Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

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Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI)
HCI (human-computer interaction) is the study of how people interact with computers and to what extent computers are or are
not developed for successful interaction with human beings.
•Human
• the end-user of a program
• the others in the organization
•Computer
• the machine the program runs on
• often split between clients & servers
•Interaction
• the user tells the computer what they want
• the computer communicates results

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What fields does HCI cover?
• Computer Science
• Psychology (cognitive)
• Communication
• Education
• Anthropology
• Design (e.g. graphic and industrial)
What is HCI?
Design, Implementation and Evaluation of interactive systems
for HUMAN use.

Humans

Design

Tasks Technology

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What is HCI?
These factors influence each other and design

Humans

Design

Tasks Technology

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What is HCI?
These factors influence each other and design
• People gain/change knowledge as they use technology … they learn.

Humans

Design

Tasks Technology

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HCI Tools
• Sound
• 3D
• Animation
• Video
• Devices
• Size (small->very large)
• Portable (PDA, phone)
• Plasticity
• Context sensitive/aware
• Personalizable
• Ubiquitous
 Interfaces in the Real World
• Not just computers!
• VCR
• Wristwatch
• Phone
• Copier
• Car
• Plane cockpit
• Airline reservation
• Air traffic control
• Running shoes!

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 User Interfaces (UI’s)

Part of technology that allows users to

• Interact with the technology
• Carry out their task
• MUST be integral part

HCI sometimes (narrowly) thought of as the design,

prototyping, evaluation, and implementation of UI’s for
desktop computers

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Bad Interfaces
• Encumbering
• Confusing
• Slow
• Trust (ex. windows
crashing)
• What makes it hard?
• Varies by culture
• Multiple platforms
• Variety of users
• What’s wrong with each?
• Type of error
• Who is affected
• Impact
• What’s a redesign solution?
Bad Interfaces

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HCI IMPACT on Society
• We can now use computers as an every-moment-
partner
• Less and less training is required for most
application and devices
• Some examples
- Touch screen: direct interaction with objects
- Voice control: for some people the only way to
interact with computers
- HCI’s impact on culture, economy?
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Goals of HCI
• Allow users to carry out tasks
• Safely
• Effectively
• Efficiently
• Enjoyably

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Usability
• Crucial issue in this area!

• Combination of
• Ease of learning
• High speed of user task performance
• Low user error rate
• Subjective user satisfaction
• User retention over time

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What is Usability?
• Ease of learning
• faster the second time and so on...
• Recall
• remember how from one session to the next
• Productivity
• perform tasks quickly and efficiently
• Minimal error rates
• if they occur, good feedback so user can recover
• High user satisfaction
• confident of success

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Usability Requirements
• Goals:
• Usability
• Universality
• Usefulness
• Achieved by:
• Planning
• Sensitivity to user needs
• Devotion to
requirements analysis
• Testing
 Requirements Analysis
1. Ascertain users’ needs
2. Ensure proper reliability
3. Promote appropriate standardization, integration,
consistency, and portability
4. Complete projects on schedule and within budget
Usability Measures
• How can we measure the ‘goodness’ of
an interface?
• What are good metrics?
• ISO 9241
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Satisfaction
• Schneiderman
• Time to learn
• Speed of performance
• Rate of errors
• Retention over time
• Subjective satisfaction
HCI How?
• How do we improve interfaces?
1. Educate software professionals
2. Draw upon fast accumulating body of knowledge
regarding H-C interface design
3. Integrate UI design methods & techniques into
standard software development methodologies
now in place

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 UI Design/Develop Process
• Tao of User-Centered Design
• Analyze user’s goals & tasks
• Create design alternatives
• Evaluate options
• Implement prototype
• Test IMPLEMENT
• Refine

DESIGN

USE &
EVALUATE
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Above All Else…
• Know the User!
• Physical & cognitive abilities (& special needs)
• Personality & culture
• Knowledge & skills
• Motivation

• Two Fatal Mistakes:

1. Assume all users are alike
2. Assume all users are like the designer
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Design Evaluation
• “Looks good to me” isn’t good enough!
• Both subjective and objective metrics
• Some things we can measure
• Time to learn
• Speed of performance
• Rate of errors by user
• Retention over time
• Subjective satisfaction

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 Why study HCI? Moore’s Law

Memory
Speed
Portability
Affordability

Computer Abilities

1950 1990 2030

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( These slides are variations of those presented by Bill Buxton )
 Human Psychology
Computers

Human Abilities

0 A.D. 1950 1990 2030

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( These slides are variations of those presented by Bill Buxton )
Why HCI? So you don’t build
this:

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 Long intros belong in hall of SHAME!
• Doesn’t help users accomplish task
• Why did they come to the site in the first place?
• Waste’s user’s time
• Most just leave and never come back
• 15 sec attention span on web!
• Entertainment value?

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Do I have any choice?

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What happens when you cancel a cancelled operation?

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Why study HCI?

• You will be building “real” systems

• That other people will use
• UI’s major part of most systems
• Often over 50%
• 50% of effort rarely on UI!
• Bad UI’s cost
• money (your product will be a flop)
• lives (planes crash, reactors blow up)
• Interfaces are hard to get right
• understanding of human capabilities will help
• understanding principles of design will help
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Why study human use of
computer systems?
• Business view:
• to use humans more productively/effectively
• the human costs now far outweigh hardware and software costs
• Personal view:
• people view computers as appliances, and want it to perform as one
• Marketplace view:
• everyday people using computers
• now expect “easy to use system”
• not tolerant of poorly designed systems
• little vendor control of training
• heterogeneous group
• if product is hard to use, people will seek other products
• eg Mac vs IBM (Microsoft Windows)
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Why study human use of
computer systems?
• The system view:
• complex human
• complex computer
• complex interface between the two

• The human factors view:

• humans have necessary limitations
• errors are costly in terms of
• loss of time
• loss of money
• loss of lives in critical systems
• loss of morale
• design can cope with such limitations!

