Design>Human Computer Interaction

The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol

The arrow and its brethren are everywhere on our computer screens. For example, a quick examination of the Firefox 3.0 browser, shown in Figure 1 in its standard configuration, yields eight examples of arrows—Forward, Back, and Reload buttons, scroll bar controls, and drop-down menus that reveal search engine, history, and bookmark choices.

Designing for B2B and Enterprise Applications

It's not uncommon to hear people complaining about the poor user experience of some B2B and enterprise applications. Read through these top tips to help you design enterprise applications that offer a better user experience and increase productivity.

Cr@p Error Messages

When writing software, *please* don't give error messages that are only meaningful to developers of the software. Microsoft used to be awful for this: "System fault at DEAD:BEEF, please contact your system administrator". Which would've been cool, except that I *was* the system administrator.

Increase Conversions in Long Web Forms by Resolving the Accidental Back Button Activation Issue

The issue of accidentally activating the browser back button through the keyboard while interacting with a long web form is applicable to users across expertise levels. The time and effort wasted by the user can be said as proportional to the number of input fields filled by the user before accidentally exiting the page. Since no application feedback indicating cause of the error to the user is provided, depending upon user expertise, the user may or may not realize the cause of the error. Realizing what went wrong does not guarantee the possibility of reverting the error either. This leads to unnecessary loss in form conversions despite favorable user intent. A solution to resolve this issue (that the author hopes becomes standard practice) to plug the hole for lost conversion that translates to big numbers in absolute terms for high traffic websites is also provided.

Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area of research and practice that emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty area in computer science. HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for three decades, attracting professionals from many other disciplines and incorporating diverse concepts and approaches. To a considerable extent, HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-distinct fields of research and practice in human-centered informatics. However, the continuing synthesis of disparate conceptions and approaches to science and practice in HCI has produced a dramatic example of how different epistemologies and paradigms can be reconciled and integrated.

Games To Explain Human Factors: Come, Participate, Learn and Have Fun!!!

Photo albums from previous presentations of Games To Explain Human Factors.

Ten Ways Computers Manipulate People

My most recent captology course at Stanford focused on 10 ways computers manipulate people. In total, I've found about 60 strategies that software can use to change what people think and do.

Using Computer-Based Narratives to Persuade

Our lab has been investigating how computer-based narratives can change people's beliefs and behaviors.

Persuading People via Computer-Based Narratives

Computer technology opens new doors for researching, creating, and distributing WIN (interactivity and narrative) experiences. Increased insight in this area could create a potential to change people’s attitudes and behaviors in ways never before possible. For example, in researching WIN experiences, our online system can now test stories to identify which stories have an impact on specific types of people. Alternately in creating WIN experiences, a computer could glean information from an interaction in order to select a specific story from a large database of proven stories. From a distribution standpoint, WIN experiences could be delivered through mobile handsets, increasing reach beyond the desktop. The potential for impact is significant. Computer-supported WIN experiences could lead to large-scale interventions to improve health, enhance learning and training, boost workplace performance, and motivate participation in civic life.

The Convivio Network

the European Thematic Network for the human-centered design of interactive technologies. Convivio supports and promotes the development of "convivial technologies", ICT products, systems and services that enhance the quality of everyday life and human interaction.

Navigating Information Spaces

Evaluation is a fundamental part of human-computer interaction (HCI). Good HCI practice tells designers to evaluate: evaluate requirements, evaluate designs, evaluate prototypes. The purpose of evaluation is to improve the usability of a software system; that is to make it easy to use, easy to learn, effective and enjoyable. But what is usability and what makes one device easier to use than another? Traditional HCI theory has produced a number of evaluation techniques and guidelines. These are based on some basic psychological assumptions which date back to the sixties.

