USABILITY OF INTERACTION

by: Dr. Alexander Ylaya Bucol

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

Usefulness and Usability
Back Story

DotDash Bank PLC has launched a new telephone-based banking service. Customers
will be able to check balances, order chequebooks and statements and transfer
money all at the press of a button. Users are presented with lists of choices and they
select an option by pressing the appropriate touch-tone key on their handset. The
system development team is certain that the system is technically very good – the
speech synthesis used to speak out instructions/ options is the state-of-the-art and
the database access times are very fast. The new banking system described is clearly
a success from a system point of view: the designers have thought about the
technical demands of the system to achieve, for example, high through-put of
database queries.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

How, though, do users feel about the system?

Note The bank’s customers have responded badly to the new system. Firstly, users want to
know why the system does not let them allow them to hear details of their most recent
transactions, pay bills and do other common functions. Worse still, they find the large number
of keypresses needed to find out a piece of information tedious and irritating. Often, users get
lost in the list of choices, not sure of where they are in the system and what to do next.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

From a human perspective the system is a real failure. It fails
because it is not as useful as it might be and has very serious
HCI problems – it fails because the designers have not fully
considered what would be useful and usable from the
customers’ point of view.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

Usefulness

For an interactive system to be useful it should be goal centred. When a

person uses a computer they will have one or more goals in mind – e.g.,
‘work out my expenses for this month’; ‘buy a book on motor mechanics’. A
useful interactive system is one that empowers users to achieve their goals.
When you build an interactive system you should make sure you use a
range of design and evaluation methods to discover the goals and
associated system functionality that will make your system useful.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

Usability

A cork-screw is a tool for opening bottles sealed with a cork. They are useful tools.
However if you are a left-handed person most cork-screws are difficult to use. This is
because they are designed for righthanded people. So, for a left-handed person the
cork-screw has low usability (despite being useful). Interactive Systems 5 Usability is
about building a system that takes account of the users' capabilities and limitations.

A system that has good usability is likely to have the following qualities:

• Flexible. Users should be able to interact with a system in ways that best suit their
needs. The system should be flexible enough to permit a range of preferences.
• Robust. A system is robust if a user is given the means to achieve their goals, to
assess their progress and to recover from any errors made. In a later unit we will look
at each of these aspects and consider ways in which they can be achieved.
MODELS OF INTERACTION

Interaction involves at least two participants: the user and the system. Both are
complex, as we have seen, and are very different from each other in the way that
they communicate and view the domain and the task. The interface must
therefore effectively translate between them to allow the interaction to be
successful. This translation can fail at a number of points and for a number of
reasons. The use of models of interaction can help us to understand exactly what
is going on in the interaction and identify the likely root of difficulties. They also
provide us with a framework to compare different interaction styles and to
consider interaction problems.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

We begin by considering the most influential model of interaction, Norman’s
execution–evaluation cycle; then we look at another model which extends the
ideas of Norman’s cycle. Both of these models describe the interaction in terms
of the goals and actions of the user. We will therefore briefly discuss the
terminology used and the assumptions inherent in the models, before describing
the models themselves.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

The terms of interaction

Task analysis involves the identification of the problem space for the user of
an interactive system in terms of the domain, goals, intentions and tasks.
A domain defines an area of expertise and knowledge in some real-world
activity. Some examples of domains are graphic design, authoring and
process control in a factory. A domain consists of concepts that highlight
its important aspects. In a graphic design domain, some of the important
concepts are geometric shapes, a drawing surface and a drawing utensil.

Tasks are operations to manipulate the concepts of a domain.

A goal is the desired output from a performed task.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

The execution–evaluation cycle

Norman’s model of interaction is perhaps the most influential in Human–Computer

Interaction, possibly because of its closeness to our intuitive understanding of the
interaction between human user and computer

The interactive cycle can be divided into two major phases: execution and evaluation.
These can then be subdivided into further stages, seven in all. The stages in Norman’s
model of interaction are as follows:

1. Establishing the goal.

2. Forming the intention.
3. Specifying the action sequence.
4. Executing the action.
5. Perceiving the system state.
6. Interpreting the system state.
7. Evaluating the system state with respect to the goals and
intentions.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

The interaction framework

The interaction framework attempts a more realistic description of interaction by including the
system explicitly, and breaks it into four main components, as shown in Figure 3.1. The nodes
represent the four major components in an interactive system – the System, the User, the Input
and the Output. Each component has its own language. In addition to the User’s task language
and the System’s core language, which we have already introduced, there are languages for both
the Input and Output components. Input and Output together form the Interface.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al
As the interface sits between the User and the System, there are four steps in
the interactive cycle, each corresponding to a translation from one component
to another, as shown by the labeled arcs in Figure 3.2.

source: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Third Edition, Dix, Alan & et.al