Human Computer Interaction

Question 1

Basic questions on field work

Answer 1

What do people do now?
What values and goals do people have?
How are these particular activities embedded in a larger ecology?
What are similarities and differences accross people?

Question 2

Ask vs Observing

Answer 2

Asking people what they want generally don`t give as many clues as observing what they do

Question 3

Good clues for usability bugs

Answer 3

When people do a workaround for something, this something is by default broken.

Question 4

Rewarding intervieweers

Answer 4

People will usually not perform interviews for free.
But you don`t need to pay them huge ammounts of money either.
Depending on the situation, giving them a token of appreciation for their time, like something useful related to the interview, is good enough.

Question 5

The trick to finding ideas

Answer 5

Convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.
Also, realize that people at the middle have better stories then the people at the top, since people at the top have to be self aware of what they say

Question 6

How do you choose a participant

Answer 6

if you want to improve an existing interface
- Choose a representative of the target users
If you want to Build a new interface, based on an existing solution
- Choose users of a similar system
If you want to broaden up the ammount of people who are able to use your interface
- Choose Non-users

Question 7

How users view the importance of features

Answer 7

If you ask someone if something is important, they will likely answer “yes”, regardless of wether or not it is important. It is a leading question, for users will not

Question 8

3 Questions to avoid

Answer 8

What would you do in hypothetical scenario?
How often do you do things?
How much they like things on an absolute scale?
Binary Questions

Question 9

Silence rule

Answer 9

Wait a few (30) seconds before you move to the next question. People will usually complete their questions afterwards.

Question 10

Diary studies

Answer 10

Give people a diary that they complete at a specific time or interval.

Offer training and practice to create the habit of the diary, and keep talking to them to maintain it.

Question 11

Experience sampling

Answer 11

Similar to diary studies, but you send a page out for users whenever you need the data.

Question 12

Lead users

Answer 12

Users that are proactive on their envrionment and came up with solutions of their own, that can be studied and generalized to a broader public.

Question 13

Extreme users

Answer 13

Users that work under extreme situations of the object of study. Keep in mind they do not compose the majority of actual users, so their problems might not be so significant when projecting.

Question 14

Personas

Answer 14

Abstract users that include demographic information, motivation, belief, intention, behavior and goals according to what you researched.

Question 15

What is the outcome of activity analysis

Answer 15

What is the current process performed by users?
What are the artifacts?
What are the goals?
What are the pain points?

Question 16

What is the purpose of a storyboard

Answer 16

To help understand what are the actions an user would be willing to do.

Question 17

How do you organize a storyboard.

Answer 17

First panels convey the setting - Who, where, and what.
Middle panels convey the sequence - What happens after the setting, and why would someone need the app in the first place.
Ending panels are the design of the reward.

Question 18

Tips for easily drawing people

Answer 18

Star people help getting personas on paper.

Question 19

Paper prototype

Answer 19

Take you design idea, and draw it on paper.

Question 20

6 paper prototyping tips and tricks

Answer 20

Work with speed, not beauty.
Keep all your materials together; widgets can get lost through time.
Transparency pens allow the user to input content
Use wide-tipped pens - smaller line widths can be difficult to see
Use stacks of index cards to simulate tabbed dialog boxes.

Question 21

Wizard-of-oz prototyping

Answer 21

Get a human being to pretend they are a machine so you don’t need to jump into coding right away.

Question 22

How do you make a wizard of oz prototype

Answer 22

Map out scenarios and application flow
Put together interface skeletons
Develop hooks for wizard input
Figure out what kind of input the wizard is allowed to offer

Question 23

Roles on wizard prototyping

Answer 23

• Facilitator: provides the tasks and takes notes.
• Wizard: Process the requests and operate the interface

Optimally should be performed by separate people, with the wizard hidden. But, if impossible, can be done by one guy.

Question 24

User feedback on wizard prototyping

Answer 24

Think aloud: Ask user to think about what he is seeing in real time
Retrospective: Ask user what he was thinking in moments you noticed difficulties, after the test.
Heuristic evaluation: Ask user to pay attention to specific parts.

Question 25

Video prototyping

Answer 25

make a video with the prototype of what you want to make with your software.

Question 26

Benefits of video prototyping

Answer 26

• Cheap and fast
• Communicate the design clearly
• Can serve as a spe for devs
• Ties interface design to tasks

Question 27

Functional Fixation

Answer 27

Also know as theory-induced blindness, the bias that, once you find a solution to a problem, you are unable to figure other solutions.

Question 28

Parallel prototyping approach

Answer 28

Creates several prototypes in parallel, without taking feedback from one to another.

Question 29

Why is the parallel prototyping approach more efficient then the serial approach?

Answer 29

Because it separates the Ego from the Artifact.

Question 30

Heuristic evaluation

Answer 30

Evaluation based on people critique

Question 31

How to perform Heuristic evaluation

Answer 31

First, you set a small set of people evaluators [3-5] to examine a certain UI

- Ask each of them to check for a specific usability principle on your design
- Have them meet afterwards with the information they have found so you can evaluate what needs to be changed.

Question 32

Nielsen Ten Heuristics

Answer 32

Visibility of System Status
Match between System & World
User Control & Freedom
Consistency & Standards
Error Prevention
Recognition Rather then Recall
Flexibility & Efficiency of Use
Aesthetic & Minimalist Design
Quick mistake recovery

Question 33

Phases of Heuristic Evaluation

Answer 33

Pre-evaluation training: Give the run-down of the testing to the valuators
Evaluation - individuals evaluate and then aggregate the results. Ask them to go through at least twice.
Severity Rating - determine the severity of the problems
Debriefing - discussion with the design team.

Question 34

Severity measurement

Answer 34

Frequency
impact
persistence
Rating it from 0 to 4

Question 35

Consistency heuristics

Answer 35

Items must stay on consistent places in order to help users find information.

Question 36

Familiar language heuristics

Answer 36

Use metaphors and familiar language to mantain consistency

Question 37

Functional design Heuristics

Answer 37

The less useless info, the batter

Question 38

Heuristics of undestanding

Answer 38

Consistency, Familiarity and Functional heuristics

Question 39

Action heuristics

Answer 39

Freedom, Flexibility and Recognition over recall

Question 40

Freedom Heuristics

Answer 40

Allow people to perform more tasks in the same interface

Question 41

Flexibility Heuristics

Answer 41

Proactively guess what users need and what users will find relevant

Question 42

Recognition over recall

Answer 42

Use of affordances over use of user experience.