对于“以人为中心的设计是有害的”的澄清

很多人难以理解我的那篇“以人为中心的设计是有害的”文章。（哈哈，下面这样说可能有些保守！关于这个问题，肯定有五百篇评论和博客文章。）特别地，我没能够清楚地说明“以活动为中心的设计”是什么意思，以及它和“以人为中心的设计”是如何的不同。一些人好像认为我彻底抛弃了我以前说过的话。另外一些人则简单地认为我疯了。还有一些人则急匆匆地出来解释我那样说的含义。

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That’s a dangerous state – when things are treated as accepted wisdom. The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought, discussion, and reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles of Human-Centered Design. These principles, I suggest, can be helpful, misleading, or wrong. At times, they might even be harmful. Activity-Centered Design is superior.

以人为中心的设计是有害的

在设计界，以人为中心的设计已经成为一个占统治地位的主题，以至于它经常被界面和应用设计人员不加思考地加以采用，更不要说是用一种带有批判的眼光加以采用。这是一种危险的状态――当某些事情被当作是被广泛认可的知识来对待时。这篇文章的目的就是要引起人们对于以人为中心设计方法的基本原理的重新思考和讨论。我认为，这些原理可能是有益的，有误导性的，或是是错误的。有时候，它们甚至可能是有害的。以活动为中心的设计是更好的一种方法。

HCD harmful? A Clarification

HCD has developed as a limited view of design. Instead of looking at a person’s entire activity, it has primarily focused upon page-by-page analysis, screen-by-screen. As a result, sequences, interruptions, ill-defined goals – all the aspects of real activities, have been ignored. And error messages – there should not be any error messages. All messages should contain explanations and offer alternative ways of proceeding from the message itself.

Zebra Striping: More Data for the Case

I recently conducted a study into the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of zebra striping—the shading of alternate rows in a table or form. The study measured performance as users completed a series of tasks and found no statistically significant improvement in accuracy—and very little statistically significant improvement in speed when zebra stripes were implemented.

Of Mice and iPods, or The Death of the Designer

Computing technologies are becoming so familiar it can feel as if they have always been here. It is strange to think that the mouse, for instance, was invented by Doug Englebart in the seventies. He must encounter a degree of incredulity when he mentions this to people. “You invented the mouse? Really? How nice. Did you also invent the pen?”

Affordances

An action possibility available in the environment to an individual, independent of the individual's ability to perceive this possibility.

Reification (to Reify)

In the fields of HCI and interaction design the term is however most often used as 'making something material from something abstract.' In other words 'thingifying' something abstract (like an idea, a work practice, a social relationshiop) or at least making a representation of it.

Trusted Interaction: User Control and System Responsibilities in Interaction Design for Information Systems

Trust emerges from interaction. If trust in information systems is to be promoted, then attention must be directed, at least in part, to interaction design. This paper explores issues of trust in the interactions between users and systems from the perspective of interaction design. It considers a variety of pragmatic aspects in interaction design that impact user trust, including, predictability, interface stability, user control, and the match between expectations and performance. It critically examines contemporary design practices, such as adaptive interfaces, in terms of their impact on user trust.

Designs We Love To Hate!

Selections of 'least favorite' designs from graduate students of the George Mason University Department of Psychology.

No-One Looks at the Screen

One of the most fundamental factors in designing for screen-based media is: No-one likes looking at a computer screen.

人性的界面

我们常常看到这样的新闻报道：飞机坠毁夺走了好几百人的生命，某次工业事故导致几百万英镑的损失，某新发现的系统医疗错误致使数千病患重返医院。几个月后，公布的调查结果如下：操作机器设备时的人为错误导致了这些事故。人们使用‘人为错误’一词来表达‘操作上的错误’，而经常的情况是，这些‘人为错误’ 根本就是机器设备的人机界面设计或安装上本身固有的问题。低劣的人机界面会导致使用效率降低或者容易发生错误，严重的则会造成财产和生命损失。

Human Factors

Human Factors is often used interchangeably with User Interface Design or Human-Computer Interface. There is a lot of overlap in these disciplines; however, Human Factors generally refers to hardware design while HCI generally refers to software design.

