Human Computer Interface Flashcards
Information visualisations allow people to?
Make sense and rapid decisions about masses of data
Cognition involves several processes such as?
Attention, memory, perception and learning
The way an interface is designed can greatly affect what?
How well users can perceive, attend, learn and remember how to do their tasks.
Theoretical frameworks such as external cognition provide ways of?
Understanding how and why people interact with products, which can lead to thinking about how to design better products
What are the three types of interviews?
Unstructured - Are not directed by a script. (Rich but not repeatable.)
Structured - Are tightly scripted. (Replicable but may lack richness.)
Semi-Structured - Guided by a script but interesting issues can be explored in more depth (Can provide a good balance between richness and replicability.)
What is Ethnography?
Involves immersing a researcher in the everyday activities of an organization or society, usually for a prolonged period of time.
What is an interface?
A layer of software, and/or hardware allowing the user toa ccess ther underlying computational functionality
What is interaction design?
Designing interactive prodcuts to suppoert the way people communicate and interact in their everyday lives.
Why is usability important?
Makes people’s work faster and easier
Makes people’s lives more enjoyable
The UI development process includes four main steps…
Requirements capture
Initial design & prototype
Implementation
Evaluation
Requirements capture invloves three main steps…
Find out what the user wants
Find out what the customer will pay for
Understand the tasks and context you are designing for
Advantaes of questionnaires
Answering specific questions
Can reach many people easily and cheaply
Advantages of interviews
Exploring issues
Interviewer can guide interviewee if necessary
Encourages contact between develoers and users
Advantages of focus groups
Collecting multiple viewpoints
Highlights areas of conseus and conflict
Encourages contact between developers and users
Brings out hidden features
Advantages of direct observation in the field
Understanding context of activity
Observing actual work/activity gives unique and grounded insight
Advantages of indirect observation
User doesn’t get distracted by the data gathering, automatic recording means that it can extend over long periods of time
Hierarchical Task Analysis is the…
Break down of tasks into subtasks, sub-sub tasks and so on
Explain Iterative Design
Identfify and document specific goals for usabilty, bases on understanding use needs and requirements.
Iterate through design, prototype and evaluate
Users should be involved throughout the project, they are the judges.
What is a Conceptual model?
A description of the proposed system in terms of a set of integrated ideas and concepts about what it should do, behave and look like, that will be understandbale by the users in the manner intended
What is wizard of oz prototyping?
Prototype an interactive system by using human operators to simulate machine behaviour.
Explain a bit about high fidelity prototyping
Uses materials that you would epect in the final product
Prototype looks more like the final system than low-fidelity
Don’t let user think it’s finished. You want them to be critical.
What are some different approaches to evaluation?
Usability testing
Field studies
Analytical evaulation
The main methods of evaltuation are…
Observing
Asking users
Asking experts
User testing
Inspection
Modelling of users task performance
Triangulation in terms of software design involes…
Using a combination of techniques to gain different perspectives, or analysing data using different technieques
DECIDE, a framework to guide evalutaion, stands for…
Determine the goals
Explore the questions
Choose the evalutation approach and methods
Identify the practical issues
Decide how to deal with the ethical issues
Evaluate, analyse, interpret and present the data
Explain a bit about usability testing
Involves recording performance of typical users doing typical tasks
Done in controlled enviroment
Data could be recorded on video, key logs, etc…
Give examples of typical data recorded in usability testing
Time to complete task
Number and type of errors per task
Number of navigations to help pages
Number of users completeing task sucessfully
How many participants is good enough for user testing?
Typically 5 - 10
Explain a bit about field studies
Done in a ‘natural’ setting
Aim is to understand what users do already
Name the three main types of experimental design
Differtent participants
Same participants
Matched participants
Name the three stages for Heuristic evaluation
- Briefing session to tell experts what to do
- Evaluation period of each expert dooing an analysis to get a feel for the product
- Debriefing session in which experts work together to prioritise problems
A few advantages of heuristic evaluation
- Few ethical & practical issues to consider because users not involved
- Best experts have knowledge of application domain as well as users
A few problems with heuristic evaluation
- Can be difficult & expensive to find experts
- Important problems may get missed
- Experts have biases
Explain a cognitive walkthrough
- Focus on ease of learning
- Designer presents an aspect of the design & usage scenarios
- One of more experts walk through the design prototype with the scenario
What are the three questions explored in a cognitive walkthrough?
- Will the correct action be sufficiently evident to the user?
- Will the user notice that the correct action is available?
- Will the user associate the system response from his/her action, and interpret it correctly?
Explain a Pluralistic walkthrough
- Variation on the cognitive walkthrough theme
- Performed by a carefully managed team
- The panel of experts begins by working separately
- Then there is managed discussion that leads to agreed decisions
- The approach lends itself well to participatory design
What is Fitt’s Law? (1954)
Predicts that the time to point at an object using a device is a function of the distance from the target object & the object’s size
The further away & the smaller the object, the longer the time to locate it and point to it
Advantages of A/B testing
- They test for casual relationships, not just correlations
- They reduce the effect of external factors
- Overcome poor intuition, espeically with novel ideas
Problems with A/B testing
- Organisation has to agree on OEC (Overall Evaluation Criterion)
- Quantitative metrics may not explain why a treatment is better or worse
Explain the Serif Hypothesis
Serif typefaces are easier to read, and thereby preferable for long stretches of text — because the serifs provide anchors that guide the reader’s eye. Sans serif fonts lack these anchors, and are therefore inappropriate for long stretches of text.
