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.
