HCI Midterm 1 Content

What is design?

Something in which someone has made a non-naturally occurring object

What are the different types of design?

Industrial, Interaction, and Experiential Design

What is a Norman Door?

A design which is aimed for beauty, not utility.

How do you minimize the harm that 'Norman Doors' create?

Minimize secret rules and frustrations.

What are the two characteristics of good design?

Discoverability and Understanding

Define Discoverability

The ability for the user to know what is possible with the machine, and what it could do.

Define Understanding

The ability for the user to comprehend what the machine can do or is meant to do.

What is the paradox of technology

Technology advances and does more things but how does the user access those things?

A successful product has to do everything right (low tolerance for error)

What is Human Centered Design?

Studying the intersection of psychology and technology in relation to human experience

What are the fundamental principles of design?

Affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, feedback, conceptual models.

What are affordances in design?

Allows for the user to do an action

What is a signifier in design?

Communicates appropriate behavior to a person

What is a constraint in design?

A mechanism to guide user to appropriate action. Constricts behavior.

What are mappings in design?

The relationship between the elements of two sets of things. Leveraging something the useris familiar with.

What is feedback in design?

Communicating the results of an action. Needs to be informative and diagnostic.

What are conceptual models?

The mental representation of how a machine or process works.

What makes the user mental model so unique?

The designer and user may have different mental models, and the designer must try to understand how the user understands the model.

What is a system image?

The popular representation of what an object is.

What did Norman’s idea of HCI do for the field of Human Computer Interaction?

Gave a framework of how to focus on the needs of the user

Define usability

An edvidence-based approach focused on deliverables.

What are the deliverables of interface usability?

1. Characteristics of the users

2. Characteristics of the system

3. Characteristics of the interaction

What is the usability paradox?

If you want something to be very useful, you may have to sacrifice an element of desirability

Why do we care about usability?

We want to increase the quality of the user’s experience

What is universal usability?

“90 percent of households as successful users”

What are the major barriers to universal usability?

Technology, infrastructure, and the user’s characteristics

• Who they are

• What they do

• Perception, memory, attention, prior knowledge.

What metrics do we use to measure usability?

1. Time to learn

2. Speed of performance

3. Error Rate

4. Retention

5. Satisfaction

What are user stories?

Characters designers make to create a design. They cannot be a full representation of themselves, but rather describe the kind of person that would use their product.

What are components of good user stories?

Explain the who, what, when, where, and why

Who are they

What do they do

Where are they living or located

Why would they use this technology

What are requirements?

A need that must be satisfied in one’s design.

What is a functional requirement?

What the system has to doW

hat is a non-functional requirement?

How the system does it

What is a UX requirement?

Non-functional requirements for the user interaction

What is chunking?

The act of grouping information together to maximize your learning capacity (Short Term Memory)

What is cognitive load?

The mental demand of the user

Explain the concept of curb cuts in design

Investing early to save money and effort later. Nothing ever works for everyone, but we could create designs that work for many groups of people.

What is declarative memory?

Facts/information “jeopardy'“ knowledge

What is procedural memory?

How to do something, ‘If-Then’ rules.

How to tie a shoe, save a document, etc.

What is episodic memory?

Memory tied to specific events

What is semantic memory?

Memories not tied to specific events

Explain the concept of forgetting and why we forget things

Some argue why we forget

• Decay - they fade in time when not used

  • Interference - they are overwritten or confused with other items

What is requirements analysis?

Requirements analysis is the process of identifying, documenting, and validating the needs and expectations of stakeholders for a product before its development begins.

What is the Modal Model of Memory?

Describes memory as having three distinct components:

Sensory Memory

Short-Term Memory (STM)

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

What is proprioception?

The body's subconscious ability to sense its position, movement, and force in space

Are humans thought of as rational decision makers? Why or why not?

No they are not. Humans can be sensitive to:

• Context

• Prior Experience

• Emotion

What are the human input channels?

Vision, Hearing, Touch, Taste & Smell

What are Human Output channels?

Hands & Fingers, Vocal System, Eyes & Gaze, Head & Body Position / Limbs

What does it mean for a human to be an information processor in HCI?

This concept sees the user like a computer system that receives input, processes data, stores information in memory, and generates output actions

What is a heuristic analysis in HCI?

A process in which designers examine a user interface against a set of established design principles (heuristics) to identify usability flaws

What is a Haptic system?

Helps recreate the sense of touch in digital environments by using forces, vibrations, or motions to target human skin receptors and muscle awareness

What is the gulf of execution?

The gap between a user's intentions and the actions required to make the system carry them out

"How do I use this?" or "What can I do now?"

What is the gulf of evaluation?

The gap between the physical state of the system and the user's ability to perceive and interpret that state.

"What just happened?" or "Did my action work?"

What is GOMS?

A a cognitive modeling framework in HCI to describe how users interact with computer systems

Goals

Operations

Methods

Selection Rules

Cones and Rods

Specialized photoreceptor neurons in the retina at the back of the eye

Convert incoming light into electrical signals sent to the brain via the optic nerve

Define working memory

A cognitive system holds a limited amount of information in your mind to perform complex tasks like reasoning, learning, and problem-solving

• The “sticky note” of the brain

What are the components of the visual system?

• Cornea and Lens

• Pupil and Iris

• Rods and Cones

Studies how physical light turns into neural signals and mental images in the brain

Define situational awareness

The ability to perceive one’s environment, understand what those observations mean, and predict how the situation will change in the near future

What are the main components of Norman's action evaluation cycle?

1. The Bridge of Execution

2. The Gulfs (Gaps in Interaction)

3. The Bridge of Evaluation (Perceiving & Checking)

What relies on Monocular and Binocular cues?

Depth perception relies on visual signals divided into binocular cues (requiring both eyes) and monocular cues (perceptible with just one eye)

Define Kinesthesis

the perception of body movements, weight, muscle tension, and limb positions

What are Internal senses?

The sensory systems that process information from inside the body rather than the external environment

1. Proprioception (Body Position)

2. Vestibular Sense (Balance and Movement)

3. Interoception (Internal Organ State)

What is Anthropometric data?

It is the measurement of human body dimensions and physical characteristics