CHAPTER 2:

Universal Usability

Designing the User Interface:

Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction

Sixth Edition

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant,

Maxine S. Cohen, Steven M. Jacobs, and Niklas Elmqvist
in collaboration with
Nicholas Diakopoulos
Addison Wesley
is an imprint of

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

 Universal Usability

Topics
1. Introduction
2. Variations in physical abilities and physical workplaces
3. Diverse cognitive and perceptual abilities
4. Personality differences
5. Cultural and international diversity
6. Users with disabilities
7. Older adult users
8. Children
9. Accommodating hardware and software diversity
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 Introduction to Universal Usability

• As a profession, we will be remembered for how

well we meet our users’ needs.
• That is the ultimate goal: addressing the needs
of all users.
• The huge international consumer market in
mobile devices has raised the pressure for
designs that are universally usable.

‫ هذا هو‬.‫ سيتم تذكرنا لمدى تلبيتها الحتياجات مستخدمينا‬، ‫• كمهنة‬

‫ أثار السوق‬.‫ تلبية احتياجات جميع المستخدمين‬:‫الهدف النهائي‬
‫ االستهالكية الدولية الضخمة في األجهزة المحمولة الضغط على‬1-3
.‫التصميمات القابلة لالستخدام عالميا‬
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 Introduction to Universal Usability
(concluded)
• The website of “Raising the Floor” includes universal
accessibility features such as options for emphasizing the
links or making buttons larger, offering several font sizes,
contrast, text descriptions of photos, translation services,
etc. (www.raisingthefloor.net).

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 Variations in physical abilities and
physical workplaces
• Basic data about human dimensions
comes from research in anthropometry
• There is no average user, either
compromises must be made or multiple
versions of a system must be created
• Physical measurement of human
dimensions are not enough, take into
account dynamic measures such as reach,
strength or speed
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 Variations in physical abilities and
physical workplaces (continued)
– Screen-brightness preferences vary substantially,
designers customarily provide a knob to enable user
control
– Account for variances of the user population's sense
perception
• Vision: depth, contrast, color blindness, and motion sensitivity
• Touch: keyboard and touchscreen sensitivity
• Hearing: audio clues must be distinct
– Workplace design can both help and hinder work
performance

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 Variations in physical abilities and
physical workplaces (concluded)
• The standard ANSI/HFES 100-2007 Human
Factors Engineering of Computer Workstations
(2007) lists these concerns:
– Work-surface and display-support height
– Clearance under work surface for legs
– Work-surface width and depth
– Adjustability of heights and angles for chairs and work
surfaces
– Posture – seating depth and angle; back-rest height
and lumbar support
– Availability of armrests, footrests, and palmrests
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 Diverse cognitive and perceptual
abilities
• The human ability to interpret sensory input
rapidly and to initiate complex actions makes
modern computer systems possible
• The journal Ergonomics Abstracts offers this
classification of human cognitive processes:
‒ Long-term and semantic memory
‒ Short-term and working memory
‒ Problem solving and reasoning
‒ Decision making and risk assessment
‒ Language communication and comprehension
‒ Search, imagery, and sensory memory
‒ Learning, skill development, knowledge acquisition, and
concept attainment
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 Diverse cognitive and perceptual
abilities (concluded)
• They also suggest this set of factors affecting
perceptual and motor performance:
‒ Arousal and vigilance
‒ Fatigue and sleep deprivation
‒ Perceptual (mental) load
‒ Knowledge of results and feedback
‒ Monotony and boredom
‒ Sensory deprivation
‒ Nutrition and diet
‒ Fear, anxiety, mood, and emotion
‒ Drugs, smoking, and alcohol
‒ Physiological rhythms
• But note, in any application, background experience
and knowledge in the task domain and the interface
domain play key roles in learning and performance
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 Personality differences

• There is no set taxonomy for identifying user

personality types
• Designers must be aware that populations are
subdivided and that these subdivisions have
various responses to different stimuli
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
– extroversion vs. introversion
– sensing vs. intuition
– perceptive vs. judging
– feeling vs. thinking
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 Cultural and international diversity

• Characters, numerals, special characters, and diacriticals

• Left-to-right versus right-to-left versus vertical input and reading
• Date and time formats
• Numeric and currency formats
• Weights and measures
• Telephone numbers and addresses
• Names and titles (Mr., Ms., Mme.)
• Social-security, national identification, and passport numbers
• Capitalization and punctuation
• Sorting sequences
• Icons, buttons, colors
• Pluralization, grammar, spelling
• Etiquette, policies, tone, formality, metaphors

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 Cultural and international diversity
(concluded)
• Designing for cell phones can open the door to a wider
audience, e.g. in developing countries where:
– feature phones often are the only way to access the internet
– literacy may be an issue
– users have very low monthly limits on the data volume they can
use

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 Users with Disabilities

• Designers must plan early to accommodate users with

disabilities
• Early planning is more cost efficient than adding on
later
• Businesses must comply with the "Americans With
Disabilities Act” for some applications
• Growing world-wide support, for example:
‒ European Union Mandate 376 will require procurement and
development of accessible technologies by EU governments (
http://www.mandate376.eu/)
‒ United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(CRPD), an international human rights agreement (
http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml)

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 Users with Disabilities (concluded)

• A user with disability is using a television with the help of

assistive technology

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 Older adult users

• Including the elderly is fairly easy

• As the world’s population ages, designers in
many fields are adapting their work to serve
older adults, which can benefit all users
• Designers should allow for variability within their
applications via settings for sound, color,
brightness, font sizes, etc. with less distracting
animation

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 Older adult users (concluded)

• HomeAssist is an assisted living platform for older adults,

installed in homes in Bordeaux, France
• The tablet is used to show alerts (e.g. when the front door was left opened) and
reminders, but also to run a slide show of photographs when not in use (
http://phoenix.inria.fr/research-projects/homeassist)

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 Children

• Using Digital Mysteries on a tablet, two elementary

school children work together to read information slips,
group them and create a sequence to create an answer
to the question “Who killed King Ted?”
– The blue pop-up pie menu allows the selection of tools.
– A larger tabletop version allows larger groups to collaborate. (
www.reflectivethinking.com)

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 Accommodating hardware and
software diversity
• Three of the main technical challenges will be:
1. Producing satisfying and effective Internet interaction
on high-speed (broadband) and slower (dial-up and
some wireless) connections
2. Responsive design enabling access to web services
from large displays (3200 × 2400 pixels or larger)
and smaller mobile devices (1024 × 768 pixels and
smaller)
3. Supporting easy maintenance of or automatic
conversion to multiple languages

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