SEN 103: Interaction Design

Course Outline
1. Foundations of HCI
2. Principles of GUI
3. GUI toolkit
4. Human-centered software evaluation and development
5. GUI design and programming

Foundations of HCI
The human is the individual user, a group of users working together, or a sequence of users
in an organization. The computer could be desktops, laptops, smart phone, large scale computer
system, pocket PC, embedded system (e.g., photocopier, microwave oven), digital wristwatches,
digital eyeglasses, software etc. The user interface includes parts of the computer that the user
interacts or have contacts, e.g., the screen, keyboard etc. Interaction usually involves a dialog with
feedback and control throughout the performing of a task (e.g., user invokes “print” command and
then the interface replies with a print dialog box).

Interface

User Task System

Interaction

Figure 1: Human-Computer Interface

The interface is the point of interaction between the user and the system. Human-Computer
Interface/Interaction (HCI) studies the best possible way to support and improve interaction
between users and the technology the are interacting with. Most users are non-technical people
who must use the computer and computing technologies. Therefore, to enable use and interaction,
these digital artifacts must be tailored to these users’ use. More so, there are different classes of
users, with different backgrounds, needs, knowledge and skills. These categories of users need
computing technologies that are comfortable, simple, easy to use and learn, effective (enables users
to accomplish their goals/tasks), efficient (that is, save their time and minimize their cognitive
efforts in use) and enjoyable to use too.
Users’ needs are multi-faceted. These needs include: physiological, sociological and
psychological needs. The computing system is to be designed to cater for these needs to enhance

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interaction. HCI is concerned with the selection and design of the most appropriate input devices
and output devices for a particular interface or task. It determines the best style of interaction, such
as direct manipulation, natural language (speech, written input), WIMP (windows, icons, menu,
pointers), etc. It is also concerned about the development and improvement of computing system
qualities e.g., safety, utility, effectiveness, efficiency, usability, appeal, individuation, pleasure etc.
HCI is beneficial because it leads to:
1. Gain in market share: People intend to buy/use products with higher viability, e.g. Google search
engine has the largest market share because it is easy to use with higher efficiency.
2. Improvement in productivity: Users can perform their jobs in a faster manner.
3. Lowers support costs: If the product is not usable, calls to customer support can be enormous.
4. Reduction in development costs: Avoids implementing features users do not want or creating
features that are annoying and inefficient.

Principles of GUI
These involves making GUI easy to use and learn. These principles include: i)
Compatibility, ii) Easy of learning, iii) Memorability, iv) Predictability, v) Simplicity, vi)
Flexibility, vii) Responsiveness, viii) Protection, ix) Invisible technology, x) Control, and xi)
WYSIWYG

i) Compatibility: These involves knowing the user, and ensuring the product reduces both
learning time and errors.
ii) Easy Learning: The system should be easy to learn so that the user can rapidly start getting
some work done with the system.
iii) Memorability: Interfaces that have high memorability will be easier to learn and use. Factors
which affect memorability include:
• Location: it will be easier to remember if a particular object is placed in a consistent
location e.g., always putting the search box in the upper right corner of a web page.
• Logical grouping: it will be easier to remember if things are grouped logically e.g.,
putting related options together in a menu.
• Conventions: conventional objects and symbols will be easier to remember, e.g.,
shopping cart symbol.
iv) Predictability: This involves a person’s expectations and his/her ability to determine the
results of actions ahead of time. It includes:
• Consistency- reinforce our associations and therefore increase our ability to remember
and predict outcome and processes.
• Generalizability- helps us use the knowledge we gathered from previous experience
and apply to similar situations.
• Familiarity- e.g., familiar menu names, and options help users locate objects and
functions more easily.
• Conventions: allow us to use our intuitions which are based on previous experience and
logic; if something is consistently done in a particular way, it will eventually become
the conventional way of doing it.
v) Simplicity: If things are simple, they will be easy to understand and then easy to learn and
remember. This includes:
• Progressive disclosure- show the user only what is necessary
• Constraints- involve limiting the actions that can be performed in a particular design

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 vi) Flexibility: Allow more user control and accommodates variations in user skill and
preferences, and gives user choices. Flexibility include hardware, styles of interacting and date
format.
vii) Responsiveness: Computer should respond immediately to a user’s input or inform the user
when long delays are unavoidable.
viii) Protection: Protect users against disastrous results of common human error.
ix) Invisible Technology: No need to know the technical defects.
x) Control: Users should feel more in control if the interface is interactive.
xi) WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get.

