1

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD

(Department of Computer Science)
WARNING
1. PLAGIARISM OR HIRING OF GHOST WRITER(S) FOR SOLVING THE
ASSIGNMENT(S) WILL DEBAR THE STUDENT FROM AWARD OF
DEGREE/CERTIFICATE, IF FOUND AT ANY STAGE.
2. SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENT(S) BORROWED OR STOLEN FROM
OTHER(S) AS ONE’S OWN WILL BE PENALIZED AS DEFINED IN
“AIOU PLAGIARISM POLICY”.
Course: Human Computer Interface (3449) Semester: Spring 2019
Level: Bachelor Total Marks: 100
Pass Marks: 50
ASSIGNMENT No. 1
Q. 1 What is HCI? What is the significance of human
computer interaction?

Human-Computer Interface
Human-computer interface (HCI) The means of communication
between a human user and a computer system, referring in
particular to the use of input/output devices with supporting
software. Devices of increasing sophistication are becoming
available to mediate the human-computer interaction. These
include graphics devices, touch-sensitive devices, and voice-
input devices. They have to be configured in a way that will
facilitate an efficient and desirable interaction between a person
and the computer. Artificial intelligence techniques of knowledge
representation may be used to model the user of a computer
system, and so offer the opportunity to give personalized advice
on its use. The design of the machine interface may
incorporate expert-system techniques to offer
powerful knowledge-based computing to the user.

HCI is a branch of the science of ergonomics, and is concerned

especially with the relationship between workstations and their
operators. The aim is to develop acceptable standards for such
aspects as display resolution, use of color, and navigation
around an application.

The terms human-system interface (HSI), human-machine

interface (HMI), and man-machine interface (MMI) are all used
2

as synonyms. Human Computer Interface (HCI) was previously known

as the man-machine studies or man-machine interaction. It deals with
the design, execution and assessment of computer systems and related
phenomenon that are for human use.

HCI can be used in all disciplines wherever there is a possibility of

computer installation. Some of the areas where HCI can be implemented
with distinctive importance are mentioned below −

 Computer Science − For application design and engineering.

 Psychology − For application of theories and analytical purpose.

 Sociology − For interaction between technology and organization.

 Industrial Design − For interactive products like mobile phones, microwave

oven, etc.

The world’s leading organization in HCI is ACM − SIGCHI, which stands

for Association for Computer Machinery

Significance of human computer interface: In the early days of

computing only highly trained specialists could use computers, and these were
massive expensive machines really only found in industry and research. Today,
computers are everywhere, and the range of knowledge and experience of different
users is very broad. Unlike 30 years ago, the majority of computer users nowadays
have not received intensive specialised training. HCI is extremely important when
designing clear intuitive systems which will be usable for people with a varied
range of abilities and expertise, and who have not completed any formal training.
HCI takes advantage of our everyday knowledge of the world to make software
and devices more understandable and usable for everyone. For example, using a
graphic of a miniature folder in a computer’s interface helps the user understand
the purpose of the folder, as everyone has experience with real paper folders in
their everyday lives. Ultimately, if a system is well designed with HCI techniques,
the user should not even have to think about the intricacies of how to use the
system. Interaction should be clear, intuitive, and natural.

Daily Life

Today computers permeate every aspect of our daily lives. Even if a person does
not directly own or use a computer, their life is affected in some way by
computing. ATM machines, train ticket vending machines, and hot drinks
dispensing machines are just a few examples of computer interfaces a person can
come into contact with daily without needing to own a personal computer. HCI is
an important factor when designing any of these systems or interfaces. Regardless
3

if an interface is for an ATM or a desktop computer, HCI principles should be

consulted and considered to ensure the creation of a safe, usable, and efficient
interface.

Business and Industry

HCI is an important consideration for any business that uses computers in their
everyday operation. Well designed usable systems ensure that staff are not
frustrated during their work and as a result are more content and productive. HCI is
especially important in the design of safety critical systems, such as, for example,
those found in power plants, or air traffic control centers. Design errors in these
situations can have serious results, possibly resulting in the death of many people.

