Human Computer Interaction

What is it all about ...

Fons J. Verbeek
LIACS, Imagery & Media
September 5, 2016

LECTURE 1
INTRODUCTION TO HCI
PRINCIPLES & KEY CONCEPTS
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 Content
• What is HCI
• Historical context
• What are the scientific disciplines involved
• Interaction & Interactive Systems
• 1st Key concept: Usability

• Systems
• Examples

• Why are we teaching this course ...

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 What is it about ...
• Humans
- Working
- Routines-Workflows
- Capabilities ~ Limitations
• Machines
- Used
- Mode of Operation
- Possibilities ~ Limitations
• INTERFACE,
- Man-Machine Interaction
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Embedded Systems

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 It is about system development

Nearly half of entire software development effort

relates to the user interface.
(Myers and Rosson, 1992)

• This statement is still very true

• Not only user interface
• Interaction Architecture, Product Design
• Connectivity
• Service Design

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 Human Computer Interaction
• As a Science
- Methods
- Formalisms
- Relations and Overlap diciplines
- Measurement
• As a Product
- Recipes
- Design
- Technology
- Measurement
• Strategies for Development
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Early Human Computer Interaction

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 Beginnings - Computing in 1945

• Harvard Mark I
- Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC):
- IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (aka Mark 1)
• 55 feet long, 8 feet high, 5 tons
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Learn about NORC ...

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 What Interactions did we See ...

• Mechanical
• Poor feedback
• Specialist use
• Process control
• Calculations
• No intention to address the mass market

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 What is HCI ...
• Early computers: extremely difficult to use
- large & expensive
- by comparison: “people time” (labour) cheap
- used by specialists
- no knowledge about how to make use easier
• Today (This era)
- None of these conditions hold
- Development of PC’s major landmark
• Shift to other interaction paradigms
- Small & Handheld - Devices
- Robots
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 Interaction Paradigms

• Batch processing • 1950’s

• Timesharing • 1960’s
• 1970’s
• Networking (1972 1st email)
• Graphical display • 1980’s
• Microprocessor
• WWW • 1990’s
• Ubiquitous Computing • 1995’s
• Grid/Cloud Computing • This era ͙

• Human Robot Interaction

• Tablet/Table Top Computing
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Initial outlook of human interaction
• Wide acceptance of computers (as of 1980ties)
• Consequence:
- Computers must be well-designed
- Interactions must be well-designed
• Users should not have to think about its use
- Intuitive
- Logical responses
- Safe
• Two crucial concepts
- Design
- Interaction
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 Not thinking about its use …
• For example compare:
- CD-players

- Cars

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 Interactions with Small Devices

Imagine what these devices can do com

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 Future directions in HCI

Q1
Japan 2005, by Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University.
• Human Robot Interaction
• Human Android Interaction
• Whole new range of interactions
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 Machine Personal Relations

• Robots get more human

- Android
- Geminoid Geminoid HI-1

- Ubiquitous phenomena
• Interaction will be more
human
- Emotive response
- Personal relations (e.g. Mariage .
- “If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and mise David Levy
is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts
like it loves you?”

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 What Interactions did we See ...

• Sensor based
• Intention of rich feedback
• Specialist use
• Multi-purpose
• Intention to address the mass market
• Ubiquitous

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 Design: Interdisciplinary Field
• HCI combines knowledge and methods
associated with professionals including:
- Computer Scientists
- Psychologists
• Experimental, Educational, Social and Industrial
- Designers
• Instructional and Graphical
- Technical Writers
- Human Factors and Ergonomics Experts
- Anthropologists and Sociologists
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 Multi-disciplinarity in HCI

Booth, 1989, Preece et al, 2002; Zhang & Li 2004

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Disciplines contributing to HCI

Computer Cognitive Social &

Science Psychology Organizational
Psychology

Ergonomics
HCI

Artificial Graphics
Sociology
Intelligence Design

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 Development of HCI
• Beyond and more than system’s capabilities
• 1970s: notion of User-Interface arises
• Also known as Man-Machine Interface
- “those aspects of the system that the user comes in
contact with” [Moran, 1981]

