Midterm Review Francis Li CS160 Midterm Review October 9, 2000

Overview Review- a “lightning” design session HCI design analysis Human abilities Task analysis Contextual inquiry Web design guidelines and patterns Prototyping and evaluation … Questions on sample midterm Freeform Q/A ‘till the cows come home…

Here’s a story… We’re the design team for CALient ® A client with a (brilliant) idea comes in Library research tools haven’t yet caught up with advances in information technology. We want to provide a set of tools integrating web, mobile, and public kiosk access for library research. More on this later…

Your mission… Prove to me that you’re qualified for the job by showing a deep understanding of the problem and its design requirements Describe plans for the early stages of development, design, and evaluation Deliverables: Web site Mobile application Public kiosk (both software and physical design)

More on the (brilliant) idea Technology available: Library SmartCards Handheld computers with barcode scanners Wireless networking Tasks I want to support: Searching Finding Note-taking Related work Reviewing results of all of above

Let’s get started… Can we describe the proposal in terms of HCI design? User-centered design Tasks, technology, humans, design, social/organizational environment (that triangle diagram)

Now let’s learn more… How can we learn more about user’s work practices in library research? Task analysis Contextual inquiry Master/apprentice model Interpretation – why users are doing things Focus – keeping things on the appropriate direction- keeping things within scope. Context – being in the users workspace Partnership – don’t do traditional interview, don’t mix- up expert/novice roles (master is expert, interviewee is novice/apprentice)

With that knowledge… How can we analyze it? Task analysis Who are the users? –Researchers, librarians What are the tasks? –Searching, finding, related work… Where are they performed? –For the library How often are they performed? –Every day? Once a week? When are they performed? What other tools exist? What experience level of users? What is the relationship between users and data? –My search results (maybe private) –Book/periodical catalog (public) –My identity (private)

Let’s get to design! What should we have first? Tasks Organized by difficulty/complexity Task 1 (easy) – Searching for book/references on the website. I want to find the book by Foo on subject XYZ published sometime in Task 2 (moderate) –Finding related work in the library, taking notes on the works… Find books related to Bar. Note importance. Task 3 (complex) –Searching, filtering my history of data. Find my notes on ABC from that data.

The website… Goals attract new and former patrons of the library provide a convenient new research service What design knowledge can we use here? Nielson’s Heuristics Existing systems Design pattern- previous experience, taken from most popular, from the “successful” websites. Recognition over recall Value proposition- motto, telling user what to expect Inverse pyramid writing style… First Look- draw the eye to… important for the user Personalization- ownership, Fresh content- different when they come back…

The mobile interface… What are the constraints here? Why are these problems for people? Size- it’s small! Screen quality. Can’t output a lot of information Working memory capacity: 7+-2 chunks Don’t use color to code information Blue is bad- rods/cones in the eye Selecting items on the screen Involves microcorrections… Fitt’s Law- came out of studies of MHP. Time ~= distance/size What did MHP say about learning? Power Law of Practice

The kiosk… We get to design the physical device! What do we need to accommodate? Task analysis suggests personal/private information needs to be managed in this public environment Let’s use SmartCards for identification Designing the SmartCard reader Which way to enter card? –Affordances are physical and/or visual attributes of the design that suggest how to use them. Recall- door handle design Other methodologies for design… Interface metaphors. Users’ existing knowledge helps them learn to use new interface. Common example- desktop metaphor Watch out for mismatches! Common example- MacOs dragging floppy to trash

About those SmartCards… When we talk about the use of SmartCards in this system, what are we constructing? As designers, we create a conceptual model of how we expect users to operate the system. I.e. users have personal accounts in the library system which they use to access their research at the public kiosk The actual design of the interface represents the system image of that designer’s model. I.e. we embody identity in a SmartCard, which they insert into the reader to bring up their account and research. What the user’s actually think in using the system is another conceptual model. Goal- the user’s model matches the designer’s model simply by interacting with the system image. I.e. will users understand the personal/private nature of the SmartCard and its role in loading accounts at the kiosk?

Enough talk- let’s build… Give me a plan for development User-centered design- an iterative cycle of design, prototype, evaluate that involves users at every cycle We involved users in the design with Contextual Inquiry… We use low-fidelity prototyping techniques at the early stages for rapid changes, since we have less investment in the design (pen and paper, for example). We focus on the interaction, not the details. We perform user testing on the prototypes with real users

How do we evaluate? How do we know it works? User testing Heuristic evaluation

Questions Sample midterm Anything else?