HumanComputer Interaction

Phases
• Phases in our group project:
• User Research
• Design Prototype and
Evaluation
• Implementation
• User Evaluation
• Final Presentation and Pitch
Video
User Centered Design
• UCD is a process that involves the user of a product
throughout its lifecycle, from planning through post-release
assessment
• In UCD, all development proceeds with the user as the
center of focus – Jeffrey Rubin
• Goal of UCD is to create products that users find usable and
useful
• UCD is an iterative process
User Centered Design -Users
• All people are different
• Have different perceptions
• Are not perfect
• Are unpredictable
• It is almost impossible to accommodate all the people
perfectly
• It all depends on who do you design for
Example: “Big Talker”
User Centered Design -Design
• Jeff
Veen:
Good design is problem solving

• Steve Jobs:
Design is not just what it looks and feels
like.
Design is how it works
User Centered Design (UCD)
• Get to know your users
• Analyze the user tasks and goals
• Establish the usability
requirements
• Prototyping the design ideas
• Testing of the concept with the
user
• Iterate over if deficiencies
• Implementation
• Deployment and User testing
Advantages of UCD
• Decreased development cost
• Increased user satisfaction
• Increased revenue
• Reduced training costs
• Better customer loyalty
• Reduced customer service/support
costs
User Centered Design
• Design without analysis won’t solve the right
problem
User Centered Design
• Do not design for
everyone
• Design goal-oriented
 Usability
• “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users
to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction in a specified context of use”
Usability Attributes
Usability Attributes
• Effectiveness:
• accuracy and completeness with which users achieve
specified goals
• Efficiency:
• resources with which users achieve goals keeping
performance high
• Satisfaction:
• how satisfying a system is to use, from user’s point of view
Usability Attributes
• Learnability:
• ease of learning for novice users
• Memorability:
• ease of using system occasionally for users
• Errors:
• handle errors made by users while performing some
specified task
Usability
• Usability effort can be more efficient at the start of the
project
• Misconceptions:
• “Usability is expensive”
• “Usability engineering will delay launch date”
UCD and Usability
• UCD is a methodology
• Usability is a result or a goal
• So, Usability is an outcome of UCD
User Research
Know your User
• who are they?
• probably not like
you!
• talk to them
• watch them
Classify Users
• Users can be classified according to
their:
• Experience
• Educational level
• Age
Experience wise Users
Ways to learn aboutusers
• Contextual Inquiry
• Interviews
• Surveys and Questionnaires
• Focus Group
• Card Sorting
Focus Setting
1. Form a team
2. Identify the target user group
3. Brainstorm questions
4. Record all items generated
5. Remove items participants cannot answer
6. Remove “personally-biased” questions
7. Create categories and groups from the individual items
8. Develop general foci/attention
9. Review the foci with the team
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual Inquiry
• Contextual inquiry is a semi-structured interview method
• To obtain information about the context of use
• Where users are first asked a set of standard questions and
then observed and questioned while they work in their own
environments
Contextual Inquiry
• In actual workplace/environment
• Focus on understanding:
• Overall goals
• Current tasks
• Constraints and exceptions
• Problems needing solution
• Ask permission to capture a video of the user and the
workplace
Contextual Inquiry
• Context
“Gather ongoing experience rather than summary experience and
concrete data rather than abstract data”
• Partnership
Develop a relationship with the user that allows you to act in
collaboration
• Interpretation
Assign meaning to the observations
• Focus
Listen and explore carefully
Contextual Inquiry - Context
• Activity in its actual place
• Defined as: The conditions within which something occurs or
exists
• Understanding work in its natural environment:
• Go to the users
• Observe real work where it is normally done
• Interview the users while they are working
• Discover details and complexities of work
• Be confident that you are observing and recording concrete, real
data
Contextual Inquiry - Partnership
• Defined as: A relationship characterized by close cooperation
• Encourages users to share their expertise
• Suspend your assumptions and beliefs
• Invite the user into the inquiry process as a co-designer
• The user is the expert!
• The only person who really knows everything about his work
is the one doing it
Contextual Inquiry - Partnership
• Let the user lead the conversation
• Use open-ended questions:
• “What are you doing?”
• “Why are you doing ..”
• “Is that what you expect to happen?”
• Pay attention to non-verbal
communication
Contextual Inquiry - Interpretation
• Defined as: The assignment of meaning to observations
• As an investigator, try to establish meaning in what you discover
• Make this interpretation explicit by verifying your interpretations
with the user
Contextual Inquiry - Focus
• Defined as: The point of view an interviewer takes while
studying work
• Listen and observe carefully
Contextual Inquiry – Importance
• The actual users of a product should always be the main focus
of the design effort
• Rather than talk to users about how they think they
behave, it is better to observe their behavior first-hand
• And then ask clarifying questions in the context of use
Selecting Participants
• Using your foci as a basis, begin to select participants to
interview
• Contact participants well in advance and schedule a meeting
time
• You may need to compensate participants for their time
• You may need to negotiate the corporate hierarchy in order to
reach the right people
• Get the consent letter signed from the participants
• Record everything (audio-video recording/pictures)
Contextual Inquiry – Activity
• Goal: Redesign the grocery stores’ point of sales (POS)
system
• User group?
• Context?
• What kind of questions would you ask in an interview?
• What details could be important?
Interviews
 Interviews

