Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Prepared by: M. Salman Khan

Todays outline
What is HCI? A real life example of a disaster caused by bad design What general activities are involved? What topics are involved in HCI studies.

What is HCI?
According to ACM SIGCHI Curricula for HumanComputer Interaction:
Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

Why HCI is important? (Scott Klemmer)

Three basic components 1. Human 2. Computer 3. Interaction Basically, HCI helps in making effective interaction between humans and computers. Good interaction design enhances the abilities of individuals to accomplish their tasks and has tremendous effects on the society, e.g., GUI based systems help in creating documents, sharing photos, connecting with family, information search, and many of other tasks. Good designs bring joy to people.

Why HCI is important? (Scott Klemmer)

Bad designs frustrate people. Bad designs can cost lives, money, and time. For example, medical devices, air plane crash, and even nuclear disasters. Bad designs also effects our daily lives such as wasting time on a banks website, figuring out how the wifi works, and trying to set something in a digital camera. We can avoid bad incidents by following some basic principles that we are going to learn in our course.

A real time example of disaster due to bad design (by Donald A. Norman)
Before I wrote this book, I was a cognitive scientist, interested in how the mind works. I studied human perception, memory, and attention. I examined how people learned, how they performed skilled activities. Along the way, I became interested in human error, hoping that my understanding of error would provide ways to teach people how to avoid mistakes. But then came the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island in the United States, and I was among a group of social and behavioral scientists who were called in to determine why the control-room operators had made such terrible mistakes. To my surprise, we concluded that they were not to blame: the fault lay in the design of the control room. Indeed, the control panels of many power plants looked as if they were deliberately designed to cause errors.

What general activities are involved? (Scott Klemmer)

Real world designs are iterative, because we do not often understand the problem and involved people, and we cannot gauge an appropriate solution. Best options often comes by comparing different options.

What topics are involved in HCI studies (ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction)

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Human Social Organization: it includes concerns such as nature of work, workflows, Models of work, Models of human activities, mutual impact of computer systems on work and vice versa, computer systems for group tasks, case studies, Quality of work life and job satisfaction etc. Application areas and tasks: concerns with application areas where user interfaces are developed, e.g., Document-oriented interfaces, Communicationsoriented interfaces, Design environments, On-line tutorial systems, etc.

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Human Machine Fit: designing to find a fit between developed object and its use. Here the topics include for example, Alternate techniques for achieving fit, system selection, system adaption, users selection, users adaption, user guidance, etc. Human Information Processing: Concerns with how humans process information. Topics include such as: Models of cognitive architecture, Phenomena and theories of memory, Phenomena and theories of perception, Phenomena and theories of problem solving, Users' conceptual models, Models of human action, Human diversity, including disabled populations

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Language and Communication: Concerns with language as interface and communication medium. The topics for example include: Aspects of language: syntax, semantics, Specialized languages (e.g., graphical interaction, query, command, production systems, editors) Ergonomics: Concerns with the physical and psychological characteristics of humans, e.g., Human cognitive and sensory limits, Fatigue and health issues, Furniture and lighting design, Design for the disabled, etc.

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Input and output devices Dialogue techniques: Concerns with dialogue input, output, interaction techniques (Navigation and orientation in dialogues, error management, form filling, menu selection, icons and direct manipulation, generic functions, natural language), dialogue issues (Real-time response issues, Supervisory control, automatic systems, embedded systems) Dialogue Genre: film, graphic design, style and aesthetics

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Computer graphics: Examples include: bitmap and voxel representations, raster-op, 2-D primitives, text primitives, device independent images, animation, Color representation, color maps, color ranges of devices Dialogue Architecture: Concerns with Software architectures and standards for user interfaces, e.g., Layers model of the architecture of dialogues and windowing systems, dialogue system reference models, Standardization and interoperability, Window manager models (e.g., Shared address-space, client-server), analysis of major window systems (e.g., X, New Wave, Windows, Open Look, Presentation Manager, Macintosh)

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Design Approaches: Graphic design basics (e.g., design languages, typography, use of color, 2D & 3D spatial organization, temporal sequencing, etc.), Alternative system development processes (e.g., waterfall model, participatory design), lifecycle model, iterative design, choice of method under time/resource constraint, etc.

What topics are involved in HCI studies (cont.)

Implementation tools and techniques: Relationships among design, evaluation, and implementation, application independence, device independence, Prototyping techniques (e.g., storyboarding, video, "Wizard of Oz", rapid prototype implementations), Object-oriented methods Evaluation Techniques: Usability testing techniques, linking testing to specifications, Formative and summative evaluation techniques for empirical evaluation, including, field observation methods, participant observation, interviewing techniques, questionnaire design, psychometric methods, video protocols, system logging, experiment design