CHAPTER 2: Universal Usability

1. Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction Sixth Edition Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine S. Cohen, Steven M. Jacobs, and NiklasElmqvist in collaboration with Nicholas Diakopoulos CHAPTER 2: Universal Usability Slides extended for CS 420/620 HCI Fall 2019 at UNR

2. Universal usability Topics • Universal Design [from Majed Al Zayer] • Introduction to Universal Usability • Variations in physical abilities and physical workplaces • Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities • Personality differences • Cultural and international diversity • Users with disabilities • Older adult users • Children • Accommodating hardware and software diversity

3. *** What is Universal Design? Note: Headers in purple preceded by *** indicate added slide by CS 420/620 course instructor(s) Designing technology that is equally usable to everyone irrespective of their individual, cultural, physical or cognitive differences

4. *** Importance of universal design: Social effects What do you think?

5. *** Importance of universal design: Social effects • Social isolation • Learned helplessness • Loss of valuable human resources

6. *** Importance of universal design: It’s a human right “desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.“ - World summit on the information society, 2003

7. *** Importance of universal design: It’s a law • Rehabilitation Act, Section 508 • Accessibility requirements for developed and procured government software • Americans with Disabilities Act • Government websites • Public accommodations (e.g., stores, hotels, video rentals) • US Justice department • Websites and instructional materials of universities • European Union Mandate 376 • Accessibility requirements for procured software

8. *** Importance of universal design: It’s a law • National Federation of the Blind vs.Target, 2006 • Target to pay $6 million in damages • National Federation of the Deaf vs. Netflix, 2011 • Netflix to pay $755,000 in legal fees and damages • National Federation of the Deaf vs. Harvard & MIT, 2015 • pending

9. *** Importance of universal design: Business effects • Loss of user base • ~ 785,000,000 people (15% of world population) live with a disability • Risk of lawsuits • 240+ companies sued over lack of website accessibility since 2015

10. *** Importance of universal design: Pays off for all • Video captioning for the deaf and hard hearing • Auto completion for the disabled and elderly • Controllable font sizes for the visually impaired • Greyscale mobile screens for the visually impaired

11. Introduction to Universal Usability • As a profession, we will be remembered for how well we meet our users’ needs • That is the ultimate goal: addressing the needs of all users • The huge international consumer market in mobile devices has raised the pressure for designs that are universally usable

12. Introduction to Universal Usability (concluded) • The website of “Raising the Floor” includes universal accessibility features such as options for emphasizing the links or making buttons larger, offering several font sizes, contrast, text descriptions of photos, translation services, etc. (www.raisingthefloor.net).

13. Variations in physical abilities and physical workplaces • Basic data about human dimensions comes from research in anthropometry • There is no average user, either compromises must be made or multiple versions of a system must be created • Physical measurement of human dimensions are not enough, take into account dynamic measures such as reach, strength or speed

14. Variations in physical abilities and physical workplaces (continued) • Screen-brightness preferences vary substantially, designers customarily provide a knob to enable user control • Account for variances of the user population's sense perception • Vision: depth, contrast, color blindness, and motion sensitivity • Touch: keyboard and touchscreen sensitivity • Hearing: audio clues must be distinct • Workplace design can both help and hinder work performance

15. Variations in physical abilities and physical workplaces (concluded) • The standard ANSI/HFES 100-2007 Human Factors Engineering of Computer Workstations (2007) lists these concerns: • Work-surface and display-support height • Clearance under work surface for legs • Work-surface width and depth • Adjustability of heights and angles for chairs and work surfaces • Posture – seating depth and angle; back-rest height and lumbar support • Availability of armrests, footrests, and palmrests

16. Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities • The human ability to interpret sensory input rapidly and to initiate complex actions makes modern computer systems possible • The journal Ergonomics Abstracts offers this classification of human cognitive processes: • Long-term and semantic memory • Short-term and working memory • Problem solving and reasoning • Decision making and risk assessment • Language communication and comprehension • Search, imagery, and sensory memory • Learning, skill development, knowledge acquisition, and concept attainment

17. Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities (concluded) • They also suggest this set of factors affecting perceptual and motor performance: • Arousal and vigilance • Fatigue and sleep deprivation • Perceptual (mental) load • Knowledge of results and feedback • Monotony and boredom • Sensory deprivation • Nutrition and diet • Fear, anxiety, mood, and emotion • Drugs, smoking, and alcohol • Physiological rhythms • But note, in any application, background experience and knowledge in the task domain and the interface domain play key roles in learning and performance

