Research methods for HCI, HCC

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Research methods for HCI, HCC

• Judy Kay
• CHAI Computer Human Adapted Interaction
• School of Information Technologies

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Overview

• What is HCI?
• What is HCC?
• What is the hallmark of excellence in HCI/HCC
  research?
• Research methods
• Case studies

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• What is HCI? HCC?
• definition research methods

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HCI is....

• 1. Creating and studying new hardware and
  software architectures for building
  human-computer interfaces
• 2. Creating and studying new interactive
  techniques, metaphors and evaluation
• 3. Studying processes and techniques for
  designing human-computer interfaces
• 4. Studying users and groups of users to
  understand their needs

http//tochi.acm.org/charter.shtml
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HCI, HCC venues

• Journals
• TOCHI, IJHCS, HCI, ...
• Conferences
• CHI, INTERACT
• others, such as Pervasive, Ubicomp
• Regional eg OzCHI, Australian UIC
• Workshops

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Hardware and software architectures

• User Interface Management Systems - Models for
  specifying interactive dialogs. Algorithms for
  generating or interpreting user interface control
  from such descriptions.

http//tochi.acm.org/charter.shtml
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Hardware and software architectures

• Windowing Systems - Software architectures for
  managing the interactive workspace and the
  allocation of interactive resources such as
  screen space, interactive devices. This also
  includes architectures for integrated usage of
  multiple workstations by multiple users.

http//tochi.acm.org/charter.shtml
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Hardware and software architectures

• Interface Software Tools - for interactively
  designing user-based systems including screen
  layout algorithms, design assistance tools and
  interface testing models and tools.

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Hardware and software architectures

• Interactive Devices - New hardware for accepting
  user input and displaying information. Examples
  of such are 3D input devices, head mounted
  displays, eye tracking devices, new keyboard
  designs etc.

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Hardware and software architectures

• Interface Aspects of Multimedia - Integration of
  sound, video, animation and other interactive
  media into the user environment.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Interactive Techniques - New ways to express
  inputs. eg new ways to express searches, new
  menu models and techniques which exploit new
  input devices.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Workspace Models - New ways to organize work. New
  models for end users to customize their
  interfaces. New metaphors which make interactive
  processes concrete for their users.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Data Presentation - Models for mapping data into
  pictures. Models for editing data by
  interactively manipulating the visual
  presentation. Algorithms for visual layout
  including graph layout algorithms and picture
  prettification algorithms.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Tutorial and Help Systems - Studies of how help
  and instruction should be delivered. Techniques
  for integrating help and instruction into user
  interface support software.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Experimental and Empirical Studies - This
  includes laboratory experiments and field
  studies. Also included are case studies
  evaluating user interfaces, interaction
  techniques, tools, and methods.
• Empirical Studies of Programmers

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User Interface Design Processes

• Analysis and Evaluation Techniques - Methods for
  analyzing and evaluating the effectiveness of
  designs and implemented systems. New software
  tools for interface evaluations. Predictive
  models of user performance with an interface.
  Tools and methods for evaluating alternative
  designs.

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User Interface Design Processes

• Design Processes - Explorations of the design
  process, techniques for capturing designs, and
  methodologies for producing good interface
  designs. Models for integrating design tools with
  implementation and evaluation tools.

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Users and Groups of Users

• Universal Access - Techniques, devices, models
  which facilitate access to and use of computers
  by people with special needs.

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Users and Groups of Users

• Group Work - Explorations of people using
  computers to work together, and systems for
  enhancing group work. Software and hardware
  architectures which support simultaneous group
  work.

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Users and Groups of Users

• Organizational Context - Understanding how user
  interface design and implementation fits into the
  organizations that use and develop interfaces.

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Users and Groups of Users

• Application-Specific Designs - Interfaces for
  specific application areas in which the domain
  places significant constraints on the design or
  implementation of interfaces. This would exclude
  application areas explicitly covered by other
  transactions.