Other principles that can improve or deplete user interface include: i) Satisfying, ii)
Enjoyable, iii) Entertaining, iv) Fun, v) Helpful, vi) Surprising, vii) Aesthetically pleasing, viii)
Rewarding, ix) Supportive of creativity, x) Emotionally fulfilling, xi) Boring, xii) Frustrating,
xiii) Annoying, xiv) Disgusting, xv) Disappointing etc.

Norman’s Principle for Designing a Usable Interface

Normans is a cognitive psychologist and expert in computers. ‘Cognitive’ refers to how we

gain knowledge, and it includes understanding, remembering, acquiring skills, and creating new
idea etc.
1. Visibility:
• Interface feature is accessible to a human sense organs (e.g. Can an answering machine
indicate the presence of incoming voice mails? The number of mail?)
• Indicate what parts operate and how
• Indicate how a user is to interact with the devise (e.g., on/off key on a calculator).
• The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do
next.
2. Feedback:
• This principle is natural: when you talk to somebody, you expect a reply
• Send back to user information about what action has actually been done. This allows a
person to continue with the activity (e.g., press a key on a telephone).
• Include sound, highlighting, animation and combination of these.
• Indicate what result has been accomplished (e.g., copy a file in PC, progress of
downloading a file from the internet)
3. Constraints:
• Restricting some kinds of user interaction to take place at a given moment (e.g., some
menu options will be deactivated by shading them at some occasions).
• Avoid wrong uses of things.
There are three main types of constraints: i) Physical, ii) Logical, and iii) Cultural

i) Physical Constraints: This refers to the way physical objects restrict the movement of
things. How many ways can you insert an electrical plug to a socket? How about
inserting a CD into a computer? Which of them has a better physical constraint?
ii) Logical Constraint: Exploit people’s common sense reasoning about actions and their
consequences. When no object is selected, it is not allowed to see the “cut” command
in WORD.

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 iii) Cultural Constraints:
• Rely on learned convention, for instance, red color stands for danger while green color
stands for safe and smiling face stands for happy emotion.
• Which one is universal and which one is culturally specific (i.e., acceptable by a
cultural group only)?
4. Affordance:
• Means to give clues to operations of things
• Indicate what thing is for ( e.g., a door handle affords pulling, a cup handle affords
grasping).
• Indicate how things could possibly be used (e.g. knobs are for turning, slots are for inserting
things into). A check box affords you to choose O to all choices.

These are two kinds of affordance:

i) Real - for physical objects and do not have to be learned
ii) Perceived - for screen-based interfaces and can be considered as learned conventions.
5. Mapping:
• Natural relationship between controls and their effects (e.g., move mouse to left, pointer
goes left).
• Upper button controls upper bulbs while lower buttons control lower bulbs (button affords
you to press). E.g., the timer knob in a microwave oven is a good mapping because turning
it clockwise implies increasing cook time (the knob affords you to turn as well). The
volume knob in a Hi-Fi system in a good mapping because turning it clockwise implies
increasing volume (the knob affords you to turn as well).
Golden Rule for Creating Effective Interface Design (Shneiderman’s 8 Golden Rule)
• Rule 1: Consistency of the software
• Rule 2: Shortcuts for the convenience of frequent users
• Rule 3: Feedback information
• Rule 4: Designing dialog boxes to show status
• Rule 5: Recoverability to minimize errors
• Rule 6: Action reversal - undo
• Rule 7: Design in a way that the user is in control of the software
• Rule 8: Minimize instruction and information to make it easy for the user to remember
things.

