Final Term 40

Mid Term 30
Assignment 10
viva voce 20
 Introduction to HCI
What is human-computer interaction (HCI)?

* HCI is the study and the practice of usability.

It is about understanding and creating software and other
technology that people will want to use, will be able to use, and
will find effective when used.

* HCI is the study of how people use computer systems to perform

certain tasks.
HCI tries to provide us with all understanding of the computer and
the person using it, so as to make the interaction between them
more effective and more enjoyable.

Introduction to HCI
What is human-computer interaction (HCI)?

* HCI concerns:
process: design, evaluation and implementation
on: interactive computing systems for human use
plus: the study of major phenomena surrounding them

Introduction to HCI
The goals of HCI
Ensuring usability.
“A usable software system is one that supports the
effective and efficient completion of tasks in a given work
context” (Karat and Dayton 1995).

The bottom-line benefits of more usable software system

to business users include:
 Increased productivity
 Decreased user training time and cost
 Decreased user errors
 Increased accuracy of data input and data interpretation
 Decreased need for ongoing technical support

Introduction to HCI
The goals of HCI
The bottom-line benefits of usability to development
organizations include:
 Greater profits due to more inexpensive products/services
 Decreased overall development and maintenance costs
 Decreased customer support costs
 More follow-on business due to satisfied customers

 Not only to use the term ‘user-friendly’ which intended

to mean a system with high usability but always
misinterpreted to mean tidying up the screen displays to
make it more pleasing

Introduction to HCI
The goals of HCI
To achieve usability, the design of the user interface to
any interactive product, needs to take into account and
be tailored around a number of factors, including:
 Cognitive, perceptual, and motor capabilities and
constraints of people in general
 Special and unique characteristics of the intended user
population in particular
 Unique characteristics of the users’ physical and social
work environment
 Unique characteristics and requirements of the users’
tasks, which are being supported by the software
 Unique capabilities and constraints of the chosen software
and/or hardware and platform for the product
Introduction to HCI
Humans, Computer and Interaction

Humans good at: Sensing low level stimuli, pattern

The H recognition, inductive reasoning, multiple
strategies, adapting “Hard and fuzzy things”.

Computers good at: Counting and measuring,

The C accurate storage and recall, rapid and consistent
responses, data processing/calculation, repetitive
actions, performance over time, “Simple and
sharply defined things”.
The list of skills is somewhat balancing. Let
The I humans do what humans do best and computers do
what computers do best.

Introduction to HCI
Different design Needs

Three broad categories of computer user:

Expert users with detailed knowledge of that particular system.
Occasional users who know well how to perform the tasks they need
to perform frequently.
Beginners who have never used the system before.
Users may well be beginners at one computer application but experts
at another one, so users will belong to different categories for
particular computer systems.

Introduction to HCI
Different design Needs

Try to understand the important factors, development of tools and

techniques, achieve effective and safe system.

Introduction to HCI
Teaching User Interface Development to Software
Engineers , Gary Perlman, Ohio University.

“There are not many specialists in user interface development, so most

software user interfaces are designed and built by software engineers.
These engineers need training about how to build usable and useful user
interfaces, but the shortage of user interface specialists is linked with the
lack of educators ready to train user interface developers.
A software engineer who has been trained in user interface development
should have gained viewpoint, learned about methods and tools, and
increased an appreciation of their limits.
Their perception should include: the importance of the user interface, the
impact of good and bad user interfaces, and the variety of users and
applications”.
Introduction to HCI
Teaching User Interface Development to Software
Engineers , Gary Perlman, Ohio University.
“About methods and tools they should know: the tradeoffs of design
decisions involving different dialogue types and input/output devices, the
information resources available for design, the benefits and costs of
developing tools for user interface implementation, the need to integrate
training materials with the user interface, the need to evaluate system
usability, and information about some design and evaluation tools.

Finally, software engineers building user interfaces must know the limits
of their knowledge: when and how to work with human factors engineers
as advisors for design and evaluation, when and how to work with technical
writers for implementation of a system of user guidance, when and how to
work with a statistical consultant, and the difficulty of measurement and the
complexity of making decisions based on data.”

Introduction to HCI
Visibility and Affordance

Visibility – what is seen

Affordance – what operations and manipulation can be done to a

particular object

What is visible must have a good mapping to their effect

Supposed affordance – what a person thinks can be done to the

object

Introduction to HCI
Importance of HCI
Introduction
In the past, problems with poor interface design of computer software
have contributed to an enormous loss in productivity, ranging from
increases in time taken to input and process information after
computerisation, to deaths from airline crashes due to pilots
misreading the instrument readings on their aircraft.

A US study in the 1980s found that:

only 20% of new systems studied were considered to be successes
40 % produced only marginal gains
40 % resulted in rejection or failure of the system
this represents a huge loss of money, time and effort from all of the
people involved.

Introduction to HCI
Importance of HCI
HCI will be progressively important in the following areas:

As part of software development process and system design methods

As part of future legal requirements for software
As the basis for a set of usability criteria to evaluate and choose from
amongst competing products
As the basis for successful marketing strategy to the increasingly
important home and small business user

Introduction to HCI
Relationship of HCI to other disciplines

Introduction to HCI
HCI is a multidisciplinary field – HCI draws knowledge from a
number of different areas of study.
1. Prototyping and iterative development from software
engineering

2. Software psychology and human factors of computing systems

3. User interface software from computer graphics

4. Models, theories and frameworks from cognitive science

Introduction to HCI
A student of HCI will not need to know all these other subjects in depth, of
course. However, it is important to be aware that in HCI, we may have to use the
knowledge from some of these disciplines to solve a problem in a certain
situation.
Linguistics
Philosophy
Sociology
Anthropology
Design
Engineering
Ergonomics and human factors
Social and organizational psychology
Cognitive psychology
Artificial intelligence

Introduction to HCI
Topics in HCI

Introduction to HCI
 Topics in HCI
Computer systems exist within a larger social, organizational and
work environment (U1).

Within this context there are applications for which we wish to

employ computer systems (U2).

But the process of putting computers to work means that the

human, technical, and work aspects of the application situation
must be brought into fit with each other through human learning,
system modifiability, or other strategies (U3).

Introduction to HCI
 Topics in HCI

In addition to the use and social context of computers, on the

human side we must also take into account:
the human information processing (H1)
communication (H2)
and physical (H3) characteristics of users

Introduction to HCI
 Topics in HCI
On the computer side, a variety of technologies have been developed for
supporting interaction with humans:
Input and output devices connect the human and the machine (C1).
These are used in a number of techniques for organizing a dialogue (C2).
These techniques are used in turn to implement larger design elements, such
as the metaphor of the interface (C3).
Getting deeper into the machine bases supporting the dialogue, the dialogue
may make extensive use of computer graphics techniques (C4).
Complex dialogues lead into considerations of the systems architecture
necessary to support such features as inter-connectable application
programs, windowing, real-time response, network communications, multi-
user and cooperative interfaces, and multi-tasking of dialogue objects (C5).

Introduction to HCI
 Topics in HCI
Finally, there is the process of development which joins design (D1) for
human-computer dialogues, techniques and tools (D2) for implementing
them (D2), techniques for evaluating (D3) them, and a number of classic
designs for study (D4).

Introduction to HCI