Legal Issues

• As user interfaces have become more prominent in

society, serious legal issues have emerged. Every developer
of software and information should review legal issues that
may affect design, implementation, deployment,
marketing, and use. For more information, Baase (2013)
gives an in-depth overview of such social, legal,
philosophical, ethical, political, constitutional, and
economic implications of computing.
• Privacy and security are always a concern whenever
computers are used to store data or to monitor activity.
Medical, legal, financial, and other data often have to be
protected to prevent unapproved access, illegal tampering,
inadvertent loss, or malicious mischief.
• A second concern encompasses safety and
reliability. User interfaces for aircraft,
automobiles, medical equipment, military
systems, utility control rooms, and the like can
affect life-or-death decisions. If air traffic
controllers are confused by the situation
display, they can make fatal errors. If the user
interface for such a system is demonstrated to
be difficult to understand, it could leave the
designer, developer, and operator open to a
lawsuit alleging improper design
• A third issue is copyright or patent protection for
software (Lessig, 2006; Samuelson and Schultz,
2007; McJohn, 2015). Software developers who
have spent time and money developing a
package are understandably frustrated when
potential users make illegal copies of the package
rather than buying it. Technical schemes have
been tried to prevent copying, but clever hackers
can usually circumvent the barriers. It is unusual
for a company to sue an individual for copying a
program, but cases have been brought against
corporations and universities
• A fourth concern is with copyright protection for
online information, images, or music. If customers
access an online resource, do they have the right
to store the information electronically for later
use? Can the customer send an electronic copy to
a colleague or friend? Who owns the “friends” list
and other shared data in social networking sites?
Do individuals, their employers, or network
operators own the information contained in e-mail
messages? The expansion of the web, with its vast
digital libraries, has raised the temperature and
pace of copyright discussions
• A fifth issue is freedom of speech in electronic
environments. Do users have a right to make
controversial or potentially offensive statements through
e-mail or social media? Are such statements protected by
freedom of speech laws, such as the U.S. First
Amendment? Are networks similar to street corners,
where freedom of speech is guaranteed, or are networks
similar to television broadcasting, where community
standards must be protected? Should network operators
be responsible for or prohibited from eliminating
offensive or obscene jokes, stories, or images?
Controversy has raged over whether Internet service
providers have a right to prohibit e-mail messages that are
used to organize consumer rebellions against themselves
• Other legal concerns include adherence
to laws requiring equal access for users
with disabilities and attention to
changing laws in countries around the
world. Do Yahoo! and eBay have to
enforce the laws of every country in
which they have customers? These and
other issues mean that developers of
online services must be sure to consider
all the legal implications of their design
decisions
 Direct manipulation
• Direct manipulation as a concept has been
around since before computers. The metaphor
of direct manipulation works well in
computing environments and was introduced
in the early days of Xerox PARC and then
widely disseminated by Shneiderman (1983).
Direct-manipulation designs can provide the
capability for differing populations and easily
stretch across international boundaries
• favorite example of direct manipulation is driving an
automobile. The scene is directly visible through the
front window, and performance of actions such as
braking and steering has become common
knowledge in our culture. To turn left, for example,
the driver simply rotates the steering wheel to the
left. The response is immediate and the scene
changes, providing feedback to refine the turn. Now
imagine how difficult it would be trying to accurately
turn a car by typing a command or selecting “turn left
30 degrees” from a menu. The graceful interaction in
many applications is due to the increasingly elegant
application of direct manipulation.
• Driverless cars may soon respond to
commands like “take me to Baltimore airport,”
but they are a long way from matching the
skills of drivers at the wheel while navigating
snow-covered roads or police hand signals at
accident sites
• Before designing for current devices, it makes sense to
reflect where early design has been. In the early days of
office automation, there was no such thing as a direct-
manipulation word processor or a presentation system
like PowerPoint. Word processors were command-line–
driven programs where the user typically saw a single
line at a time. Keyboard commands were used along
with inserting special commands to provide instructions
for viewing and printing the documents often as a
separate operation. Similarly, with presentation
programs, specialized commands were used to set the
font style, color, and size. Obviously, these were very
limited compared to the numerous font families
available today. Most users today are used to a
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment
enhanced by direct-manipulation widgets.
The three principles and attributes of direct
manipulation
• The attraction of direct manipulation is apparent in the
enthusiasm of the users. Each example has problematic
features, but they demonstrate the potent advantages of
direct manipulation, which can be summarized by three
principles:
1. Continuous representations of the objects and actions of
interest with meaningful visual metaphors
2. Physical actions or presses of labeled interface objects
(i.e., buttons) instead of complex
3. Rapid, incremental, reversible actions whose effects on
the objects of interest are visible immediately
• Using these three principles, it is possible to design systems
that have these beneficial attributes:
• Novices can learn basic functionality quickly, usually through a
demonstration by a more experienced user.
• Experts can work rapidly to carry out a wide range of tasks,
even defining new functions and features. Knowledgeable
intermittent users can retain operational concepts.
• Error messages are rarely needed.
• Users can immediately see whether their actions are
furthering their goals, and if the actions are
counterproductive, they can simply change the direction of
their activity.
• Users experience less anxiety because the interface is
comprehensible and because actions can be reversed easily.
• Users gain a sense of confidence and mastery because they
are the initiators of action, they feel in control, and they can
predict the interface’s responses.
 Translational distances with direct
manipulation
• The effectiveness and reality of the direct-
manipulation interface are based on the validity
and strength of the metaphor chosen to represent
the actions and objects. Using familiar metaphors
creates easier learning conditions for users and
lessens the number of mistakes and incorrect
actions. Adequate testing is needed to validate the
metaphor. Special attention needs to be paid to the
user characteristics such as age, reading level,
educational background, prior experiences, and any
physical disabilities.
Examples of translational distances (strength).
• Weak—early video game controllers (Fig. 7.5)
• Medium—touch screens, multi-touch (Fig.
7.1)
• Strong—data glove, gesturing, manipulating
tangible objects (Fig. 7.2)
• Immersive—virtual reality, i.e, oculus rift (Fig.
7.14)
• Weak direct manipulation is what can be
described as basic direct manipulation. There
is a mouse, trackpad, joystick, or similar device
translating the user’s physical action into
action in the virtual space using some
mapping function.
• Medium direct manipulation is the next step
moving along the continuum. The translational
distance is reduced. Instead of communicating with
the virtual space with the device, the user reaches
out and touches, moves, and grabs the entities in
the on-screen representation. Examples of this
include touchscreens (mobile, kiosk, and desktop).
• strong direct manipulation involves actions such as
gesture recognition with various body parts. It may
be the user’s hand, foot, head, or full body
(whatever controls the action) that is “virtually”
placed inside the physical space
 Disadvantages of Direct manipulation

• May be hard to code.

• High resource usage.
• The requirement for a lot of screen space may
be cumbersome.
• Poing may be slower than typing.
• May increase difficulty for the visually impaired.
• May require graphics display and pointing
devices.