18. Personality differences • There is no set taxonomy for identifying user personality types • Designers must be aware that populations are subdivided and that these subdivisions have various responses to different stimuli • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) • extroversion vs. introversion • sensing vs. intuition • perceptive vs. judging • feeling vs. thinking

19. Cultural and international diversity • Characters, numerals, special characters, and diacriticals • Left-to-right versus right-to-left versus vertical input and reading • Date and time formats • Numeric and currency formats • Weights and measures • Telephone numbers and addresses • Names and titles (Mr., Ms., Mme.) • Social-security, national identification, and passport numbers • Capitalization and punctuation • Sorting sequences • Icons, buttons, colors • Pluralization, grammar, spelling • Etiquette, policies, tone, formality, metaphors

20. Cultural and international diversity (concluded) • Designing for cell phones can open the door to a wider audience, e.g. in developing countries where: • feature phones often are the only way to access the internet • literacy may be an issue • users have very low monthly limits on the data volume they can use

21. Users with disabilities • Designers must plan early to accommodate users with disabilities • Early planning is more cost efficient than adding on later • Businesses must comply with the "Americans With Disabilities Act” for some applications • Growing world-wide support, for example: • European Union Mandate 376 will require procurement and development of accessible technologies by EU governments (http://www.mandate376.eu/) • United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international human rights agreement (http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml)

22. Users with disabilities (concluded) • A user with disability is using a television with the help of assistive technology

23. Older adult users • Including the elderly is fairly easy • As the world’s population ages, designers in many fields are adapting their work to serve older adults, which can benefit all users • Designers should allow for variability within their applications via settings for sound, color, brightness, font sizes, etc. with less distracting animation

24. Older adult users (concluded) • HomeAssist is an assisted living platform for older adults, installed in homes in Bordeaux, France • The tablet is used to show alerts (e.g. when the front door was left opened) and reminders, but also to run a slide show of photographs when not in use (http://phoenix.inria.fr/research-projects/homeassist)

25. Children • Using Digital Mysteries on a tablet, two elementary school children work together to read information slips, group them and create a sequence to create an answer to the question “Who killed King Ted?” • The blue pop-up pie menu allows the selection of tools. • A larger tabletop version allows larger groups to collaborate. (www.reflectivethinking.com)

26. Accommodating hardware and software diversity • Three of the main technical challenges will be: • Producing satisfying and effective Internet interaction on high-speed (broadband) and slower (dial-up and some wireless) connections • Responsive design enabling access to web services from large displays (3200 × 2400 pixels or larger) and smaller mobile devices (1024 × 768 pixels and smaller) • Supporting easy maintenance of or automatic conversion to multiple languages

27. *** Physical differences • Static • Weight, height, … • Dynamic • Reach speed, pressure of finger touch, …. • How do we deal with these variations? (your ideas?)

28. *** Physical differences [source: ourworldindata.org]

29. *** Physical differences • Alternative 1: Design for the average user • 1940s: multiple crashes per day by Air Force pilots [see article by Todd Rose, The Star, 2016] • Planes were designed for the average pilot dimensions • 4,000 pilots were measured against the average • Zero pilots were found to fit the average!

30. *** Physical differences • Alternative 2: Accommodate all variations with configurable design

31. *** Cognitive differences due to … • Fatigue & sleep deprivation • Cognitive load • Fear & anxiety • Intoxication • Background experience

32. *** Personality differences • Different people learn differently Haptic Visual Auditory

33. *** Cultural differences & design: Colors perception It’s a boy! Meaning of white colorThe East vs. the West

34. *** Cultural differences & design: Colors perception Check out more on color meanings across continents and countries at webdesignerdepot

35. *** Cultural differences & design: Cultural characteristics • A travel booking page at TravelBird.com

36. *** Cultural differences & design: Cultural characteristics • The German culture associates systematic details with well-thought-out design

37. Cultural differences & design:Cultural characteristics • A better design that suites the values of the German culture

38. *** Cultural differences & design: Internationalization • Thoughtful translation • Text direction • Date & time formats • Numeric formats (What’s 1,00 or 1,000 to you?) • Currency • Measurement units • Name formalities