Goals & Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction

Human-Computer Interaction
Lect 2
Goals & Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction
1 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

The goals of HCI
The bottom-line benefits of usability to
development organizations include:
• Greater profits due to more competitive
products/services
• Decreased overall development and
maintenance costs
• Decreased customer support costs
• More follow-on business due to satisfied
customers

Different design Needs
Three broad categories of computer user:
• Expert users with detailed knowledge of that particular system.
• Occasional users who know well how to perform the tasks they need
to perform frequently.
• Novices who have never used the system before.
• Users may well be novices at one computer application but experts
at another one, so users will belong to different categories for
particular computer systems.

Importance of HCI
• In the past, problems with poor interface design of computer
software have contributed to an enormous loss in productivity,
ranging from increases in time taken to input and process
information after computerization, to deaths from airline crashes due
to pilots misreading the instrument readings on their aircraft.
• A US study in the 1980s found that:

• only 20% of new systems studied were considered to be
successes
• 40 % produced only marginal gains
• 40 % resulted in rejection or failure of the system
• this represents a huge loss of money, time and effort from all of the
people involved.

Importance of HCI
• HCI will be increasingly important in the following areas:
• As part of software development process and system design

methods
• As part of future legal requirements for software
• As the basis for a set of usability criteria to evaluate and choose

from amongst competing products
• As the basis for successful marketing strategy to the increasingly

important home and small business user

Why is HCI important?
■ ■ Nearly 25% of all applications projects fail.

Why?
◻ overrun
budgets & management pulls plug
◻ others complete, but are too hard to learn/use
Solution is user-centered design. Why?
◻ easier to learn & use products sell better
◻ can help keep a product on schedule
■ finding problems early makes them easier to fix!

◻training costs reduced
User Interfaces (UIs)
■ Part of application that allows
people
◻ to interact with computer
◻ to carry out their task
HCI = design, prototyping,

evaluation, & implementation of
UIs

Who creates UIs?
A team of specialists (ideally)
◻graphic designers
◻interaction / interface designers
◻information architects
◻technical writers
◻marketers
◻program managers
◻Test/usability engineers
◻researchers (ethnographers, etc.)
◻software engineers
◻hardware engineers
◻industrial designers
◻customers

In the Last Lecture
Products with a bad user

experience deserve to
DIE !

Engineers Belief
Engineers believe that since they made it, can use it, everyone can use
it
“If WE can use it, YOU can use it. If you can’t, YOU must be STUPID”
“Users are stupid” – anonymous
“Users are dummies” – anonymous

HCI – A Definition
“Human-Computer Interaction is a discipline

concerned with the design, evaluation and
implementation of interactive computing
systems for human use and with the study
of major phenomena surrounding them”
-ACM/IEEE

Human-Computer Interaction
Usability User Experience
Interface
Interaction
Computer Human
Every user is unique Types of experiences
Experiences are unique Good or Bad

User Experience – A Definition
• The user experience is the holistic combination of everything that
the user
– Sees
– Touches
– Feels
– Interacts with

Good and Bad Experiences
Good experience Satisfaction

Happiness
Elation
Bad experience Frustration

Resentment
Anger

Usability - Abstract-level Constituents
Ease of Use
(Could I use it?)
Usefulness
(Would I use it?)

Usability
• Ensuring that interactive products are easy to learn, effective to user
and enjoyable from the user’s perspective

Perspective ?
• People perceive the same item in
different ways
• What do you see in the Image ?

