To be covered:-

What is HCI?
Goal of HCI
HCI - An Interdisciplinary Area
Concerns in HCI
Interface and interaction design
Goals of interaction design
Utility, Usability, Likeability
Structured Process for Creating Usable Products
Principles to support usability
How to Achieve Usability
 Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Human–computer Interaction (HCI) involves the study, planning,
and design of the interaction between people (users) and
computers. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the
user interface (or simply interface), which includes both software
and hardware.

Human-computer interaction 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”
 Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Because human–computer interaction studies a human and a

machine in conjunction, it draws from supporting knowledge on
both the machine and the human side.

On the machine side, techniques in computer graphics, operating

systems, programming languages, and development environments
are relevant.

On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial

design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive
psychology, and human factors such as computer user satisfaction
are relevant.
 Goal of HCI
A basic goal of HCI is to improve the interactions between users
and computers by making computers more usable and receptive
to the user's needs. Specifically, HCI is concerned with:
➢ Methodologies and processes for designing interfaces (i.e., given a task
and a class of users, design the best possible interface within given
constraints, optimizing for a desired property such as learnability or efficiency
of use).
➢ Methods for implementing interfaces (e.g. software toolkits and libraries;
efficient algorithms).
➢ Techniques for evaluating and comparing interfaces.
➢ Developing new interfaces and interaction techniques.
➢ Developing descriptive and predictive models and theories of interaction.
The Goals of HCI

To Produce
Usable
Safe

Functional

Functional
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 In order to produce computer system with good usability;
Developers must attempt to

Understand Develop Achieve Put People 1st

• Tools and •Their needs,

• The factors • Efficient, capabilities and
that techniques effective, preferences for
determine to enable and safe conducting
how people building various tasks
interaction should direct
use suitable developers in the
technology systems way that they
design systems
•People should
not change their
way they use the
system to fit with
it, instead
system should
match their
requirements

The long term goal:

To design systems that minimize the barrier between the
human’s cognitive model of what they want to accomplish and
the computer’s understanding of the user’s task 6
 HCI - An Interdisciplinary Area /
Disciplines that Contribute to HCI

▪ Computer Science
Application design and engineering of human-computer
Interfaces
▪ Psychology
The application of theories of cognitive processes and
the empirical analysis of user behavior
▪ Sociology and Anthropology
Interactions between technology, work, and organization
▪ Design and Industrial Design
Creating interactive products
 Concerns in HCI
Science, Engineering, and Design Aspects

▪ The joint performance of tasks by humans and machines

▪ The structure of communication between human and
machine
▪ Human capabilities to use machines (including the
learn ability of interfaces)
▪ Algorithms and programming of the interface itself
▪ Engineering concerns that arise in designing and
building interfaces
▪ The process of specification, design, and implementation
of interfaces
 Interface and interaction design

❑ Interface design (ID)

• Primarily design of 2D/3D widgets
❑ Designing interactive products to support people
in their everyday and working lives
• Sharp, Rogers and Preece (2002)
❑ The design of spaces for human communication
and interaction
• Winograd (1997)
 Goals of interaction design
❖ Develop usable products
Usability means:
• easy to learn
• effective to use
• enjoyable experience

❖ Usable products = successful products?

❖ Involve users in the design process

 Utility, Usability, Likeability
▪ Utility
a product can be used to reach a certain goal or to
perform a certain task. This is essential!
▪ Usability
relates to the question of quality and efficiency. E.g. how
well does a product support the user to reach a certain
goal or to perform a certain task.
▪ Likeability
this may be related to utility and usability but not
necessarily. People may like a product for any other
reason…
 What is Usability
“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to
use. The word ‘usability’ also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use
during the design process.”

❑ Usability has five quality components:

✓ Learn ability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks
the first time they encounter the design?
✓Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly
can they perform tasks?
✓ Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of
not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
✓ Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these
errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
✓ Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
 USABILITY
One of the key concepts in HCI.
It is concerned with making systems easy to learn
and use

A Usable system is:

Easy to
Easy to Effective to Efficient to Enjoyable
remember Safe to use
learn use use to use
how to use

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Why is Usability Important

Frustration

Many everyday
systems and
products seemed
to be designed
with little regard
to usability.
Wasted This leads to:
Errors
time

15
 Why Usability is Important?
Mobile
phone
Remote Computer
Control

How many
Photoco Personal systems are
pier Example of Organizer
Interactive easy, effortless,
products and enjoyable
to use?
Soft
Watch Drink
Machine

The
ATM
Web

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Why is Usability Important?

Improving usability can

• increase productivity of users
• reduce costs (support, efficiency)
• increase sales/revenue (web shop)
• enhance customer loyalty
• win new customers
Why is Usability Important in the
Context of WWW and New Media?