- “input language for user, an output language for

machine and a protocol for interaction” [Chi,1985]

- Man-Machine Interface: implies gender bias

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 Early concepts in HCI
• Companies started to call their products:
- “user-friendly” [ today this is a Curse ]
• In practice:
- Just tidy up the screens
- Make them more aesthetically pleasing
- No Design decisions nor Interaction plan
• Meanwhile:
- Research focus on capabilities/limitations of people
- Different thing!
- Important focus on psychological factors
- Focus on aspects of ergonomics
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Design - Capabilties - Humans

Poet Doet
Donald A. Norman - Psychologist

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 User Friendly

• What is User Friendly ?

• Can we measure it ?
• Criteria adhering to some standard ?

• Prototyping, Prototyping styles

• Usability, Usability criteria
• Evaluations, Evaluation techniques

• All are based in getting the User involved!

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 Definitions of HCI

• A workable definition is:

“a set of processes, dialogues and actions through
which a human employs and interacts with a
computer” (comment: visa versa ?)

• A focus on the research themes:

“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”

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 Dissect HCI definition
• Human,
- Users, single, group working together, sequence
- User(s) tries to complete a task.
• Computer,
- Technology, not just Desktop computer
- Systems:
• Large-scale computers,
• Process control,
• Embedded systems.
• Interaction,
- Communication, direct/indirect
- Dialogue + feedback/batch
- Task oriented
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 Development Attitude

• Computing paradigms have shifted

- Early computing had no end users.
- “end users” are extremely important
- Natural focus is on the needs and capabilities of
these end users
- Interface Design
- Interaction Design
• “Nearly half of entire software development effort
relates to the user interface.” [Myers and Rosson, 1992]

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 Design (1)
• ‘What is design?

It’s where you stand with a foot in two worlds -

the world of technology and the world of people
and human purposes - and you try to bring the
two together’.
Mitch Kapor (1996)

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 Design (2)

• The term ‘design’ refers to:

both to the creative process of specifying
something new and to the representations
that are produced during the process.

• In Design:
both problem and solution need to evolve
during the design process; rarely complete
specification before some design work has
been done. Ergo: it is an interactive process.
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 Design and Interactive Systems (1)
• Interactive system:
• Term used to describe the technologies that
interactive system designers work with.
• Term intends to cover components, devices,
products and software systems that are primarily
concerned with processing information.
• Things that deal with the transmission, display,
storage or transformation of information that
people can perceive.
• Devices and systems that respond dynamically to
people’s actions.
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Design and Interactive Systems (2)

• Examples
- Mobile phones:
transmit, store and transform information
- Websites:
store and display information and respond to
people’s actions
- Computer game controllers
dynamic response to actions
- Interactive Installations
transmit information, generate dynamic response

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 People and Technologies
• People and interactive systems are different:
this entails the fundamental challenge for
interactive systems designers is to deal with.

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 Interface
• The interface to an interactive system is all those parts of the
system with which people come into contact with; physically,
perceptually and conceptually.
• Physically
• Pressing buttons, moving levers
• Interactive device might respond by providing feedback
• Perceptually
• Display things on a screen which we can see
• Make noises which we can hear.
• Conceptually
• Trying to work out what it does
• What we should be doing.
• Messages/Indicators designed to help us do this.
• The interface consists of
• Input
• Output
• HCI needs a (conceptual) model for this
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 HCI: disaster stories
1988 :
Iran Air Flight 655 shot down by USS Vincennes
• F-14?? - 290 casualties
• Conclusion: ‘ egis had provided accurate data.
The crew had misinterpreted it.’
• Different radar screens displayed different aspects
of airplane
• Correlating information was difficult
• Vital data cluttered by trivial data
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 Poor interface design
1. Increased mistakes in
• data entry
• system operation
2. Inaccessible functionality
3. User frustration
• low productivity and/or
• under-utilisation
4. System failure because of user rejection

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 Software Quality (ISO 9126)

Metrics and Evaluation

- Functionality
- Reliability
- Usability
- Efficiency
- Maintainability
- Portability
- PM Accessibility (sometimes relevant, not ISO 9126)

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 Definition of Usability (Nielsen 2003)

• 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.