•• The way system
Protecting supports
the useritsfrom
usersdangerous
in carrying out
their tasks
conditions and
– Talk about the threeundesirable
systems situation
Usability
• How
– Which
good theof&system
User
the Experience
is at doing
Cases what it is supposed• Satisfying
we discussed Effectiveness
to do
earlier you think was the most unsafe ?
• Satisfying
• Does How
•the easy
product
Plane a system is to sustain
help users learn toauser Efficiency
high level of • Enjoyable
– iDrive system being effective since it would perform all
productivity?
the tasks Safety
• Enjoyable
Was iDrive easy to Learn • Fun
• System providing the right kind of functionality so that the
– Porsche example the system was effective enough to Utility
user can
• detect
Simple
Fun do what they want
theDevice VCRof Air in Fuel system
high intake Usabili • Entertaining
– Task 1: Learning to Play ty Learnability
• The
– Entertaining Goals
Alarm clock is effective in the way that it would • Helpful
– Task
play music2:inPre-Record
exactly the Two
samePrograms
way it is supposed to Memorablity
•• Helpful
How easy the system is to Experience
remember once learnt• Motivating
• Are these systems really User Goals
effective ? Think again !!
–
• Main goal of HCI is to evaluate things from the
Motivating
• User’s
Riding aperspective
bicycle

Fun
Satisfying Emotionally
fullfilling
Efficient to
use
enjoyable Effective Rewarding
Easy to
to use
remember
Usabili
ty
Goals
Easy to Supportive of
Safe to creativity
Entertaining learn
use
Have good
utility
Aesthetically
helpful pleasing
Motivating
Usability and Quality
• What is Quality?
– You like a product
– Does not break down
• More about Quality later

Software Quality – A Definition
• The extent to which a software product exhibits these characteristics
– Functionality
– Reliability
– Usability
– Efficiency
– Maintainability
– Portability

Evolution and History of HCI

Groundwork for HCI: 1960s – Early 1970s
• “Man-machine Symbiosis" (Licklider, 1960)
– Symbiotic relationship
– Computers would contribute in creative process
• “Augmentation of human intellect” (Engelbart, 1963)
• SketchPad system at MIT (Sutherland, 1963)

– Ideas for displaying, manipulate, copy pictures
– Use of input devices

Groundwork for HCI: 1960s – Early 1970s
• Parallel developments
– Interactive graphic interfaces
– Interactive text processing systems
– Line and display editors
– WYSIWYG editors
– Computer graphics (CAD/CAM)

Early Days of HCI
• Early days of computing computers were used and operated by
Engineers / Technical Staff only
• 1970’s: technology explosion

– Notion of user-interface arises, a.k.a. Man-Machine Interface (MMI)
– User-interface became a concern for system designers and researchers
• Growing realization
– Success depended on improving physical aspect of UI
– ‘user friendly’ was often just lip service and making UI aesthetically
pleasing

Role of Academic Researchers
• Academic researchers were more interested in how computers
enriched human life
• They investigated
– ‘people’ side of interaction
– Limitations and capabilities of humans
• Other issues found

– Training issues
– Working practices
– Management and organizational issues

‘Birth of HCI’
• ‘HCI’ term adopted in mid-1980s
• Another HCI definition

– A set of processes, dialogues, and actions through which a human user
employs and interacts with a computer.

Landmark Systems in Evolution
• Three systems were landmarks in evolution
– Dynabook
– The Star
– Apple Lisa
• Unifying theme in these systems

– Easy-to-use for all
– Visual spatial-interface

Dynabook – 1970s
• Brainchild of Alan Key and his Associates in Xerox’s Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC), California
• Intention
– Develop highly-responsive book-sized PC
• Colour display
• Radio link to a world wide computer network
– Could function as
• Secretary
• Mailbox
• Reference Library
• Telephone Center
• Amusement Center

The Star
• Same team of Dynabook
• Desktop Sized Personal Workstation
• Intended for Individual Use
• First Time a Mouse was Used
• Xerox as slow to capitalize on its invention

Apple Lisa – Early 1980s
• Apple exploited this discovery (Star)
• Lisa developed
• Macintosh developed
– Smaller, cheaper and more powerful version than Lisa
• The concept of GUI

Quote of the Day – Terry Winograd
“HCI is the kind of discipline which is neither the study of humans nor the study
of technology, but rather the bridging between the two. So you always have
to have one eye open to the questions:
– What can the technology do?
– How can you build it ?
– What are the possibilities?

And one eye open to the question
– What are people doing and how would this fit in
– What would they do with it ?

