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Human – Computer
Interaction: Portfolio 1

HCI Yola Site:

http://astilair.yolasite.com/hci-work.php

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HCI Tutorial 1 – Week 2................................................................................................3
Activity 1: Good and Bad Design..........................................................................3
Activity 2: Your Own Site.....................................................................................3
Activity 3: Assignment...........................................................................................3
Activity 3: Assignment (cont)................................................................................4
HCI Tutorial 2 – Week 3................................................................................................5
Activity 1: Accessing Social Websites...................................................................5
Activity 2: Walk in their shoes...............................................................................5
Activity 3: Collecting Data....................................................................................5
Activity 4: Translation...........................................................................................6
Activity 5: Assignment...........................................................................................7
HCI Tutorial 3 – Week 4................................................................................................7
Activity 1: Project Proposal...................................................................................8
Activity 2: Emotions and HCI................................................................................8
Activity 3: Social Interaction Design.....................................................................8
Activity 4: Assignment Chapter 7..........................................................................9
HCI Tutorial 4 - Week 5..............................................................................................10
Activity 2 - Social Interaction through Role Play................................................11
Activity 3: Assignment Chapter 8 (Preece)..........................................................11
Activity 4: User Analysis.....................................................................................12
HCI Tutorial 5 – Week 6..............................................................................................12
Activity 2: Creating an Online Survey.................................................................12
Activity 3: Manual Card Sorting..........................................................................13
Activity 4: Automatic Card Sorting.....................................................................13
Activity 5: Assignment Chapter 10......................................................................13

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HCI Tutorial 1 – Week 2

Activity 1: Good and Bad Design

I completely agree on you with google.com, the website is designed to run as fast as
possible, and that means a small logo, and very little on the actual website.

And I also agree with your opinion on http://www.spaceistheplace.ca/, while I think it

could have been much worse, if the designer had not used thumbnails and hyperlinks,
and not spaced as well as he did.

Activity 2: Your Own Site

Activity 3: Assignment

- Air Traffic Control

Managing Air Traffic Control of airplanes, and making sure that the flight schedule
(landing schedule does not become clustered)

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• Reservation software for airline agents at the luggage check-in counter

1. Making sure that the reservations can be checked quickly, and changed
quickly, so that the line can move long quickly.

• Flight simulators to train airline pilots

1. Accurate and realistic simulators that help pilots prepare for real flights.

• An adoption of a flight simulator as a video game for home use

Activity 3: Assignment (cont)

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/11/atc-problems-on-east-coast-
not.html

This site is explains a problem that appeared in their ATC system (Air Traffic Control
System), problems in Federal Aviation Administration has caused some problems at
airports around the country.

Luckily the longest delays were only just over an hour. Unfortunately the computer
glitch was mysterious in nature, and all the computer technicians could do was reboot
the system, and wait for it to resynchronize.

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HCI Tutorial 2 – Week 3

Activity 1: Accessing Social Websites

Created website on Facebook.

While allot of information is usually available on your friends, this information is

usually put out and displayed by the creator of the website.

The kinds of activities are varied, ranging from small games, to groups, and blogs,
and even online chatting to online friend finders and matchmaking.

The information on Facebook is basically Pictures, general information, friends,

groups, interests, and much more.

Activity 2: Walk in their shoes

There is a considerate difference between a handicapped person and a healthy person,

I have analysed the difference chiefly between the blind and the healthy, mainly
because is hardest for a blind person to use a computer, and the examples [provided
by the HCI tutorial help most.

In analysing this with myself blindfolded, and using MS accessibility options, where
the computer speaks out loud everywhere the mouse moves and clicks, I have
discovered that it is quite impossible, compared to using my eyes as I normally do,
without knowing where the mouse is I cannot navigate anywhere near as easily.

In concern to making the public more aware of this problem for blind people, and
somehow making them more sympathetic and helpful, there is the key issue of the
public not being educated in the problems of blind people, the answer to this is to
make the public more educated, by making them take small course in primary school
where they try to navigate as a blind person, making sure of course that they pair up
with a un-blindfolded friend, so that it is possible to avoid injuries, this would both
improve friendships, trust and educate the children on the problems that visually
impaired have throughout life.

Activity 3: Collecting Data

Online chatting and face-to-face conversation is usually completely different. Usually

the conversation online or offline depends on the relationship between the people
conversing, added to the fact of what type it is, whether casual or strict business.

