Urban HCI myths

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Urban HCI myths

• Lyn Bartram
• Proud Purveyor of HCI Truth

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Myth 1. HCI is just about the user interface to
my application

• 1a. And user interface is just look-and-feel
  with some marketing added..
• Interface the place at which and means by which
  independent and often unrelated systems meet, act
  on and communicate with each other
• --Websters Dictionary

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Myth 1. HCI is just about the user interface to
my application?

• The Systems Design view
• the scientific discipline concerned with the
  understanding of interactions between humans and
  other elements of a system
• The Communications View
• 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.

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Myth 1a. Well then, HCI is just about usability?

• Usability means optimising the design of an
  artifact or a technology to solve a problem
• Making a better hammmer for your nails
• Doesnt help the dry -my-hair problem
• Problem definition, Design, Implementation,
  Deployment and effects of technology

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Myth 2. HCI problems are easily defined

• Limited by perspective
• The blind men and the elephant
• The ABM UI
• The CSS complaints path

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Myth 3. Only engineers and computer types need to
care about HCI

• From the systems design viewpoint again
• Understand interactions
• From the communications viewpoint again
• Optimise communications
• We can leverage a lot from human-human
  interactions
• Arguably engineers, computer scientists and other
  geeks arent necessarily good at same

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Myth 3. Only engineers and computer types need to
care about HCI ?

• Ergonomics (human factors)
• Visualisation
• Interaction (hardware , software, motor skills,
  )
• Information structure and retrieval
• CSCW (computer-mediated collaboration)
• Ethnography (how people use tools)
• Cognitive and perceptual psychology
• Operating systems
• Security

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Myth 4. HCI is design (art) not science

• Large empirical body of research
• Human factors, perception and other reproducible
  experimentally robust results
• BUT
• Difficult to study humans in ecologically valid
  ways
• Complexity breeds interpretative and qualitative
  research that is difficult to generalise
• .BUT
• Still increasing body of knowledge about how
  systems interact

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Myth 5. HCI is science and not design or art

• Designers are trained in communication and
  expression
• Quantification does not imply understanding

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Myth 6. The user always knows what she wants

• User reporting is notoriously inaccurate
• Actually the user mostly knows what she doesnt
  want as soon as you show it to her
• HCI design is most often an iterative process of
  being wrong

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Myth 6a. The more expert the user, the better
she knows what she wants

• Eliciting expert knowledge is incredibly
  difficult
• Expert knowledge is the easiest to misconstrue
  and mishandle
• Wrong problem specification
• Wrong solution direction
• Non-invasive, non-disruptive informative
  observation is an oxymoron
• Expert users are expensive in effort and time

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Myth 7. What the user wants is what the user
needs

• Individual preferences often fly in the face of
  performance results
• Explicit articulation does not map to implicit
  rules and knowledge
• Balance between efficiency, affection and hatred
• Empirical research informs hard decisions

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Myth 8. HCI Design and deployment should be left
to experts

• Whos an expert???
• Participatory design provides guidance and
  enlists owners
• Autonomy, influence, flexibility and freedom are
  as important in human-computer interaction as
  they are in human-human interactions

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Myth 9. HCI is deterministic there is
eventually always a right answer

• Set of tradeoffs factoring in environmental,
  cognitive, cost and capacity constraints
• Often a choice of the best of unsatisfactory
  options
• A moving target once encountered there is
  always something better

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Myth 10. HCI is easy

• NOT!
• The hard sciences are math, chemistry, physics,
  
• The soft sciences are the most difficult because
  they study the most complex system (humans)
• HCI attempts to cover the meeting of the two
• 78-90 of dev costs relate to HCI