If you lose sight of either of those you fail to design well .. I think the challenge is
to really keep knowledge of both the technology and the people playng ff
against each other in order to develop new things”

Usability and Quality

Quality and Software
• What is Quality?
– You like a product
– Does not break down
• QA Teams

Quality is a predictable degree of uniformity and
dependability, at low cost and suited to the market
(Edward Deming)
Quality is conformance to requirements
(Philip Crosby)
Quality is fitness for purpose or use
(Juran)
Quality is conformance to specifications

(British Defense Industries Quality Assurance Panel)

Quality is synonymous with customer needs and
expectations
(R J Mortiboys)
Quality is the total composite product and service

characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing
and maintenance through which the product and service
in use will meet the expectations by the customer
(Armand Feigenbaum)
Quality is meeting the (stated) requirements of the

customer- now and in the future
(Mike Robinson)
Totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its

ability to satisfy stated and implied needs
(ISO 8402 : 1994)

What is a Product?
Product
• A generic term that refers to
– Goods
– Services
• Failure to meet quality requirements in either dimension can have
serious negative consequences

Software QA Teams
• Only test requirements
• Customers and users

The Dual Nature of Usability
• Usability is both
Strategic
Tactical

Interdisciplinary Nature of HCI

What is HCI?
• HCI is a large interdisciplinary area
• Emerging as specialty concern within several disciplines, each with different

emphases
– Computer science (application design and engineering of human interfaces)
– Psychology (the application of theories of cognitive processes and the empirical
analysis of user behavior)
– Sociology and anthropology (interactions between technology, work, and
organization)
– Industrial design (interactive products)

What is HCI?
• HCI concerned with:
– Joint performance of tasks by humans and machines
– Structure of communication between human and machine
– Human capabilities to use machines
– Algorithms and programming of interfaces
– Engineering concerns in designing and building interfaces
– Process of design, specification and implementation
– Design trade-offs

What is HCI?
• Various aspects
– Science
• Human capabilities to use machines
– Engineering
• Building interfaces
– Design
• Design tradeoffs

Case Study – Ticketing System
• A small ticketing agency has many shops distributed throughout the
country
• Feels the need to install efficient ticketing system, for survival
• Manual Issuing Procedure

– Call airlines to check for vacant seats
– Check with customer if the available seat is suitable
– Then ticket is written out manually
– Customer receipts and intinerary
– Accounting for issued tickets every two weeks

Case Study – Ticketing System - Research
• The research on existing ticketing systems reveal
– Computers always going wrong
– Lack of trust in computers
– Staff unable to understand messages
• The Result
– Sales figures had dropped and were disappointing
– A large number of sales staff had left

Ticketing System - Recommendations
• Immediate booking via Internet
• Automatic print-out of tickets, route and receipts
• Direct connection between booking system and accounting system
• Elimination of booking forms

Ticketing System - Recommendations
• Layout of the agency needs to be changed for staff to operate
computers
• Staff training
• Changes to job design
• Support to older staff during period of change
• Changes to employment conditions must be examined
• Staff relationship with other non-techi staff members (Technology

Power)

Factors in HCI
Organizational Factors Environmental Factors
Training, job design, politics, roles Work organization Noise, heating, ventilation,lighting
Health and Safety Cognitive processes and capabilities Comfort Level
Stress, headaches, The User Seating
Musculo-skeleton, Motivation, Enjoyment, Satisfaction, Personality Equipment
disorders Experience level layout
User Interface
Input devices, output displays, dialogue structures, User of colour, icons, commands, graphics, natural language
3-D, user support materials, multimedia
Task Factors
Easy, complex, novel, Task allocation, repetitive,Monitoring, skills, multi-media
Constraints
Costs, timescales, budgets, Staff, equipment, building structure
System Functionality
Hardware, software, application
Productivity Factors
Increase output, increase quality, decrease costs, decrease errors,Decrease labour requirements, decrease
production time,
Increase creative and innovative ideas leading to new products

• HCI is understanding the Complex Relationship between Human
and Computers
• Two Distinct “Species”
• Successful Integration is dependent upon the a better understanding

of both Species
• Hence HCI borrows and establishes its roots in Disciplines

concerned with both

• HCI has roots in many disciplines
• HCI is inter-disciplinary in nature

Social
Cognitiv Organiz
e ational
Psychol Linguisti
ogy Psychol
ogy cs
Anthrop
Ergono
ology
mics
&
Human
HCI Factor
Philosop
hy
Design
Comput
er
Science Artificial Enginee
Intellige ring
nce

