HCI

• 50s - Interface at the hardware level for engineers - switch panels
• 60 to 70s - interface at the programming level - COBOL, FORTRAN
• 70-90s - Interface at the terminal level - command languages
• 80s - Interface at the interaction dialogue level - GUIs, multimedia
• 90s - Interface at the work setting - networked systems, groupware
• 00s - Interface becomes pervasive
• Human-computer interaction (HCI) Is: “concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them” (ACM SIGCHI, 1992, p.6)
• Interaction design (ID) is: “the design of spaces for human communication and interaction” -Winograd (1997)
• Academic disciplines

  Psychology – Social Sciences – Computing Sciences – Engineering – Ergonomics
• Design practices

  Graphic design – Product design – Artist-design – Industrial design – Film industry
• Interdisciplinary fields

  HCI – Human Factors – Cognitive Engineering – Cognitive Ergonomics – Computer Supported Co-operative Work – Information Systems
• 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 - people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products
• Core characteristics of interaction design

  • Efficient to use • Safe to use • Have good utility • Easy to learn • Easy to remember how to use
• Usability goals

  Effective to use
• User experience goals

  Satisfying - rewarding – Fun - support creativity – Enjoyable - emotionally fulfilling – Entertaining
• Design principles

  Generalizable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design • The do’s and don’ts of interaction design • What to provide and what not to provide at the interface • Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common-sense
• Feedback

  Sending information back to the user about what has been done

  Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these
• Constraints Restricting the possible actions that can be performed • Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
• Three main types of Constraints

  physical – cultural – logical
• Physical Constraints

  Refer to the way physical objects restrict the movement of things
• Logical constraints

  Exploits people’s everyday common sense reasoning about the way the world works
• Cultural constraints

  Learned arbitrary conventions like red triangles for warning • Can be universal or culturally specific
• Mapping • Relationship between controls and their movements and the results in the world • Why is this a poor mapping of control buttons?
• Consistency • Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
• Internal consistency refers to designing operations to behave the same within an application
• External consistency refers to designing operations, interfaces, etc., to be the same across applications and devices
• Affordances

  • Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
• Norman (1988) used the term affordances to discuss the design of everyday objects
• Conceptual model

  Need to first think about how the system will appear to users (i.e. how they will understand it)
• Conceptual models based on activities

  Giving instructions

  Conversing

  Manipulating and navigating

  Exploring and browsing
• Giving instructions – issuing commands using keyboard and function keys and selecting options via menus
• Conversing – interacting with the system as if having a conversation

  Underlying model of having a conversation with another human
• Manipulating and navigating – acting on objects and interacting with virtual objects

  Involves dragging, selecting, opening, closing and zooming actions on virtual objects
• • Exploring and browsing – finding out and learning things

  Similar to how people browse information with existing media (e.g. newspapers, magazines, libraries, pamphlets)
• Interaction mode: – what the user is doing when interacting with a system, e.g. instructing, talking, browsing or other
• Interaction style: – the kind of interface used to support the mode, e.g. speech, menu-based, gesture