Scrolling and Scrollbars

Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. Among the ongoing problems that result are frustrated users, accessibility challenges, and missed content.

Useless Memory and Email

While no one would argue that email is useless, continued inefficient management of emails makes email worse than useless—--it makes them dangerous.

Fun Systematically

This position paper looks at two examples where the study of fun is at very least systematic, and quite possibly scientific. In the first, Virtual Crackers, a systematic process of 'deconstructing experience'; identifies the individual aspects of an experience (pulling crackers), which are then used to reconstruct a new experience in a new medium (the web).

The Human Interface

The phrase 'human error' is taken to mean 'operator error', but more often than not the disaster is inherent in the design or installation of the human interface. Bad interfaces are slow or error prone to use. Bad interfaces cost money and cost lives.

Design Principles for Multi-Window Online Information Systems

The proliferation of online information complicates information retrieval for users, who must first learn to use the information system itself. Multi-window online information systems compound this problem further by complicating an already-unfamiliar interface. However, research and practical experience suggest some design principles that can help to maximize the benefits of a multi-window system.

Modeling the Empowered User

An STC-funded study of computer users in an R & D organization attempts to identify users who reflect a high degree of productive integration of computers into workplace tasks. The study reveals user stratification along the lines of low-strategic and high-strategic users: users who choose to use computers to accomplish information and communication-oriented tasks. The study attempts to confirm this stratification by indicating that users identified in this way also use computers to perform a higher frequency of information-related computer behaviors, such as use of email, electronic information transfer, archiving, and software learning. Identifying users in this way can help writers and documention designers by providing models of integrated computer use.

Do Students Really Feel Integrated With Computers?

This paper reports the results of a survey of senior Business and Engineering majors conducted at the University of Cincinnati. The survey's goal was to examine whether or not students felt integrated with computers yet, since the technological trend is towards a human-computer interface.

The Effects of Perceptual Grouping on Text Entry Performance

One of the primary challenges confronting designers of mobile computing devices is the issue of efficient text entry. One potential solution is to group multiple letters onto single keys, similar to the T9 keyboard currently used on telephones. Two experiments examined the effects of perceptual grouping on soft keyboard transcription rates. Results from Experiment 1 showed significantly slower transcription rates for QWERTY keyboards with grouped keys. Results from Experiment 2 showed various levels of perceptual interference due to the different Gestalt grouping effects. These results indicate that perceptual grouping can negatively affect text entry performance, and placing multiple letters onto single keys reduces the speed at which users can transcribe words.

Help Strategies and Their Effect on Graphical Icon Usage

An increasingly popular component of modern graphical human-computer interfaces are graphical command buttons. Studies have shown that graphical command buttons can enhance user productivity. However, two factors, the time required to acquire a working knowledge of the graphical command set and the need for frequent use to maintain the knowledge limit the effectiveness of graphical command buttons as a user interface strategy. This study attempts to quantify the effects of four types of help (balloon style, a mouse documentation line at the bottom of the screen, a help browser, and hardcopy documentation) on the ability of novice users to acquire a working knowledge of a graphical command set. The study did not find any significant difference (based on the anova and manova tests) between the four treatments.

Depth vs Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of depth and breadth of web site structure on the user response time.

GUIdebook

This site is meant to be an online museum of graphical interfaces, especially those old, obscure and in desperate need of preservation. For those interested in seeing how the GUIs evolved throughout the decades.

Human-Computer Interaction and Your Site

Ever wondered what makes some websites easier to use than others, or why some people seem to master new navigation systems quickly while others struggle to learn? Do you know why users get lost in electronic space or find it difficult to communicate with others through the medium of technology? These questions are just some of the driving forces behind research in the developing field of Human Computer Interaction.

