1
Q
Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
A
- Researches the design and use of computer technology, focusing particularly on the interfaces between people (users) and computers.
- Objectives
- Creation of principles theories and methodologies
- Applying them to development
- Testing the outcome of the development
- Key Focus is objective metrics
2
Q
Purpose of UX specialist
A
- Inform the design
- Evaluate the build
- Make sure the user is taken into account at all stages of the development
- Software produced is “what the user wanted”.
3
Q
User Experience (UX)
A
- Broad term used to describe all the factors that contribute to the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific software artefact, or system.
- Focuses on the practice of user-centered:
- Design, creation, and testing
- The outcomes can be qualitatively evaluated using small numbers of users.
4
Q
UX key properties
A
- Utility (creates value)
- The software must be useful, profitable, or beneficial
- Effective in Use
- The software must be successful in producing a desired result
- Efficient in Use
- The software must achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense
- Affective in Use (Emotional)
- The software must support the emotional dimensions of the experiences of the user
- Engaging in Use (Dynamic)
- Fun to use, users may experience delight
5
Q
Waterfall
A
- sequential design process which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards
- the worst way of doing human factors work since it’s difficult to feedback and change the requirements.
6
Q
Spiral
A
- Emphasis placed on risk analysis.
- Four phases:
- Planning, Risk Analysis, Engineering and Evaluation.
- Repeatedly passes through phases in iterations, called Spirals. The baseline spiral, starting in the planning phase, requirements are gathered and risk is assessed. Each subsequent spirals builds on the baseline spiral.
- Acceptable for UX, because it acknowledges that a number of iterations will be required for each of the phases which may need to be redeveloped based on new information.
7
Q
Iterative
A
- Takes into account the impact that the user testing will have on the next iteration of development and planning
- The endpoint can sometimes become lost
8
Q
Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM)
A
- divides an application development project into modules, stages, steps, and tasks
- Provides a framework for describing projects in a fashion suited to managing the project
- based on waterfall
- not great, but better than waterfall as more time spent understanding the users, envoronment, etc.
9
Q
Rational Unified Process
A
- object-oriented and Web-enabled program development methodology
- establishes four phases of development, each of which is organized into a number of separate iterations that must satisfy defined criteria before the next phase is undertaken
- Flexible process which can be modified to suit development needs
- for UX it is better to use Agile Unified Process.
10
Q
Scrum
A
- Create backlog -> choose tasks for sprint (2-4 weeks) -> product is usable at the end
- enables aspects of the software to be released to the user in a fast incremental manner.
- All changes requested by users can be integrated in the next sprint.
11
Q
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
A
- Rapidly created models of software are tested with users before the main functionality and interaction design are fixed
12
Q
eXtreme Programming
A
- rapid application development which requires developers to work in pairs without a detailed design
- lifecycle is cyclical and involves frequent small (point) releases of the software for consumption by the users
- user comments can be accommodated very quickly, minimises the ability to miss undocumented user requirements and specs.
13
Q
Cowboy coding
A
- Used to describe software development whereby the developers have autonomy over the process.
- Best for UX
- Development is purely focused on research
- No plans, schedule and timeline
- Used for experimental work and prototyping
- But doesn’t work with commercial projects as will lead to unorganised development and messy work.
14
Q
Agile Development
A
- Methodology that is aimed at unpredictability and ability to change direction at any point in development
- Scrum is prime example
- More useful and flexible with regard to the human facing aspects of the development
- User-centric
15
Q
Separation of Concerns
A
- Separating the presentational concerns from the other logical components of the system has a high degree of utility.
- UI can then be created in isolation from the other components.
16
Q
Model View Controller (MVC)
A
- Controller are based on behaviors and can be shared across views.
- Can be responsible for determining which view to display
17
Q
Model View Presenter (MVP)
A
- View is more loosely coupled to the model.
- The presenter is responsible for binding the model to the view.
- Easier to unit test because interaction with the view is through an interface.
- Usually, view to presenter map one to one.
