Acknowledgement

The content of this lecture is adapted from the notes of

Dr. Pratheeba J.
Head of Department
Department of Computer Engineering
 Introduction

Faculty of Engineering
University of Jaffna

Pratheeba J (UOJ) EC9540 - Human Computer Interaction 2 / 17

Course overview

Academic credits: 02
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, students should be able to
• explain the concepts of cognitive science and the physiology of
human perception
• assess the need of user for an interactive system
• apply the HCI standards and principles of
sustainable HCI design for interactive
systems;
• recommend an interactive HCI design
considering usability and accessibility;

Minimum of 80% attendance is must

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Course structure
• 24 hours lectures.
• 13 hours lab will be used to implement an interactive user
interface for selected purposes.
• That will be an individual mini-project, details will be
provided later
• For the first assignment (after 10 hours of practical), you
will be requested for do your first presentation on the
progression of your project – 10 Marks.
• 5 hours assignment - details will be provided during the specific
time
• At the end (after 13 hours of labs and 3 hours of assignment),
you are expected to submit and present your end model – 10
Marks.
• On top of that, at the end of every lab, you are requested to
submit a report on your progression – 10 Marks.
• You have a mid exam for 20 marks and an end-exam for 40
marks EC9540 - Human Computer Interaction 4 / 17
Lecture plan – Chapter 1

Lecture hours: 1 hour

Teaching method: PowerPoint slide and conventional teaching
method
Assignments: No assignment
Practical: No practical
References: Human–Computer Interaction: Fundamentals and
Practice by Gerard Jounghyun Kim

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What is HCI?
Human Computer interaction is a field which covers the theory,
design, implementation and evaluation of different approaches used by
the humans to interact with computing devices.
Here interaction indicates an abstract model which is used to interact
with the computing device for every given task.
Interface is a choice of technical realization of such a given
interaction model.
Nowadays, HCI becomes very crucial because computers plays very
important role in everyday life.
Early focus of HCI is on how to design interaction and implement
interfaces for high usability.
High usability means that the resulting interfaces are,
easy to use
efficient
ensure safety
lead to correct completion of the task
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Why HCI is important?
Productivity of the device highly depends on the usability and
efficient interaction.
The elegance of the interfaces is an added advantage for commercial
successful of a product. E.g., Apple products
In this concept, user experience is a new buzzword.
User experience: This term covers not only the above mentioned
characteristics such as high usability and elegance but also it’s
seamless amalgamation into someone’s lifestyle.
Impact of HCI in the success is less acknowledged in the history of
computing.
Examples for few successful interfaces:
Spread sheet: Made huge success in business computing.
Web browsers: No internet phenomenon without them.
Smartphones: Almost replaced the prvious phones with their
touch-orientd features.
Body-based and action-oriented interfaces: New way to play and enjoy
the computer games.
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Goals of HCI

Goals of HCI
(a) Functional completeness (Apple iPhone)
(b) High usability (Microsoft Pixelsense)
(c) Aesthetic appeal (Apple iPhone)
(d) Compelling user experience
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Principles of HCI
Characteristics of a good HCI:
It is very important.
Generally difficult to design.
Why the design is so complicated?
It is a multiobjective task.
It simultaneously considers many things such as,
types of users
characteristics of the tasks
capabilities and cost of the devices
lack of objective or exact quantitative evaluation measures
changing technologies, etc.
A considerable knowledge in many different fields is required.
Over this relatively young history of HCI, few principles are
established by the researchers.
The main characteristics of these principles are:
general, fundamental and commonsensical.
Applicable to almost any HCI design situation.
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Know thy user
Main objectives of HCI is to devise interaction and interfaces around
the target users.
This principle simply says that the interaction and interface should
meet the requirements and capabilities of the end user of that system.
Comprehensive information about the target user such as age, gender,
education level, social status, computing experience and cultural
background should be collected and analyze to determine their
tendencies, capabilities and skill levels.
These information can be used to model the interaction properly and
pick the right interface solution for them.
Examples cases:
Young adults are adaptable to new interfaces quickly than older
generations.
While designing 3-D user interfaces, spatial ability of males than female
should be considered.
An equal spacial ability between male and female should be considered
in engineering and science applications.
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Universal usability