PRINCIPLES OF HCI
Despite the importance of HCI, good HCI design is generally difficult, mainly because it is
a multi-objective task that involves simultaneous consideration of many things such as, the type
of users, characteristics of the tasks, capabilities and cost of the devices, lack of objective and exact
quantitative evaluation measures and changing technologies etc. The principles include:
1. “Know thy user”: the foremost creed in HCI is to devise interaction and interfaces around
the target users. This overall concept was well captured by the phase “know thy user”
coined by Hansen in 1971. The principle simply states that the interaction and the interface
should cater for the needs and capabilities of the target user of the system in design.
However, most HCI design and implementers proceed without a full understanding of the
user, for example, by just guessing and pretending to know and be able to predict how the

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 representative user might respond to one’s design. Ideally, comprehensive information
(e.g., age, gender, educational level, social status, computing experience, cultural
background) about the representative target user should be collected and analyzed to
determine their probable preferences, tendencies, capabilities (physical and mental), and
skill/disability levels. Such information can be used to properly model interaction and pick
the right interface solution for the target user.
2. Understand the task: Another almost-common sense principle is to base HCI design on
the understanding of the task. The term task refers to the job to be accomplished by the
user through the use of the interactive system. In fact, understanding the task at hand is
closely related to the interaction modelling and user analysis.
3. Reduce memory load: Designing interaction with as little memory load as possible is a
principle that also has a theoretical basis. Humans are certainly more efficient in carrying
out tasks that require less memory burden, long or short-term. Keeping the user’s short-
term memory load light is of particular importance with regard to the interface’s role as
quick and easy guidance to the completion of tasks. Light memory burden also leads to less
erroneous behavior. This fact is well applied to interface design, for instance, in keeping
the number of menu items or depth to less than 9 (i.e., short term memory is about 5-9
chunks of information – or items meaningful with respect to the task) to maintain good
user awareness of the ongoing task or in providing reminders and status information
continuously throughout the interaction.
4. Strive for consistency: In the longer term, one way to unburden the memory load is to
keep consistency. Users are likely to get confused and exhibit erroneous responses if the
same subtask is involved, at different times, for different interaction steps or interface
methods.
5. Remind users and refresh their memory: Any significant task will involve the use of
memory, so another good strategy is to employ interfaces that give continuous reminders
of important information and thereby refresh the users’ memory. The human memory
dissipates information quite quickly and this is especially true when switching tasks in
multi-tasking situation (which is a very prevalent form of interaction these days).
6. Prevent errors/reversal of action: While supporting a quick completion of the task is
important, error free operation is equally important. As such, the interaction and the
interface should be designed to avoid confusion and mental overload.
7. Naturalness: The final major HCI principle is to favor “natural” interaction and interfaces.
Naturalness refers to a trait that is reflective of various operations in our everyday life. For
instance, a perfect HCI may one day be realized when a language-based conventional
interface is possible, because this is the prevalent way that humans communicate. However,
it can be tricky to directly translate real life styles and models of interaction to and for
interaction with a computer. Perhaps a better approach is to model interaction
“metaphorically” to the real life counterpart, extracting the conceptual and abstract essence
of the task.

USERS’ COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE STATES: DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

COGNITION:

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 Cognition is what goes on in our heads when we carry out our everyday activities. It
involves cognitive activities like thinking, remembering, learning, daydreaming, and
decision making, seeing, reading, writing and talking. Norman (1993) distinguishes
between two general modes of cognition: experimental and reflective cognition. The
former is a state of mind in which we perceive, act and react to events around us effectively
and effortlessly. It requires reaching a certain level of expertise and engagement. Examples
include driving a car, reading a book, having a conversation and playing a video game. In
contrast, reflective cognition involves thinking, comparing and decision-making. This kind
of cognition is what leads to new ideas and creativity. Examples include designing, learning
and writing a book. Norman points out that both modes are essential for everyday life but
that each requires different kinds of technological support. Cognition has also been
described in terms of specific kinds of processes. These include: attention, perception and
recognition, memory, learning, reading, speaking and listening, problem solving,
reasoning, decision making. This understanding influences the kind of interfaces designed
for different categories of users at different cognitive levels.
1) Perception: Design implication: Representations of information need to be designed
to be perceptible and recognizable across different media.
• Icons and other graphical representations should enable users to readily
distinguish their meaning.
• Sounds should be audible and distinguishable so users understand what they
represent.
• Speech output should enable users to distinguish between the set of spoken
words and also be able to understand their meaning.
• Text should be legible and distinguishable from the background (e.g., it is ok to
use yellow text on a black or blue background but not on a white or green
background).
• Tactile feedback used in virtual environments should allow users to recognize
the meaning of the various touch sensations being emulated. The feedback
should be distinguishable so that, for example, the sensation for squeezing is
represented in a tactile form that is different from the sensation of pushing.
2) Memory: Design implications:
• Do not overload users’memory with complicated procedure for carrying out
tasks.
• Design interfaces that promote recognition rather than recall by using menus,
icons and consistently placed objects.
• Provide users with a variety of ways of encoding electronic information (e.g.,
files, emails, images) to help them remember where they have stored them
through the use of color, flagging, time stamping, icons, etc.
3) Learning: Design implications:
• Design interfaces that encourage exploration
• Design interfaces that constrain and guide users to select appropriate actions
• Dynamically link representations and abstractions that need to be learned.