One of the main problems with chatting online is that expressions are not taken into
account when chatting online, the use of emoticons has greatly improved this, but still
it is nothing like the same thing.

When chatting online people tend to swear more easily, or insult easily, where both or
all parties know that the people are joking or taking the swearing lightly.

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Another added fact when conversing online, people tend to shortcut words and
conversations, using 'txt language' or so it has been called.

Activity 4: Translation

http://translate.google.com/#

Original

Online chatting and face-to-face conversation is usually completely different. Usually

the conversation online or offline depends on the relationship between the people
conversing, added to the fact of what type it is, whether casual or strict business.

Translated to Japanese

オンラインチャットと顔を突き合わせて会話を通常 completley 異なってい

る。通常の会話をオンラインまたはオフラインの人が会話の間の関係に依存
するが、タイプは何かどうか、カジュアルや、厳しいビジネスの事実を追加
しました

Translate Website to From Japanese to English

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.languageguide.org%2Fnihongo%2F

Translated back to English

Regular face-to-face and online chat conversations are completely different.

Dependent on the relationship between the people talking in normal conversation
online or offline, whether or not type anything, and casually, was added to the hard
business facts

Answer

As you can see most of the translated paragraph is completely accurate, while the very
last few word of the last sentence is mixed up and lost in translation.

While using this to translate an entire website and use it for everything, it is better
than not understanding a website at al, and allows the user to get the basic idea of
what is on the website.

The Fact that the whole website is changed but most of the words are completely
wrong, and not even close to their original makes it annoying to use regularly, but or
people who need this information from one certain cite, that is in a foreign language
Google translator will do the job for them, making it ‘close enough’ but caution must
be taken when relying on it too much, because as you have seen, words can be
distorted very easily.

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Activity 5: Assignment

http://questionpro.com/t/ADx7TZHNeC

This is a short default survey I made that asks questions regarding the website and its
features

The fact is that this activity is useful for getting surveys published quickly, and many
people taking them, because I assume that the surveys are then sent online to people
who answer surveys for a little extra change on the side.

What I found after publishing the survey and asking 2 people to answer the questions
was that, multiple choice works best. Because the users taking the surveys found it
easier to do the survey when the question and the answer were displayed all at once,
and could be read and answered as quickly as possible. Drop down menus were
therefore less convenient and I removed the entire drop down menus, to make it easier
on the people taking the survey, and check boxes were irrelevant mostly because they
are used for more than one answer, where only one was required by my questions.

HCI Tutorial 3 – Week 4

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Activity 1: Project Proposal

After examining the requirements and details for the project requirements I have
decided upon a website based project for my assignments 1 and 2 (project 1 and 2) of
HCI, this will be detailed on firstly the user analysis and prototyping of the
interactions between the user and the website, chiefly how the website is used such as
downloading and interaction between the user and website also detailing the
automation of the website upon interaction with the user.

The website that I have chosen is a torrent based website where artists, musicians and
amateur moviemakers post their work and users, who sometimes include scouting
companies search through it all and can download what seems interesting. This
website is called www.mininova.com, and is called Mininova for short.

Activity 2: Emotions and HCI

Understanding emotions in HCI is especially important because emotions are a

deciding factor in goals and needs of people, and understanding these emotions helps
achieve their goals and needs.

An even more appropriate example of this is where the user of a website reacts to the
images on the website, in understanding the user’s emotional reaction to this website
it is easier to understand the achievement of the website and get the users to react with
the wanted emotions.

There are 4 key effects to emotion in HCI, these 4 are: Attention, Memory,
Performance, Assessment.

Attention – when the user is made to react with wrapped attention this emotion is
usually happiness or sadness, although the user can be made to pay attention through
other emotions.
Memory – When the user is made to look at something emotionally stirring, wether
happy or sad, the user is storing that in memory, and with a strong enough emotional
response form the user, the memory of the graphics/interface/ website can stay in their
memory for a long time.
Performance – with the right emotional stimuli performance of the user can increase
greatly, for example a motivational graphic that shows the user ‘How good he has it’
compared to billions in third world countries. Another example of this is a happy
emotional response and everyone knows that we work better when we are happy.

Activity 3: Social Interaction Design

www.myspace.com is an a social interaction site where a more active approach is

taken for the users to interact and connect (dating, chatting, friendship) and social
interaction is actually rewarded by use of it’s ‘Social Points’ system, where the people
who interact and connect with more people the better their social points system is.

