College of Engineering

Spring 23-24

Human-Computer Interactions – ITE409

Instructor: Dr. Heba Ismail

Assignment 1
PACT Analysis: “Employees sending an email (Gmail) at their desk”

By:
Chakib Derradji Benchaouche 1087307
Abd Al Rahman Saleh 1082103
Saif Al Meqbali 1073945
Introduction:
Human-centered design is an approach that puts the human at the center of the development
cycle, which allows to reflect people’s needs in products and services. In this report, we will
discuss Gmail as an example system for our PACT analysis.

This report will go into the people aspect (physical, psychological, social), the activity aspect
(temporal, cooperation, complexity, safety-critical, nature of content), and the context aspect
(organizational, social, physical) wherever applicable.

People Aspect:
1. Physical:
a. Visual Impairments: With Gmail’s very large userbase, it is almost guaranteed that
there are ones with special needs. Of which are short/long sightedness (or below par
eyesight). These groups will have difficulties reading emails or labels, finding
relevant information…etc. In addition, colour blindness and light sensitivity may
present hardship in a few cases, when there is bright multimedia content in an email
for example. To accommodate these individuals, Google employs the following:

 Text size: Gmail allows users to change the font size for better visibility.
 Dark mode: Gmail has both options for light and dark mode, up to the user’s choice.
This gives better visibility for those who have weak vision and offers a dimmer
interface for those who are sensitive to brightness.
 Colour-blind friendliness: Google doesn’t have any direct implementation to
accommodate colour blindness, but it uses minimal colours in the interface to
compensate.

b. Hearing Impairments: In the case of Gmail, it is not necessary to analyse whether is

accommodates this type of impairment as it is a mailing system and does not deal
with audio communication/media.

c. Motor Issues: Motor issues is not exclusively chronic, as it can happen to anyone at
any time. E.g.: shaking hands may be caused by lack of sleep, stress, or chronic
diseases. To reduce the need for physically typing emails, Google implements it’s
voice assistant across its products, namely Gmail, to allow voice typing.
2. Psychological:
a. Cognitive: There is a wide range of cognitive difficulties that users may face
while using Gmail, most prominently attention and focus issues as well as
memory problems. Gmail, by default, has a very cluttered interface by presenting
all messages as compressed boxes with only a few words visible from the body.
This may cause attention span deficits and overwhelm users. To combat this,
Gmail allows to change the display of the interface based on different preferences.

To accommodate for bad memory, Gmail has a very advanced search feature
which allows to search by sender, title, content, attachment (has or doesn’t have), size…
etc. Which greatly reduces the efforts it takes to find specific information to users with
bad memory.
 b. Mental model: the user’s image of what the interface of a system should look
like based on the activity it allows them to do is what is called a mental model. A
sense of familiarity that facilitates navigating a system for a non-expert user. In
our case, Gmail keeps the same layout as any other Google app.

This consistency greatly contributes to the ease of using Gmail. In addition, the simplicity
of the design helps with guiding users. Gmail has a “Compose” button on the left-hand side
menu which is the only one labeled (except the categories/labels). After clicking it, it will pop a
message box for the user to type the sender address and email content.

3. Social:
a. Multilingual support: Gmail supports 133 different languages (and sometimes
even dialects) for a very inclusive experience. Users will have no issues
navigating the application in their native (or one of their spoken) language(s).

Activity Aspect:
The discussed activity is writing emails for sending them in the workplace. Certain attributes are
relevant to this activity and must be considered in the process of designing. Factually, Google
has taken care of these attributes to offer a well human-centered system for users.
1. Temporal:
Continuity and frequency are mainly the 2 main points should be discussed for this attribute.
 a. Continuity:

 Draft Saving: Gmail automatically saves drafts of emails in progress, allowing users
to pause and resume writing at any time without losing their work. This flexibility
supports interruptions and enables users to manage their email tasks efficiently.
 Offline Access: Gmail's offline mode enables users to access and compose emails
even when they are not connected to the internet, providing a seamless experience,
and accommodating interruptions due to network connectivity issues.
 Quick Actions: Gmail's quick actions, like archiving, labeling, and starring emails, allow
users to manage their inbox efficiently and respond to messages promptly, even when
faced with a high volume of correspondence.