An Application of the Principles of Minimalism to the Design of Human-Computer Interfaces

Minimalism in information design, specifically as applied to user tutorials and manuals, was introduced in the early 1980s through the work of Dr. John M. Carroll, then a cognitive psychologist at the IBM Watson Research Center. Since that time, theorists and practitioners have further elucidated the principles of minimalism and have attempted to apply it to a variety of situations in which people attempt to learn how to use a software application. Most recently, a new exposition of minimalist principles and practices was published by MIT Press. This work, Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel, represents the work of leading theorists and practitioners in the field.

Barras de Mosaicos

Las barras de mosaico (TileBars) son una técnica de visualización de búsquedas en documentos que permiten hacerse una idea más clara de lo que nos devuelve un buscador, añadiendo la serendipia (descubrimiento accidental) al concepto de relevancia.

Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture

AIfIA is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture. Founded in 2002, AIfIA has over 400 members in 30 countries.

User Experience

This document outlines typical areas of concern when porting a Microsoft Windows application to Mac OS X, and provides guidance for transitioning to the Mac OS X UI.

Just How Far Beyond HCI is Interaction Design?

A recent book captures a larger movement within the academic field of human-computer interaction away from its traditions of behavioral science and engineering towards 'interaction design.' But re-labeling isn't enough, it also requires a shift in philosophical foundations as well as professional practice, and the language of HCI is not the best place to look for inspiration.

Teaching Information Architecture to the Design Student

What the design student needs is a design course that stresses usability, human factors, and clarity, instead of the typical branding and interpretation problems they usually encounter in their other design classes. James Spahr recounts a year of teaching at Pratt Institute that attempts to cross those boundaries.

Human Factors for Web Page Design

Knowing the purpose of your web page is the most important step to applying human factors principles to your design. By understanding the special chahnges related to presenting information on a web page, in addition to understanding the way human-9 use their eyes, prioritize the information they process, and react to sound, you can apply principles of information design and interface design to create effective web pages. Numerous sources of information about what to do and what not to do on a web page are available from the World Wide Web.

Web Site Designs: Influences of Designer's Expertise and Design Constraints

Nowadays, much research examines both the cognitive difficulties encountered by web site users and the development of ergonomic guidelines for designers. However, few studies examine designers’ cognitive functioning while designing web sites. We defend the idea that determining the difficulties web site designers encounter is necessary to better support their design activities, especially in making web sites easier to use. We present an experimental study that demonstrates that the designers’ levels of expertise (novice and professional) as well as the design constraints that clients prescribe influences both the number and the nature of constraints designers articulate and respect in their web site designs. Based on our study findings, we suggest ways to better support web site designers.

HCI Design for Network and System Management

All too often the people responsible for the care and feeding of the information technology infrastructure are poorly supported by the very technology they must manage, even as the popularity and use of networks (such as for the World Wide Web) grows. Corporate MIS staffs spend billions of dollars just on managing their computing infrastructures, and still they must continually cope with ineffectual products that do not support them in their work. A $2,000 PC may cost $5,000 to $10,000 a year to support.(1) This Special Interest Group (SIG) provided an opportunity for over 30 HCI practitioners and researchers in the domain of network and system management to share information about the problems faced by operators, system managers, administrators, and end users, and to explore new techniques in user interface design that might provide better support in the future. The group spent the majority of its time sharing information about design problems in a structured brain-storming exercise. Candidate areas for solutions were considered in response to the defined problem.

HCI Solutions for Managing the IT Infra-structure

In a kick-off Special Interest Group (SIG) at CHI 97, participants focused on key design challenges in the domain of network and system management. At the conclusion of the CHI 97 SIG the group decided it would be helpful to continue to meet and to provide a forum for exploring solutions to these key design challenges. The CHI 98 SIG provided an opportunity for over 30 HCI practitioners and researchers in the management domain to share information about work in several key areas.