Accessibility

HCI is a key consideration when designing systems that are not only usable, but
also accessible to people with disabilities. The core philosophy of HCI is to
provide safe, usable, and efficient systems to everyone, and this includes those
with different sets of abilities and different ranges of expertise and knowledge.
Any system properly designed with HCI user-centeed techniques and principles
will also be maximally accessible to those with disabilities.

Software Success

Good use of HCI principles and techniques is not only important for the end user,
but also is a very high priority for software development companies. If a software
product is unusable and causes frustration, no person will use the program by
choice, and as a result sales will be negatively affected.

Untrained users

Today, very few computer users actually read the manual accompanying the
software, if one exists. Only very specialised and advanced programs require
training and an extensive manual. Computer users expect to understand the main
functionality of an average program within a few minutes of interacting with it.
HCI provides designers with the principles, techniques, and tools necessary to
design effective interfaces that are obvious and easy to use, and do not require
training.

Q. 2 Illustrate different trends in human computer interface.

In the early days of computer science, designers and developers paid much less attention to making
hardware and software products usable or “user friendly.” Yet, requests from a growing subset of
users for easy-to-use devices eventually focused researchers’ attention on usability. In the mid-1990s,
4

another important concept became associated with usability. User experience (UX) focuses mainly on

parameters related to the user: satisfaction, enjoyability, emotional fulfillment, aesthetic appeal, and
so on. The concept of UX has been extended and better defined in some research areas. For
instance, web interface designers often leverage the User Experience Honeycomb to identify priorities
in the design phase. The honeycomb’s seven hexagons represent parameters that must be carefully
balanced to provide users a satisfactory quality of experience (QoE) by ensuring that an interface is:

useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, and valuable. Several affordable sensors
have begun to shake up the way people interact with devices. Touch and multitouch screens have
driven the change from cellular phones to smartphones, and gestures are now the main interaction
modality to activate functions on personal devices. At the same time, speech recognition technologies
and CPUs’ increased computational power let users efficiently provide inputs when they can’t perform
gestures. One market that has led this deep innovation in HCI is entertainment. With users asking
game and device makers for new ways to control characters, game console developers proposed
controllers to release players from the constraints of using a keyboard and mouse (the controller
becomes a steering wheel, a gun, or a tennis racket, for instance). Sensors such as the Microsoft
Kinect are a further step toward the implementation of fully natural interfaces in which the human
body becomes the controller. The device lets users provide commands to the machine via gestures
and body poses Researchers have also proposed sensors that can track a user’s hands. For
instance, the Leap Motion can interactively track both hands of a user by identifying the positions of
finger tips and the palm center some smart TVs let users control their choices with a set of gestures,
thus replacing the traditional remote control. Found only in science fiction movies just a few years
ago, the above-mentioned scenarios are now the present reality of HCI. future technological
advances, which aim to transform interface devices into wearable and embeddable objects. Google
Glass will be (massively) marketed in the near future, and new application fields are proposed
daily. Other trends are Curved and Ultra High Definition (UHD) or 4K Resolution Displays ,Curved and

Flexible Displays, Brain Signal Capturing Headset, Projection or Virtual Keyboard, Hand Gesture,
Voice Recognising Devices, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Gaming, Virtual Reality Headset,

Google Cardboard allows users to build a very low-cost headset to experience virtual reality using
smartphones

Haptic feedback controllers produce realistic feedback e.g. force, vibration etc. to the user for virtual
reality,

Smart glass e.g. Google Glass is a smart-phone-like hands-free device that is able to take voice
commands. It is a heads-up display (HUD) equipped with a camera, microphone and GPS etc
5

HCI has also entered the world of fashion and jewellery in the form of Smart devices. For example,
the CSR and Cellini Bluetooth Pendant is capable of connecting to a smart-phone and is able to
change its LED colour or brightness depending on the mood or clothing of the user.

