Introduction to HCI

CS4HC3 / SE4HC3/ SE6DO3

Fall 2011

Instructor: Kevin Browne

brownek@mcmaster.ca

Slide content is based heavily on Chapter 1 of the textbook:

Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer
Interaction / 5th edition, by Ben Schneiderman & Catherine Plaisant
 Introduction to HCI
● What is HCI?
● Measuring HCIs
● Motivations
● Universal usability
● Goals of HCI profession
 What is HCI?
● Human Computer Interface (or Interaction)
● Design, implementation, evaluation and study of
human-computer interaction
● User interface: where the interaction occurs

● Interdisciplinary design science

● Computer science, psychology (especially
experimental psychology...), hardware, software
engineering, graphic design, ergonomics, sociology,
economics, business...
 Exciting time for HCI field!
● Transition away from desktop software
● Mobile computing
– Smartphones
– Tablets
● Cloud computing

● Transition away from keyboard and mouse

● Accelerometer
● Touch screen
● Motion sensing (e.g. Kinect)
 Measuring HCIs
● ISO 9241 standard Ergonomics of Human-
System Interaction (ISO, 2008)
● Goals:
– Effectiveness
– Efficiency
– Satisfaction
● Contains guidance, principles, framework, design
criteria, test methods, etc.
 Measuring HCIs
● Measurements for practical evaluation of HCIs:
● Time to learn
● Performance (e.g. speed, error rate)
● Retention
● Subjective satisfaction
● Subjective trustability

● Relative importance of desirable qualities varies

depending on requirements, target users, etc.
 Measuring HCIs
● Measurements can be different across different
applications
● E.g. “performance” may be speed, total work
accomplished within a set time, etc.

● Often times unavoidable trade-offs between

these desirable HCI qualities exist

● Often improving one desirable HCI quality

improves others, e.g. improved learnability may
increase subjective satisfaction
 Motivations
● What software domains are motivating HCI
research and what are the typical design trade-
offs in the domains?

● Life-critical systems
● Air traffic, police/fire, military, power plants, etc.
● Design trade-off considerations:
– Time to learn can be high, training expected
– Performance regarding speed, error rate, should be high
– Subjective satisfaction less important
 Motivations
● Industrial and commercial uses
● Banking, inventory, airline/hotel reservations, order
entry, point-of-sale terminals, ATMs, etc.
● Design trade-off considerations:
– Speed of performance typically of high importance
– Error rate importance typically depends on cost trade-off
with speed
– Subjective satisfaction only of modest importance
 Motivations
● Home and entertainment applications
● Smartphones, mp3 players, tablet computers, video
game consoles, digital cameras, etc.
● Design trade-off considerations:
– Low time to learn, error rates desired
– High subjective satisfaction desired
● Layered design from novice to expert usage
● e.g. Basic search engine to advanced search features
● Feature-bloat can be an issue, simplicity often
achieved by reducing or trimming features
 Motivations
● Exploratory, creative, collaborative software
● Search engines, scientific or business collaboration
supporting applications, music-composition or video
editing software, etc.
● Design trade-off considerations:
– How to even objectively measure “performance” for these
kinds of applications?
– Time to learn often important
– Often, best scenario is to have the interface “vanish”
through a direct manipulation interface...
 Motivations
● Sociotechnical systems
● Complex long-term systems involving many people
● Electronic voting, health care, crime reporting, etc.
● Often created by governments
● Design trade-off considerations:
– Trust of users is paramount
– Time to learn important
 Motivations
● New hardware changes are motivating HCI...
● Smartphones, tablets
● Natural user interfaces: touch screen,
accelerometer, motion sensing, voice recognition,
etc.

● New software challenges are motivating HCI...

