1CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Dario Salvucci, Drexel University. Lecture 2: Users

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Users Lets begin our term-long interest in User Goal-Oriented Design by understanding the User. Who is the User? How does a User think? Are we designing with the User's mind in mind?

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Revisiting our Design Model This lecture: Research. Research users & the domain Modeling users & use contexts Requirements user, business, & technical needs Framework structure & flow Refinement of behavior, form, context

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Three important User groups Beginners, Intermediates, Experts Cooper uses a “bell curve” argument: He thus argues that we should “optimize for intermediates” Is this always the case? – for what systems does this make sense? – for what systems doesn’t this make sense? “Most users are neither beginners nor experts; they are intermediates.” beginnerintermediateexpert

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Beginners Beginners need a lot of help! – This is especially true for complex software! Beginners need – straightforward “mental model” – good, concise topical help Beginners never want to remain beginners – Remaining a Beginner is never an Objective! Beginners always want to become intermediates. If Beginners can not become intermediates, they give up on your software and use the competitor's software.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Attracting Beginners Beginners must grasp concepts quickly! Imagine them as intelligent people, but they're very busy. Extra help put into an interface for a beginner pushes them to intermediacy, but this help must go away then. – Farewell to Clippy! Guide boxes, dialog windows that give beginner tips and advice always work well. If successful, you will attract intermediates!

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Intermediates Most users will become intermediates if not turned away. Intermediates are your bread basket user group. The software must tailor itself to them. Intermediates require support, but usually specific support suchas: – How do I find facility X? – Remind me how to import. – What was that command for feature Y? Make all optimizations for intermediates.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Experts Every once and a while an expert is born. Don't try to inhibit intermediates from becoming experts. Don't expect more than 5% of users to ever become experts, though. Encourage expertise by allowing the things they need: – Shortcuts – Customizations – Automation People respect Expert opinion!

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Acquiring Qualitative User Data Qualitative Data: Information on Users that is based in sociology. Many techniques have been developed, lets look at a few: – Stakeholder Interviews – Subject Matter Expert Interviews – User and Customer Interviews – User observation – Competitive product audits – Literature Reivew

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Interviews Stakeholder: Commissioners of the Design work, who stake their business in it. – Vision: What are they dreaming up? – Budget: They have the best estimates. – Feasibility Studies – Business Objectives – Stakeholder/User relationship.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Interviews Subject Matter Experts: The experts in the domain which the product is designed to work within. Ex: A chemistry analysis program. The chemist who knows the formulas is the SME. SMEs provide: – The expert user approach, as mentioned earlier. – Knowledge, but know nothing about design. – Must be accessible to the developers. – Must be present throughout design process, as much as possible.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 User and Customer Interviews Users are not always Customers End users don't always know what they want, or how they want to see it. They just want a usable solution to their problem! For customers: – What goals are they achieving with the product? – What frustrates them with existing products? – What their role in maintenance will be. For users, who aren't the customer: – How does this product fit in your workflow? – What tasks do you undertake frequently? – Understanding of the user's goals.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 User Observation Observing a user can be *very* insightful. Must be done in a fashion where the user is unaware or distracted by the presence of a usability engineer. – You want to see the user in his natural state. Ericsson and Simon, “Protocol Analysis”, the Think-Out-Loud Protocol. This type of observation is much like what one would see on the Discovery Channel, but not to laugh: Science is the art of natural observation.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Combining interviews and observation Ethnographic Interviews: combining technique of interviewing and immersive observation. Ethnographic: Systematic and Immersive study of human culture. Your users are indeed human! You would have to include all levels of human observation ranging from behavioral psychology to anthropology.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Using Research to initiate Modeling The point of this research is that once enough data is collected, user modelling can be done. What is user modeling? – The process of identifying behavioral patterns, goals, and motivations observed Modeling provides user archetypes Research users & the domain Modeling users & use contexts

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Good Research for Good Modeling Modeling is done using personas. This is covered next week, in chapter 5. Well done research is a must for the modeling process to be accurate. It pays to do extra researching effort. Modeling will never reflect the research perfectly, but if research is done bad, then modeling will be bad. The rest fall like dominoes! Research users & the domain Modeling users & use contexts Requirements user, business, & technical needs Framework structure & flow Refinement of behavior, form, context

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Who performs the Research Computer Scientists rarely have to perform this research, but it is important for engineers to understand the higher level. Knowing who the software was intended for is always important when designing framework. Engineers may have to work with the user types that are modeled, for maintenance and debugging purposes. Research is the far end from engineering, but is very important for an application to be on target!

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Next Week Personas will be developed in a class exercise. Think of Personas as The Sims, a game by Maxis (owned by Hasbro). Class groups will develop personas based on research for design of the CS Web Site. Before then, lets take a quick glimpse at some current research being done on goal- analysis design of web site information.

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Research Question of the Day When people surf the web, they have goals. – the goals might be very specific e.g., find a paper – the goals might be very general e.g., find a cool news article or on-line game For typical web browsing, what are users’ goals and how common are these goals?

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Research Question of the Day Byrne et al. (1999) created a “taskonomy” of web browsing – take users from a diverse population – observe them in a natural environment – analyze their verbal protocols & extract goals And at the same time... – perform a task analysis of web browsing – create categories & subcategories of goals e.g., locate word, image, something interesting...

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Research Question of the Day Byrne et al. (1999) defined 6 tasks: – use information: read, listen, view, download,... – locate: visual search – go to: display a new URL – provide information: username, address,... – configure: change state of browser – react: respond to browser-initiated events Which of these do you think took the most time, on average, for each event?

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Research Question of the Day

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Research Question of the Day

CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces. Michael Czajkowski, Drexel University.1 Assignment 1 Assignment 1 is focussed on understanding the basics of Java. Its due next week! Start early, ask questions early, get responses, early! Next: Optional lecture on the basics of Java. No Java Swing until Assignment 2. Understanding Java is very important, if you do not know it, you need to pick it up quickly. See Resources page of Class Website for more Java tutorial information.