Q. 4 What are user center and activity centered designs

approaches in HCL? Explain
USER-CENTERED DESIGN (UCD) APPROACH: User-centred
design (UCD) is a collection of processes which focus on putting users at the center
of product design and development. You develop your digital product taking into
account your user’s requirements, objectives and feedback. A more formal definition
is the one provided by the Interaction Design Foundation:

User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers

and other stakeholders focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the
design process. UCD calls for involving users throughout the design process
via a variety of research and design techniques so as to create highly usable
and accessible products for them.
— Definition of user-centered design (UCD) by the Interaction Design
Foundation

User-Centered Design may be considered a practice, field, craft,

framework, philosophy, discipline, or method of designing tools for
human use by involving humans in the design process. Regardless of
how one couches UCD—framework, philosophy, etc.—the defining
tenet of UCD concerns placing users at the center of design decisions.
This is not to say that users themselves are producing the final design
deliverables, even though users may engage in design activities as
participants of design research. As Nielsen notes, “users are not
designers, and designers are not users” [1:12-13]. Further, user-
centered design is not about asking users directly what they want [8:
283, 284]—indeed, to do so would be to introduce bias. Rather, UCD is
about a UCD practitioner (such as a user experience architect,
interaction designer, information architect, etc.) profiling users and
defining their behaviors of use of and preferences for various aspects
of a given application, and using that information to then make design
decisions about the web application. In this regard, UCD is a
collaboration between designer and user.
6

UCD Foundations User-Centered Design has multiple

methods-, research-, and theory-related precursors from the
1980s and 1990s, including what was commonly referred to as
Usability Engineering (e.g., see [1]) and Human-Computer
Interaction (e.g., [2], [4], [5], [6]). Usability engineering serves
as a solid foundation given its focus on the user, the user
interface (UI), and the user’s goals and approaches to the task
at hand

UCD Deliverables: Written report of findings and

recommendations, Presentation, Personas, Process Flow,
Usability Test Plan.
ACTIVITY-CENTERED DESIGN (ACD): Activity-centered
design (ACD) is an extension of the Human-centered design paradigm in interaction design[1].
ACD features heavier emphasis on the activities that a user would perform with a given piece of
technology. ACD has its theoretical underpinnings in activity theory,[2] from which activities can be
defined as actions taken by a user to achieve a goal.[3]
When working with activity-centered design, the designers use research to get insights of the
users. Observations and interviews are typical approaches to learn more about the
users' behavior. By mapping users' activities and tasks, the designer may notice missing tasks
for the activity to become more easy to perform, and thus design solutions to accomplish those
tasks.

ACD Foundations ACD has roots in a variety of theories and

disciplines. Like UCD, ACD has foundations in human-
computer interaction. But it also has roots in distributed
cognition, computer supported collaborative work (CSCW)
(e.g., , and the highly democratic, Scandinavian Participatory
Design (which itself has a large body of literature). ACD
Processes and Deliverables In light of the recent enthusiasm
for ACD among leading practitioners in the field .and given that
ACD has formally been known and called ACD for at least 10
years), it is surprising that no definitive text yet exists that
profiles the processes, methods, and deliverables that are to be
used or produced by the ACD practitioner in business, or
workplace contexts. Consequently, this section provides less
information about ACD than the other sections provide about
UCD At a high level, it seems that ACD presents a dramatic, if
7

merely a surface-level shift from UCD in that ACD asks not

what tasks or activities the user must perform with the
application but what tasks or activities must be enabled by the
application/tool/system. In the industry-oriented publications
that are available on ACD, the move is from “understanding
your users as people” to “understanding them as participants in
activities”. Some authors ,have noted that Activity-Centered
Design remains largely theoretical in nature. It is likely that the
very foundation of ACD—rich, complex, and largely
theoretical— simply does not translate readily to the day-to-day
practices of design in industry.

