Intro Flashcards
Human-Computer Interaction
Everything you see, touch, feel, do … to exchange information with a technical system
What is interactive systems design about?
- Design - how to do it
- Technologies - what can technology do? What content does something have?
- People - who will use it, who will be affected by it?
- Activities and contexts - what will people have to do in what circumstances?
- Evaluation - how does is it really experienced?
Design
- the creative process of specifying something new
- the representations that are produced along the way
it typically involves interation - both problem and solution evolve during desing
Spectrum of Design activities
- engineering design - using scientific principles
- artistic - creative design where imagination is key
- design as craft
what HCI is not about
- non-information processing
- non-interactive systems
- computer-computer interaction
Definition: HCI
Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them
The user interface
Input:
- some methods are needed to enter commands
- we also need to be able to navigate through the commands and the content of the system
- we need to enter data or other content into the system
Output:
- so the system can tell us what is happening - provide feedback
- so the system can display the content to us.
User Interface Aspects
- physical (pressing a button)
- perceptual (things we see)
- conceptual (mappings)
- logical (input and output or only one)
being human-centered
we take a human-centered approach to designing interactive systems. that means:
- thinking about what people wnat to do rather than just what the technology can do
- designing new ways to connect people with people
- involving people in the design process
- designing for diversity / inclusion
PACT method
People
Activities
Contexts
Technologies
People undertake activities, in contexts using technologies
How People are different from one another
Physical differences
* Height, weight, different capabilities in sight, hearing, touch, ….
Psychological differences
* Different ays of working; different memory abilities, spatial ability; different amounts of attention at different times; ability to recognize tings or remember things; Different ‘mental models’
Usage differences
* Experts versus novices, discretionary users of technologies, differences in designing for a heterogeneous group or a homogeneos group
Mental models
Also known as conceptual models
Mental models describe the ways in which we think about things - about how we conceptualize things.
a key aspect of the design of technologies is to provide people with a clear model,
- so that they will develop a lear mental model
- but of course that depends on what they know already, their background, experiences, etc.
Mental models
- fill in the details that people don’t tell you
- are incomplete in that they don’t include all the details
- can be ‘run’ in that you use them in reasoning or remembering
Characteristics of different activities
- temporal aspects
- co-operation and complexity
- safety critical
- content
Temporal aspects of activities affect designs
- How regular or infrequent are the activities?
- Busy times vs quiet times
- Continuous set of actions, or can be interrupted?
- Response time from the system
Different Contexts
activities always take place in some context
‘context’ sometimes means things that surround an activity and sometimes what glues an activity together
- physical environment
- social context (help from others, acceptability of certain designs)
- organizational context (power structure, changes in life style, etc)