4) Reading, speaking and learning: Design implications:

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 • Keep the length of speech-based menus and instructions to a minimum. Research
has shown that people find it hard to follow spoken menus with more than three
or four options. Likewise, they are bad at remembering sets of instruction and
direction that have more than a few parts.
• Accentuate the intonation of artificially generated speech voices, as they are
harder to understand than human voices.
• Provide opportunities for making text large on a screen, without affecting the
formatting, for people who find it hard to read small text.
5) Problem solving, planning, reasoning and decision making: Design implications:
• Provide additional hidden information that is easy to access for users who wish
to understand more about how to carry out an activity more effectively (e.g.,
web searching).

AFFECTIVE ASPECTS:
In general, the term “affective” refers to producing an emotional response. For example,
when people are happy, they smile. Affective behavior can also cause emotional response in
others. So, for example, when someone smiles, it can cause others to feel good and smile back.
1) Affective interface
A well-known approach to designing affective interface is to use expressive icons and
other graphical elements to convey emotional states. Other ways of conveying the states of a
system are through the use of:
• Dynamic icons, e.g., a recycle bin expanding when a file is placed into it.
• Animations, e.g., a bee flying across the screen indicating that the computer is
doing something like checking files.
• Spoken messages, using various kinds of voices, telling the user what needs to
be done.
• Various sounds indicating action and events (e.g., window closing, file being
dragged, new email arriving).

Main Guidelines on how to Design Good Error Messages (Adapted from Shneiderman,
1998)
• Rather than condemn users, messages should be courteous, indicating what users need
to do to set things right.
• Avoid using terms like fatal, error, invalid, bad and illegal.
• Avoid long code members and uppercase letters.
• Audio warnings should be under the users’ control, since they can cause much
embarrassment.
• Messages should be precise rather than vague
• Messages should provide a help icon or command to allow users to get context-sensitive
help.
• Messages should be provided at multiple levels, so that short messages can be
supplemented with longer explanations.

INTERFACE DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Different kinds of widget

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 Interfaces are made up of widgets, elements such as dialog boxes, menus, icons, toolbars
etc. Each element must be designed or chosen from a pre-designed set of widgets. Sometimes,
these decisions are made for you through the use of style guide. Style guides may be
commercially produced, such as the Windows style guide (called commercial style guide), or
they may be internal to a company (called corporate style guides). A style guide dictates the
look and feel of the interface, i.e., which widgets should be used for which purpose and what
they look like.

Menu design
Menu provides users with a choice that can be a choice of command or a choice of
options related to a command. They provide the means by which the user can perform actions
related to a command. They provide the means by which the users can perform actions related
to the task in hand and therefore are based on task structure and the information required to
perform a task. Menu may be designed as a drop-down, pop-up or single dialog menus. For
pull-down and pop-up menus, the most commonly used functions should be at the top, to avoid
frequent long scans and scrolls. The principle of grouping can be used to good effect in menu
design. For example the menu can be divided into collections of items that are related, with
collection being separated from others. Opposite operations such as “quit” and “save” should
be clearly separated to avoid accidentally losing work instead of saving it. Menu names need to
be short, clear, and unambiguous. The space for listing them will be restricted, so they must be
short, and you want them to be distinguishable, i.e. not easily confused with one another so that
the user won’t choose the wrong one by mistake. We need to consider logical grouping. In this
case, we group according to user goal, i.e. have Query entry, Add entry, Edit entry, More entry
and Delete entry grouped together. Similarly, we could group Add contact, Edit contact, and
Delete contact together.