2. Frequency

 Efficient Composition: Gmail's features, such as auto-complete, canned responses,

and templates, streamline the email composition process, making it easier for
frequent users to write and send emails quickly.
 Notifications and Alerts: Gmail provides customizable notifications and alerts,
ensuring that users are promptly notified of new emails or important messages. This
helps users stay on top of their email correspondence and respond to time-sensitive
messages in a timely manner.
 3. Cooperation:
Gmail supports cooperation in writing emails through more than way:
 Organization and Accessibility: Allows teams to categorize and share emails related to
specific projects or topics, ensuring easy access and collaboration.
 Inclusive Communication: Allows users to include additional recipients (CC) in emails,
ensuring that relevant parties are informed and can contribute to the conversation.

4. Complexity:
Gmail is very simple and straightforward to use by users, just after logging into the
account, the user can in one click make a new message and write their messages, then they can
select from the top of the message whom to send the message to and send it via the “Send”
button.

5. Nature of Content:
When it comes to crafting an email on Gmail, employees have the flexibility to
incorporate a wide range of content types to effectively convey their message. From the written
word, emails can include plain text, formatted text with headings and bullet points, and even rich
text with bold, italic, and colored fonts. Additionally, emails can be enhanced with multimedia
elements such as audio files which can be attached or embedded directly into the message.
Visual content like images can also be added to break up text and make the message more
engaging. Furthermore, emails can include downloadable files like documents, spreadsheets, and
presentations, allowing recipients to access and review the documents and the information within
them when necessary.

Context Aspect:
1. Physical:
a. Lighting Conditions: Dark mode in Gmail is useful where there are
fluctuations in lighting conditions by enabling the user to use the app with ease in
low light settings. This feature is beneficial to the users who work at night or in
low light conditions as it helps to minimize eye strain.

b. Device Compatibility: The Gmail is developed system is built to accommodate

the different devices with varying sizes, that is from the PCs, the cell phones and
tablets included. It has the aspect of responsive Web design, which makes its
interface adjust to the size of the device to suit it; however, relative to the screen
size, some functions are complex to navigate.
 2. Organizational:
Gmail is widely employed in the business environment. As a communication tool
for professionals, Gmail is compatible with Google Calendar, Google Meet, and Google
Docs, enabling users to organize their work-related engagements within a single
application. Furthermore, the email delegation feature is relevant for business scenarios
where it becomes necessary for the assistant to work with the executives’ emails.

3. Cultural:
Gmail also contains features that allow it to support different time zones, as well
as different languages. Nonetheless, it could be better in terms of giving culturally
appropriate recommendations for some of the areas of smart compose and auto-reply that
are set with default settings that are more suitable for a Western locale.

Pains and Gains:

1. Pains:
a. Learning Curve for New Features: Some of them are not able to effectively
operate with the complicated filters, labels, and Google Workspace that come
with Gmail. One disadvantage – new users may be confused about the mental
model of working with folders and labels.
b. Overload from Frequent Updates: Google Mail often rolls out updates and
interface changes, adding new features. These are often enhancements, but they
can interfere with the environment that has been optimized for a specific type of
user, if this is not clearly articulated or explained.

2. Gains:
a. Increased Accessibility: Adaptive design of Gmail covers the basic need of disabled
individual, such as screen reader support, keyboard shortcuts, high contrast themes, and
others. These features reflect the human-centered design approach to make sure that
every user of the platform will be able to navigate it efficiently.

b. Enhanced Productivity: Advanced interface elements such as predictive text, labels,

filters, and priority inbox have made the organizing of emails easier by cutting down time
and effort. This shows that making design with humane perspective leads to increased
efficiency.
 c. Error Prevention: The “undo send” and confidential mode is most evident of its strong
concern against common mistakes and individual privacy. These are very important in
critical areas, where corporations avoid data leakage or sending sensitive mail.
In 2023, the number of active users of Gmail was more than 1.8 billion users. In the US, Gmail
has 53% of the market share, it accounts for 29.5% of the global market share. In addition, more
than 85 percent of the US-based startups use Gmail.
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