University of Wollongong in Dubai

CSIT226

Human Computer
Interaction
The subject provides students with

An understanding of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) principles and practices, and how to
apply them in the context of developing usable interactive computer applications and systems.

The subject also emphasises the importance of taking into account contextual, organisational,
and social factors in the design of computer systems.

Students will be taken through the analysis, design, development, and evaluation of user
interfaces. They will acquire hands-on design skills through an interaction design project.

The subject will cover topics including user-centred design, the development process,
prototyping, usability testing, measuring and evaluating the user experience and accessibility.
 Chapter 1
WHAT IS INTERACTION DESIGN?
Bad designs

Elevator controls and labels on the bottom row all look

the same, so it is easy to push a label by mistake instead
of a control button

[Link]

People do not make same mistake for the labels and

buttons on the top row. Why not?
 Why is this vending machine so bad?

• Need to push button

first to activate
reader

• Normally insert bill

first before making
selection

[Link]

[Link] 6
 Good design

• Marble answering machine (Bishop, 1995)

• Based on how everyday objects behave

• Easy, intuitive and a pleasure to use

• Only requires one-step actions to perform core tasks

[Link] 7
 Good and bad design

• Why is the TiVo remote so much better designed

than standard remote controls?
– Peanut shaped to fit in hand
– Logical layout and color-coded, distinctive buttons
– Easy to locate buttons

See:
[Link]
-remotes-untold-past-present-and-future

[Link] 8
Which is the best way to interact with a smart TV?

• Standard remote device?

• Apple slimline remote control?
• Minnum’s new keyboard?

[Link]

9
What to design

• Need to take into account:

– Who the users are
– What activities are being carried out
– Where the interaction is taking place

• Need to optimize the interactions users have with

a product:
– So that they match the users’ activities and needs
Understanding users’ needs

– Need to take into account what people are good

and bad at

– Consider what might help people in the way they

currently do things

– Think through what might provide quality user

experiences

– Listen to what people want and get them involved

– Use tried and tested user-centered methods

What is interaction design?

• “Designing interactive products to support the

way people communicate and interact in their
everyday and working lives.”
– Preece, Sharp and Rogers (2015)

• “The design of spaces for human communication

and interaction.”
– Winograd (1997)
Goals of interaction design

• Develop usable products

– Usability means easy to learn, effective to use and provide an
enjoyable experience

• Involve users in the design process

Which kind of design?

• Number of other terms used emphasizing what is

being designed, e.g.
– user interface design, software design, user-centered
design, product design, web design, experience design
(UX)

• Interaction design is the umbrella term covering

all of these aspects
– fundamental to all disciplines, fields, and approaches
concerned with researching and designing computer-
based systems for people
HCI and interaction design
Relationship between ID, HCI and other fields

Academic disciplines contributing to ID:

– Psychology
– Social Sciences
– Computing Sciences
– Engineering
– Ergonomics
– Informatics
Relationship between ID, HCI and other fields

Design practices contributing to ID:

– Graphic design
– Product design
– Artist-design
– Industrial design
– Film industry
Relationship between ID, HCI and other fields

Interdisciplinary fields that ‘do’ interaction

design:

– HCI
– Ubiquitous Computing
– Human Factors
– Cognitive Engineering
– Cognitive Ergonomics
– Computer Supported Co-operative Work
– Information Systems
Working in multidisciplinary teams

• Many people from different backgrounds involved

• Different perspectives and ways of seeing

and talking about things

• Benefits
– more ideas and designs
generated

• Disadvantages
– difficult to communicate and
progress forward the designs being create
Interaction design in business

• Increasing number of ID consultancies, examples of well known ones include:

– Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter

the age of the consumer, designing human-
centered products and services”
– Cooper: “From research and product to goal-
related design”
– Swim: “provides a wide range of design services,
in each case targeted to address the product
development needs at hand”
– IDEO: “creates products, services and
environments for companies pioneering new ways
to provide value to their customers”
What do professionals do in the
ID business?
• interaction designers - people involved in the design of all
the interactive aspects of a product