- Complex views may have multi-presenters.
18
Q
Presentation Abstraction Control (PAC)
A
- Similar to MVC, but occurs in layers.
- Layers consist of agents which communicate with each other through the control element.
- Each agent completely isolates both the presentation and abstraction elements.
19
Q
Multilayered Architecture
A
- Breaks each aspect of the system into a separate layer running from the user interface layer at the top to infrastructure at the bottom.
- For UX, the most important aspect is the division of the UI from the other layers.
- Separation of concerns can still be maintained as long as the application interfaces between the different layers are well defined, isolation between the components can still be maintained
20
Q
Model-based approaches
A
- Enable the interface to be directly generated, but additional functionality is required for this.
- Examples
- MVC
- MVP
21
Q
Layered approaches
A
- Very practical and describe the system as it is actually developed.
- Separation of concerns is not as high as model-based approaches, so there is always the possibility of functionality drifted between the different layers.
22
Q
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
A
- Network architecture which requires a high degree of loose coupling of the services provided, to such a degree that these architectures are mainly enacted over the entire networks
- Separates the functionality of the application into distinct uses and isolates that functionality from the operating system.
- Persistence and accuracy cannot be guaranteed if the system developer does not have full control over those services
23
Q
How can you more efficiently design for multiple Windows Managers?
A
- Use abstract (multi-platform) windowing toolkits which will compile for many platforms.
- But only if you can guarantee that the result will conform the look and feel of the underlying OS or platform, otherwise you can use skins.
24
Q
Visual channel (seeing)
A
- One of main sensory channels
- Visual attention processes:
- Bottom-up
- contrast, size, shape and colour correlate well with visual interest.
- Allows quickly detect items such as bold text and images, and also help to group information into ‘sections’.
- Top-down
- driven by semantics or knowledge about the environment.
- Enable people to interpret the information using prior knowledge and heuristics.
- Bottom-up
25
Auditory channel (hearing)
* We hear the sounds by the help of our ears
* Highly interrelated with the visual channel.
* Reaction to auditory stimuli is faster than reaction to visual stimuli.
* Restricted to certain frequency and distance
26
Olfactory channel (smelling)
* Smell has close link with memory, and can be used to assist the user in finding or recognising locations that have already visited.
* Smell and taste is particularly effective when associated with image recognition.
* It is useful to keep smell in mind if you are having particular problems with users forgetting aspects of previously learnt interaction.
27
Somatic/haptic channel (touching)
* Describe how the user experiences force or dermatic feedback when they touch objects or other users.
* Use of the haptic channel for both control and feedback can be important especially as an aid to other sensory input or output.
* Tactility and haptics have the advantage of making interaction seem more real.
28
UX relations to previous Human Factors work
* Key aspect of Human Factors and it’s application as user experience engineering is the focus on making a system more humane.
* UX is richer and qualitative whereas previous human factors work is quantitative
29
Implicit communication
Aesthetics and emotional responses to aspects of the communication
30
Explicit communication
* Well understood
* Centres on the visual or auditory transmission of both text and images (or sounds) for consumption by user.
31
Affective/Emotional computing
* Study and development of systems and devices that can recognise, interpret, process, and simulate human emotional changes
* Centres around:
* the detection of emotion
* the ability for computers to express emotion
* in some cases the ability of computers to actually have emotions (in some form).
32
Input and Control
* Text entry (keyboard)
* Pointing devices
* Speech input
* Touch interfaces
* Gesture recognition
33
Difference between Gestural interfaces and Touch Gestures
* Touch Gestures in 2D, Gesture recognition in 3D:
* Touchscreen gestures are about the two-dimensional movement of the user’s fingers,
* Gesture recognition is about the position and orientation of a device within three-dimensional space (often using accelerometers, optical sensing, gyroscopic systems).
34
User Centered Design (UCD) / Co-operative evaluation
* Place user in the center of the development process and allow to criticise the proposed system to gather ‘real’ requirements
* Analyse them using iterative looping methodology which enable the UX’er to understand the requirements of the user and to understand how to service the tasks required by those users.
