Human Computer Interaction Flashcards
Basic questions on field work
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?
Ask vs Observing
Asking people what they want generally don`t give as many clues as observing what they do
Good clues for usability bugs
When people do a workaround for something, this something is by default broken.
Rewarding intervieweers
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.
The trick to finding ideas
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
How do you choose a participant
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
How users view the importance of features
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
3 Questions to avoid
What would you do in hypothetical scenario?
How often do you do things?
How much they like things on an absolute scale?
Binary Questions
Silence rule
Wait a few (30) seconds before you move to the next question. People will usually complete their questions afterwards.
Diary studies
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.
Experience sampling
Similar to diary studies, but you send a page out for users whenever you need the data.
Lead users
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.
Extreme users
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.
Personas
Abstract users that include demographic information, motivation, belief, intention, behavior and goals according to what you researched.
What is the outcome of activity analysis
What is the current process performed by users?
What are the artifacts?
What are the goals?
What are the pain points?
What is the purpose of a storyboard
To help understand what are the actions an user would be willing to do.
How do you organize a storyboard.
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.
Tips for easily drawing people
Star people help getting personas on paper.
Paper prototype
Take you design idea, and draw it on paper.
6 paper prototyping tips and tricks
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.
Wizard-of-oz prototyping
Get a human being to pretend they are a machine so you don’t need to jump into coding right away.
How do you make a wizard of oz prototype
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
Roles on wizard prototyping
- 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.
User feedback on wizard prototyping
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.
Video prototyping
make a video with the prototype of what you want to make with your software.
Benefits of video prototyping
- Cheap and fast
- Communicate the design clearly
- Can serve as a spe for devs
- Ties interface design to tasks
Functional Fixation
Also know as theory-induced blindness, the bias that, once you find a solution to a problem, you are unable to figure other solutions.
Parallel prototyping approach
Creates several prototypes in parallel, without taking feedback from one to another.
Why is the parallel prototyping approach more efficient then the serial approach?
Because it separates the Ego from the Artifact.
Heuristic evaluation
Evaluation based on people critique
How to perform Heuristic evaluation
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.
Nielsen Ten Heuristics
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
Phases of Heuristic Evaluation
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.
Severity measurement
Frequency
impact
persistence
Rating it from 0 to 4
Consistency heuristics
Items must stay on consistent places in order to help users find information.
Familiar language heuristics
Use metaphors and familiar language to mantain consistency
Functional design Heuristics
The less useless info, the batter
Heuristics of undestanding
Consistency, Familiarity and Functional heuristics
Action heuristics
Freedom, Flexibility and Recognition over recall
Freedom Heuristics
Allow people to perform more tasks in the same interface
Flexibility Heuristics
Proactively guess what users need and what users will find relevant
Recognition over recall
Use of affordances over use of user experience.
