Creating Interfaces Fonts article. Favorite sites issues. Users. Usability definition. College sites. Classwork: Compare Purchase College site to other college. Homework: Post proposal for sites for site comparison study.

Fonts Reactions?

Users Computing and illegal drugs are the only industries that call their customers / clients users.

Distinguish System owners System users –End users System designers System builders

Owners vs users Determining owners’ objectives is not always easy. Old models were –IT developed an application for in-house use. Objectives of users and owners were the same…pretty much. –IT developed an application for sale (or lease). System users (=customers or clients) purchased the application to satisfy their objectives.

Your favorite sites examples Content: –What are owners’ and what are users’ objectives? Mechanics: –any issues with CSS, html? –Demonstrate FTP? Alternative ways using file hierarchy

Common ways interfaces are NOT user-centered Assume user knows the jargon –Technical –Business personal Citibank story Assume user knows the organization –visitors to college website OR catalog Assume user's interests will motivate sustained time with site/application

ISO definition usability of an interface is "the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in a particular environment". –effectiveness=does it do the job –efficiency=how well it does it in terms of time, effort, costs (system & user) other factors –satisfaction=perception of user

Aside If system owners just want people to come to site to see ads, then the most important criteria is satisfaction, not particularly efficiency or effectiveness.

Case study: college site Who are the owners? What are the user groups and their objectives? How to determine success: –Effectiveness –Efficiency –Satisfaction

User groups Challenge: multiple user groups! –Current faculty –Current students –Prospective students first time visitor repeat visitor Parents Possible transfer (i.e., older) student Accepted –Guidance counselor –Other Academics, other professionals wanting information ?

Activity Pick another institution and compare to Purchase. Answer these questions. Keep [rough] track of number of screens, any false starts, etc. –What are the major(s) offered involving computing? How does it/do they compare in requirements to math/cs here? Are there major(s) similar to new media? How does it….. –What is the phone number / for person to talk to about specific major? What is phone number / … about summer courses? –What does it cost? What are deadlines to apply? –When is Spring break? What is schedule for finals? –Define your own question. Who (what user group) would ask each of these questions?

Regarding satisfaction… IBM usability study story…. –DOS, Windows, OS –two part study: setup versus use Set up of OS was too painful for group to continue –use part included tests on specific tasks: looking up addresses, writing a letter, sending , etc. Performance was poor! Participants said systems were easy to use!

Interface in most/many? cases… –success means the interface is less obvious, not more –User's objective is NOT to use the interface but to get something accomplished. –BUT there can be the issue of branding Complex interactions (data-rich) require more than simple interactions.

Critical factors Need to define (know) –purpose process (what goes on before and after, what are the steps, etc.) –user purpose & owner purpose may be different: Web site with ads: the 'content' is there to 'capture the eyeballs'. Even in intranet web sites, system owners and system users can have different views. –environment--audience –costs of success and failure Cannot really talk about interface if you don't know these factors.

Jakob Nielsen's Rules Simple and natural dialogue-- Minimising complexity, principles of graphical layout. Speak the user's language– Affordances*, mappings, metaphors and using the user's perspective. Minimise the user's memory load--Limits of human short-term memory load. Recognition versus recall. Consistency--Importance of generalisation in learning and use. Feedback--Types, persistence and response times. Clearly marked exits--Cancel, undo and action priorities. Shortcuts--Power-user options* including macros, history and agents. Good error messages--Guidelines for error messages. Prevent errors--Interface modes, interface syntactic correctness and commensurate effort. Help and documentation--Task centred minimal manuals.

Affordances from Don Norman ( –The word "affordance" was invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). –perceived affordance: what the user believes to be possible (as way of communicating with system) for example: using mouse to move cursor to click on specific region

Usability Principles (Heuristics) from U. S Dept of Labor 1. Speak the users' language. Use words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user. Present information in a natural and logical order. 2. Be Consistent. Indicate similar concepts through identical terminology and graphics. Adhere to uniform conventions for layout, formatting, typefaces, labeling, etc. 3. Minimize the users' memory load. Take advantage of recognition rather than recall. Do not force users to remember key information across documents. 4. Build flexible and efficient systems. Accommodate a range of user sophistication and diverse user goals. Provide instructions where useful. Lay out screens so that frequently accessed information is easily found. 5. Design aesthetic and minimalist systems. Create visually pleasing displays. Eliminate information which is irrelevant or distracting.

US D. of Labor Heuristics, cont. 6. Use chunking. Write material so that documents are short and contain exactly one topic. Do not force the user to access multiple documents to complete a single thought. 7. Provide progressive levels of detail. Organize information hierarchically, with more general information appearing before more specific detail. Encourage the user to delve as deeply as needed, but to stop whenever sufficient information has been received. 8. Give navigational feedback. Facilitate jumping between related topics. Allow the user to determine her/his current position in the document structure. Make it easy to return to an initial state. 9. Don't lie to the user. Eliminate erroneous or misleading links. Do not refer to missing information.

Caution Usability inspection using rules is NOT as important as consulting with users and [observing] testing by users or as close as you can get to 'real' users. –Still, do it! Continual monitoring of usage, system performance, etc. is also important. –Prepare for change. Users liking the system is probably not as important as users 'using' the system [fairly] successfully.

User (give name!) Power-user: frequent, 'expert', repeat client Novice user: –infrequent user your site –infrequent user in general Emerging & important phenomenon: users familiar with web sites in general, though not yours. (Nielsen stresses the importance of [following] general standards.) Need to weigh following conventions versus strategies that may better reflect your subject matter.

Other Purchase sites We use moodle for instructional support –You can comment now and we will discuss this at the end. Note: two classes of users: students (you) and teacher We use myHeliotrope for registration and ongoing support. Several classes of users. –Hope to have someone from CTS come in for discussion.

Homework Pick a type of web site for which you can identify 2 distinct sites, for example: –Clothing store –DMV –Gps –weather Your task is to compare the two with respect to usability. Post