CISB213 Human Computer Interaction

Introduction and Overview

Lecturer

Rohaini Ramli
Level 4 BW4 C16
Meeting by appointment
Email is preferred rohaini@uniten.edu.my

Subject : Structure

CISB213 Human Computer Interaction

3 credits, 3 hours a week
Materials To be advised next week
Assessment
Test 1 10%
Test 2 10%
Group Project 30%
Final Exam 50%

Subject : Learning Outcomes

At the end of this semester, the student should be
able to:
Identify the basic concept of HCI
Describe the evolution of HCI
Discuss the design issues
Assess and implement the interaction design
processes
Use different models of interaction design
principles/rules
Apply the usability evaluation techniques
effectively

Course Plan
Week

Topics

Week 3-4

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

The Human
The Computer
The Interaction

Week 5

Interaction Design Basics

Introduction
Design Process
User Focus

Week 6

HCI in the Software Process

Introduction
The Software Life Cycle
Usability Engineering
Iterative Design and Prototyping
Design Rationale

Course Plan
Week

Topics

Week 7

Design Rules
Introduction
Principles to Support Usability
Standards & Guidelines
Golden Rules & Heuristics

Week 8

Evaluation Techniques
What is Evaluation?
Goals of Evaluation
Evaluation Methods
Choosing an Evaluation Method

Week 9

Universal Design
Introduction
Universal design Principles
Multi-modal Interaction
Designing for Diversity

Course Plan
Week

Topics

Week 9

User Support
Introduction
User Support Requirement
Approaches to User Support
Designing User Support Systems

Week 10

Cognitive Models
Introduction
Goal and Task Hierarchies
Linguistic Models
Physical and Device Models

Week 11

Communication and Collaboration Models

Introduction
Face-to-face Communication
Text-based Communication

Course Plan
Week

Topics

Week 12

Meeting the Changing Needs of IT Development and Use

Groupware
Ubiquitous computing
Augmented realities

Assessment Plan

Reference
HumanComputer Interaction, 3rd Edition, by Alan
Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd, Russell
Beale, Prentice Hall, 2004
http://www.usabilityfirst.com
Designing the User Interface-Strategies for
Effective Human-Computer Interaction, Fifth
Edition, by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine
Plaisant, Pearson Addison Wesley, 2010
http://metalab.uniten.edu.my/~rohaini

Why Bother?

Why Systems Fail?

Inadequate requirements
13%
Lack of user participation
12%
Inadequate resources
11%
Unrealistic expectations
10%
Lack of support at senior level
9%
Changing specification
8%
Lack of planning
8%

The Perfect User

(every designer s wish)

Common Issues in User Interface

Design
Software developers are forced to do it
all
Often based on intuition and experience
than on theory-based models
Tendency to let the art of interface
design beats its usability
Inconsistent features that do not fit into
a good user interface design criteria

Why Study HCI?

Business view :
to employ people more productively and
effectively
- people costs now far outweigh
hardware and software costs
people now expect easy to use
systems
- generally they are not tolerant of
poorly designed systems
- if a product is hard to use, they will
seek other products

Why Study HCI?

Human Factors view :
Humans have limitations.
Errors are costly in terms of
- loss of time & money
- loss of lives in critical systems
- loss of morale

What is HCI
Short for human-computer Interaction.
A discipline concerned with the study, design,
construction and implementation of humancentric interactive computer systems.

The goal of HCI

The goals of HCI are to develop or

improve the safety, utility and
effectiveness of systems that include
computers, often through improving
usability.

What is usability?
Usability can simply be thought of as the practical
implementation of good HCI, but, more formally :

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

How to design and build usable

UIs?
UI Development process :

User Profiling

Usability goals

Task analysis & understanding the process

Prototyping

Evaluation

Programming

Important!!!
users should be involved throughout the
development of the project (How?)
specific usability and user experience
goals
need to be identified, clearly
documented and agreed at the beginning
of the project

Understanding interaction
User centric design is the formula for
usability
The key to User-centered Design is to
understand Interaction
We need to understand :
What Interaction is
What are the elements involved

Interaction Model
The most influential model of interaction is
Donald Normans (http://www.jnd.org/) :
Execution-Evaluation cycle
Norman divides interaction into :
Execution
User activities aimed at making the
system do something
Evaluation
Evaluating whether the system did
actually do what the user wanted

Understanding Interaction
Execution
If User cannot make system do what
they want
e.g. cannot understand how to do it,
unclear icons, unclear indication etc.
Will result in the Gulf of Execution
i.e. difference between the users
formulation of the action and the
actions allowed by the system

Understanding interaction
Evaluation
If user cannot see what happened to
system
e.g. if system has done what they want
but no feedback is given to the users
etc.
Will result in the Gulf of Evaluation
i.e.
difference
between
the
representation of the system state/result
and the expectations of the user

Your first task

Work individually
Take a picture of one badly designed
object you can find here at UNITEN
Prepare a PowerPoint slide to explain why
do you think the object is badly designed
To be presented in the next class.

Q&A