Q6 & Q7 Flashcards
When establishing the requirements for an interactive product, the following are four aspects of the environment you should consider. For each aspect, what is the one question you would need to ask when establishing the requirements?
- Physical environment
- Organisational environment
- Technical environment
- Cultural environment
Physical environment
Is the environment in which the product to be used very noisy?
Organisational environment
How good will user support be?
Technical environment
Will the product need to be compatible with any specific technology?
Cultural environment
What will motivate users?
What is an advantage and a disadvantage of using a Focus group to gather data?
Advantage: they may provide an opportunity for potential conflicts to be resolved.
Disadvantage: They might be dominated by one individual.
Name two ways of representing user characteristics and explain how these two ways are related?
- Users experience of using similar products to your design – are they experts or novices?
- The age of possible users.
The older the users the more likely they are to have had some experience with interactive products.
Of the three ways of representing task-based behavior (scenarios, use cases, and essential use cases), which would you use if you were especially interested in the context in which the task was carried out?
Scenario
Of the three ways of representing task-based behavior (scenarios, use cases, and essential use cases), which would you use if you were interested in the detailed sequence of user actions and interactive product responses?
Essential Use case
One requirement for an e-commerce website is that users should not get frustrated in searching for a particular item. You are recording this requirement by means of a Volere shell.
(a) Give a fit criterion for this requirement.
(b) Give a user experience goal to which this requirement refers
(a) The Users shall find what they are searching for within a specified period of time
(b) the user experience goal could be ‘satisfying’ because it allows users to do what they want to do, easily and quickly.
In each of the following situations, state which of scenarios, use cases and essential use cases, would be most appropriate. Give a brief reason in each case:
(a) You wish to explore in detail how the interactive product will support users in a particular activity;
(b) You want to allocate tasks in an activity between the user and the interactive product;
(c) You are at the very beginning of the requirements gathering process and you want to understand the broad context of the activity which the interactive product is intended to support.
(a) A Use case because you want to specify the application for a set activity from the users’ perspective.
(b) An Essential Use case because you are interested only in specific actions between user and the interactive product.
(c) In this case I would use a scenario because scenarios put a design idea into motion, and as we are at the beginning, we need to get some basic feedback.
State one disadvantage of using Interviews to gather data and how you might alleviate it.
Disadvantage: interviews are more time consuming and it may be that interviewer bias can creep in, where the interviewer influences the replies by revealing their own opinions.
Alleviation: Interviews could be carried out by telephone, thus reducing any bias on behalf of the interviewer
State one disadvantage of using Questionnaires to gather data and how you might alleviate it.
Disadvantage: Respondents may answer superficially especially if the questionnaire takes a long time to complete.
Alleviation: The questionnaire should not contain too many questions; that should be avoided if at all possible.
State one disadvantage of using Documentation to gather data and how you might alleviate it.
Disadvantage: If there are problems with the researcher’s judgment, the data could be compromised.
Alleviation: Use more researchers to find lots of data and systematically evaluate it. Once the data is found, it can also be corroborated by other researchers making the data reproducible.
Describe three issues you should consider when choosing a pointing device for an interactive product.
- Whether the device would be easy to learn. Some devices tend to be straightforward to use by just pointing and touching, like a stylus for example, whereas a mouse needs more control.
- How robust the device will be. Touch screens for example are quite robust, and can take a certain amount of wear if constructed well. Pen systems by contrast are fairly delicate.
- How much space will there be for the device. Trackball and joystick require very little room, but users seem to prefer using a mouse.
You are designing a mobile system for use in a theme park for booking rides. Discuss two of the issues should consider when choosing a pointing device for this interactive product.
- Since the device will probably be hand-held, space will be at a premium, so the pointing device could be of the touch-screen type - especially if it being used by just one person who is booking the rides.
- In line with 1 above, if a touch-screen is employed then it should be fairly easy and uncomplicated to learn to use.
Is a Graphics tablet a discrete or a continuous input device? Justify your answer and give an example application where the device might be used.
Continuous because a tablet is a pointing device and they are good at tasks that cannot be easily split up. A graphics tablet would probably be used for creating drawings.
Is a Chord keyboard a discrete or a continuous input device? Justify our answer and give and example application where the device might be used.
Discrete because keyboards are used by pressing various keys to get results. In the case of the Chord keyboard, pressing several keys can produce different results – much like pressing strings on a guitar for example, and would be useful in areas where space is at a premium.
What is an advantage and a disadvantage of using Speech recognition to interact with a device?
Advantage: Speech is a very natural way to interact, and no training required for users
Disadvantage: Even the best speech recognition systems sometimes make errors. If there is noise or some other sound in the room (e.g. the television or a kettle boiling) the number of errors will increase.