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In this way Myspace.com is completely different from other social networking sites,
and while mispace.com encourages online connections and networking of friends, the
site designers also encourage physical aspects, and outdoor activities.

Networking websites like Myspace.com are an ingenious invention for anyone who
wishes to keep in touch with friends, especially if they are too busy to visit them, but
in this aspect it also poses a problem, where some people will start to ONLY
communicate online, and start to avoid contact and physical activities, but sadly this is
a risk when concerning online networking.

Activity 4: Assignment Chapter 7

• The basic goals of improving the product in my situation, improving the

website is to make sure the users are happy with the website overall, with
factors like:
1. Distance from server,
2. People Employed (number and skill level) to maintain
website
3. Number of users for website…
Then making sure the speeds and services of the website reach the users
standards:
1. Forums,
2. Download speeds,
3. Upload speeds,
4. Loading Time…
• For Interviews the data gathering would be incredibly easy, considering the
number would be quite low, in the amount of interviews possible, because
while interviews can be very detailed and are great for gathering data from
users because the interviewer can ask the questions they need and go further
into the issue until they have all the data they need from the interviewee, the
number of people available to interview is quite low, both because of time
constraints for the interviewer and because very few people have the spare
time to go to a interview and answer the questions needed.
• For questionnaires, the information can be gathered much more easily, meaning
that the person who needs data gathered can make one questionnaire (usually
referred to as a survey) and then copy it hundreds (or more) of times and hand
or email it out to the relevant groups of people. The downsides of
questionnaires is that the people taking them can easily misinterpret the
questions, and the answers quickly become something completely unrelated,
this is due to people having widely different opinions and understandings on
the subjects of the questions, in this sense questionnaires are vastly lacking
compared to interviews where he interviewer can ask the question in different
forms and ways until the interviewee understands the question and can answer
it to the best of their ability.
• Observation is probably one of the most limited of all the data gathering
techniques, specifically because it is much harder to observe on a mass scale
where it is easy to average out the results. In short observation is hard both
because it is time consuming to observe the needed number to average3 out

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the results, hard to observe the subjects, because they will act differently from
a real situation, and another key one is that observation is much harder
because it is hard to see exactly what the people are doing for example, a
person types something onto a computer screen in the website, it is often hard
for the observer to see what the person types, because the person types quickly
then presses enter.

HCI Tutorial 4 - Week 5

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Activity 2 - Social Interaction through Role Play

A person with vision impairment (meaning a person who is blind) will have some
problems with social situations, as will anyone who is even a little different from the
general social groups.

Some of the key problems would be the person with vision impairment relating to
others in a social situation, some examples of these are:

Scenario 1 – Buying groceries and talking with the checkout operator

Scenario:

The general conversations one might have with complete strangers are very different
where the person is blind, where a person with normal vision may chat idly about the
weather and the stock market price, a blind person cannot see the weather, while
usually this will not hinder, the problem being that a blind person never fully looks
directly to a speaker, and speaks directly to his/her face, this may cause certain
problems for some people, and unease on others.

Scenario 2 – Ordering food at a restaurant from a menu, talking with

a waiter and eating a meal:

In this situation, the process would be a little more annoying for blind person, while
the waiter mist be patient, the blind person will ask for a brail menu, where he/she
will ‘read’ over the entire menu, and ask the waiter what he/she thinks is the best meal
for the day/night.

In this situation, neither side is at a disadvantage, I would assume that there are rules
stating that a restaurant must have brail menus for a blind person available, and the
waiter can chat idly to the customer about the foods, and anything else that takes their
fancy.

Scenario 3 – Meeting someone new at a party, sports club, BBQ:

This situation is a little harder to gauge, and usually depends on the kind of people the
blind person is talking to. That said, people usually will still feel unease when talking
to a blind person, usually because of hurting the blind persons feelings.

The person talking to the blind person will sometimes feel unease because of talking
to a person who does not look directly at them (thought they know that the blind
person is not doing this on purpose).

Activity 3: Assignment Chapter 8 (Preece)

Upon reviewing data gathered on the website www.mininova.com I have realised that
there is some qualitative data that can be gathered and changed to quantitative data,
this mainly relates to the users and uploaders on the website.

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The users before were estimated to being within a age group of 12-24, and the
uploaders around the same ages, but this data could be gathered and changed to
quantities data through graphs and more thorough data when concerning age groups,
of course, this data is restricted because of privacy laws.