Interdisciplinary Nature of HCI – Human Side
• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Organizational Psychology
• Ergonomics and human Factors
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Sociology
• Anthropology

Cognitive Psychology
• Understanding human behavior and mental processes
• Human information processing

– See
– Feel
– Touch
– Smell
– Taste
• How much information can be processed and remembered

Social Organizational Psychology
• Studying nature and causes of human behavior in social context
• Four core concerns

– Influence of one individual on another person’s attitude and behavior
– Impact of a group on its member’s attitude and behavior
– Impact of a member on group’s activities and structure
– Relationship between the structure and activities of different groups
• Informs designers how computers affect working practices

Ergonomics or Human Factors
• To define and design tools and various artifacts for different work,
leisure and domestic environment to suit the capacities and
capabilities of users
• Ergonomist translates the above information from the above

mentioned sciences into context of design of products
• Increase feelings of comfort and satisfaction
• Concerns
– Hardware design
– Radiation from VDUs
– Repetitive Strain Injury (RPI)

Linguistics
• Scientific study of languages
• Command-object (delete ‘report’ OR ‘report’ delete)
• Understanding structure (syntax) and meaning (semantics)
• HCI goal is to develop natural language interfaces

Philosophy, Sociology and Anthropology
• Contribution in the sense of Soft Sciences for HCI
• Considers introduction of IT in society
• Ethnography involves observing people
• Cognitive psychology tries to predict
• Computer Supported Cooperative Writing

Interdisciplinary Nature of HCI – Computer Side
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Design

Other Disciplines
• Computer Science
– Provides knowledge about capability of technology
– Developing techniques to support software design, development and
maintenance
• Artificial Intelligence
– Intelligent Computing concerned with simulating human behaviour
– HCI – development of expert and tutoring systems
• Engineering
– Engineering takes finding of sciences and utilizes them in the production of
artifacts
• Design
– Design contributes creative skills and knowledge to this process

Discipline of HCI

How will we proceed now ?
Foundation
Human Side Computer Side
Interaction Design
Methods

– Human Side
• Cognition
• Cognitive Framework

Going for a Drive
• Driving a Car with a Keyboard
• Steering with Arrow keys
• Brake – Space bar
• Acceleration – Enter
• Indicators
– Left – F1
– Right – F2
• Horn – F3
• Headlights – F4
• Windscreen Wipe – F5

Going for a Drive
• Driving along on Highway
• Suddenly a Cow comes in front
• What do you do ?
• What are your chances of survival

Cognitive Psychology
• Psychology primarily concerned with human behavior and the mental
processes that underlie it.
• It is primarily concerned with information processing

Cognition
• Process by which we became acquanted with things or in other
words gain knowledge
– Understanding
– Remembering
– Reasoning
– Attending
– Creating a new idea
• How Humans and Computers interact with one another in terms of

knowledge transmitted by them

Cognition
• Also described in terms of specific process
– Attention
– Perception
– Memory
– Learning
– Reading, speaking and listening
– Problem solving, planning, reasoning, decision making

Experiential and Reflective
• Experiential
– We perceive, act and react to events around us effectively
– Identify the cognitions shown in previous as experiential
• Driving a car, reading
• Reflective
– Involves thinking , comparing and decision making

What Goes inside the head
Perceiving Understanding others

Thinking Talking to others
Remembering Manipulation others
Learning
Planning a meal Making decisions

Imaging a trip Solving problems
Painting daydreaming
Writing
Composing

Information Processing …
• Lets look at how humans process
information
• Identify the following:

So what was it ?
• Was it :
– An elephant ?
– A Tiger
– An Apple
– Roses
• Roses Of course

Information Processing Analysis
• Trace mental operations
• Example Retrieving a friends phone number

– Identifying friends Name
– Retrieving meaning of words
– Understanding the meaning of set of words given in the exercise
– Retrieve number from memory
– Generate plan and formulate the answer
– Recite digits or write them down

