HCI revision lecture

Main points Understanding Applying knowledge Knowing key points Knowing relationship between things If you’ve done the group project work from start to finish then you’re quite well prepared for the exam

Exam format All four questions 1.5 hours Mixture of structured questions and essay-style answers 100% in 90 mins –Spend 54 secs per % –Gives guidance as to how much I expect in an answer

User-centered design Definition - target audience, user needs etc. Task analysis - identify user’s goals, tasks, strategies, current tools, problems and thoughts on future Design Prototype - create alternative solutions (usually low-fi) Test - walk-through with users, get feedback, choose design Redesign Build - in stages, soliciting user feedback on key issues and problems - iterate the design cycle, evaluating the system in-situ, looking at task working, errors, etc Acceptance testing, benchmark assessment: run final tests and evaluation to uncover remaining issues. Run benchmarks against competitors to show solution meets objectives

Design Creativity Understand and be able to use different approaches –Brainstorming –Matrix –Impossible combinations –Future envisaging –Inspiration tray

Personas What are they? What are they used for? –Design guidance –Communication Characteristics –Overview, day in life, work, leisure, goals, skills, impact, demography, technological awareness, communications, international,quotes, references

Ethnography What is it? What does it give you? What tools does it use? –E.g. cultural probes

Questionnaires What are they used for? What are the main points to consider in the design? –Objectives, sampling, writing, administering, interpreting How to write questionnaire –Subjective vs objective, qualitative vs quantitative

How to ask questions Open vs closed Clarity Leading questions Ambiguity Multiple part questions Embarrasing questions Hypothetical questions Prestige bias Dealing with “don’t know”

Prototyping Approaches –Low-fi Paper sketches Post-its –Med-fi Powerpoint Web pages Screenshots –Hi-fi Reduced functionality systems Animation systems

Prototyping: why? Easy and fast to do Focuses on the critical elements Allows high-level concepts to be quickly explored Easy for designers and users to modify Rapid iteration Focus for discussion Cheap

Guidelines Why have them? What are some typical ones? –With examples Web and interface

Evaluation Think-aloud –user-driven usage, verbally identifying usability or confusion problems through actions Cooperative evaluation –User and designer discussing issues, answering questions, exploring interface Heuristic evaluation –basic guidelines plus domain-specific ones, expert eval to see if site conforms or does not. –And heuristics….. Cognitive walkthrough –detailed set of actions and screens from programmers, expert assessment to see if actions obvious, visible, and achievable Expect to identify usability problems, comprehension issues, confusions, possibly speed/performance issues

Other issues covered Your project –Know what you did, why, how you worked with users, what impact that had –UCD in practice Ethics –What are ethical considerations, examples