Week: 06
Human-Computer Interaction
Waseem Iqbal
Assistant Professor
PhD-Scholar (Adaptive Interface for Mobile Devices in
User’s Context)
Acknowlwdgement
Dr. Ibrar Hussain
(Assistant Professor / HEC Approved Supervisor)
PhD. in Computer Science
Pervasive Computing Research Lab, Zhejiang University, China.
Carried out 6 months collaborative research work with HCI & SE group at
University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
Human Computer Interaction (Book)
3rd Edition by Alan Dix
Ergonomics
physical aspects of interfaces
industrial interfaces
Ergonomics
• Study of the physical characteristics of interaction
• Also known as human factors – but this can also be used to
mean much of HCI!
• Ergonomics good at defining standards and guidelines for
constraining the way we design certain aspects of systems.
• A primary focus is on user performance and how the
interface enhances or detracts from this.
Ergonomics - examples
• arrangement of controls and displays
e.g. controls grouped according to function or frequency
of use, or sequentially
• surrounding environment
e.g. seating arrangements adaptable to cope with all
sizes of user
• health issues
e.g. physical position, environmental conditions
(temperature, humidity), lighting, noise,
• use of colour
e.g. use of red for warning, green for okay,
awareness of colour-blindness etc.
Industrial interfaces
Office interface vs. industrial interface?
Context matters!
Office Industrial
Type of data textual numeric
Rate of change slow fast
Environment clean dirty
Glass interfaces ?
• industrial interface:
• traditional … dials and knobs/grips
• now … screens and keypads
• glass interface
+cheaper, more flexible,
multiple representations, Vessel B Temp
precise values 0 100 200
• not physically located,
loss of context, 113
complex interfaces
• may need both
multiple representations
of same information
Indirect manipulation
• office– direct manipulation
• user interacts
with artificial world system
• industrial – indirect manipulation
• user interacts
with real world
through interface
interface plant
• issues ..
• feedback immediate
feedback
• delays
instruments
Interaction Styles
dialogue … computer and user
distinct styles of interaction
Common interaction styles
• command line interface
• menus
• natural language
• question/answer and query dialogue
• form-fills and spreadsheets
• WIMP
• point and click
• three–dimensional interfaces
Command line interface
• Way of expressing instructions to the computer directly
• function keys, single characters, short abbreviations,
whole words, or a combination
• suitable for repetitive tasks
• better for expert users than novices
• offers direct access to system functionality
• command names/abbreviations should be meaningful!
Typical example: the Unix system
Menus
• Set of options displayed on the screen
• Options visible
• less recall - easier to use
• rely on recognition so names should be meaningful
• Selection by:
• numbers, letters, arrow keys, mouse
• combination (e.g. mouse plus accelerators)
• Often options hierarchically grouped
• sensible grouping is needed
• Restricted form of full WIMP system
Natural language
• Familiar to user
• speech recognition or typed natural language
• Problems
• vague
• ambiguous
• hard to do well!
• Solutions
• try to understand a subset
• pick on key words
Query interfaces
• Question/answer interfaces
• user led through interaction via series of questions
• suitable for novice users but restricted functionality
• often used in information systems
• Query languages (e.g. SQL)
• used to retrieve information from database
• requires understanding of database structure and
language syntax, hence requires some expertise
Form-fills
• Primarily for data entry or data retrieval
• Screen like paper form.
• Data put in relevant place
• Requires
• good design
• obvious correction
facilities
Spreadsheets
• first spreadsheet VISICALC, followed by Lotus 1-2-3
MS Excel most common today
• sophisticated variation of form-filling.
• grid of cells contain a value or a formula
• formula can involve values of other cells
e.g. sum of all cells in this column
• user can enter and alter data spreadsheet maintains
consistency
WIMP Interface
Windows
Icons
Menus
Pointers
… or windows, icons, mice, and pull-down menus!
• default style for majority of interactive computer systems,
especially PCs and desktop machines
Point and click interfaces
• used in ..
• multimedia
• web browsers
• hypertext
• just click something!
• icons, text links or location on map
• minimal typing
Three dimensional interfaces
• virtual reality
• ‘ordinary’ window systems
• highlighting
flat buttons …
• visual affordance
• indiscriminate use
just confusing! click me!
