CS 4750 Human Computer Interaction

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CS 4750Human Computer Interaction
Spring 2004

• Jim Foley
• foley _at_ cc.gatech.edu

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Acknowledgements

• The presentations and assignments have been
  develop by the Georgia Tech HCI faculty over a
  period of years, and continue to evolve.
  Contributors include
• Gregory Abowd, Jim Foley, Diane Gromala,
  Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeff Pierce, Colin Potts, Chris
  Shaw, John Stasko, Bruce Walker
• Feedback is most welcome!

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Agenda

• Introductions
• Course Information
• A little about HCI
• Project Information
• Homework

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Introductions - Jim Foley

• Professor in College of Computing
• Founded GVU Center in 1991
• Industry and consulting
• Research Interests
• HCI - now focused on technology in education
• Computer Graphics Information Visualization
• Technology Transfer
• Office - TSRB 365
• Hours Tu-Th 11-12 and 315-4 (email or phone to
  confirm) or by appt outside classroom before
  and after class

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Introductions Julie Kientz

• Your TA
• CS PhD Student
• Office Hours
• M (3-4), W (1-2) and by appointment (tentative)
• CCB Darts Lab (second floor lounge)
• julie_at_cc

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Introductions - You

• Name, Degree, Your specialization
• What youd like to get out of the class
• Previous HCI experience
• An interesting fact about yourself
• This week - put a page with your picture on the
  class Swiki (Co-Web)

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Course Information

• Books
• Interaction Design, by Preece, Rogers and Sharp,
  Wiley, 2002
• The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman.
  Currency/Doubleday, 1990.
• Web Site
• Syllabus/dates/readings/lectures
• Dates subject to change
• Assignments
• Policies
• Discussion areas
• HCI resources

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Course Information

• Grading
• Mid-term final exams (30)
• Group project, 4 parts (40)
• More info to come...
• Homeworks (20)
• Participation (10)
• Class involvement
• Presentations

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Policies

• No lates accepted without documented personal
  issues (serious illness, family emergency, etc)
• Individual homeworks done individually
• Team projects original approach
• But get LOTS of inputs

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Course Information

• Resources
• Previous courses, courses elsewhere
• Content, lectures, projects,
• Books
• Web sites
• Go further
• Move beyond lectures book
• Further courses
• Step into research

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Course Aims

• Consciousness raising
• Make you aware of HCI issues
• Design critic
• Question bad HCI design - of existing or proposed
• Learn Design Process
• interfaces
• Improve your HCI design evaluation skills
• Go forth and do good work!

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Course Overview

• Requirements Gathering
• Human abilities
• Design
• Evaluation (without users)
• Evaluation (with users)
• Dialog interaction
• Special topics
• CSCW, InfoVis, Ubicomp, 3D Interaction, Adaptive
  Interfaces

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Homework - Due Thursday

• Put up on the class Swiki
• A paragraph about yourself
• Something most people dont know about you
• Why you are taking 4750
• Your picture if available, or a link to your home
  page if you have one
• One-paragraph description of a potential project
  for the course (bring 5 copies of this to class
  with you)

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And were off!

• HCI what is it?
• Can you define / describe it?

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HCI

• HCI is at the interface between a human and a
  computer performing a task
• Task - write document, calculate budget, solve
  equation, learn about Bosnia, drive home, ...
• Task might be work, play, learning,
  communicating, etc etc
• Yes, thats a little simplistic
• Key points are that user has to
• Express task (execution)
• Interpret results (evaluation)
• Note not just desktop computers!

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Why should we care?

• Computers (in one way or another) now affect
  every person in our society
• Increasing utilize computers at work and home
• Tonight - count how many in your home/apt/room
• Goal increase satisfaction, utility,
  efficiency, and safety
• Product success may depend on ease of use, not
  necessarily power
• But not always Macintosh OS vs. Microsoft
  Windows

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Goals of HCI

• Allow users to carry out tasks
• Safely (Three-mile Island, ATC)
• Effectively
• Efficiently
• Enjoyably
• Bottom line is lives or dollars or intangibles

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Usability

• Important issue
• Combination of
• Ease of learning
• High speed of user task performance
• Low user error rate
• Subjective user satisfaction
• User retention over time

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What is difference between

• User-friendly interfaces
• and
• Programmer-friendly interfaces?

