Faculty of Computing & ICT

Bachelor of Science in Information

Technology
Course Code: Course Name: Human
Computer Interaction

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 Contents
 Course overview and objectives
 Chapter 1: overview and its
objectives
 Principles of good design of interface
for user interaction
 Usability of interactive systems
 Usability testing procedures
 Interface specifications principles 2
 Course Overview
 In the 1950’s, computers in commercial
market were huge, expensive, importable,
time consuming and difficult to use.
 Companies had to hire technical specialists
to handle computers because the interface
was not very user-friendly.
 Computer users had to remember command
lines in order to interact with the system.

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 Cont………..
 Increasing the operational efficiency will reduce
the production time. When the production time is
reduced, the cost will be reduced as a
consequence.
 Computer technologies has revolutionized the
way people use the computer. E.g. the laptop,
iPod, & mobile phone are small, portable, more
powerful and more user friendly. As a result of
the evolution in computer technologies, the
demands from users have evolved too.
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 Cont…………..
 Some of the users demand more specific
functions from the computer specification.
Hence, we cannot design a system that fits
all purposes. But we can design a system
that suits a particular need.
 Therefore, since the users’ requirements are
different from one another, we need a person
who is specialised in designing a system that
fits the particular demands of the users.

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 Course objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
1. Utilize human cognitive capabilities in designing

software interface.
2. Incorporate principles and methodologies to

develop and manage modern interactive systems.

3. Design and maintain interactive software for

different users.
4. Review the interface quality.

5. Discuss the interface design for modern use.

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 WHO IS INVOLVED IN HCI?
 HCI is undoubtedly a multi-disciplinary
subject.
 Psychology and cognitive science
 Ergonomics for the user’s physical capabilities
 Sociology
 Computer science and engineering
 Graphic design and
 Technical writing

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 Chapter one

FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN
COMPUTER INTERACTION

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 Chapter One
 This chapter discusses the psychological
and physiological attributes of the user,
providing us with a basic overview of the
capabilities and limitations that affect our
ability to use computer systems.
 It is only when we have an understanding of
the user at this level that we can
understand what makes for successful
designs.
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 Chapter 1: Overview
 Imagine you have been hired by a company as a
web designer for an online bookstore. Your job
specification is to design a website for the company.
Where do you start?
 Would you sit down on the desk and quickly sketch
out a few designs for the IT manager to consider. If
the IT manager does not like it, then you can redraw
until he is satisfied. The redrawing may take a long
time. To be efficient in designing, you have to know
the golden rules of design, which is the purpose of
this unit.
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 Chapter 1: Objectives
By the end of Unit 1, you should be able to:
1. Define Human Computer Interaction.

2. Describe the principles of a good design of interface for

user’s interaction.
3. Explain the usability of interactive systems and testing

procedures.
4. Apply various usability requirements on interactive

design.
5. Apply interface specifications principles on design.

6. Identify the different types of interface development

tools.
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 Definition
 The term human–computer interaction has only
been in widespread use since the early 1980s,
but has its roots in more established disciplines.
 By human we mean an individual user, a group
of users working together.
 By computer we mean any technology ranging
from the general desktop computer to a large-
scale computer system.
 By interaction we mean any communication
between a user and computer.
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 What is HCI?
 It is a study about how people
interact or use computers in achieving
a particular goal; making computers
easier to use.

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 Principles of Good Design
of Interface for User
Interaction
 How do we design an interface that is suitable for
you, me and everyone?
 Are there any “magic” guidelines that if followed,
will encourage everyone to like your interface?
 The principle of good design is to understand
human behaviour, our capabilities and limitations.
 By understanding human behaviour, you can
design according to their needs, i.e. human
centered development. we will discuss how humans
perceive input and output through their senses.

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 Categories of Information
processing
 The process of the information processing
can be divided into three categories:
1. The sensory system, which handles

sensory stimulus from the environment.

2. The motor system, which controls actions.

3. The cognitive system which connects the

sensory and motor systems.

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 Cognitive psychology of
human being

1. The capability and limitations of

human ability.
2. How humans perceive and store
information in their memory.
3. How humans physically manipulate
objects.