* Also interested in making sure the functionality defined in the requirement gathering is the ‘right’ functionality for the users - it is ‘what people want’.
35
Requirements gathering (capture)
* The most used methods for requirements capture:
* participant observation
* interviewing
* archival and unobtrusive methods (collecting data that don’t interfere with the subjects under study).
* Better outcome could be achieved if a variety of methods are used in combination - however, in reality you will mostly be limited by time.
36
Participant observation
* Gathered by participating in the daily life of the group or organisation under study.
* UX’er watch people to see what situations they normally meet and how they behave in them.
* Then they enter into discussions with participants in the situations to discover their interpretations of the event that have been observed (called ‘conversations with a purpose’), and are usually very informal interviews.
37
Informant
* Special classes of participants, ‘people-in-the-know’, have a broad knowledge of organisation and can provide clarifications for data collected.
* Key informant
* have extensive knowledge of the user roles, the actions they perform, or the objects on which these action were performed.
* They are an excellent way to recover information about the past events.
38
Task analysis
* Set of methods which analyse and describe how users do their job in terms of the activities they perform.
* You may wish to be more prescriptive than observation if time is limited
* The most common form is hierarchical task analysis in which primary tasks are splitted into subtasks to describe the order and applicable conditions.
39
Group interviews (Focus groups)
* Short-term requirement gathering
* Used to enable informants to participate and discuss the situations with each other while the UX’er steers (manages) the conversation and notes the results.
* Working as moderator the UX’er needs to think of more practical considerations of working with an organisation.
40
Respondent (member) validation
* Short-term requirements gathering
* Variation of focus group where a trained UX’er guides the untrained users in an attempt evolve a knowledge of the problem and possible solutions.
41
Interviewing
* Short-term requirements gathering
* Friendly exchanges between the user and UX’er in order to find out more about the organisation or the users’ job.
* These techniques are best applied when:
* It is hard to observe the issues
* Need for the reconstruction of events
* Unable to observe due to ethical considerations
42
Social processes
* Social interaction in informal work environment might have some implicit information mentioned:
* Errors that often occur
* Annoyances with the system
* Might have a high impact on requirements gathering as opposed to the more formal setting of interview.
43
Post-its advantages
* Disposable - psychologically easier to criticise, easy to discard
* Everyone can use them (no skills needed) at once (input lots of ideas at once)
* More permanent than a whiteboard - can save post its and take photo to rearrange them later
* Can rearrange them easily - compared to a whiteboard
* Easy to take a photo to remember position and keep post-its in order to put them back together later - less easy to do with a whiteboard
* Can put aside an idea without getting rid of it completely
* Writing and position is important
* Cheap
* Can be color coded to reflect importance
* Easier to setup
44
Ways to convey information
* Informal methods
* User stories
* Use cases
* Wireframes
* Mock-ups & Storyboards
* Semi-formal methods
* Priority planning poker (MoSCoW analysis)
* Flowcharts, State diagrams, UML diagrams
45
Main danger points when undertaking
User Experience Design (UXD)
1. Different people make different choices. Product should not be ‘good enough’, but best for some.
2. Many software engineering practices declare that the system has been successfully developed for the user if it meets the specification defined in the models, but ideally should be tested by real users.
46
Types of impairment (Barriers to efficient use)
1. Visual (blindness, visual disability, or low vision)
2. Cognitive
3. Hearing
4. Physical
5. Situational
6. Combinatorial
7. Literacy (low education), computer use in underdeveloped regions accessibility issues
47
Visual impairment
* Sight loss that cannot be fully corrected with glasses/lens
* Solutions:
* Screen can be magnified and that components which are necessary for interaction can be located in a physically similar location
* Each visual object has a corresponding textual description, and that the textual description can be accessed
48
Cognitive impairment
* Learning difficulties.
* One of the most frequent.
* Users may have difficulties with executive function, memory, attention, visual and spatial perception, language, and emotions.