Icon design
Designing a good icon takes more than a few minutes. You may be able to think of good
icons in a matter of seconds, but such examples are unlikely to be widely acceptable to your
user group. Icons can be cultural or context-specific. Designing good icon takes time. At a
sample level, designers should always draw on existing traditions or standards and certainly
should not contradict them. Concrete objects or things are easier to represent as an icon since
they can be just a picture of the item. For example, using a picture of a pair of scissors to
represent ”cut” in a word processing application provides sufficient clues as long as the user
understands the convention of “cut” for deleting text.

Screen design
There two aspects to screen design: how the task is split across a number of screens, and
how the individual screens are designed. The first aspect can be supported by reference to the
task analysis, which broke down the user’s task into subtask and plans of action. One starting
point for screen design is to translate the task analysis into screens, so that each task or subtask
has its own screen. The guidelines for the second aspect - individual screen design, draw more
clearly from some of the visual communication principles earlier mentioned, for example,
designing the screen so that users attention is drawn immediately to the salient points, and using
color, motion, boxing and grouping to aid understanding and clarity. Each screen should be
designed so that when users first see it, their attention is focused on something that is appropriate

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and useful to the task at hand. Animations can be verydistracting if they are not relevant to the
task, but are effective if used judiciously.
Good organization helps users to make sense of an interaction and to interpret it within
their own context. This is another example where principles of good grouping can be applied,
for example, grouping similar things together or providing separation between dissimilar or
unrelated items. Grouping can be achieved in different ways by placing things close together,
using colors, boxes or frames to segregate items, or using shapes to indicate relationships among
elements. There is a tradeoff between sparsely populated screens with a lot of open space and
overcrowded screens with too many and too complicated set of icons. If the screen is
overcrowded then users will become confused and distracted. But too much open space and
consequently many screens can lead to frequent screen changes and a disjointed series of
interactions.

GUI TOOLKITS: Tool support

The tools available to support the activities described here are wide ranging and various.
Several application development environments have their custom toolkits. Students should
explore and find out (as many as possible) GUI toolkits and interface design support tools.

HUMAN CENTERED SOFTWARE EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT

User involvement: in the past, developers would often talk to managers or to “proxy
users”, e.g. people who role-played as users, when eliciting requirements. But the best way to
ensure that development continues to take users activities into account is to involve real users
throughout. In this way, developers can gain a better understanding of their needs and their
goals leading to a more appropriate, more usable product. However, two other aspects which
have nothing to do with functionality is equally as important if the product is to be usable and
used: expectation management and ownership. Expectation management is the process of
making sure that the users’ views and expectation of the new product are realistic. The purpose
of expectation management is to ensure that there are no surprises for users when the product
arrives. If the users’ feel they have been “cheated” with promises that have not been fulfilled,
then this will cause resistance and maybe rejection of the product. In essence, expectation
management ensures that what users expect is what they get and that their expectation is
reasonable and common sensible. A second reason for user involvement is ownership. Users
who are involved and feel that they have contributed to a product’s development are more likely
to feel a sense of “ownership” towards it and to be receptive to it when it finally emerges.
User centered approach: this involves the participation of users throughout the design
process.
i. Users’ tasks and goals are the driving force behind the development. In user-
centered approach to design, while technologically will inform design option and
choices, it should not be the driving force. Instead, of saying, “where can we deploy
this new technology?” say, “What technologies are available to provide better
support for users’ goals?
ii. Users’ behavior and context of use are studied and the system is designed to support
them. This is about more than just capturing the tasks and the users’ goals. How
people perform their task is also significant. Understanding behavior highlights
priorities, preferences and implicit intentions.

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 iii. Users’ characteristics are captured and designed. For when things go wrong with
technology, we often say that is our fault. But as humans, we are prone to making
errors and we have certain limitations, both cognitive and physical. Products
designed to support humans should take these limitations into account and should
limit the mistake we make.
iv. Users are consulted throughout development from earliest phases to the latest and
their input is seriously taken into account.
v. All design decisions are taken within the context of the user, their work and their
environment.