Q. 3 Discuss different design elements and principles along

with issues in HCI in detail.
Elements of HCI:
1. What are user interfaces?

2. Users are different, usage environments are different

3. Factors in HCI

4. Levels of analysis

5. Measurable human factors

6. Disciplines contributing to HCI

7. Integration of usability testing into the software development

process

DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN COMPUTER

INTERACTION:
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the design and study of how
people (Users) interact with technology interfaces. HCI is everywhere
 8

and not just restricted to the home PC or laptop, HCI also refers to
other technologies from mobile phones, MP3 players, IPads to
microwave ovens, digital radio and even remote controls.

HCI – Human Computer Interaction Communication between a

human and a computer system, referring in particular to the use of
input/output devices with supporting software. John Daintith. – A
Dictionary of Computing. 2004.
There are many different properties that go into HCI design. Though I
am only going to cover 5 here since that is what I am currently being
taught, there are many more such as;
 Requirements Engineering
 Interaction Design
 Personas
 Disruptive Innovation
 Visual Aesthetics
Visibility:The more visible functions are, the more likely users will
be able to know what to donext. In contrast, when functions are "out
of sight," it makes them more difficult to find and knows how to use.
Norman describes the controls of a car to emphasize this point.The
controls for different operations are clearly visible (e.g., indicator,
headlights,horn, hazard warning lights), indicating what can be done.
The relationship betweenthe way the controls have been positioned in
the car and what they do makes it easyfor the deriver to find the
appropriate control for the task at hand.
Affordance:
Affordance in terms of design means how an object should physically
be used, we should be able to visually see what
that object or thing should be used for. Let’s do a quick example of
affordance, check out my wheelie bin:
9

The design is instantly recognisable and we automatically know what

to do with it. The two handles at the top are designed to pull, so that is
one affordance. The wheelie bin also has two handles on the back so
we can pull it behind us, yet another affordance. We also put our
recycling inside, that’s yet another affordance.
There are also affordances for which the wheelie bin was not
originally designed to do. Light does not pass through it, so we can
hide behind it. We can climb inside if we wanted to!
There are hundreds of things we come in contact with on a daily basis
where the design is intuitive. Affordances are things we think about
without even knowing.
Perceivability:
A website user should be able to perceive when or if an action should
be carried out. The website itself should be designed so users get
visual clues about what to do and where to go next. Designers use a
call to actions for this process, in the form of text, graphics and other
elements such as sound. The less time the user spends trying to work
out what to do next the more perceivability the website has. Most
designers will try to abide by universal standards, such as placing a
search box in the upper right-hand area of the website. To help aid in
the searching process it is universally known that the search button is
to the right of the search bar itself.

Feedback:
 10

Giving the user feedback whilst processing an action is fundamental

when it comes to HCI design. If a user does not get the proper
feedback, they may think something is wrong or they did not perform
the action, therefore they will perform the action again and this could
lead to errors.
feedback comes in many shapes and sizes. When a user clicks an
action we want the outcome to happen as soon as possible and in the
fastest time, certain actions need a little bit more time to process. We
as humans have very little patience, so to counteract this, designers
incorporate features that give us feedback. For example, just say you
want to search for something on a website, depending on the search it
could take some time. So the designers can place a loading box
element with some text such as “We are just searching your results,
please bear with us…”.
Since we can now see feedback and that our action is actually “doing
something”, we have a little bit more patience to await the results of
the search. Here are some typical user feedback examples;
 Mouse graphic turning into a sand timer
 Flashing red lights on a TV indicating the remote control action has
worked
 Led light on a kettle telling us that it has been switched on
 A “Waiting…” graphic on a website after an action has been carried
out.
Constraints:
Constraints are when the interactive options and functions of a
product are restricted. Since we have all filled them out at some point,
we shall look at website forms. When we fill out a form online,
whether it be for a registration, subscription, book an appointment or
other, they are generally the same in the sense they require
information.
Forms use constraints to stop us from making frustrating errors. For
example, until we type in the *required information the form needs,
we are prevented from pressing “Submit” or
Many years ago this system was not in place, the form would actually
let you send after partially completing it and then complain it was
incorrect, this meant we had to re-type the form back out, very
frustrating! Apart from forms, there are other constraints used in
11