The data gathered from users could easily be gathered and compiled onto spreadsheets
and graphs making it into quantities data, where the numbers are more definite, and
the information gathered from the data a lot more accurate.

For example: the age groups and the download number should be cross-referenced
and then compared, to decide what age groups will download from what download
sections, and what certain downloads will be the ‘nest new thing’ where everyone will
want one download of the download from that certain download section.

Activity 4: User Analysis

The users for www.mininova.com are usually in the teenager’s category, due to its
mainly music/movie content and all aimed at the teenage user group.

The knowledge of their technology obviously goes quite far, where they are able to
use and manage torrents and a torrent downloader on their computer, but that isn’t
saying much for the current age, where all teenagers know computers better than the
back of their hands.

The general education of the teenagers logging onto mininova.com could vary a lot,
usually I would say that with their ability to use and manage minionva torrenents that
they would have to have at least a primary school education especially in computers,
and the general age level of teenagers tends to have a trend of high schoolers.

The website www.mininova.com supports hundreds if not thousands of independent

music artists and moviemakers, mininova is fast becoming one of the new websites
where independent artists and moviemakers show their works to the world.
www.mininova.com is different to YouTube in where it doesn’t allow direct
streaming off the website, it allows huge downloads off p2p networks, where people
share their copies and upload/download between each other.

HCI Tutorial 5 – Week 6

Activity 2: Creating an Online Survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/jsPopInvite.aspx?sm=QNiZDwJP
%2fLEECwMAFIvFLDtARMDIB7FJyIshsoLwRfs%3d
My survey was based on questions to ask the user about their project/ assignment/
portfolio. The answers and feedback I got concerning this was very limited because of
the extremely small sample size of the students involved.

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All things considered, the general trend was that they were happy with the practicals,
and project, but the main problem was the vagueness of the question in Project1, and
not having it been explained properly in the assignment sheet, the students had a
harder time understanding the nature of the project, and therefore doing the
assignment.

Activity 3: Manual Card Sorting

There is a general trend when dealing with Card sorting in similar areas, such as
websites, and software applications, but these trends only are similar because of the
similar basic design and layout of a website, while websites on different things (e.g.:
sport and shopping) have much more of a gap between the groups and similarities.
The groupings depended on the user, but a more general thought was where the
groups and cards grouped into, these groups were accepted by everyone in the class,
and acknowledged as similar grouped, because of their similar purposes and place, for
example in the “about us” group there was contact us, store locator, and delivery
details.

Activity 4: Automatic Card Sorting

I made an automatic card sorting game about the classroom, and people generally
placed all the right cards into the correct groups that I researched beforehand making
the card sorting game. The advantages and disadvantages were discovered upon
studying the difference between automatic card sorting and manual card sorting.
Advantages:
• Many more people can do this card sorting now, from practically anywhere in
the world

• Much easier to do automatic card sorting than manual

• Much faster than manual card sorting- - Many people don’t have the time to
do manual card sorting

Disadvantages:
• Much less personal than doing the card sorting game face to face, and
discussing.

• Discussion is impossible, making more detailed information on the card

sorting, and why the user chose that particular combination

• Data is much less detailed in automatic card sorting

Activity 5: Assignment Chapter 10

The users requirements in relation to my project is a website that enables them to look
through various legal torrents, where frequently amateur artists and moviemakers and
musicians post their work, as well as various radio stations and other organisations
that want the people to hear/read/see their works for free.
In this sense the user’s requirements are easily recognizable, especially after looking
at similar websites, and observing and interviewing a few friends who used this
website, the most prominent of the users requirements are:
• Fast upload/download times

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• Wide selection of torrents uploaded from their designers

• Comments available on each torrent uploaded, and available to

make comments from users…

After analysing 2 user profiles, one of an uploader’s and one of a frequent downloader
I have seen a large difference, chiefly based on the torrents, and the comments on the
profiles, and the comments made by each concerning torrent downloads.
The uploaders profile was incredibly detailed, making sure that any company that saw
his work and liked it could easily reach him, on email, twitter, facebook, mobile,
home phone, and his profile had many designs to make it look more professional, for
any company talent scouters looking at it.
The downloader’s profile was bare minimum, with few comments on his profile, and
only basic information, mostly hidden, but his dummy email address setup as contact
information, the downloader’s chief concern was to download work of artists and
moviemakers that he liked or looked good, then make comments on it describing how
the uploader could improve on it.

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