Challenges of HCI and Visual Representation Flashcards
How do we ensure software is practically usable?
By ensuring it is:
- intuitive - easy to learn, easy to remember and easy to apply to new problems
- powerful - efficient and effective
What did computer displays resemble for many years?
Paper documents
How can information be structured on paper?
Information on paper can be structured using tabulated columns, alignment, indentation and emphasis, borders and shading.
How are traditional computer interactions restricted relative to those possible on paper?
It is only possible to perform the operations available on the typewriter rather than those available with a pencil. Keyboard interaction and not text itself is limited in comparison to what can be done with paper.
Why is most information on computer screens still represented as text?
Conventions of typography and graphic design help us interpret text as if it were on a page and readers can benefit from many centuries of refinement in text document design.
What conventions should be taken into account when designing screen representations?
- position on the page
- use of typographic grids
- genre-specific illustrative conventions
what do basic diagrammatic conventions rely upon?
A quantitative correspondence between a direction on the surface and a continuous quantity such as time or distance.
What do engineering drawing conventions allow?
Schematic views of connected components to be shown in relative scale with text annotations labelling the parts.
What does white space in the representation plane help the reader to do?
Distinguish elements from one another.
Resemblance Fallacy
Drawings are able to depict real objects or scenes because the visual perception of the flat image simulates the visual perception of the real scene. It is naive to treat screen representations as though they were simulations of experience in the physical world.
What do pictorial representations rely upon to give them meaning?
Shared interpretive conventions
Node-and-link connectivity diagram’s distinctive feature
The position of each node can be used to carry other information as it is irrelevant to a circuit’s operation.
Do most icons allow computer use without being able to read?
No, they instead simply add decoration to text labels and event those intented to be self-exxplanatory must be supported with textual tooltips.
What is the easiest option when designing simple, memorable icons?
Following established conventions.
Correspondences for symbols
Pictorial, symbolic, metonymic, bizarrely mnemonic. (Monolingual puns are a bad idea.)
Does the desktop metaphor make sense?
No
How can the desktop be most profitably analysed?
Understanding the representational conventions that it uses.
Mark - Graphic Resources
Shape, orientation, size, texture, saturation, colour, line
Mark - Correspondence
Literal, Mapping (quantity, relative scale), conventional (arbitrary)
Mark - Design Uses
Mark position, identify category, indicate direction, express magnitude, Simple symbols and colour codes
Symbols - Graphic Resources
Geometric elements, letter forms, logs and icons, picture elements, connective elements
Symboles - Correspondence
Topological, depictive, figurative, connotative, acquired
Symbols - Design uses
Text and symbolic calculi, diagram elements, branding, visual rhetoric, definition of regions
Regions - graphic resources
alignment grids, borders and frames, area fills, white space, gestalt integration
Regions - Correspondence
Containment, separation, framing, layering
Regions - Design Uses
Identifying shared membership
Segregating or nesting multiple surface conventions in panels
Accommodation labels, captions or legends
Surfaces - Graphic Resources
The plane
Material object on which marks are imposed
Mounting, orientation and display context
Display medium
Surfaces - Correspondence
Literal, Euclidean, Metrical, Juxtaposed or ordered, Image-schematic, Embodied/situated
Surfaces - Design Uses
Typographic layouts Graphs and Charts Relational Diagrams Visual interfaces secondary notations signs and displays