Atleast a study on cognitive psychology, ergonomics and

anthropomorphic data to assess the capabilities.
The term universal usability refers covering to a wide range of users,
across different ages, skill level, cultural background and disability
level.
Very difficult to achieve.
Could be achieved by building separate interfaces between different
user groups.
E.g., different interfaces for various languages, for color blinds and
visually challenged users.
Interfaces with both menu-driven commands and keyboard-based
keys.

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Understand the task
This principle refers to identifying the sequence and structure of
subtasks at an abstraction level appropriate for the typical user within
that large context.
Example: Changing the access point of Wi-Fi connection for a
smartphone.
For an expert user, the model might designed with dtailed steps such
as asking to select from the pool of nearby access points based on their
characteristics such as signal strength, bandwidth, security level.
For a normal user, entering the correct password will automatically
select an access point.
Task model should come from the user.
Different users will have different mental models in their idea and it
should be reflected on the built one.
However, we can’t expect the most efficient model/approach.
We should remember that humans are very adaptive and few non
user-based models may developed based on this capacity.
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Reduce memory load

This principle deals with the usage of less memory as possible.

Basic idea behind this concept is capacity of human’s short-term
memory – about 5-9 chunks of information.
This leads to less erroneous behavior.
This concept can be applied to interface design as well.
Few instances where this can be applied,
Keeping the number of menu items.
Providing reminders and status throughout the task
Amount of user awareness of the ongoing task

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Strive for consistency

One way to unburden the memory load is keep consistency.

This can be applied within the applications and across different
applications.
Also we can consider consistency in both the interaction model and
interface implementation.
Example: If same subtask is involved at different times, for different
interaction steps or interface methods users might get confused and
exhibit erroneous responses.
Consistency and familiarity also lead to higher acceptability and
preference.
Microsoft Windows based application maintain their competitiveness
by promoting consistency and familiar interfaces.

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Remind users and refresh their memory

Another important principle will be reminding the users for important

information throughout the task – refresh the user’s memory.
For example, during online shopping, one should remind different
types of information – item selection, delivery option, address, credit
card information, no of items, etc. This situation could be easily
handled by proper and continuous feedback.
Another type of informative feedback can be used to reconfirm the
user action which signals the closure of a larger process.
Example includes the safe receipt of a credit card number.
This will give a satisfaction to the users about the ongoing interactive
process.

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Prevent errors/ Reversal of action

Supporting a quick completion of the task has equal importance to

error free operation.
Hence, the interaction and interface should be designed to avoid
confusion and mental overload.
More over, an efficient technique should present only relevant
information at a given time.
Inactive menu items are good examples of such technique.
Select from a drop-down menu can be safer than direct text input.
As mistakes are human nature, it is always good to give a chance to
do a reversal of the action – UNDO.
This will put the user in a comfortable state and increase the user
satisfaction.

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Naturalness

Final major principle is giving a natural interaction and interfaces.

This means to reflect various everyday operations.
Example could be a natural language based conversational interface.
It might be a bit tricky to directly apply real-life styles and modes of
interactions to interaction with computer.
A better approach may be to model interaction metaphorically to the
real life counterpart, extracting the conceptual and abstract essence
of the task.
A natural or metaphoric interface (assuming that the metaphor is not
contrived) will also have affordance, a property (or additional cues)
that appeals to our innate perception and cognition, thus making it
so intuitive that the interface would require almost no learning.

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Summary

Introduction to HCI – objectives and importance.

High level principles of HCI with examples.

These principles are based on just manifestations of deeper theories in

cognitive science and ergonomics.

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