Evaluation Frameworks/Paradigms
1. “Quick and dirty” evaluation: “A quick and dirty evaluation” in a common practice in
which designers informally get feedback from users or consultants that confirm that their
ideas are in line with users’ needs and are liked. “Quick and dirty “evaluation can be
done at any stage and the emphasis is on fast input rather than carefully documenting
findings.
2. Usability testing: Usability involves measuring typical users’ performance on carefully
prepared tasks that are typical of those for which the system was designed. Usability
testing evaluates users time on tasks (time to complete task), number of errors and user
satisfaction, etc.
3. Field studies: The distinguishing feature of field studies is that they are done in natural
settings with the aim of increasing understanding about what users do naturally and how
technology impacts them. In product design, field studies can be used to: a) Help identify
opportunities for new technology; b) Determine requirements for design; c) Facilitate
the introduction of technology, and d) Evaluate technology. Qualitative techniques are
used in field studies. These techniques include interviews, observation, participant
observation, and ethnography. The exact choice of techniques is often influenced by the
theory used to analyze the data. The data takes the form of events and conversations that
are recorded as notes, and by audio and video recording, and later analyzed using a
variety of analysis techniques such as content, discourse and conversational analysis.
These techniques vary considerably. In content analysis, for example, the data is
analyzed into content categories, whereas in discourse analysis, the use of words and
phrases is examined. Artifacts are also collected. In fact, anything that helps to show
what people do in their natural contexts can be regarded as data.
4. Predictive evaluation: In predictive evaluation, experts apply their knowledge of
typical users, often guided by heuristics, to predict usability problems. Another approach
involves theoretically-based models. The key feature of predictive evaluation is that
users need not be present, which makes the process quick, relatively inexpensive, and
thus attractive to companies, but it has limitations. In recent years heuristic evaluation
in which experts review the software product guided by tried and tested heuristics has
become popular.

DECIDE: A Framework to Guide Evaluation

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 Well-planned evaluations are driven by clear goals and appropriate questions. To
guide our evaluations, we use the DECIDE framework which provide the following checklist
to help novice evaluators:
• Determine the overall goals that the evaluation addresses
• Explore the specific questions to be answered
• Choose the evaluation paradigm and techniques to answer the questions
• Identify the practical issues that must be addressed, such as selecting participants.
• Decide how to deal with ethical issues.
• Evaluate, interpret and present the data.

Observing users
Observers can be outsiders in the field and in the controlled environments, but they
cannot be insiders in a controlled environment. In the field, it is possible to have varying degrees
of “insider-outsiderness”. In practice, these distinctions are more difficult to describe than to
experience.
1. “Quick and dirty” observation: this can occur anywhere, anytime. For example,
evaluators often go into a school, home or office to watch and talk to users in a casual
way to get immediate feedback about a prototype or product. Evaluators can also join a
group for a short time, which gives them a slightly more insider role. Quick and dirty
observations are just the ways of finding out what is happening quickly and with little
formality.
2. Observation in usability testing: videos and interaction log capture everything that the
user does during a usability test including key strokes, mouse clicks and their
conversations. In addition, observers can watch through a one-way mirror or via a
remote TV screen. The observational data is used to see and analyze what users’do and
how long they spend on different aspects of the task. It also provides insights into users
affective reactions. For example, sighs, tense shoulders, frowns, and scrawls speak of
users’ dissatisfaction and frustrations. The environment is controlled but users often
forget that they are being observed. In addition, many evaluators also supplement
findings from the laboratory with observations in the field.
3. Observation in field study: in field studies, observers may be anywhere along the
outsider-insider spectrum. Looking on as an outsider, being a participant observer, or
being an ethnographer brings a philosophy and practices that influence what data is
collected, how data collection is done, and how the data is analyzed and reported. Insider
observers may be participant observers or ethnographers. In participant observation,
evaluators participate with users in order to learn what they do and how and why they
do it. A fully participant observer observes from the insider as a member of the group,
which means he must not only be present to share experiences, but also learn the social
conventions, use of language and non-verbal communication. Ethnographers can be
thought of as participant observers or not, depending on your point of view.
Ethnographers themselves debate this issues. Some see participant observations as
virtually synonymous with ethnography. Others view participant observation as a
technique that is used in ethnography, along with informants from the community,
interviews with community members and the study of community artifacts.
Ethnographic evaluation is derived from ethnography. Ethnographic studies typically

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 takes weeks, months and even longer to gain an “inside” understanding of what is going
on in a community.