• 3D workspaces
… or sculptured
• use for extra virtual space
• light and occlusion/closing give depth
• distance effects
elements of the wimp interface
windows, icons, menus, pointers
+++
buttons, toolbars,
palettes, dialog boxes
also see supplementary material
on choosing wimp elements
Windows
• Areas of the screen that behave as if they were independent
• can contain text or graphics
• can be moved or resized
• can overlap and obscure each other, or can be laid out next to one
another (tiled)
• scrollbars
• allow the user to move the contents of the window up and down or
from side to side
• title bars
• describe the name of the window
Icons
• small picture or image
• represents some object in the interface
• often a window or action
• windows can be closed down (iconised)
• small representation many accessible windows
• icons can be many and various
• highly stylized
• realistic representations.
Pointers
• important component
• WIMP style relies on pointing and selecting things
• uses mouse, trackpad, joystick, trackball, cursor keys or
keyboard shortcuts
• wide variety of graphical images
Menus
• Choice of operations or services offered on the screen
• Required option selected with pointer
File Edit Options Font
Typewriter
Screen
Times
problem – take a lot of screen space
solution – pop-up: menu appears when needed
Kinds of Menus
• Menu Bar at top of screen (normally), menu drags down
• pull-down menu - mouse hold and drag down menu
• drop-down menu - mouse click reveals menu
• fall-down menus - mouse just moves over bar!
• Contextual menu appears where you are
• pop-up menus - actions for selected object
• pie menus - arranged in a circle
• easier to select item (larger target area)
• quicker (same distance to any option)
… but not widely used!
Menus extras
• Cascading menus
• hierarchical menu structure
• menu selection opens new menu
• and so in ad infinitum
• Keyboard accelerators
• key combinations - same effect as menu item
• two kinds
• active when menu open – usually first letter
• active when menu closed – usually Ctrl + letter
usually different !!!
Menus design issues
• which kind to use
• what to include in menus at all
• words to use (action or description)
• how to group items
• choice of keyboard accelerators
Buttons
• individual and isolated regions within a display that can be selected
to invoke an action
• Special kinds
• radio buttons
– set of mutually exclusive choices
• check boxes
– set of non-exclusive choices
Toolbars
• long lines of icons …
… but what do they do?
• fast access to common actions
• often customizable:
• choose which toolbars to see
• choose what options are on it
Palettes and tear-off menus
• Problem
menu not there when you want it
• Solution
palettes – little windows of actions
• shown/hidden via menu option
e.g. available shapes in drawing package
tear-off and pin-up menus
• menu ‘tears off’ to become palette
Dialogue boxes
• information windows that pop up to inform of an important event or
request information.
e.g: when saving a file, a dialogue box is displayed to allow the user to
specify the filename and location. Once the file is saved, the box disappears.
interactivity
easy to focus on look
what about feel?
Speech–driven interfaces
• rapidly improving …
… but still inaccurate
• how to have robust dialogue?
… interaction of course!
e.g. airline reservation:
reliable “yes” and “no”
+ system reflects back its understanding
“you want a ticket from New York to Boston?”
Look and … feel
• WIMP systems have the same elements:
windows, icons., menus, pointers, buttons, etc.
• but different window systems
… behave differently
e.g. MacOS vs Windows menus
appearance + behaviour = look and feel
Initiative
• who has the initiative?
old question–answer – computer
WIMP interface – user
• WIMP exceptions …
pre-emptive parts of the interface
• modal dialog boxes
• come and won’t go away!
• good for errors, essential steps
• but use with care
Error and repair
can’t always avoid errors …
… but we can put them right
make it easy to detect errors
… then the user can repair them
hello, this is the Go Faster booking system
what would you like?
(user) I want to fly from New York to London
you want a ticket from New York to Boston
(user) no
sorry, please confirm one at a time
do you want to fly from New York
(user) yes
………
Context
Interaction affected by social and organizational context
• other people
• desire to impress, competition, fear of failure
• motivation
• fear, allegiance, ambition, self-satisfaction
• inadequate systems
• cause frustration and lack of motivation