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Why study human use of
computer systems?
• The social view:
• Computers contribute to critical parts of our society, and cannot be
ignored
• educate our children
• take medical histories and provide expert advice
• keep track of our credit worthiness
• play(?) war games (and help form policies)
• control air and ground traffic flow
• book travel
• control chemical/oil/nuclear plants
• control space missions
• assist humans with their everyday tasks (office automation)
• control complex machines (aircraft, space shuttles, super tankers)
• help control consumer equipment (cars, washing machines)
• entertainment (games, intellectual stimulation).…

In all these views, economics and human best interests are aligned

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Who Builds Interfaces?
• A team of specialists (ideally)
• graphic designers
• interaction / interface designers
• technical writers
• marketers
• test engineers
• software engineers
• customers

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Foundations for building UI’s

• Design Cycle
• Psychology of everyday things
• Understanding users and their tasks
• Task centered design
• Design principles, usability heuristics
• Designing with the user
• User centered design
• Rapid prototyping
• Evaluation of the interface with users
• Qualitative & quantitative
• Iteration

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Task analysis and design

• Observe existing work practices

• Create examples and scenarios of actual use of
artifacts
• Try out new ideas with users before building
anything if possible

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User Centered Design

• Know thy user!

• Cognitive abilities
• Physical abilitities
• Memory
• Perception
• Job skills
• Keep users involved throughout the system
building process

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 Psychology of everyday things
Design Principles & Hueristics

• What makes something obvious?

• How does it work by default?
• What is the user’s immediate reaction to it?
• Principles to guide our designs before they’re built?
• Hueristics to evaluate those designs before formal
evaluation?

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Rapid Prototyping

• Build mockup of design

• Low fidelity prototypes
• Paper sketches
• Video segments
• Steal, cut, copy, paste!
• High fidelity prototypes Fantasy Basketball
• Somewhat working models
• HTML, Hypercard, Director, physical media
• Fake some of it

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Evaluation
• “That’s cool!”, “I love it!” is NOT good enough
• perception not always reality
• conscious articulation not always behaviour
• Human behaviour & performance is complex
• sometimes beyond analysis
• individual differences
• Objective, quantitative, measures
• Qualitative techniques

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Advanced Topics in HCI
• Working with video (not really a topic)
• Featurism - software bloat
• Adaptive and adaptable interface design
• Information Visualization
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
• Ubiquitous computing

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Course Objectives
• Know what is meant by good design
• Have an understanding of human capabilities, design guidelines, models,
and how to apply them to interface design
• Know and have applied some methods for
• Design
• Prototyping
• Evaluation
• Know how to involve a user in the process
• Be familiar with a number of advanced topics in HCI
• Know how to communicate your work
• Learn to write!
• Have background to
• Apply this to work in industry
• Begin research in the area
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How you will be evaluated (tentative)
• Peer review and class participation (10%)
• Fellow group members assessment of your contribution to the project
• Contribution to class discussion and activities
• Advanced HCI topic assignment done individually (20%)
• Synthesis of research in topic area
• Short written report
• Short class presentation
• In English
• In-class test (20%)
• Covers readings, lectures, discussion in class, assignments
• Group project (50%)
• Design, prototype, implement, evaluate an interface for some technological
artifact
• Class presentation during scheduled exam period

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Texts and Readings

• Main text (BGBG):

“Human Computer Interaction” by Alan Dix, Janet Finlay Gregory
D Abowd, and Russel Beale, 3rd Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004
“The Human Computer Interaction Handbook,” by Julie A Jacko and Andrew
Sears, 2nd Ed., CRC, 2007
• Additional references on web site
• Many web links
• Lecture slides will be shared.

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Group Project
Semester-long team effort
Group Project
• Design and evaluate an interface
• 0 - Team formation & topic choice
• 1 - Understand the problem space
• 2 - Exploring the design space
• 3 - Prototype
• 4 - Evaluation

• Main 4 parts worth ~10% each

• Presentation, documentation ~ 5%

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Group Project Details
• Part 0 - Topic definition
• Identify team & general topic
• Suggestion: Pick a population and pick a technology;
check out intersection
• Part 1 - Understanding the problem
• Describe tasks, users, environment, social context
• What are implications for design?

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Group Project Details
• Part 2 - Design alternatives
• Storyboards, mock-ups for multiple different designs
• Explore, push boundaries of design space
• Explain decisions

• Part 3 - System prototype & eval plan

• More detailed prototype (semi-working ok)
• Plan for conducting evaluation

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Group Project Details
• Part 4 - Evaluation
• Conduct formal evaluation with example users
• Use appropriate methods
• Analyze results of evaluation
• Characterize what’s working and what’s not

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Presentations
• Midterm poster session
• Feedback on ideas, whole class period
• After Part 2 (near midterm)
• Other students and “expert” gallery (hopefully)

• Final poster session (2 days)

• Week 15 of the semester

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Project Teams
• 3 people
• You decide (or I will!)
• Diverse is best!

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Project Topics
• Semester theme: “Innovative Interfaces in Everyday
Life”
• ?? What does this mean ??

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What Makes a Good Project

• Typically:
• Access to domain experts & users
• “Real” clients
• Interesting human issues
• Rich domain for design

• Theme has a LOT of range for topics

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Previous Topic Ideas
• Mobile/handheld (cars, tour guides, etc.)
• Wedding planner
• GIS
• Calendar agent (speech)
• Audio / Web sites
• Domain that you know well

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