IT 505 QnA

1. What is HCI?
a. HCI 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.
2. What is goal of HCI field?
a. Develop User-oriented perspective, rather than system-oriented, with two thrusts:
human (cognitive, social) and technological (input/output, interactions styles, devices).
b. Allow users to carry out tasks Safely, Effectively, Efficiently, Enjoyably
3. Mention the role of the following fields in HCI?
a. Computer Science: Implementation of software
b. Engineering: Faster, cheaper equipment
c. Graphic design: Visual communication
d. Technical writing: Textual communication
e. Linguistics, artificial intelligence: Speech recognition, natural language processing
f. Ergonomics: Design for human factors
g. Cognitive psychology: Perception, memory, mental models
4. List and describe five objectives of HCI
a. Safety. Safety of Users and safety of Data.
b. Utility. what services a system provides?
c. Effectiveness. user’s ability to achieve goals
d. Efficiency. A measure of how quickly users can accomplish their goals or finish their
work using the system.
e. Usability. a measure of the ease with which a system can be learned and used.
f. Appeal. How well users like the system, First impressions, and Long-term satisfaction.
5. Define what are Interactive Systems and give three different examples?
a. They are components, devices, products and software systems concerned with
processing information for transmission, display, storage or transformation of
information that people can perceive and that respond to people’s actions.
b. phones, web sites and washing machine controllers.
6. What is interaction design?
a. Designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in
their everyday and working lives.
7. What are jobs/roles in an interaction design team?
a. interaction designers
b. usability engineers
c. web designers
d. information architects

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 e. user-experience designers (UX)

8. Define usability of user interface?

a. a measure of the ease with which a system can be learned and used.
b. Combination of
i. Ease of learning
ii. High speed of user task performance
iii. Low user error rate
iv. Subjective user satisfaction
v. User retention over time
9. What is three kinds of user interface where human interact with interactive system?
a. Physically: user pressing buttons and system respond.
b. Perceptually: system display things on screen or make noise where user can percept.
c. Conceptually: human try to understand what system should does what he should do.
10. Explain user interface inputs and outputs objectives
a. Input
i. some methods are needed to enter commands (tell the system what we want it
to do)
ii. We also need to be able to navigate through the commands and the content of
the system
iii. We need to enter data or other content into the system
b. Output
i. So the system can tell us what is happening – provide feedback
ii. So the system can display the content to us.
11. What are five attributes of system to achieve Usability.
a. Ease of learning
b. High speed of user task performance
c. Low user error rate
d. Subjective user satisfaction
e. User retention over time
12. Explain why Usability is hard to achieve?
a. People (users) are all different
b. People are unpredictable
c. Design skill isn’t enough
d. Evaluation with users is required
e. Designer’s pride
f. New ways to think, break out of the box
13. Explain why programmers cannot build user interface for usability
a. don’t think like ‘normal’ people
b. know the software internals, technology first
c. enjoy systems more than people
d. arrogant (my software!)
14. explain how to achieve human-centered approach for design
a. thinking about what people want to do rather than just what the technology can do

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 b. designing new ways to connect people with people
c. involving people in the design process
d. designing for diversity
15. explain why human-centered design is so important?
a. Safety
i. Is ‘human error’ really often the fault of bad design?
b. Effectiveness
i. Human-centered design will result in better designs.
c. Ethics
i. Designs affect people’s lives. Designers need to consider the affect they are
having
16. Explain what are knowledge where interactive system designer should have?
a. Knowing about people
i. Sociology, anthropology, psychology, culture
b. Knowing about technologies
i. Software, communications, materials, databases, etc.
c. Knowing about activities and contexts
i. Communities of practice, information systems, organizations, knowledge
management
d. Knowing about design
i. Fashion, interior, information design, architecture, product design
17. Explain what is a PACT Analysis concerned about?
a. People: relevant user characteristics and skills
b. Activities: how is the activity currently carried out? Why? What can be improved?
c. Context: the environment of the activity
d. Technologies: what tools are used now, and how might new developments be used?
18. What are four key issue about good design
a. Usability refers to the quality of the interaction in terms of parameters such as time
taken to perform tasks, number of errors made and the time to become a competent
user.
b. Acceptability refers to fitness for purpose in the context of use. It also covers personal
preferences that contribute to users ‘taking to’ an artefact, or not.
c. Engagement concerns designing for great, exciting and riveting experiences.
d. Access concerns removing the barriers that would otherwise exclude some people from
using the system at all. Exclusions could be physically conceptually economically,
culturally, or socially. Think of Universal design
19. Mention four Principles of Universal Design?
a. Equitable Use: The design does not disadvantage or stigmatize any group of users.
b. Flexibility in Use: The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and
abilities.
c. Simple, Intuitive Use: Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's
experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
d. Tolerance for Error: The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of
accidental or unintended actions.

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 20. The interactive systems designer aims to produce systems that are learnable, effective and
accommodating. Give example of one design principle to achieve these design aims.
a. Learnable:
i. Uniformity in appearance, placement, and behavior
ii. Use familiar language and symbols
b. Effective:
i. Rapidly feedback information from the system to people
ii. enable recovery from actions, particularly mistakes and errors, quickly and
effectively
c. accommodating:
i. Allow multiple ways of doing things, so as to accommodate users with different
levels of experience and interest in the systems.
ii. designs should be stylish and attractive
iii.

Part II Complete
1. HCI 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.

2. Interactive Systems are components, devices, products and software systems concerned with
processing information

3. Designing Interactive Systems is concerned with design systems for people, undertaking
activities in contexts using technologies.