Human Interface Design Principles

This section provides a theoretical base for the wealth of practical information on implementing the Aqua interface elements presented in the rest of this book. You’ll undoubtedly find that you can’t design in accordance with all of the principles all the time. In those situations, you’ll have to make decisions based on which principle or set of principles is most important in the context of the task you’re solving. User testing is often an excellent way to decide between conflicting principles in a particular context.

Macintosh OS X: Aqua Human Interface Guidelines

This document, which covers features up to Mac OS X version 10.2, describes what you need to do to design your application for Aqua. Primarily intended for Carbon and Cocoa developers who want their applications to look right and behave correctly in Mac OS X, these guidelines provide examples of how to use Aqua interface elements. Java application developers will also find these guidelines useful.

Tools and Trade-Offs: Making Wise Choices for User-Centered Design

How can we choose among customer data collection methods when limited staff and financial resources must be spread across the whole development cycle? This tutorial helps participants understand the tradeoffs, so they can make effective choices among methods at different points during product design and development. It focuses on early user-centered intervention to gain cost-effective, reusable end-user information.

Fitts's User Interface Law Applied to the Web

Interface design is difficult in part because everything requires interpretation. A design that works for one task or one user might not be appropriate for another. In other types of engineering, like architecture or bridge building, designers can always rely on laws of physics and gravity to make designs work. There is at least one immutable rule for interface design that we know about, and it's called Fitts's Law. It can be applied to software interfaces as well as Web site design because it involves the way people interact with mouse or other pointing devices. Most GUI platforms have built-in common controls designed with Fitts's Law in mind. Many Web designers, however, have yet to recognize the powerful little facts that make this concept so useful.

Giving the Human Touch to Software

Making too many assumptions about users’ expectations and levels of competence can get software developers into a lot of trouble. Here, Yogita Sahoo tells her own story about designing an application for an industry she was deeply familiar with—but that industry knowledge didn’t keep her from making some big usability blunders.

Affect and Machine Design: Lessons for the Development of Autonomous Machines

Human beings have evolved a rich and sophisticated set of processes for engaging with the world in which cognition and affect play two different but equally crucial roles. Cognition interprets and makes sense of the world. Affect evaluates and judges, modulating the operating parameters of cognition and giving a warning about possible dangers. The study of how these two systems work together provides guidance for the design of complex autonomous systems that must deal with a variety of tasks in a dynamic, often unpredictable, and sometimes hazardous environment.

Human Error and the Design of Computer Systems

People err. That is a fact of life. People are not precision machinery designed for accuracy. In fact, we humans are a different kind of device entirely. Creativity, adaptability, and flexibility are our strengths. Continual alertness and precision in action or memory are our weaknesses. We are amazingly error tolerant, even when physically damaged. We are extremely flexible, robust, and creative, superb at finding explanations and meanings from partial and noisy evidence. The same properties that lead to such robustness and creativity also produce errors. The natural tendency to interpret partial information -- although often our prime virtue -- can cause operators to misinterpret system behavior in such a plausible way that the misinterpretation can be difficult to discover.

The Post Disciplinary Revolution: Industrial Design and Human Factors—Heal Yourselves

The fault lies with the separation of powers. There are four legs to product development. Four equal legs are required for good product design, all sitting on the foundation of the business case.

Presentation Shui

Have you ever been in a room that felt strangely uncomfortable? Most presenters have, making comments afterwards about a forebodingly long executive table, a sterile design that put a chill in the air or a frenetic disorganized feeling that seemed to bounce around the room during the talk. It's reactions like these that corporate room designers and architects seek to avoid, striving to use technology and interior design to create a professional yet welcoming atmosphere. That quest has opened the door to fresh ideas, including the Chinese art of feng shui.

Ссылки на Материлы по HCI

A series of links to Russian-language resources in human-computer interaction.

Bad Human Factors Designs

A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles.