❖ Competition is very close (just another link…)

❖ User Interface is often the central discriminating factor
❖ Comparison is easily possible

Example – Online-Shop
▪Direct correlation between usability and sales is reported in many cases.
▪Users who can’t find the product in the shop can not buy it.
▪Users who are not able to fill in correctly the order form are not going to buy.
 HCI is Central to the Design and Development Process

➢… even if done unconsciously. Decisions made

in the development process are likely to influence how a product
can be used.

➢thinking about the user interface when a first

version of a product is finished is to late!

➢good user interfaces – and often good products

– are a joined effort of all participants in the
design and development process
Structured Process for Creating Usable Products

❖ Precondition
• Understanding how people interact with their environment
• Understanding the capabilities and limitations of users
• Basic ergonomics

❖ Analyze what interaction is required and what technical

options are available in a user centered way, evaluate
the results of the analysis

❖ Design and prototype user interfaces with user

involvement, evaluate prototypes
❖ Implement an interactive digital product
❖ Test and study the product created
❖ Usability Engineering is a part of the overall development
❖ The process is iterative (overall and at each step)
Evolution of the Software Development Process
How it does NOT work
➢ Usability tests at the end when the product is
ready and needs to be shipped.

➢ Designing a new and pretty skin to a product.

➢ Introducing HCI issues after the system

architecture and the foundations are completed.

➢ Comparison: An interior designer can not make

a great house if the architect and engineers forgot windows, set
the doors at the wrong locations, and created an unsuitable
room layout.
Principles to support usability

Learnability
the ease with which new users can begin effective
interaction and achieve maximal performance

Flexibility
the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange
information

Robustness
the level of support provided the user in determining
successful achievement and assessment of goal-
directed behaviour
Principles of learnability

Predictability
– determining effect of future actions based on
past interaction history
– operation visibility

Synthesizability
– assessing the effect of past actions
– immediate vs. eventual honesty
Principles of learnability (ctd)

Familiarity
– how prior knowledge applies to new system
– guessability; affordance

Generalizability
– extending specific interaction knowledge to new
situations

Consistency
– likeness in input/output behaviour arising from similar
situations or task objectives
Principles of flexibility

Dialogue initiative
– freedom from system imposed constraints on input
dialogue
– system vs. user pre-emptiveness

Multithreading
– ability of system to support user interaction for more
than one task at a time
– concurrent vs. interleaving; multimodality

Task migratability
– passing responsibility for task execution between user
and system
Principles of flexibility (ctd)

Substitutivity
– allowing equivalent values of input and
output to be substituted for each other
– representation multiplicity; equal opportunity

Customizability
– modifiability of the user interface by user
(adaptability) or system (adaptivity)
Principles of robustness

Observability
– ability of user to evaluate the internal state of the
system from its perceivable representation
– browsability; defaults; reachability; persistence;
operation visibility

Recoverability
– ability of user to take corrective action once an error
has been recognized
– reachability; forward/backward recovery;
commensurate effort
Principles of robustness (ctd)

Responsiveness
– how the user perceives the rate of
communication with the system
– Stability

Task conformance
– degree to which system services support all
of the user's tasks
– task completeness; task adequacy
How to Achieve Usability
➢ Identify what utility and usability for the product means
• main purpose of the product
• anticipated users, target audience
• compare with similar/competing products (if applicable)
➢ Common effort in the design and development process
• trade-offs between design, engineering, and usability
➢ Iterative evaluation
• usability testing with different methods at various stages of the
development process
➢ Improvement after product release
• monitoring user behavior.
• evaluation of changes to the product (e.g. adding a new feature
to a web shop)
 Design principles
When evaluating a current user interface, or designing a new user
interface, it is important to keep in mind the following experimental
design principles:

➢ Early focus on user(s) and task(s): Establish how many users are needed to
perform the task(s) and determine who the appropriate users should be; someone
who has never used the interface, and will not use the interface in the future, is
most likely not a valid user. In addition, define the task(s) the users will be
performing and how often the task(s) need to be performed.

➢Empirical measurement: Test the interface early on with real users who come
in contact with the interface on an everyday basis. Keep in mind that results may
be altered if the performance level of the user is not an accurate depiction of the
real human-computer interaction. Establish quantitative usability specifics such
as: the number of users performing the task(s), the time to complete the task(s),
and the number of errors made during the task(s).
➢ Iterative design: After determining the users, tasks, and empirical
measurements to include, perform the following iterative design
steps:

1. Design the user interface

2. Test
3. Analyze results
4. Repeat
Repeat the iterative design process until a sensible, user-friendly
interface is created
Design methodologies