaction

Human Characteristics

Physical and physiological requirements Information processing - Memory - Perception - Skills - Attention - Motivations - Impairments

Query Methods

Query By Example (QBE)—the database fields are selected and displayed in a grid, and requested query values are either entered in the field area or below the field • Structured Query Language (SQL)—uses a series of words and commands to select the rows and columns that should be displayed in the resulting table

Accessibility

Refers to the design of products, devices, services, software, or environments for people who experience disabilities

Considering Human Limitations, Disabilities, and Design

• An individual with a disability is a person who: - Has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities - Has a record of such impairment - Is regarded as having such an impairment • Blind or those with low vision • Braille keyboards • special sorware that reads Web pages and other documents aloud • screen magnifiers • Deaf or impaired hearing • include access to wrijen versions of the audio material • headphones • People with limited mobility • speech input • breathing into a tube • looking at the spot • thinking about where the cursor should move

Building More Complex Queries

• Arithmetic operations are performed first: - Exponentiation - Either multiplication or division - Addition or subtraction • Comparative operations are performed: - GT, LT, and others • Boolean operations are performed: - First AND, and then OR

Human-Computer Interaction

• Awareness of HCI - Learn how to do human informa@on requirements assessments and how to incorporate your findings into your designs • Existence of HCI in organizational settings • Need to master the concepts surrounding HCI • Guidelines for usability

Users profiles

• Backgrounds • Impairments • Preferences • Expertise • Education

Badges

• Badges are quiet and passive - an unobtrusive way to send a message to the user - E.g. little red circles • A badge for the App Store signifies how many updates are waiting for the user to download and install

Display Devices

• Bitmaps, resolution, color • CRT, LCD, OLED • Large displays • Digital paper: eInk

Including Feedback in Design

• Can be a powerful reinforcer of users' learning processes • Serve to improve user performance with the system • Increase their motivation to produce • Improve the fit among the user, task, and the technology

WIMP: Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer

• Classic interaction paradigm • For Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) • Pros - WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get - Easy recall • Cons - Suitable for graphic user interfaces - Accessibility issues

Partocipatory Design

• Co-operative design • Design approach that actively involves all stakeholders - employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users • To ensure the result meets users' needs and is usable

Interaction Styles

• Command Line Interface • Menu • Natural Language • Ques@on and answer dialog • Form fill and spreadsheets • WIMP • Point and click

Command Line Interface

• Command language interpreter (CLI), command-line user interface, console user interface • Interaction is based on lines of text • Pros - Quick interaction (for experts), light weighted • Cons - unintuitive, steep learning curve, unfriendly

A/B Testing

• Comparing two versions of a system to see which one performs better • Randomized experiment • Control vs. variation • Statistical analysis - hypotheses

Task

• Complex tasks that require human, system, and task interaction are supported by e-commerce and Web systems, ERP systems, and wireless systems inside and outside of the organization • Can be structured and routine or illdefined and without apparent structure

Well-being

• Concern for a human's - overall comfort, safety, and health • Psychological attitudes are also important • How users feel about themselves • Their identities, work life, and performance - can all be gauged through assessing their attitudes

Easy Navigation for eCommerce Websites (One-Click Navigation)

• Creating a rollover menu • Building a collection of hierarchical links • Placing a site map on the home page and emphasizing the link to it • Placing a navigational bar on every inside page that repeats the categories used on the entry screen. • Search function • Creating flexibility

Positioning, Pointing, Drawing

• Direct Manipulation • Mouse

Mobile Computing

• Equipped with a range of sensors • Serving multiple purposes - Social media - Communication - Entertainment - Time, alarm, calendar - Recording - Multimedia

Tasks

• Goals of the interaction defined in terms of features and functions

Designing Queries

• Help reduce users' time spent in querying the database • Help them find the data they want • Result in a smoother user experience overall

Dialog Techniques

• Input - Keyboard, mouse, pen-based - Commands, clicking, gesture • Output - Displays, speakers - Visualization, scrolling, windows

Direct Manipulation

• Interaction style in which users act on displayed objects of interest using physical, incremental, reversible actions whose effects are immediately visible on the screen • Continuous representation of the object of interest • Physical actions - instead of complex syntax • Continuous feedback • Reversible, incremental actions • Rapid learning

Interactive Computing Systems

• Interface architecture • Input and Output devices • Interaction is the process of transferring information - Diversity of devices, data, systems

Think Aloud

• Is a protocol to gather data in a usability test • Participants express aloud all their thoughts and perceptions about the interaction - As they perform a set of tasks • It gives insights on the participants' cognitive processes

Additional Input Devices

• Joystick • Keyboard nipple • Touchscreens • Stylus • Eyegaze

Standard Operation and Consistency

• Locating titles, date, time, and operator and feedback messages in the same places on all displays • Exiting each program by the same key or menu option • Canceling a transaction in a consistent way • Obtaining help in a standardized way • Standardizing the colors used for all displays or web pages