• Very similar to Contextual Inquiry, except without the work-

based context
• The interview is a method for discovering facts and opinions
held by potential users of the system being designed
• It is usually done by one interviewer speaking to one
informant at a time
• Reports of interviews have to be carefully analyzed and
targeted to ensure they make their impact. Otherwise the
effort is wasted
Interviews
• Still set a focus, using the same foci-setting techniques
• Develop a list of questions to ask
• If you don’t ask the right questions, you may not get the right
responses
Interviews
• Engage the user more than just
watching
• Structured interviews
• Efficient, but requires training
• Unstructured interviews
• Inefficient, but requires no training
• Semi-structured interviews
• Good balance
• Often appropriate
Semi-Structured Interviews
• Predetermine data of interest
• Plan for effective question types
• How do you perform task A?
• Why do you perform task A?
• What information do you need to…?
• Who do you need to communicate with
to…?
• What happens after you…?
• What is the result or consequence of …?
Semi-Structured Interviews
• A good interviewer is an active listener
• Use open body language
• Ask open-ended questions (how, when, what, why) to
encourage
elaboration
• Use closed questions (can you, will you, do you) with
yes/no or simple fact answer to clarify your
understanding
• Summarize to check you understand the important points:
“So it sounds like the key points are...”.
What people can’t tellyou
• What they would do / like / want in hypothetical
scenarios
• How often they do things
• The last time they did something
• How much they like things on an absolute scale
What people can tellyou
• What they “generally” do
• How they do it
• Their opinions about their current activities
• Their complaints about their current activities
• How much they like one thing compared with
another
 General flow of Interviews
• Introduce yourself, explain your purpose
• Why we’re here: We’ve been asked to design/improve A
• What we’ll ask: your day, your background, your frustrations
• Start with demographics – education, age, area, gender etc.
• Tell us about your responsibilities and your typical workday
• Ask open, unbiased questions
• Cycle back to more detailed questions
• Drill into specific tasks
• How is existing product (if any) involved in those tasks
General flow of Interviews
• Ask the question and let them answer
• The interview is about them, not you!
• Follow up
• Adjust your questions to their previous answers
• Ask questions in language they (use) understand
• Pick up on and ask for examples
• Be flexible
• Follow up on interesting points
• Wrap-up
Where to Interview?
• In their setting (i.e. their office, home, car, etc. more like
contextual inquiry)
• Gives you much better insight into their activities
• Gives you a chance to see their environment
• Allows them to show you rather than tell you
• If not possible to interview in their setting, ask for a tour
before or after
Key to good Interview
• Participant’s answers are spontaneous, rich, specific, and
relevant
• Interviewer’s questions shorter and the participant’s answers
longer.
The longer, the detailed
• Degree to which the interviewer follows up and clarifies the
meanings
of relevant aspects of the participant’s answers
• Attempt to verify interpretations of the participant’s answers
during
the course of the interview
Preparations
• Focus Setting meeting
• Interview in pairs
• One person interviews, the other takes notes & listens
• Audiotaping
• Get permission in advance - be aware of security issues
• Videotaping
• If you can't videotape, take snapshots
• Take a trial run with colleagues or friends
• Gives you practice interviewing
• Irons out problems with the questionnaire, redundancies,
inconsistencies
Post Interview Tasks
• Keep photos and other concrete details around
• Directly after the interview, in your team, meet and regroup;
discuss
the interview, and document key takeaways
• As soon as possible, transcribe/write down your interview.
A full transcription is best, but is tedious. Partial
transcription may be adequate
• Send a thank-you note to the participant, and confirm that you
may contact them again in the future (for testing purposes)
Focus Group
Focus Group
• Structured Interview with groups of individuals
• 3 to 10 persons
• Use several different groups with different roles or
perspectives
• Manage the interaction
• Avoid few people dominating the discussion
• Focus on preferences and views, not performance
• Relatively low cost, quick way to learn a lot
• Audio or video record, with permission
Focus Group
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
• A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a
series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of
gathering information from respondents
• Presence in the context is not needed
• Distribute via email easily
• Get responses from broader audience
Questionnaire
• Name
• Gender
• Age group
• Profession
• Close questions
• Yes/No
• On a scale of 1 – 5 or Very Good, Good, Neutral, Poor,
Very Poor
• Open ended questions
Questionnaire
User Research Methods
Readings
• “Interaction Design – Beyond human -computer interaction” by
John
Wiley - Chapter 7,9,12,13
• "The design of Everyday Things" by Norman - Chapter 7