Human Factors in Software Development: Models, Techniques, and Outcomes

We present the results of a survey designed to identify ways that human factors engineers have been successfully involved in software projects. Surveys describing successful and unsuccessful outcomes were returned by 14 human factors engineers and 21 software and documentation engineers at Hewlett Packard. In addition to describing the type of involvement and techniques used, respondents were also asked to define what they considered to be a successful outcome and give their views on what factors contribute to success or failure. The results of this study suggest ways in which the human factors/R&D partnership can be more effective in current development scenarios.

Making the Physical Environment Interactive

Microsoft's most innovative product of the 1990s was Interactive Barney: a plush toy containing a computer that lets it interact with kids. When you squeeze Barney's toe, for example, he sings a song; when you cover his eyes, he plays peek-a-boo. Soon, many more physical objects may become interactive, and they're likely to contain much more broadly defined and subtle user interfaces than the primitive toe squeezing that Interactive Barney pioneered.

Macintosh OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines

This document describes the additions and changes to Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines related to the release of Mac OS 8. Specifically, it presents guidelines for taking advantage of the Mac OS platinum appearance and the Appearance Manager. This document does not replace Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

HCI Usability: Impact of Style, Graphics, and Quality on Web-Site Effectiveness

The rampant growth of the WWW has resulted in a very large number of web sites being produced and used before standards and guidelines for appearance and interaction could be developed and accepted. Two factors that could affect user performance and perceived quality of a web site are: surface blemishes added, and the presence of extra, gratuitous features. The effects of these two factors can be assessed through performance testing and attitudinal surveys. the approach or design criteria for each site. We chose as a basis, a classification presented by Karen Schriver of traditions that have shaped our thinking about, and approach to, document design and evaluation.

Accommodating Color Blindness

An estimated nine to twelve percent of the male population suffers from some form of color vision deficiency, commonly called 'color blindness.' It is important for computer interface designers to take into account and eliminate, if possible, any potential confusions that can arise because of color vision deficiencies. There are two major types of color blindness. The most prevalent causes are confusion between red and green. This type affects approximately eight to ten percent of the male population. In another type, an additional one to two Percent of men suffer from a deficiency in perceiving blue/yellow differences. Less than one percent of women suffer from any form of color blindness. To understand color blindness better, it is helpful to be familiar with the ways in which colors differ from each other. One standard way to discuss color is to divide it into hue, saturation and brightness (HSB).

The Influence of Semantics and Syntax on What Readers Remember

The objectives of the study presented here are to help writers and editors better allocate their efforts, increase the discipline’s knowledge about reader performance with technical documents, and examine many text variables in one study. For this study, participants read and recalled one of two technical texts. Results reveal that readers are more likely to recall more important versus less important information. Additionally, readers are more likely to recall information in clauses, in independent clauses, and in the first paragraphs of documents. The implication of these results for writers and editors is discussed.

Physical, Cognitive, and Affective: A Three-part Framework for Information Design

This article first explores limitations of the prevailing concept of document design. Next, it offers a definition of information design—a framework meant to broaden the popular perspective on design in our field. The article then describes in detail the three types of design activities involved in technical communication: physical design, cognitive design, and affective design. Last, this article suggests the strengths and limitations of this framework. Appendixes describe implications of this framework to the teaching of technical communication to majors in the field, to the practice of technical communication in industry, and to research in the field.

Technical Communication in an Altered Technology Landscape: What Might Be

Technical communicators create support products that mediate between people and their computers. However, human-computer relations of the future may not require the reading of manuals or even direct manipulation of the interface. These relations may be delegated to agents, computer surrogates that possess a body of knowledge about something and about the user in relation to that something. A new class of applications may suggest information relevant to the user's situation, proactively offering advice that the user didn't know to ask for. Technical communicators will have continuing roles in enabling users because of their knowledge of the ways that people want to learn from machines. The skills required for technical communicators in the next computer revolution will change at least as much in the next 5 years as they have in the past 5 years.