Asking Users and Experts

Asking Users
1. Interview: interviews can be thought of as a “conversation with a purpose”. There
are four main types of interviews: open-ended or unstructured, structured, semi-
structured and group interviews (focus group).
2. Questionnaires: this is a well-established technique for collecting demographic
data and users’ opinions. It is similar to interviewers and can have closed or open
questions. Effort and skill are needed to ensure that questions are clearly worded
and that data collected can be analyzed efficiently. The questions asked in a
questionnaire, and those used in a structured interview are similar. Questionnaires
can be paper type or outline.
3. Inspections: sometimes users’ are not easily accessible or involving them is too
expensive or takes too long. In such circumstances, experts or combination of
experts and users can provide feedback. Inspection methods include: heuristic
evaluation and walkthrough.
3.1 Heuristic evaluation: heuristic evaluation is an informal usability inspection
technique developed by Jakob Nelson and his colleagues in which experts, guided
by a set of usability principles known as heuristics, evaluate whether user interface
elements, such as dialog boxes, menus, navigation structure, online help, etc.,
conform to the principles: the following is the guideline:
i. Visibility of system status: Are users kept informed about what is going on?
Is appropriate feedback provided within reasonable time about a user’s
action?
ii. Match between the system and the real world: is the language used at the
interface simple? Are the words, phrases and concepts used familiar to the
user?
iii. User control and freedom: Are there ways of allowing users to easily escape
from places they unexpectedly find themselves in?
iv. Consistency and standards: Are the ways of performing similar actions
consistent.
v. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Are error messages
helpful? Do they use plain language to describe the nature of the problem
and suggest a way of solving it?
vi. Error prevention: Is it easy to make error? If so, where and why?
vii. Recognition rather than recall: Are objects, actions and options always
visible?
viii. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Have
accelerators (i.e. shortcuts) been provided to allow more experience users
to carry out task more quickly?
ix. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Is any unnecessary and irrelevant
information provided?
x. Help and documentation: Is help information provided that can be easily
searched and easily followed?

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 HOMERUN Heuristics

However, some of these core heuristics are too general for evaluating new
products coming into the market and there is a strong need for heuristics that are more
closely tailored to specific products. Nielson (1999) suggests that the following heuristics
are more useful for evaluating commercial websites and makes them memorable by
introducing the acronym: HOMERUN.
• High-quality content
• Often updated
• Minimal download time
• Ease of use
• Relevant to users’ needs
• Unique to the online medium
• Net centric corporate culture.

3.2 Walkthroughs: Walkthroughs are an alternative approach to heuristic evaluation

for predicting usability problems without doing user testing. As the name suggests,
they involve walking through a task with the system and noting problematic
usability features. Most walkthrough techniques do not involve users. Other, such
as pluralistic walkthrough involves a team that involves users, developers and
usability specialists.
3.2.1 Cognitive walkthroughs: ”Cognitive walkthroughs involves stimulating
a user’s problem-solving process at each step in the human-computer
dialog, checking to see if the users’ goals and memory for actions can be
assumed to lead to the next correct action. The defining feature is that they
focus on evaluating design for ease of learning - a focus that is motivated
by observations that users learn by exploration.
3.2.2 Pluralistic walkthroughs: ”Pluralistic walkthroughs are another type of
walkthrough in which users, developers and usability experts work
together to step through a [task] scenario, discussing usability issues
associated with dialog elements involved in the scenario steps.” Each
group of experts is asked to assume the role of typical users.

GUI Design and Programming

Students are to employ the knowledge and insight gained from the course to design and
implement interactive interfaces using user-centered design approaches to enrich users’ interaction
experiences.

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