* When designing interface:
* use as simple a language as possible.
* where appropriate, annotate the interface with consistent graphical symbols.
49
Hearing impairment
* Complete or partial loss of the ability to hear
* Two Types
* Conductive occurs when there is a problem conducting sound waves anywhere along the route through the outer ear, tympanic membrane (eardrum), or middle ear (ossicles);
* Sensorineural is usually permanent and is caused by excessive noise or ageing.
* When designing interface:
* Where possible captioning and text should be used, and (or) sign language.
50
Physical impairment
* Musculoskeletal disorders that arise from loss, injury or disease in the muscle or skeletal system
* Movement disorders that arise from a damage to the nervous system or neuromuscular system such as Parkinson’s disease which cause slowness of movement.
* When designing an interface:
* Use alternative keyboards and pointing devices, voice input, keyboard-based pointing methods and pointing based typing methods
51
Situational impairment
* Not actually an impairment of the person directly, but indirectly by the computational device or the environment in which it must be used.
* Example - individual’s typing performance may decrease in a cold environment.
52
Combinatorial impairment
Aging related issues
53
Main principles of effective design (Accessibility)
* If asked for 4 - POUR (Perceivability, Operability, Understandability, Robustness)
* If Asked for 5 - POOUF (Perceivability, Operability, Openness, Understandability, Flexibility)
* Perceivability
* User interface and human facing aspects of the development should be perceivable by many different types of user.
* Operability
* Device manufacturers can be assured that your software is operable regardless of the input modality. Example: when using text-to-speech, to the application it seems as though someone is typing using the keyboard.
* Openness
* Leaving the system open to extension, so it can be adjusted/extended/modified later
* Understandability
* Using language which is simple to understand and supporting foreknowledge
* Flexibility/Robustness
* Adapt to different environments, e.g. mobile devices; allow personalization settings
54
Main principles by the Xerox Star
* Familiar Conceptual Models
* E-mail icon similar to “mail” (envelope) etc.
* Universal Commands
* Defining a set of universal commands such as ‘move’, ‘copy’, ‘delete’ etc; having the same action and being controlled by the same shortcuts, as every other program within the operating system.
* Consistency
* we can assist the user in learning the correct outcomes for the same action over different applications.
* Simplicity
* What is simple to one user might be verbose and tedious to another user, especially when the first user might be a novice while the second, an expert.
* User Tailor-ability
* Usability is all about customisation, personalisation, and system adaptation; this means flexibility.
55
The Human Processor Model
* Usability model
* A cognitive modelling method used to calculate how long it takes to perform a certain task.
* Allows a system designer to predict the performance with respect to the time it takes a person to complete a task
56
Goals, Operators, Methods, Selection rules (GOMS)
* Usability Model
* Reduces a user’s interaction with a computer to their primary actions.
* Using these primary actions as a framework an interface can be studied.
* Goals - the thing we want the user to achieve
* Operators - things the user does in order to achieve the goal
* Method - a series of operators to achieve the goal
* Selection rules - used to choose between methods to get to the goal
57
Keystroke level modelling (KLS, KLS-GOMS)
* Usability model
* Eleven step method that can be used by software engineers seeking ways to estimate the time it takes to complete simple data input tasks using a computer and mouse.
58
Main principles of **efficient** design (Usability)
* Consistency
* The use of standardised components. In this way the developer can be assured that look and feel of the software will be harmonious with the best practice of the operating system.
* Familiarity
* Mapping real-world to virtual world concepts, using common terms and jargon, by making the look and feel of the new system similar to that of an old system – or an old manual way of doing things (such as forms which look similar).
* Stability
* Make sure that interactions are stable, that they can be resumed if they break, that data will not be lost, that the place someone is at, in an interaction (the stage for the step), can be returned to in the event of a failure. Example: previews.
* Learnability
* Make sure system behaviour is predictable
* Robustness
* Error recovery, error-prone systems
* Progressive Disclosure
* Have clear hierarchy of interface, if it looks complicated - simplify
* Scalability
* An interface should handle scaling data without issues.