everyday life such as menu items being disabled on a website because

they are not being used. A button in a life which is greyed out as that
particular button is not being used.
There are a lot of different ways to sway the user from wasting time
by placing constraints. There are also two different kinds, physical
and psychological. Take a set of traffic lights, for instance, the light is
on red, we can physically go but psychologically we shouldn’t.
Consistency:
Consistency tells us the way in which I make sense of the world,
including products we interact with. As humans, we create and work
out patterns in almost everything we do, this helps us to decide what
our next steps are to achieving our ultimate goal.
The same is true for interactive products. If I said to you “Website
Menu”, you are instantly thinking that the menu is somewhere near
the top of the website. That’s because it’s universally known that
website menus appear at the top of all pages. On the other hand, if the
menu items linked to different pages each time a user followed it, the
website would be almost impossible to use and very inconsistent.
It is just not enough that website elements need to be perceivable,
they must also be designed and organised with consistency, since
interacting with them needs to yield the same results each and every
time.
One last example is the sharing buttons on the bottom of this very
post, just one glance and we already know that they are for sharing on
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and finally Reddit

Q. 5 Write a brief note on different paradigms of interaction

in HCL
we argue that central to each paradigm in HCI is a different
metaphor of interaction. Each such metaphor introduces
‘centers’ and ‘margins’ that drive choices about what
phenomena constitute important descriptive qualities of
interactions, what questions are interesting to ask about
12

interaction, what methods are appropriate for studying and

designing interaction and what validation procedures are
required to establish knowledge claims about interaction.
The First and Second Paradigms Using this model of paradigms, we
can now characterize the first two waves of research in HCI. The first
paradigm, an amalgam of engineering and human factors, saw
interaction as a form of man-machine coupling in ways inspired by
industrial engineering and ergonomics. The goal of work in this
paradigm, then, is to optimize the fit between humans and
machines; the questions to be answered focus on identifying
problems in coupling and developing pragmatic solutions to them.
Occupying the center of the first paradigm are concrete problems
that arise in interaction and cause disruption; at the margin are
phenonema that underlie interaction but do not directly lead to
noticeable trouble.
The second paradigm, in contrast, is organized around a central
metaphor of mind and computer as coupled information processors.
At the center is a set of information processing phenomena or issues
in com

puters and users such as ‘how does information get in’, ‘what
transformations does it undergo’, ‘how does it go out again,’ ‘how
can it be communicated efficiently’ and so forth. To appropriate
Flyvbjerg’s characterization of the state of modern social sciences, it
places “rationality and rational analysis [as] the most important
mode of operation for human activity”

The Third Paradigm: The third paradigm contains a variety of

perspectives and approaches whose central metaphor is interaction
13

as phenomenologically situated. The goal for interaction is to

support situated action and meaning-making in specific contexts, and
the questions that arise revolve around how to complement
formalized, computational representations and actions with the rich,
complex, and messy situations at hand around them. Because of its
emphasis on multiple meanings made in context, we term the third
paradigm situated perspectives. Because of its emphasis on multiple
perspectives, the third paradigm does not espouse a single, correct
set of methods or approaches to answer these questions. Instead,
we see a variety of approaches that are embedded in a similar
epistemological substrate. In a curious way, the third paradigm
resembles the first in its ability to recognize issues
phenomenologically. The description of the third paradigm should
not sound new – many researchers in HCI are already working out of
this framework. Thus the three interlocking elements of the
phenomenologically situated paradigm are a (1) focus on meaning
and meaning creation, (2) based on human experience, and (3)
therefore represented through multiple perspectives, and the
relationship amongst those perspectives.