4. Usability Is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified
goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

5. Effectiveness is the accuracy and completeness with which specified users can achieve specified
goals in particular environments.

6. Efficiency is defined as the resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness of
the goals achieved.

7. Satisfaction is the comfort and acceptability of the work system to its users and other people
affected by its use.
8. Designing Interactive Systems is more than just designing the user interface …. is more than
designing the input, output and content.
9. human-centered Design is thinking about what people want to do rather than just what the
technology can do.
10. Knowing about people includes Sociology, anthropology, psychology, culture.
11. Knowing about technologies includes Software, communications, materials, databases, etc.
12. Knowing about activities and contexts includes Communities of practice, information systems,
organizations, knowledge management

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 13. Knowing about design includes Fashion, interior, information design, architecture, product
design

Part III: Practice Questions

1. If you are responsible for designing error messages for a system. What are principles will
follow?

a. Avoid using terms like FATAL, INVALID, BAD.

b. Audio warnings should be under user control.

c. Avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers.

d. Messages should be precise rather than vague.

e. Provide context-sensitive help.

f. Messages should be provided at multiple levels, so that short messages can be

supplemented with longer explanations.

2. If you are going to interact with Virtual Reality systems? What are common features you
expect to see?

a. Graphical User Interface

b. User Immersion

c. Interaction and Interactivity with user.

d. Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.

e. Simulation of human behavior.

f. Telepresence

g. Shared Space: allows many users to participate at once.

3. Think about the reasons of a user frustration from an interactive system?

h. When an application doesn’t work properly or crashes.

i. When a system doesn’t do what the user wants it to do.

j. When a user’s expectations are not met.

k. When a system does not provide sufficient information to enable the user to know what
to do.

l. When error messages pop up that are vague, obtuse or condemning.

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 m. When the appearance of an interface is noisy.

n. When a system requires users to carry out too many steps to perform a task.

Part III: Practice Questions (15 mark). For first seven statements, mark as T for true or F for false.
1. Material design is a visual design language developed by Google which inspired by the physical world
and its textures, including how they reflect light and cast shadows. ( T )
2. Developers can use Material Design to create apps for Android, but not Chrome OS. ( F )
3. Material has a uniform thickness of 1dp. ( F )
4. Material cannot change shape. ( F )
5. Because Material lives in a digital world, two sheets of it can occupy the same space simultaneously.
( F)
6. Material has dimensions on the x and y axis. The movement of Material on the z axis is typically a
result of user interaction. ( T )
7. App bar component is best used for branding, navigation, and search purposes. ( T )
8. For the following designs, answer the mentioned questions:

What is martial component used: Tab What is martial component used: Tab
Is it used correctly: No Is it used correctly: No
Why?: because it mix pictures with text Why?: because it does not show full text

What is martial component used: CARD What is martial component used: FAB
Is it used correctly: No Is it used correctly: No
Why?: because it appears like tiles Why?: because it is repeated

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Part III: Problem Solving
1. Activities always happen in a context, so there is a need to analyze the two together. For an activity
such as ‘withdraw cash from an ATM’. Give examples of Phycical and Social context analysis
o Physical Context: location of the device (often as a ‘hole-in-the-wall’), the effect of sunshine
on the readability of the display, and security considerations.

o Social Context: would include the time spent on a transaction or the need to queue.

2. In PACT analysis for people, designers need to think about the physical, psychological and social
differences and how those differences change in different circumstances and over time. It is most
important that designers consider all the various stakeholders in a project. If you asked by a
university department to consider developing a system controlling access to their laboratories. What
is PACT analysis you can do for people, activities, context, and technology for this system.

o People

▪ Students, lecturers and technicians are the main groups.

▪ These are all well educated and understand things such as swipe cards, passwords
and so on.

▪ People in wheelchairs need to be considered as do other design issues such as color

blindness.

▪ There may be language differences.

▪ Both visitors and frequent visitors need to be considered.

▪ However, there are other stakeholders who need access to rooms, such as cleaning
staff and security personnel.

▪ What are the motivations for management wanting to control access in the first
place?

o Activities

▪ The overall purpose of the activity is to enter some form of security clearance and to
open the door.

▪ This is a very well-defined activity that takes place in one step.

▪ It happens very frequently with peaks at the start of each laboratory session.

▪ The data to be entered is a simple numeric or alpha-numeric code.

▪ It is an activity that does not require cooperation with others (though it may be
done with others, of course).

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 ▪ It is not safety-critical, though security is not an important aspect

o Context

▪ Physically the activity takes place indoors, but people might be carrying books and
other things that makes doing anything complicated quite difficult.

▪ Socially it may happen in a crowd, but also it may happen late at night when no-one
else is about.

▪ Organizationally, the context is primarily about security and who has access to
which rooms and when they can gain access.

o Technology

▪ A small amount of data has to be entered quickly.

▪ It must be obvious how to do this to accommodate visitors and people unfamiliar

with the system.

▪ It needs to be accessible by people in wheelchairs.

▪ The output from the technology needs to be clear: that the security data has been
accepted or not and the door has to be opened if the process was successful.

▪ Communication with a central database may be necessary to validate any data

input, but there is little other content in the application.

3. For activities they need to think about the complexity of the activity (focused or vague, simple or
difficult, few steps or many), the temporal features (frequency, peaks and troughs, continuous or
interruptible), cooperative features and the nature of the data.

4. For contexts they think about the physical, social and organizational setting

5. For technologies they concentrate on input, output, communication and content.