• usability engineers - people who focus on evaluating

products, using usability methods and principles

• web designers - people who develop and create the visual

design of websites, such as layouts

• information architects - people who come up with ideas of

how to plan and structure interactive products

• user experience designers (UX) - people who do all the

above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the
design of products
The User Experience

• How a product behaves and is used by

people in the real world
– the way people feel about it and their pleasure and
satisfaction when using it, looking at it, holding it, and
opening or closing it
– “every product that is used by someone has a user
experience: newspapers, ketchup bottles, reclining
armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2010)
– “all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the
company, its services, and its products. (Nielsen and
Norman, 2014)

• Cannot design a user experience, only

design for a user experience
Why was the iPod user experience such a success?

• Quality user experience

from the start

• Simple, elegant, distinct

brand, pleasurable,
must have fashion
item, catchy names,
cool, etc.
What is involved in the process of interaction design

• Establishing requirements

• Developing alternatives

• Prototyping

• Evaluating
Core characteristics of interaction design

• Users should be involved through the

development of the project

• Specific usability and user experience

goals need to be identified, clearly
documented and agreed at the
beginning of the project

• Iteration is needed through the core

activities
Points to consider

– understand how to design interactive products

that fit with what people want, need and may
desire
– appreciate that one size does not fit all
e.g., teenagers are very different to grown-ups

– identify any incorrect assumptions they may

have about particular user groups
e.g., not all old people want or need big fonts

– be aware of both people’s sensitivities and

their capabilities
Are cultural differences important?

• 5/21/2015 versus 21/5/2015?

– Which should be used for international services
and online forms?

• Why is it that certain products, like the

iPod, are universally accepted by people
from all parts of the world?
Accessibility

• Degree to which a product is usable and accessible by as

many people as possible

• Focus on disability:
– Have a mental or physical impairment
– This has an adverse affect on their everyday lives
– It is long term
Anna, IKEA online sales agent

• Designed to be
different for UK and US
customers
• What are the differences
and which is which?
• What should Anna’s
appearance be like
for other countries,
like India, South Africa,
or China?
Usability goals

• Effective to use:
• How good the product is at doing what it is suppose to do?

• Efficient to use: Refers to the way the product supports users in carrying
out their task.

• Safe to use: Safety involves protecting users from dangerous conditions

and undesirable [Link]. Error recovery

• Have good utility: Extend to which the product provides the right
functionalities. Computing speed for an accounting software

• Easy to learn: Learnability refers to how easy a system is to learn to use.

• Easy to remember how to use: memorability refs to how easy a product is

to remember how to use, once learned.
User experience goals

Desirable aspects
satisfying helpful fun
enjoyable motivating provocative
engaging challenging surprising
pleasurable enhancing sociability rewarding
exciting supporting creativity emotionally fulfilling
entertaining cognitively stimulating

Undesirable aspects
boring unpleasant
frustrating making one feel guilty
making one feel stupid
annoying
childish gimmicky
Usability and user experience goals

• Selecting terms to convey a person’s feelings,

emotions, etc., can help designers understand the
multifaceted nature of the user experience
• How do usability goals differ from user experience
goals?
• Are there trade-offs between the two kinds of
goals?
– e.g. can a product be both fun and safe?
Design principles
Visibility

• This is a control panel for an elevator

• How does it work?

• Push a button for the floor you want?

• Nothing happens. Push any other

button? Still nothing. What do you
need to do?
[Link]

• It is not visible as to what to do!

Visibility

…you need to insert your room card in the slot by

the buttons to get the elevator to work!

How would you make this action more visible?

• make the card reader more obvious

• provide an auditory message, that says what
to do (which language?)
• provide a big label next to the card reader
that flashes when someone enters

[Link] • make relevant parts visible

• make what has to be done obvious
What do I do if I am wearing black?

