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Introduction To Human Computer Interface: Instructor: Syed Mubashir Ali

This document provides an introduction to the course "Introduction to Human-Computer Interface". The main goals of the course are to motivate the field of HCI, teach basics of interface design, evaluation methods, research problems in HCI, and the HCI community. The instructor emphasizes that HCI is important because computers now affect everyone and badly designed interfaces can negatively impact effectiveness, productivity, safety and user experience. The document outlines various topics that will be covered in the course like definition of HCI, importance of usability, interface evaluation metrics, design process, and challenges in designing usable interfaces.

Uploaded by

Talha Sarwar
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
59 views

Introduction To Human Computer Interface: Instructor: Syed Mubashir Ali

This document provides an introduction to the course "Introduction to Human-Computer Interface". The main goals of the course are to motivate the field of HCI, teach basics of interface design, evaluation methods, research problems in HCI, and the HCI community. The instructor emphasizes that HCI is important because computers now affect everyone and badly designed interfaces can negatively impact effectiveness, productivity, safety and user experience. The document outlines various topics that will be covered in the course like definition of HCI, importance of usability, interface evaluation metrics, design process, and challenges in designing usable interfaces.

Uploaded by

Talha Sarwar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to Human

Computer Interface
CSC 442

Instructor: Syed Mubashir Ali


Class Goals
• Motivate the field of HCI
• Learn
– Basics of interface design
– Evaluation of interfaces
– HCI research problems
– HCI community (conferences and people)
Why take this course?
• Build your portfolio
– Work on a project you’ve always wanted
• Study a unique topic
– A computer science course focused on users
• Skill building
– Important in most research
– A growing job field
Intro
• What is a user interface?
• Why do we care about design?

• We see this all the time.


– What’s good about the design of this error box?
• The user knows there is an error
– What’s poor about the design of this error box?
• Discouraging
• Not enough information
• No way to resolve the problem (instructions or contact info)
Definition of HCI
• 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.
Why do we care?
• Computers (in one way or another) now affect every person in
our society
• Tonight - count how many in your home/apt/room
• We are surrounded by unusable and ineffective systems!
• Its not the user’s fault!!
• Product success may depend on ease of use, not necessarily
power
• You will likely create an interface for someone at some point
– Even if its just your personal web page
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
Class Assignment

Take 5 minutes to write down one common


device with substantial HCI design choices and
discuss the pros and cons. How does it affect
you or other users?
What fields does HCI cover?
• Computer Science
• Psychology (cognitive)
• Communication
• Education
• Anthropology
• Design (e.g. graphic and industrial)
HCI Goals
• Influence academic and industrial researchers
– Understand a problem and related theory
– Hypothesis and testing
– Study design (we’ll do this!)
– Interpret results
• Provide tools, techniques and knowledge for commercial
developers
– competitive advantage (think ipod)
• 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!
Goals of HCI
• Allow users to carry out tasks
– Safely

– Effectively

– Efficiently

– Enjoyably
HCI Community
• Academics/Industry Research
– Taxonomies
– Theories
– Predictive models
• Experimenters
– Empirical data
– Product design
• Other areas (Sociologists,
anthropologists, managers)
– Motor
– Perceptual
– Cognitive
– Social, economic, ethics
HCI Tools
• Sound
• 3D
• Animation
• Video
• Devices
– Size (small->very large)
– Portable (PDA, phone)
– Plasticity
• Context sensitive/aware
• Personalizable
• Ubiquitous
Usability Requirements
• Goals:
– Usability
– Universality
– Usefulness

• Achieved by:
– Planning
– Sensitivity to user needs
– Devotion to requirements
analysis
– Testing
Bad Interfaces
• Encumbering
• Confusing
• Slow
• Trust (ex. windows
crashing)
• What makes it hard?
– Varies by culture
– Multiple platforms
– Variety of users
Requirements Analysis
1. Ascertain users’ needs
2. Ensure proper reliability
3. Promote appropriate standardization, integration,
consistency, and portability
4. Complete projects on schedule and within budget
Ascertain User’s Needs
• Define tasks
– Tasks
– Subtasks
• Frequency
– Frequent
– Occasional
– Exceptional
– Repair
• Ex. difference between a space
satellite, car engine, and fighter jet
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
Usability Measures
• How can we measure the ‘goodness’
of an interface?
• What are good metrics?
• ISO 9241
– Effectiveness
– Efficiency
– Satisfaction
Usability
• Combination of
– Ease of learning
– High speed of user task performance
– Low user error rate
– Subjective user satisfaction
– User retention over time
Design Evaluation
• Both subjective and objective metrics
• Some things we can measure
– Time to perform a task
– Improvement of performance over time
– Rate of errors by user
– Retention over time
– Subjective satisfaction
UI Design / Develop Process

• User-Centered Design
– Analyze user’s goals & tasks
– Create design alternatives
– Evaluate options
– Implement prototype
– Test
– Refine
– IMPLEMENT
Know Thy Users!
• Physical & cognitive abilities (& special needs)
• Personality & culture
• Knowledge & skills
• Motivation

• Two Fatal Mistakes:


– Assume all users are alike
– Assume all users are like the designer
Design is HARD!
• “It is easy to make things hard. It is hard to
make things easy.” – Al Chapanis, 1982
• Its more difficult than you think
• Real world constraints make this even harder

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