How come we all Recognized them as Roses
• Behind the scenes of Information processing in Humans:
– Input Channels Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste
– Encoding information from environment in some kind of internal

representation
– Internal representation is compared with memorized representations

(Comparison)
– Concerned with deciding on a response to the encoded stimulus

(Response Selection)
– Organizing response and necessary action (Response Execution)

Human Information Processing Model
Encoding Comparison Response Response

Selection Execution

Extended Model
• How Information is perceived by the perceptual processors
• How information is attended to
• How information is processes and stored in Memory

Extension to the Information Processing Model
Attention
Encoding Comparison Response Response

Selection Execution
Memory

Human Processor Model
• Helps Conceptualize human behavior
• Models of users: Model human Processor

– Perceptual System
– Motor System
– Cognitive System

Models
• Human Information Processing Models
• Human Processor Models
• These models assume that is based solely upon mental activities

GOMS
• Goals
• Operators
• Methods
• Selection Rules

More Models
• Knowledge Representation Models
• Mental Models
• User Interaction Learning Models
• Apply to HCI through

– Conceptual Models
– Interface Models

Other Approaches
• Computational Approach
– Computer metaphor as theoretical framework
• Emphasis on
– What is important is processed

More Frameworks
• External Cognition
• Language Action Framework
• Distributed Cognition

External Cognition
• Externalizing to reduce memory load
• Computational offloading
• Annotating and Cognitive tracing

External Cognition - Externalizing
• Knowledge is transformed into external representations
– Example birthdays
– Phone numbers
– Addresses
– Appointments
• Talk about Ghalib tying knots to remember whatever verses he
created at night

External Cognition – Computational Offload
• Computational Offloading
– Try the following
– 2X3
– 12 X 15
– 12387 X 9875

External Cognition – Annotating and Cognitive Tracing
• Annotating and Cognitive tracing
• Modify representation to reflect changes that are taking place
– Annotating
– Cognitive Tracing

Beyond Cognitive framework
• Where do you think the framework lacks?

– Lack of consideration for other aspects
– How people interact with each other
– How people interact with objects other than Computer system.
– In Short Context

Distributed Cognitive framework
• Describing cognition as it is distributed across individuals and
settings (functional systems) in which it takes place.
• To provide explanation to conceptualize cognitive activities
• Analyze processing from the following aspect

– Cognitive
– Social
– And Organization

Distributed Cognitive framework
• Consider an example taking a plane to higher altitude
– ATC gives clearance to pilot to fly to higher altitude (verbal)

– Pilot changes altitude meter (mental and physical)
– Captain observes pilot (visual)
– Captain flies to higher altitude (mental and physical)

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Human-Computer Interaction

1 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

2 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

3 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• A US study in the 1980s found that:

4 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• HCI will be increasingly important in the following areas:

• As part of software development process and system design

• As part of future legal requirements for software

• As the basis for a set of usability criteria to evaluate and choose

• As the basis for successful marketing strategy to the increasingly

5 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

■ ■ Nearly 25% of all applications projects fail.

■ finding problems early makes them easier to fix!

HCI = design, prototyping,

7 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

8 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

Products with a bad user

9 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

“Users are stupid” – anonymous

“Users are dummies” – anonymous

10 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

“Human-Computer Interaction is a discipline

11 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

Usability User Experience

12 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

13 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

Good experience Satisfaction

Bad experience Frustration

14 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

15 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

16 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• What do you see in the Image ?

17 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

18 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• More about Quality later

20 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

21 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

22 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• “Augmentation of human intellect” (Engelbart, 1963)

• SketchPad system at MIT (Sutherland, 1963)

23 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

24 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• 1970’s: technology explosion

25 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• Other issues found

26 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• Another HCI definition

27 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• Unifying theme in these systems

28 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

29 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• Desktop Sized Personal Workstation

• Intended for Individual Use

• First Time a Mouse was Used

• Xerox as slow to capitalize on its invention

30 Virtual University - Human Computer Interaction Imran Hussain | UMT

• The concept of GUI