Invisible automatic
controls can make it
more difficult
to use
Feedback

• Sending information back to the user about

what has been done
• Includes sound, highlighting, animation and
combinations of these

– e.g. when screen button clicked on provides sound or

red highlight feedback:

“ccclichhk”
Constraints

• Restricting the possible actions that can be performed

• Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options

• Physical objects can be designed to constrain things

– e.g. only one way you can insert a key into a lock
 Logical or ambiguous design?

• Where do you plug the

mouse?

• Where do you plug the

keyboard?

• top or bottom connector?

• Do the color coded icons

help?
[Link]

[Link] 39
 How to design them more logically

(i) A provides direct

adjacent mapping
between icon and
connector

(ii) B provides color

[Link] coding to associate
the connectors with
the labels

[Link]

[Link] 40
Consistency

• Design interfaces to have similar operations and

use similar elements for similar tasks

• For example:
– always use ctrl key plus first initial of the command for
an operation – ctrl+C, ctrl+S, ctrl+O

• Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to

learn and use
When consistency breaks down

• What happens if there is more than one

command starting with the same letter?
– e.g. save, spelling, select, style

• Have to find other initials or combinations of

keys, thereby breaking the consistency rule
– e.g. ctrl+S, ctrl+Sp, ctrl+shift+L

• Increases learning burden on user, making them

more prone to errors
Internal and external consistency

• Internal consistency refers to designing

operations to behave the same within an
application
– Difficult to achieve with complex interfaces

• External consistency refers to designing

operations, interfaces, etc., to be the
same across applications and devices
– Very rarely the case, based on different
designer’s preference
Keypad numbers layout

• A case of external inconsistency

(a) phones, remote controls (b) calculators, computer keypads

1 2 3 7 8 9

4 5 6 4 5 6

7 8 9 1 2 3

0
0
Affordances: to give a clue

• Refers to an attribute of an object that allows

people to know how to use it
– e.g. a mouse button invites pushing, a door handle
affords pulling

• Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the

design of everyday objects

• Since has been much popularised in interaction

design to discuss how to design interface objects
– e.g. scrollbars to afford moving up and down, icons to
afford clicking on
What does ‘affordance’ have to
offer interaction design?
• Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like
physical objects

• Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about

interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances

• Instead interfaces are better conceptualized as

‘perceived’ affordances
– Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action
and effect at the interface
– Some mappings are better than others
Activity

– Virtual affordances

How do the following screen objects afford?

What if you were a novice user?

Would you know what to do with them?

Key points

• Interaction design is concerned with designing

interactive products to support the way people
communicate and interact in their everyday and
working lives
• It is concerned with how to create quality user
experiences
• It requires taking into account a number of
interdependent factors, including context of use,
type of activities, cultural differences, and user
groups
• It is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from
wide-reaching disciplines and fields
Activity:

• Form teams of 10-11 students for class activities. Select a team leader.
• Fill in your names and ids in the google sheet shared on Moodle.
Class Activity:
Every group will select a device
and explain the usability goals for the device.

• Usability Goals
• effective to use
• Is the product good at doing what it is suppose to do.
• Is the product capable of allowing people to learn, carry out their efficiently access the information they
need, or buy the goods they want?

• Efficient to use( efficiency) Once the users have learned how to use a product to carry out their tasks,
can they sustain a high level of productivity?
• e.g. [Link] :you need not re-enter your address and name for anothr product you want to buy.
•
• Safe to use : provides error recovery
• Having good utility : Does the product provide an appropriate set of functions that will enable users to
carry out all their tasks in a way they want to do them?
•
• Learnability: How easy it is for the user to learn how to use the product by exploring the interface? How
hard it is to learn all the function?
• Memorability: What kind of interface support have been provided to help user remember how to carry
out tasks, especially for operation used infrequently?
Class Activity

• The team will present their work using a power point presentation( 2 slides max)
• Time limit : 5 minutes per team.