• Consequently, usability testing requires

interaction with representative users!

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 Usability Components

• Learnability
- Ease of learning the system, i.e. the basic tasks
- Skills retained over time (also Memorability)
• Throughput (also Efficiency)
- Speed of task performance
- Low user error rate
• Flexibility
- Suitability for intended user expertise
- Can system be customised?
• Attitude (also Satisfaction)
- User subjective satisfaction with system
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 Usability & Goals
• Usability goals (criteria = objective)
• effectiveness, efficiency, learnability, safety, etc.
• User experience goals (quality = subjective)
• fun, motivating, aesthetically pleasing, supportive of
creativity, rewarding, helpful, satisfying, etc.
• Sometimes there are conflicts

• “10 minute rule?”

• optimize what the user already knows(͙ Nelson 1980)
• use the innate knowledge of the user (group)
to learn the software (study workflow)
• not for complex systems
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 User Activities - Capabilities

• Activities
- Physical resources
• Devices that support interaction
- Cognitive resources
• Support of cognitive functions
• Memory
- Affective resources
• Pleasing
• Intelligent use of color and graphics
• activities are used to understand “Human”
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 Usability & Transparency

Relationship between
• user’s goals
• required actions
• results

must be meaningful,
not arbitrary

ORDER of ACTIONS!

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 Problems with ATMs
• Older people make much less use of ATMs
• 24 years : average 7 visits to an ATM per month
• Use drops off among those over 45
• 65+ years : two-thirds NEVER use an ATM
• Senior citizens often put off by ATMs
they find the machines
complicated, inconvenient and intimidating.
• Buttons that did not line up with commands
• Dimly lit screens hard to read in the glare of
daylight
• Sometimes confusing menu choices

Source: http://cnn.com/TECH/9712/04/t_t/atms.seniors/index.html
Reporting on research by W. Rogers and A. Fisk, Georgia Institute of Technology
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 Problems with ATM’s (Continued)

• Researchers + banks expected ATMs to be intuitively

easy to use
• Testing among senior citizens found only 20 percent
correct operation
• Usability suggestions:
• Simpler on-screen instructions
• More "undo" buttons
• Banks should provide training for any customers who need it

• remark a "large percentage" of people surveyed said

they would use ATMs if trained

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Learn how to use it ...

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Improvements with new Technology

Touch screen technology.

Has to be taught !
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 Importance of Usability
Research machines 1950s Mathematicians Machine reliability
Scientists users do programming

Mainframes 1960s Data-processing Users of output (business

& professionals managers) grow
1970s disenchanted with delays,
costs and lack of flexibility

Minicomputers 1970s Engineering and Users must still do must

other non-computer programming; usability
professionals becomes a problem

Microcomputers 1980s Almost anyone Usability is the major

problem
Internet (WWW) 2000s Almost anyone Usability is big business
Shackle, 1991

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 HCI has economic value ($, €, £)
Think about, strong competition on:
• Operating Systems
• Phones / Tablet Systems / Portable Devices

• Internet Browsers
• Word Processors
• Web-editing systems
• Photo-editing systems

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 Beyond standard computing ...

• Control in modern cars - navigation systems

Tesla, car-console; How well tested ?

Direct and Indirect Interaction

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 Aim - Approach for this Course
• Learn the major principles of HCI /Interaction
- Cognetics
- Affordance/Visability
- Usability
• Learn how people think, react, acquire
- Perception
- Cognetics
• Learn how to evaluate a system
- Development track
- Envisioning, Prototyping, Evaluating
- Research Based Approach - Empirical !
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 Aim - End terms for this Course

• Learn to communicate accross disciplines

• Learn about software design for Interaction
• Learn about graphic design for Interaction
• Learn about design of usefull Interaction
Open Mind
Understand context
Be prepared to throw away
Be adventurous

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