CS365 - HCI

1. CS365 - HCI Prof. Ahmed Sameh Week 2

2. Reflections • How long should it take to learn a new web development tool i.e. Dreamweaver or Microsoft’s’ new Expression Studio? • 20-30 mins to become productive - • What is meant by “usability?” • Effective to use • Efficient to use • Safe to use • Having good utility • Easy to learn • Easy to remember • Can you decide what people “experience” when they are satisfied with the interface?

3. Problem solving • Process of finding solution to unfamiliar task using knowledge. • Several theories. • Gestalt • problem solving both productive and reproductive • productive draws on insight and restructuring of problem • attractive but not enough evidence to explain `insight' etc. • move away from behaviourism and led towards information processing theories

4. Problem solving (cont.) Problem space theory • problem space comprises problem states • problem solving involves generating states using legal operators • heuristics may be employed to select operators e.g. means-ends analysis • operates within human information processing system e.g. STM limits etc. • largely applied to problem solving in well-defined areas e.g. puzzles rather than knowledge intensive areas

5. Problem solving (cont.) • Analogy • analogical mapping: • novel problems in new domain? • use knowledge of similar problem from similar domain • analogical mapping difficult if domains are semantically different • Skill acquisition • skilled activity characterized by chunking • lot of information is chunked to optimize STM • conceptual rather than superficial grouping of problems • information is structured more effectively

6. Errors and mental models Types of error • slips • right intention, but failed to do it right • causes: poor physical skill, inattention etc. • change to aspect of skilled behaviour can cause slip • mistakes • wrong intention • cause: incorrect understanding humans create mental models to explain behaviour. if wrong (different from actual system) errors can occur

7. Emotion • Various theories of how emotion works • James-Lange: emotion is our interpretation of a physiological response to a stimuli • Cannon: emotion is a psychological response to a stimuli • Schacter-Singer: emotion is the result of our evaluation of our physiological responses, in the light of the whole situation we are in • Emotion clearly involves both cognitive and physical responses to stimuli

8. Emotion (cont.) • The biological response to physical stimuli is called affect • Affect influences how we respond to situations • positive  creative problem solving • negative  narrow thinking “Negative affect can make it harder to do even easy tasks; positive affect can make it easier to do difficult tasks” (Donald Norman)

9. Emotion (cont.) • Implications for interface design • stress will increase the difficulty of problem solving • relaxed users will be more forgiving of shortcomings in design • aesthetically pleasing and rewarding interfaces will increase positive affect

10. Individual differences • long term – sex, physical and intellectual abilities • short term – effect of stress or fatigue • changing – age Ask yourself:will design decision exclude section of user population?

11. Psychology and the Design of Interactive System • Some direct applications • e.g. blue acuity is poor blue should not be used for important detail • However, correct application generally requires understanding of context in psychology, and an understanding of particular experimental conditions • A lot of knowledge has been distilled in • guidelines • cognitive models • experimental and analytic evaluation techniques

12. Does the Wii meet these criteria

13. User experience goals • satisfying • aesthetically pleasing • enjoyable • supportive of creativity • engaging • supportive of creativity • pleasurable • rewarding • exciting • fun • entertaining • provocative • helpful • surprising • motivating • enhancing sociability • emotionally fulfilling • challenging • boring • annoying • frustrating • cutsey

14. Usability and user experience goals • Selecting terms to convey a person’s feelings, emotions, etc., can help designers understand the multifaceted nature of the user experience • How do usability goals differ from user experience goals? • Are there trade-offs between the two kinds of goals? • e.g. can a product be both fun and safe? • How easy is it to measure usability versus user experience goals?

15. Design principles • Generalizable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design • The do’s and don’ts of interaction design • What to provide and what not to provide at the interface • Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common-sense

16. Visibility • This is a control panel for an elevator • How does it work? • Push a button for the floor you want? • Nothing happens. Push any other button? Still nothing. What do you need to do? It is not visible as to what to do! From: www.baddesigns.com

17. Visibility …you need to insert your room card in the slot by the buttons to get the elevator to work! How would you make this action more visible? • make the card reader more obvious • provide an auditory message, that says what to do (which language?) • provide a big label next to the card reader that flashes when someone enters • make relevant parts visible • make what has to be done obvious

18. What do I do if I am wearing black? • Invisible automaticcontrols can make it more difficult to use

19. Feedback • Sending information back to the user about what has been done • Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these • e.g. when screen button clicked on provides sound or red highlight feedback: “ccclichhk”

20. Constraints • Restricting the possible actions that can be performed • Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options • Physical objects can be designed to constrain things • e.g. only one way you can insert a key into a lock

21. Logical or ambiguous design? • Where do you plug the mouse? • Where do you plug the keyboard? • top or bottom connector? • Do the color coded icons help? From: www.baddesigns.com

22. How to design them more logically (i) A provides direct adjacent mapping between icon and connector (ii) B provides color coding to associate the connectors with the labels From: www.baddesigns.com

23. Consistency • Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks • For example: • always use ctrl key plus first initial of the command for an operation – ctrl+C, ctrl+S, ctrl+O • Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use

24. When consistency breaks down • What happens if there is more than one command starting with the same letter? • e.g. save, spelling, select, style • Have to find other initials or combinations of keys, thereby breaking the consistency rule • e.g. ctrl+S, ctrl+Sp, ctrl+shift+L • Increases learning burden on user, making them more prone to errors

25. Internal and external consistency • Internal consistency refers to designing operations to behave the same within an application • Difficult to achieve with complex interfaces • External consistency refers to designing operations, interfaces, etc., to be the same across applications and devices • Very rarely the case, based on different designer’s preference

26. Keypad numbers layout • A case of external inconsistency (a) phones, remote controls (b) calculators, computer keypads 8 9 1 2 7 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 8 9 1 2 7 3 0 0

27. Affordances: to give a clue • Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it • e.g. a mouse button invites pushing, a door handle affords pulling • Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday objects • Since has been much popularised in interaction design to discuss how to design interface objects • e.g. scrollbars to afford moving up and down, icons to afford clicking on

28. What does ‘affordance’ have to offer interaction design? • Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical objects • Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances • Instead interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’ affordances • Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at the interface • Some mappings are better than others

29. Activity • Physical affordances: How do the following physical objects afford? Are they obvious?

30. Activity • Virtual affordances How do the following screen objects afford? What if you were a novice user? Would you know what to do with them?

31. Usability principles • Similar to design principles, except more prescriptive • Used mainly as the basis for evaluating systems • Provide a framework for heuristic evaluation

32. Usability principles (Nielsen 2001) • Visibility of system status • Match between system and the real world • User control and freedom • Consistency and standards • Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors • Error prevention • Recognition rather than recall • Flexibility and efficiency of use • Aesthetic and minimalist design • Help and documentation

33. Key points • Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives • It is concerned with how to create quality user experiences • It requires taking into account a number of interdependent factors, including context of use, type of activities, cultural differences, and user groups • It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disciplines and fields