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Famous Quotations

• It is easy to make things hard. It is hard to
  make things easy. Al Chapanis, 1982
• Learning to use a computer system is like
  learning to use a parachute if a person fails
  on the first try, odds are he wont try again.
  anonymous

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Key Historical Event

• Design of the first Mac 1983-1984
• The computer for the rest of us

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How Improve User Interfaces?

• Educate software professionals
• Do NOT wait til the end
• Good UI can not be pasted on top of
  poorly-designed functionality
• Draw upon accumulating body of knowledge
  regarding HCI interface design
• Integrate UI design methods techniques into
  standard software development methodologies now
  in place

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UI Design / Develop Process

• User-Centered Design
• Analyze users goals tasks
• Create design alternatives
• Evaluate options
• Implement prototype
• Test
• Refine
• IMPLEMENT THE REAL SYSTEM
• Be prepared for further iterative refinement

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Know Thy Users!

• Physical cognitive abilities special needs
• Personality culture
• Knowledge skills
• Motivation
• Two Fatal Mistakes
• Assume all users are alike
• Assume all users are like you
• Please leave your ego at the door

You Are Here
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User Expectations (1)

• Some users expect the computer-based system to be
  just like the old system.

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User Expectations (2)

• Other users expect the system to work magic..

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Design Evaluation

• Both subjective and objective metrics
• Some things we can measure
• Time to learn
• Speed of performance
• Rate of errors by user
• Retention over time
• Subjective satisfaction

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• And now more about that project

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Project Structure

• Design and evaluate an interface
• 0 - Team formation topic choice
• 1 - Understand the problem
• 2 - Design alternatives
• 3 - Prototype evaluation plan
• 4 - Evaluation
• Main 4 parts worth 10 each

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Project Details

• Part 0 - Topic definition Due Jan 15
• Identify team topic, create web notebook
• Part 1 - Understanding the problem Due Feb 5
• Describe tasks, users, environment, social context

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Project Details

• Part 2 - Design alternatives Due Feb 24
• Storyboards, mock-ups for multiple different
  designs
• Explain decisions
• Poster session in class that day
• Part 3 - System prototype eval plan - Due March
  25
• Semi-working interface functionality - enough to
  evaluate
• Plan for conducting evaluation

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Project Details

• Part 4 Evaluation Due April 20
• Conduct evaluation with example users
• Characterize pros and cons of the UI
• Fix the easy to fix UI problems
• Present results to class April 20 and 22

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Project Groups

• 4 people
• You decide
• Diverse is best!
• Consider schedules
• Cool name
• Some time available at next class for recruiting
  members

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Project Presentations

• Informal poster session
• Feedback on ideas, both class periods
• October 2
• Other students and expert gallery
• Formal project presentation
• Final week of classes
• 15 minute summary

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Project Topics

• Set of possibilities
• Max of 2 teams per topic
• First-come, first-served
• By next Thursday
• Set up web notebook
• Real client

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Previous Project Topics

• Mobile/handheld (cars, tour guides, etc.)
• Wedding planner
• GIS
• Calendar agent (speech)
• Audio / Web sites
• Domain that you know well
• More on Class Co-Web
• http//swiki.cc.gatech.edu8080/cs6750

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What Makes a Good Project

• Access to domain experts users
• Real clients
• Interesting human issues
• Rich domain for design

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An Experiment

• Pre-recorded lectures
• Powerpoint
• Talking head - me )
• Multiple uses
• View in advance of class
• Alone or with your team
• May have short set of questions
• View during class
• With instructor or with facilitator
• For review
• For distance learning