Week 1 - Intro to HCI Flashcards
Definition of HCI
Design, Evaluation, and Implementation of interactive computing systems for human use + major phenomena surrounding them.
Need of manual is
often considered as the result of bad design.
Because HCI is very broad, it is
multidisciplinary. People from different disciplines work on HCI research.
Pros and Cons of working in a multi-disciplinary team
Pros : More ideas & designs & combined knowledge => useful to solving problem
Cons: Communication Challenge
Important disciplines in HCI
Human Factors, Ergonomics
Social Science, Psychology / Cognition
Engineering, Computer Science
User Interface is crucial to
It is one of the most
the success of a product
critical parts of a system.
Bad user interfaces are costly in terms of
time, money, lives, etc.
Definition of Usability
Extent to which a product can be used to achieve specified goals by users with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Definition of User Experience
A person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use of a product (personal)
6 Usability Goals
Effectiveness - goal is achievable
Efficiency - quick & with ease
Safety - x promote risky actions & mistakes are recoverable
Utility - Useful Functions & shortcuts
Learnability - Self exploration (x manual)
Memorability - remembering functionalities, once learned
Some features of safe interfaces
Data are saved regularly and securely.
Removal actions are idiot-proof (confirm message, moving to bin before permanent deletion)
Some features of interfaces having good utility
Users are able to perform tasks in the way they want to
- advanced, customisable functionalities for experienced users
Achieving all usability goals in one design is
often difficult to achieve; hence we must understand trade-offs between usability goals and prioritise some over others.
When measuring performance of design,
it’s advised to provide quantitative indicators.
A usability matric assesses
how user-friendly & effective a design is. It can either be quantitative or qualitative.
Some common usability matrices are
tasks: (general vs advanced vs 1st attempt vs after a while)
(Effectiveness) = Task success rate
(Efficiency) = Time taken on task
(Satisfaction) = error rate, abandonment rate, cognitive load, rating on scale
4 Design Rules
Design Standards
Design Guidelines
Design Principles
Design Patterns
About Design Standards
Govern & Specific to large communities
Processes, specification, or definitions that are established based on concrete theories
About Design Guidelines
Recommendations and good practices
- apple/iOS or google/android design themes
Schneiderman Eight Golden Rules
Nielsen 10 Usability Heuristics
Schneiderman Eight Golden Rules
- strive for consistency (terms, layout, colour, font, etc)
- frequent users can use shortcuts
- offer informative feedback
- design dialogs to yield closure
- offer error prevention and simple error handling
- permit easy reversal of actions
- support internal locus of control
- reduce short-term memory load
Design Principles
Derived from mix of theory, experience, and common sense
- visibility
- consistency
- affordances (possibility of action - intuitive)
- feedback
- constraints
- mapping
Design Patterns
Common practices, not necessarily the best
Depreciates when outdated
Dark pattern
Design to trick people, championing stakeholder value over user value
Anti pattern
Collection of poor practices