* Self-Description
* The user should not need to refer to help or the documentation.
* Simplicity
* An interface which is too simplistic will be seen as boring, or only utilitarian, one that is too complex will be perceived as being overly complicated and aesthetically displeasing.
* Situational Awareness
* Situational awareness involves a perception of the environment critical to making decisions in complex and dynamic situations.
59
Shneiderman’s rules difference from efficient design rules
* There is nothing about Scalability or that too Simplistic Design is Boring in Shneiderman’s rules.
* However, according to Shneiderman’s rules, there should be shortcuts and hidden commands for expert users, whereas in the principles above “The user should not need to refer to help or the documentation.”
60
Why is it difficult to know if the affective principles have been captured in software correctly?
Different people have different perceptions and opinions, there will be always a lot of variance.
61
Why is affective computing different to affective experiences and how they are related?
* Completely different notions
* Affective computing is about computers having functionalities to detect, express emotions and sometimes to have emotions.
* Affective experience is about users feeling and emotions during interaction with a device.
62
How do Aesthetics and Visual Complexity relate to each other?
* Visual Complexity is about the presentation of components in an interface: their arrangement, density and diversity, etc.
* These factors are handled by Aesthetics as well, which is about the beautifulness of the design.
63
How does narrative art relate to the principle of Flow?
* The principle of flow is about creating a consistent, fluid progression or path through an experience.
* In the way a well-structured interface can guide the user around it creating a flow in the activity
* People remember narratives better than instructions
* Narrative art draws the users attention skillfully around the image building a logical ‘picture’ of the story or message it is trying to convey.
64
Why is Emotion difficult to quantify?
* Emotion is all about subjectivity, and this subjectivity occurs temporally, culturally, and psychologically.
* One of possible solutions - involve wider audience.
65
Principles of Affective UX
* Quality
* Aestetics
* Flow
* Pleasantness
* Satisfaction
* Personality
* most superior principle.
* If your interface seems to be a meme – or an avatar – of who you are, then this principle is superior to the rest.
* If your interface has personality, good or bad aesthetics, quality, flow, satisfaction, or fulfilment are not important
66
Stages of gamification
* Elementary
* Few Interactions are Gameplay Like
* Bolt-On
* A set of game elements which are more deeply related to games and gameplay
* Ground-Up
* All Interactions are Gameplay Like
67
Gamification pros
1. may make usual tasks entertaining
2. task completion is rewarding
68
Gamification cons
* Gamified products are (often) poorly executed.
* Not everything we saw in games are able to make a product fun - it may not do that.
* Negative features of gamification are also transferred to a system side-by-side when we use it.
* Games are finite and once complete, interest is lost
69
How to include social dynamics into a system?
* Include suitable functionality to facilitate collaboration
* Use language and terminology which users may find playful.
* Link the real and virtual to facilitate better user engagement
* Group members can interact with each other using the system functionalities
70
How can you enhance the user's perception of fun?
* Include playful, and game like social elements
* Personalize and customize the system to users.
* Use metaphors instead of complex and dull phrases.
* Involve the user to act more when using the system.
* Make the system to be more narrative.
* Provide intangible enjoyment (touching to users’ desires, emotions).
71
What is the ‘skeptic’ view of Gamification?
* Cannot be fully integrated (always an addon)
* May not be right for your environment
* In some cases for one person it is ‘playful’ whereas for another it is ‘frustrating’.
* Users may cheat the system which in turn discourages other users from playing properly
72
Principles of Dynamic Design
* Facilitate Social Dynamics
* Make sure that users have an understanding that there are other people also interacting with the system, and who are immediately available for support and task collaboration.
* Facilitate progression
* Provide motivation by goals or rewards and then facilitate the users progression (in some way) toward those goals and rewards.
* Facilitate play
73
Nominal Variable
* A variable with values which have no numerical value, such as gender or occupation.
* For example:
* opposite
* alternate
* whorled.