Designing for Cognitive Styles of Individual Users

• Making sure data is made available in different forms - Tables - Graphs - Text - Different times

Form-Fill Interfaces (Input/Output Forms)

• Onscreen forms or Web-based forms displaying fields containing data items or parameters that need to be communicated to the user • Advantage - The filled-in form provides excellent documentation • Disadvantage - Users experienced with the system or application may become impatient - Auto complete, pre-filled

Natural-Language Interfaces

• Permit users to interact with the computer in their everyday or "natural" language • No special skills are required of the user e.g. alexa, Siri, cortana • Advantages - Less training required - Faster than keyboard entry - Accessible choice • Drawbacks - Not always accurate - Speech recognition issues - Difficulties in managing accents, ambiguities

A Variety of Help Options

• Pressing a function key, such as F1 • A GUI pull-down menu • Context-sensitive help • Icon mouse hover help • Wizards • Online help or help lines • Software forums

Evaluation

• Produc@vity • Metrics - @me, errors, learnability, task comple@on • Usability tes@ng techniques - linking tes@ng to specifica@ons • Forma@ve and summa@ve • Empirical evalua@on - observa@on, interviews, ques@onnaire design, system logging, experiment design, ethnographic studies, ethics of working with par@cipants

Focus Groups

• Qualitative method • Small number of users (6-9) • Moderated • Short script • Discuss issues, concerns, perspectives on a user interface • Early design stages or evaluation

Benchmarking

• Quantitative analysis of the user interaction • Metrics and Logs - Number of access - Responsiveness - Performance • Products - UserZoom, Qualtrics, Optimal Workshop

Query Types

• Query Type 1 - What is the value of a specified attribute for a particular entity? • Query Type 2 - What entity has a specified value for a particular attribute? • Query Type 3 - What attribute(s) has (have) a specified value for a particular entity? • Query Type 4 - List all the values for all the attributes for a particular entity • Query Type 5 - List all entities that have a specified value for all attributes • Query Type 6 - List all the attributes that have a specified value for all entities

Visual Analysis of Databases

• Support visual thinking • Extend the user's cognitive capabilities • Increase the changes of making an appropriate decision

Question-and-Answer Interfaces

• The computer displays a question to the user on the display • The user enters an answer • The computer acts on that input information in a pre programmed manner • Examples: • Dialog boxes • Wizards • Office Assistant used with Microsor products

Definitions

• The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both - "direct access": unassisted - "indirect access": meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers)

Universality

• The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.

Ethnography

• The scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures • Systematic study • Observation of real user behavior - No judgments • To present empirical data on human societies and cultures

Interface Design

• The user interface has two main components: • presentation language—the computer-to-human part • action language—human-to-computer part

Menus

• The user is limited to the options displayed • Can be nested within one another to lead a user through options • Secondary menus grouped into similar sets of features • GUI menus • Object menu • Provides the user with an onscreen list of available selections—in responding to the menu, the user is limited to the options displayed • Not hardware dependent—menus can be set up to use keyboard entry, lightpen, or mouse • Pros - Do not require to memorize commands - Require lijle training • Cons - May be difficult to find a specific option - Does not scale well: users may be lost in the design space

Designing Interfaces for Smartphones and Tablets

• Touch-sensitive screens allow a user to use a finger to activate the display • These small devices use multitouch gestures also called capacitive sensing • Used for moving from one screen to another or from one state to another on the same screen

Trackball and Thumbwheel

• Trackball - the ball is rolled as a cursor • Thumbwheels - manipulate only horizontal and vertical movements of the cursor

Evaluating Interfaces

• Training period for users should be acceptably short • Users early in their training should be able to enter commands without thinking about them, or referring to a help menu or manual • The interface should be seamless so that errors are few, and those that do occur are not occurring because of poor design • Time that users and the system need to bounce back from errors should be short • Infrequent users should be able to relearn the system quickly

Usability heuristics

• Usability heuristics: • visibility of system status • match between the system and the real world • user control and freedom • consistency and standards • error preventon • recognition rather than recall • flexibility and efficiency of use • aesthetic and minimalist design • help users to recover from errors • help and documentation

Usability standards

• Usability standards: • the use of the product • the user interface and interac@on • the process used to develop the product • the capability of an organiza@on to apply user centered design

Interviews

• Useful to explore users' general attitudes and thoughts • 'Face to face' meeting, conversational • Structured vs. semi-structured • Avoid to skew participants • Avoid yes/no questions

Usability Lab Study

• Users interact with a system in a controlled environment to evaluate it • A one-way mirror can be used for observation • A facilitator gives a set of tasks for the user to perform • Documentation can be done with audio, video and log

Task analysis

• What your users' goals are • What they are trying to achieve • What users actually do to achieve those goals • The workflow they follow to perform their tasks