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 Human-centred design
 What is human-centred design?
 It’s a process of interface development that
starts with the users and their needs rather than
with other factors such as technology.
 At its core, human-centered development
requires developers who understand people and
the tasks the users wish to achieve.
 You will need to study carefully this process in
order to design a good interface for user’s
interaction.
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 Input-output channels
 To design a human-centred interface, you have to
first understand how humans perceive input and
output in a user-centred development.
 Input in the human occurs mainly through the
senses and the output through the motor control of
the effectors.
 We have five major senses which are the vision,
hearing, touch, taste and smell.
 The output is carried out by the effectors like the
limbs, fingers, eyes, head and vocal system in HCI.
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 Scenario
 You are now using an application on the computer
which contains menus, icons and windows with a
keyboard and mouse. Basically, you interact with
this system by receiving information primarily via
sight which appears on the screen. You also receive
information through hearing the special sound
effects and touching the keys on the keyboard or
the orientation of the mouse. After you have
received and processed the input information, you
will send the output information to the computer,
either through keyboard or mouse.
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 Vision
 The human eyes are the main source of information
for the average person.
 You are capable of detecting and interpreting the
light stimuli for the environment through your eyes.
 Vision begins with light. The eye is a mechanism
for receiving light and transforming it into electrical
energy. Light is reflected from objects in the world
and their image is focused upside down on the back
of the eye. The receptors in the eye transform it
into electrical signals which are passed to the brain.

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 Hearing
 Hearing is an important sense in HCI but we
tend to underestimate it.
 The auditory system has a great capacity in
perceiving information about the
environment.
 Sound is the sensation produced when
longitudinal vibrations of the molecules in
the external environment strike the
eardrum.
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 Cont……..
 The sound frequencies that are audible to
humans range from 20 Hz to 20000 Hz.
 The greater the amplitude the louder the
sound, and the greater the frequency, the
higher the pitch.
 Earns are selective
 However, if the sounds are too loud, or the
frequencies are too similar, then we are
unable to differentiate the sound.
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 Touch
 The skin contains three types of sensory receptors:
1. Thermo-receptors respond to heat and cold
2. Nociceptors respond to intense pressure, heat and
pain
3. Mechanoreceptors respond to pressure

NB. You will find the skin of your finger and lips
more sensitive because the touch receptors are
concentrated at that area.

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 Threshold, stereognosis
and Kinesthesis
 The minimal distance by which two touch
stimuli must be separated to be perceived as
separate is called the two-point threshold.
 The ability to identify objects by handling
them without looking at them is called
stereognosis.
 Awareness of the position of the body and
limbs which is called kinesthesis is also
important in the sense of touch.
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 Movement
 The motor system controls the movement and
the effect of interaction with computers.
 After interpreting the input information, the brain
sends output information to the appropriate
muscles for response.
 Each of these stages takes time.
 Movement time depends on the physical
characteristics of the subject and reaction time is
dependent on the picture through which stimulus
is received.
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 Human disability and the role of
HCI in assisting the disabled
 A good user interface design cannot
just provide for the average person.
 We also need to consider other groups
of people who are suffering from
impairments.
 In this section, we will discuss those
users with impairments in areas such as
visual, hearing, movement and speech.
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 Visual impairment
 Visual impairment is experienced by those who are
unable to see but may be able to read through Braille.
With the increase in usage of Graphical User Interface
(GUI), the visually impaired have been disqualified.
 For instance, when you develop a web page that is fully
graphical, these graphics are inaccessible for the visually
impaired. Hence, visually impaired people still use text-
based interaction, screen readers or Braille output.
 Therefore, when designing for a visual impairment
group, you can use sound and touch to overcome the
difficulties.

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 Hearing impairment
 Those with hearing impairments are
able to interact with the system through
the Graphic User Interface (GUI).
 Therefore, in order to communicate with
them, a written form should be
presented through your system.
 People can use email or instant
messaging to improve communication.
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 Physical impairment
 The physically impaired are a group that has
difficulties in controlling the movement of the
hands. Therefore, using a mouse to interact with
the system will be difficult as mouse control
requires precision on where to click on the GUI.
 In order to overcome this problem, speech input
and output can be used when developing the
system. In addition, you can also consider the
eye gaze system where it tracks the eyes
movements to control the movement of the
mouse.
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Speech impairment
 Those who suffer from speech
impairments can use textual
communication.
 For example, MS Word enables
people to type, provides grammar
correction and spell check.

