ITIS 3130 Human Computer Interaction Dr. Heather Lipford

Agenda Course Info & Syllabus Course Overview Introductions HCI Overview A brief history

Introductions – Dr. Heather Lipford HCI, Privacy, and Visualization Contact info: – preferred, put 3130 in title – Office: 305E Woodward Office Hours: – Mondays 2:30-3:30 pm, – Wednesdays 4:45-5:30 pm – By appointment

TA- Mark Plemmons Undergraduate/Masters in SIS Office hours: TBD

Course Information Books – Interaction Design by Preece, Rogers, and Sharp, Wiley (ID) – The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman, (DOET) Web – – Overview – Grading and Policies – Syllabus and Lectures – Assignments – Wiki:

Grading 15% Participation & Quizzes 10% Assignments – More next… 45% Project – More details to come… 15% Midterm 15% Final

Assignments Most done individually (one at the end is not) Post to the Wiki by class time on the due date Graded based on a reasonable effort Discuss in class on due date, bring print out so you can talk about it

Group project 4-5 people per group, graded as a group 3 parts: requirements, design, evaluation Original interface design and evaluation Each part due by class time on the due date Project notebook on Wiki with each write up Theme: Communication

Course Aims Consciousness raising – Make you aware of HCI issues Design critic – Question bad HCI design - of existing or proposed Learn Design Process – Software interfaces and beyond Improve your HCI design & evaluation skills – Go forth and do good work!

Course Overview Requirements Gathering – How do you know what to build? Design – How do you build the best UI you can? Evaluation – How do you make sure people can use it? Also human abilities, cognitive and contextual models, interface paradigms, and advanced topics

How to do well Time and effort – Do the reading and prepare for class – Attend class and participate – Spend time on project – This is a writing-intensive class (unofficially) Attention to detail Communication – Tell me what you learned and why you made decisions – Ask for feedback!!

How to do well DON’T: – Expect extra credit work to make up for a bad score – Expect that you can let other group members do all the work – Expect that you can learn the material without doing the reading and coming to class DO – Come talk to me or the TA if you have any questions or difficulties

Warm up Write down on a piece of paper: – A product/interface/device you love and why – A product/interface/device you hate and why – What makes you love a product? – What makes you hate it?

The User Experience How a product behaves and is used by people in the real world – the way people feel about it and their pleasure and satisfaction when using it, looking at it, holding it, and opening or closing it – “every product that is used by someone has a user experience: newspapers, ketchup bottles, reclining armchairs, cardigan sweaters.” (Garrett, 2003) Cannot design a user experience, only design for a user experience

Why was the iPod user experience such a success?

Now let’s get started What is Human-Computer Interaction?

Human Computer Interaction The interaction and interface between a human and a computer – Write a document, calculate monthly budget, learn about places to live in Charlotte, drive home, play music, talk to friends, etc. etc. Interaction Design: designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday lives

Why do we care? Computers (in one way or another) now affect every person in our society Tonight - count how many in your home/apt/room We are surrounded by unusable and ineffective systems! Its not the user’s fault!! Product success may depend on ease of use, not necessarily power You will likely create an interface for someone at some point – Even if its just your personal web page

Goals of HCI Allow users to carry out tasks – Safely – Effectively – Efficiently – Enjoyably

Usability Combination of – Ease of learning – High speed of user task performance – Low user error rate – Subjective user satisfaction – User retention over time

Design Evaluation Both subjective and objective metrics Some things we can measure – Time to perform a task – Improvement of performance over time – Rate of errors by user – Retention over time – Subjective satisfaction

What is the process of interaction design ? Identifying needs and establishing requirements for the user experience Developing alternative designs Building interactive prototypes and assessing Evaluating what is being built and the user experience it offers

Know Thy Users! Physical & cognitive abilities (& special needs) Personality & culture Knowledge & skills Motivation Two Fatal Mistakes: – Assume all users are alike – Assume all users are like the designer

Design is HARD! “It is easy to make things hard. It is hard to make things easy.” – Al Chapanis, 1982 Its more difficult than you think Real world constraints make this even harder

Interaction design in the real world Increasing number of ID consultancies, examples of well known ones include: – Nielsen Norman Group: “help companies enter the age of the consumer, designing human-centered products and services” – Cooper: ”From research and product to goal-related design” – Swim: “provides a wide range of design services, in each case targeted to address the product development needs at hand” – IDEO: “creates products, services and environments for companies pioneering new ways to provide value to their customers”

What do professionals do? interaction designers - people involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product usability engineers - people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles web designers - people who develop and create the visual design of websites, such as layouts information architects - people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products user experience designers (UX) - people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products

The past… Time User Productivity Batch Command Line WIMP (Windows) 1940s – 1950s 1980s - Present 1960s – 1970s ? ? Interaction has evolved from communication in the language of the computer, to communication in the language of people and their activities

Batch processing Computer had one task, performed sequentially No “interaction” between operator and computer after starting the run Punch cards, tapes for input Serial operations

Paradigm: Networks & time-sharing (1960’s)  Command line  teletype – increased accessibility – interactive systems, not jobs – text processing, editing – , shared file system Need for HCI in the design of programming languages

The Ubiquitous Glass Teletype Source: 24 x 80 characters Up to 19,200 bps (Wow - was big stuff!)

Paradigm: Personal Computer Small, powerful machine dedicated to an individual Importance of networks and time- sharing Also: – Laser printer (1971, Gary Starkweather) – Ethernet (1973, Bob Metcalfe)

Paradigm: WIMP / GUI Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers Graphical User Interface Multitasking – can do several things simultaneously Has become the familiar GUI interface Computer as a “dialogue partner” Xerox Alto, Star; early Apples

Xerox Star First commercial PC designed for “business professionals” – desktop metaphor, pointing, WYSIWYG, high degree of consistency and simplicity First system based on usability engineering – Paper prototyping and analysis – Usability testing and iterative refinement

Apple Macintosh Aggressive pricing - $2500 Not trailblazer, smart copier Good interface guidelines 3 rd party applications High quality graphics and laser printer “The computer for the rest of us”

Paradigm: WWW Hypertext around since the 1960’s… Two new components – URL – Browser Tim Brenners-Lee did both – 1991 first text-based browser Marc Andreesen created Mosaic (first graphic browser, 1993)

New paradigms?

And the future?

Course ReCap To make you notice interfaces, good and bad – You’ll never look at doors the same way again To help you realize no one gets an interface right on the first try – Yes, even the experts – Design is HARD To teach you tools and techniques to help you iteratively improve your designs – Because you can eventually get it right

Next time Design process and understanding users Read ID , and chapter 9