* Also known as Categorical Variable (plural categorical variables).
74
Scientific method
* A method of evaluation that aims to disprove rather than prove an hypothesis
* It only takes a single contradiction to disprove a hypothesis rather than having to prove every case of the subject in question.
* Steps:
* Form a hypothesis
* Design an experiment trying to disprove the hypothesis
* Results either support the hypothesis or prove it wrong
75
Quantitative methods
* Provide a broad overview but the richness of the data is thin.
* Associated with HCI rather than UX
* Much easier to analyse as the results are numerical.
76
Qualitative methods
* Information you receive is not measurable.
* Examples:
* conversations,
* interviews,
* focus groups
* Allows to gather specific knowledge and often are used to answer questions how or why
77
Laboratory-based methods
* Provide exact experimental validation with the key aspect of refutation
* Problems:
* The guinea pig effect, whereby people feel like guinea pigs being tested in experiments and so therefore change their behaviour patterns;
* Role selection, whereby participants see the experimenter as taking a certain role, having an elevated status above the participant, who therefore follows that experimenters lead;
* Measurement as change agent, in which aspects of the initial measurement activity introduces real changes in what’s being measured
* Response sets, whereby respondents will more frequently endorse a statement than disagree with its opposite
78
External validity
* Refers to the degree to which we are able to generalise the results of the study
* And if its applicable outside the confines of the experiment / in the real world.
* Use well formed and tested statistical tests to enable us to mathematically generalise to a population
79
Internal validity
* Extent to which results are valid within the confines of the experiment that has been done
* Have confounding variables been minimized?
* Has the experiment/evaluation been done correctly?
80
Analysis
* Enables to:
* Describe the results of your work in an objective way.
* Generalise these results into the wider population.
* Support your evaluation hypotheses which were defined at the start of the validation process
81
Descriptive statistics
* Statistical test
* Are mainly concerned with analysing your data in relation to the standard normal distribution
82
Inferential statistics
* Statistical test
* Are used to support the generalisability, of your samples’ characteristics, in relation to that of the general population from which the sample is drawn.
83
Key ethical principles
1. You Must Be Competent
2. You Must Have Integrity
3. Conform to Scientific Principles
4. Respect Your Participants
5. Maximise Benefits
6. Ensure Justice
7. Maintain Trust
8. Social Responsibility
84
Why is conforming to scientific principles key to good ethical designs?
* If the science is bad the experiment will have been performed for nothing
* Specifically:
* If we don’t conform to scientific principles then the science is bad/not reliable hence pointless,
* This wastes the participants’ time and means they get no benefit out of it so it breaks the ethical principles.
85
What problems may exist when undertaking single method evaluation?
* All methods have their own weaknesses
86
‘poor’ UXer tools
* Notebooks
* Audio recording devices
* video cameras
* Screen recorders
87
Principle of Flow
Creating a consistent, fluid progression or path through an experience
88
Main danger points to remember when undertaking UX / Participatory Design?
Testing the design and group think
89
Most important reason for having a set of ethical procedures governing experimentation with human participants
Having good ethical procedures gives good science, which without, everything we are doing and have done is rendered pointless
90
User’s temporal (time-spans) engagement
* Anticipated (Before Usage)
* Momentary (During Usage)
* Episodic (After Usage)
* Cumulative (Over time)
91
2 Key factors related to Thinking and Learning
* Attention
* Exploration
92
Specialist Input Devices
* Binary Switch,
* Head Operated Mouse
* Blink Switch
* Gaze Detection
93
How would you go about getting the ‘what’, in a Requirements Elicitation (Formative Evaluation)?
* Used with focus groups, participation observation, etc to asnwer these questions:
* What does the current system (paper based or not) do ('Current System?')
* What does it produce and what terms / jargon is used ('Current Documentation?')
* What improvements could be made (where does it fail)? ('Improvements?')
* What changes / additions / subtractions are required ('Newness?')
* What is important / what needs speed / what is less often used / what is the 'schedule'? ('Importance?')
User Experience
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