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 Understanding users’
cognitive processes
 Cognitive process is concerned with how we
acquire experience, and how we store experience
in our long term memory.
 By understanding the user’s cognitive process,
you can increase the efficiency of the interface
design.
 Therefore, we need to know how human memory
works because it will help us to design a system
that will enable the user to apply their experience
when they interact with the system.
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 Human memory
 Memory is the retention and storage of the
information.
 Short term memory which lasts seconds to hours.
It stores information that is temporary in nature.
 Long term memory which stores memories for
years and sometimes for life. Long-term memory
holds everything that we “know” such as
experience or facts. In long-term memory, there
are three main activities: Storage, Retrieval and
Forgetting.
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 Usability of Interactive
Systems
 “What a stupid system!” It is common to
hear this especially when you are stuck
with a system that looks so simple, yet did
not perform according to what you
expected.
 Those systems that are difficult to use
have low usability.
 Where as those systems that are easy to
use have high usability.
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 What is usability?
 What is usability? Based on ISO 9241-11,
standards related to usability can be
categorized as primarily concerned with:
1. The use of the product (effectiveness, efficiency
and satisfaction in a particular context of use).
2. The user interface and interaction.
3. The process used to develop the product.
4. The capability of an organisation to apply user-
centered design.
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 What constitutes usability?
 Usability requirement is part of the non-
functional specification that you will need to
take into consideration when designing the
system specification.
 We need methods to measure how
successful we are in implementing the
usability requirements on the system.
 The second part of this section is the
discussion on the usability measure.
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 Usability requirements
 In this section, we will discuss the usability
requirements for an interactive design. Overall,
there are three main categories on usability
requirements:
 Learnability  How easy is it for users to learn
about the system?
 Flexibility  How flexible can the system adapt to
the user requirements?
 Robustness  How successful is the level of
support provided to the user?
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 Learnability
 Learnability: A good system will enable
the user to learn how to use the system
based on their past experience.
 Therefore, learnability requirement can
be applied to either the user learning
about the system or the system learning
about the user’s behaviour.

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 Usability measures
 In usability requirements, we have
discussed the learnability, flexibility
and robustness principles.
 Usability measurement measures how
far we have achieved the usability
requirements. In other words, it
measures our success in achieving the
usability of the system.
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 Total performance time
 Total performance time measures the
total time the user takes to complete a
task.
 For instance, if you take two seconds to
save a new file, then the total
performance time is two seconds.
 Therefore, total performance time enables
us to see how much time the user takes to
complete a task.
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 Recording the usability
problems
 If we set some tasks for test users to
perform, all we have to do is record their
feedback.
 For example, we select 10 test users to test
our system. We need to record their
feedback.
 After that, we count how many test users
are facing problem A, how many test users
are facing problem B and so on.
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 Counting the input from
the user
 Input from the user can be keystrokes,
mouse click, voice detector or even
finger recognition.
 We set some tasks for the test users
and we count how many times they
click in order to complete the tasks.

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 Questionnaire
 We can develop a questionnaire to measure
the user’s satisfaction on the system.
 For example, we can ask them to rate how
easy to use the system is, their opinions and
suggestions.
 After we have collected the questionnaire,
we can use a graph to present the data,
which helps us to see the overall
measurement of usability on the system.
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 Setting the limit
 We need to set limits when we carry out
the usability measurement.
 We need to set the target for the total
performance time to be measured against.
 Let’s say, we set the limit where the user
only takes two seconds to save a file.
 From there, we can measure whether the
user has exceeded the time limit or not.
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 Usability Testing
Procedures
 By measuring the usability
requirements, we can find out how far
we have succeeded in our achievement.
 The next question is how to carry out
these measurements.
 In other words, what are the methods
and procedures that can be used to
obtain feedback from users.
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 Cont…..
 We need to measure and test our system at
an early stage and to ensure that they work
as we have expected.
 The advantages in testing the system at an
early stage enable us to:
1. Rectify potential problems.
2. Change and correct the errors while the
errors are still in their infancy.
3. Dry run the design with expert review.
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 Aim of usability testing
 There are three main goals in usability
testing:
1. To assess the system functionality.

2. To assess users’ experience.

3. To rectify any problems within the

system.

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 Evaluation through user
participation
 It is important to do testing throughout
the whole process of the system
development.
 Imagine what would happen if you had
developed the whole system and the
user rejects it because they found it
inefficient and difficult to use.

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 Methods of user
evaluation
 We will look into various methods of
user evaluation. These include:
1. Empirical methods

2. Query techniques

3. Observational techniques

4. Think aloud and co-operative

evaluation

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 Cont…………
 The four user evaluation methods depend on
two styles of evaluation performed under the
following two different environments:
1. Laboratory studies (We use this method
when we need to use special equipment. For
example, we want to test how the doctor
responds to the new x-ray scan)
2. Field studies (In field studies, we test the
user in their actual working environment.)
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 Empirical methods:
Experimental evaluation
 Empirical method is a method where
the result is based on experience and
not based on theory.
 Hence, the results will be more realistic
because the actual group of test-users
are used during the testing.
 The empirical method is used to
support a suggestion.
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 Cont…………
 There are a few factors that need to be
considered when you want to use the
empirical method.
 These factors will affect the reliability

of your test result. These factors are:

1. Participants-You need to choose the

right group of people to participate in

the evaluation.
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 Cont…………
2. Variables- The purpose of carrying out the
experimental evaluation is to measure a
certain element.
 Suppose you want to find out whether using
sound to alert the user on the system is a
good option or not, the sound here is the
variable for you to measure its usability.
3. Hypotheses- A hypothesis is a prediction of
the outcome of an experiment.
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 Cont…………
4. Experimental design- The structure of
the experiment has to be properly
designed.
 it should have defined aims and

objective.
 Use different tools to measure

different requirements.

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 Cont…………
5. Statistical measures
 Statistical data can provide feedback

to the user.
 It is a method of representing the data

in a more informative way.

 For example, a set of figures can be

represented using the graph.

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 Query techniques
 The best way to find out what you want
is to ask the users directly.
 Query techniques allow us to obtain
the detail of users’ viewpoints about
the system.
 Unfortunately, this method has
limitations too. The user’s point of view
can be biased because they may not
have seen the whole system. 55
 Interviews
 Interviews enable the evaluator to get
a good view of the user’s experience.
 The interview needs to be planned in
advance and a set of questions needs
to be carefully designed in order to get
accurate information.

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 Questionnaires

 A questionnaire enables us to get

information on statistical evidence to
prove a hypothesis or user’s
viewpoints.

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 Observational techniques
 Some times when you interview users, they
can give you a set of logical answers but in
reality, they use another set of methods to
interact with the system.
 One of the ways to overcome this situation
is to observe the user on the method they
use to interact with the system. Observation
can improve our knowledge on how the user
carries out their work.
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 Think aloud and co-
operative evaluation
 Think aloud and co-operative evaluation. In the
“think aloud” method, we observe the user and at
the same time, we ask the user to talk through the
process. The advantages of the think aloud method
is that it is simple to carry out.
 Co-operative evaluation is very similar to think
aloud, but in this context, you act as a collaborator.
This means that you still need to talk through the
process of using the system but the evaluator will
ask you why you do it that way or give you an
alternative way.
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 Interface Specifications
Principles
 We are going to look into two sets of guidelines
that have been established by Shneiderman and
Norman
 These set of guidelines are meant to make the
system more usable.
 Bear in mind that the design principles do not
show you how to build a perfect interface, it goes
on to show how these principles can be applied
in practice during the design and development
process.
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 Shneiderman’s eight
golden rules of interface
design
 Strive for consistency. A designer must
ensure consistency in designing a good
interface. Consistency can come in many
forms, such as the menus, help screens,
color, layout and fonts
 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts. It
is good to provide the user with a shortcut
for those frequently-used commands.
clt+a
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 Cont…………
 Offer informative feedback. It is important
to offer feedback to users when they are
interacting with the system. This is similar
to synthesizability in usability
requirement.
 When you send a document to the printer,
the system offers a feedback to you by
showing a print icon on the bottom of the
screen.
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 Cont…………
 Design dialogs to yield closure. When the
user is interacting with the system through
the dialog box, the sequence should have
start, peak and end. For example, when the
user starts the printing through the dialog
box, the print icon appears on the bottom
right hand side. The icon will be gone when
the document is printed, thereby indicating
closure of the process. E.g. loading.
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 Cont…………
 Offer error prevention and simple error
handling. The system can help the user
from making a serious error.
 For example, error checking on numeric
fields is available in Microsoft Excel.
 When the user enters an alphabet on
the age column, the system needs to
prevent it.
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 Cont…………
 Permit easy reversal of actions. You
might change your mind in the middle
of doing something. A system should
enable the user to perform an easy
reversal of actions.
 For example, when you press
<Ctrl>+<Z> on MS Word, it will let you
undo the previous move.
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 Cont…………
 Support internal locus of control.
Expert users desire to control the
system. Therefore, the system needs
flexibility when it is being handled by
different levels of expertise in the user
group. E.g. pop up message such as “
are you sure you want to close?” ok or
cancel.
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 Cont…………
 Reduce short-term memory load.
Therefore, a good system should not
overload the user memory. For example,
a user-friendly system will not ask the
user to remember hundreds of command
lines. It should reduce the memory load
by providing an indication for the user to
recognize what to do with the cue.

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 Norman’s seven principles for
transforming difficult tasks into
simple ones

1. Use both knowledge in the world and

knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible.
4. Get the mapping right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize.
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END

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