● How do we provide a UI for a website across many
different desktop, smartphone and tablet platforms?
 Universal usability
● UI challenge: diversity of user backgrounds,
abilities, cultures, personalities

● Meeting challenge critical to:

● Enabling full participation for everyone
● Expanding market share

● Accommodation for a specific group doesn't

mean “dumbing down” a UI
 Universal usability
● Accommodation often pays off for other groups
● Curb cuts in sidewalks for wheelchair users benefit
parents with strollers, people with luggage, etc.
● Text-to-speech conversion can help sighted users
– e.g. UI reading off text messages while driving a car
● Helping seniors access e-mail, text messaging,
social networking also helps them keep in touch
with their family and continue to contribute to
society
 Universal usability
● Things to accommodate:
● Variations in physical abilities and physical
workspaces
● Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities
● Personality differences
● Cultural and international diversity
● Users with disabilities
● Older adult users
● Children
● Hardware and software diversity
 Universal usability
● Variations in physical abilities and physical
workspaces
● Anthropometry: scientific study of measurements
and proportions of the human body
– Data from anthropometry key to design, e.g. Touchscreen
keypad key distance based on finger size ranges
● Perception ability differences
– Motion sensitivity, screen brightness, corrected vision
● Workspace differences
– Noisy environment? Poor lighting? Temperature?
 Universal usability
● Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities
● Short-term, long-term memory
● Problem solving and decision making
● Language communication and comprehension
● Learning, skill development, knowledge aquisition
● Fatigue and sleep deprivation
● Monotony and boredom
● Mood, emotion
● Inebriation
 Universal usability
● Personality differences
● Male, female differences?
– Conjectures, but no clear pattern of differences
● Myers-Briggs
– Extroversion versus introversion
– Sensing versus intuition
– Perceptive versus judging
– Feeling versus thinking
● Organized vs unorganized approach to files, e-
mails, data?
 Universal usability
● Cultural and international diversity issues...
● Character sets
● Left-to-right vs. Right-to-left reading
● Date and time formats
● Weights and measurements
● Names and titles
● Etiquette, policies, tone, formality and metaphors
 Universal usability
● Users with disabilities
● Recent legislation increases demand, importance...
– United States: Amendment to Section 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act requires access to IT by employees
and the public
● Accommodation:
– Screen magnification
– Text-to-speech conversion
– Visual indications of auditory alarms\sginals
– Closed captioning
 Universal usability
● Older adult users
● Important concern due to aging population
● Problems
– Visual\auditory acuity, strength, and response speed
decline
– Memory function loss
– Increased difficulty in acquiring new and complex mental
skills
● Continued endeavours of experienced adults can
greatly benefit society
 Universal usability
● Children
● Different financial resources and learning
environments
– Some may be frustrated by technology
● Limited abilities
– Critical thinking
– Dexterity
● Dangers
– Exposure to inappropriate material
 Universal usability
● Accommodating hardware and software
diversity
● High-speed vs low-speed internet
● Enabling web access across all devices
– Small mobile device screens to desktop screens
● Supporting translation \ conversion of UI to multiple
languages, cultures
● Different inputs: touchscreen, keyboard & mouse
 Goals for HCI Profession
● Goals for HCI profession:
● Influencing academic and industrial researchers
● Providing tools, techniques and knowledge for
commercial designers
● Raising the computer consciousness of the general
public
 Influencing academic and industrial
researchers
● Introspection, intuition for HCI design
insufficient
● Rigour needed: Scientific method, experiments
– Understand problem, related theories
– Testable hypothesis
– Select subjects
– Manipulation of independent variables
– Measurement of dependent variables
– Apply statistical tests to acquired data
– Interpret results, refine theories
– Validate results through replication
 Influencing academic industrial
researchers
● Controlled experiments typically short-term, but
what about long-term HCI observations?
● Automated logging of user behaviour
● Surveys
● Focus groups
● Interviews
● Online feedback: forums, wikis, social networks
Influencing academic and industrial
researchers
● Need for more HCI research exists...
● Reduced anxiety and fear of computer usage
● Graceful evolution
● Social media participation
● Input devices (relative merits)
● Online help
● Information exploration
● And many more areas...
 Providing tools, techniques, and
knowledge for commercial designers
● Usability increasingly no longer seen as a
secondary topic: more UI designers, testers
● Competitive advantage recognized
● Require user interface building tools
● Different tools for different problems...
● Desire techniques, guidelines
● UI guidelines exist for major platforms
– iOS, Android, WP7
● Desire UI feedback during, after development
● Surveys, interviews, empirical tests, etc.
 References
Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction / 5th edition, by Ben Schneiderman & Catherine
Plaisant (2010)