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Halmarks of excellence
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Hallmark of excellence in HCI/HCC

• Addresses important problems for people
• everyday activities for typical people
• special situations, people
• safety critical contexts
• when using technology
• Solid validation
• building on existing theories
• studies
• comparisons

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. appropriate research methods
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HCI is....

• 1. Creating and studying new hardware and
  software architectures for building
  human-computer interfaces
• 2. Creating and studying new interactive
  techniques, metaphors and evaluation
• 3. Studying processes and techniques for
  designing human-computer interfaces
• 4. Studying users and groups of users to
  understand their needs

http//tochi.acm.org/charter.shtml
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Research methods - familiar

• Classic computer science
• Design
• Methodologies
• Theories
• evaluations
• Scalability
• Accuracy
• Effectiveness

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Research methods new for HCI

• Theories
• eg Fitt's Law, Norman's interaction model....
• Design principles
• User studies to determine needs
• eg. interviews, grounded analysis
• Evaluations
• with users
• techniques that do not require users
• statistical methods

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Case studies
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Case study 1 tabletop interaction
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Novel Interfaces tabletop
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Case study tabletop interaction

• Design of new interaction
• New technology
• Comparing two classes of interaction
• Theoretical
• Analytic

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Case Study 1

• T. Apted, J. Kay, and A. Quigley. Tabletop
  sharing of digital photographs for the elderly.
  In CHI '06 Conference on Human Factors in
  Computing Systems, pages 781-790, New York, NY,
  USA, 2006. ACM Press.
• Goals
• Design of new way to interact
• Challenging new software creation
• Validation
• Theoretical analysis
• User study, two populations

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Tabletop interaction design issues

• Tables as social places
• Interaction without keyboard or mouse
• Usable by all
• Interaction design to support co-located
  collaboration and social interaction

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Evaluation of design analytic

• Identify design drivers
• Identify suitable guidelines for design
• Analyse design according to these
• Value for future researchers, designers
• Demonstrates validity in terms of established
  guidelines which, in turn, are based on research

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Evaluation of design user studies

• Design of user study
• Hypotheses and goals
• Participants
• Tasks
• Ethics clearance aside for Hons
• Trial the study
• Actual study
• Analysis of results
• Qualitative v quantitative

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Case study 2 tabletop file system
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Case study file system interaction

• Design issues
• tabletop file system interaction
• beyond hierarchies
• collaboration across different people's file
  systems
• very limited interaction

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Evaluation comparative user study

• Comparing two ways to interact
• Double cross over user study
• New file-system v hierarchical

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Case study 3 new interface to support long term
collaboration on trac
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Case study Narcissus, WikiNavMap, EDM

• Design issues
• help people collaborate more effectively in a
  group by gaining a better sense of the activity
  on a wiki
• long term collaboration is complex
• Kay, J, K Yacef and P Reimann, Visualisations for
  team learning small teams working on long-term
  projects. In C. Chinn, G. Erkens S. Puntambekar
  (Eds.), Minds, mind, and society. Proceedings of
  the 6th International Conference on
  Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL
  2007) 351-353, New Brunswick, NJ International
  Society of the Learning Sciences
• .

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Narcissus
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Design of Narcissus

• user study
• select suitable users
• design questionnaire
• administer it
• analyse results
• common alternatives focus groups, ethnographic
  studies, draw on literature

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Evakuation of Narcissus

• user study
• select suitable users
• design user tasks and questionnaire
• administer
• analyse results
• common alternatives focus groups, ethnographic
  studies, draw on literature

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Case study 4 educational data mining
modelling users from trace data
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EDM

• data mining to learn about users
• Perera, D, J Kay, K Yacef and I Koprinska, (2007)
  Mining learners' traces from an online
  collaboration tool, Educational Data Mining
  Workshop at Artificial Intelligence and
  Education, 60 69.
• http//aied.inf.ed.ac.uk/AIED2007/AIED-EDM_proceed
  ing_full2.pdf

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Case study 5 pervasive interaction
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Case study Memento

• Design issues
• future interfaces, current technology limitations
• Evaluation issues
• proof of concept, usability evaluation
• West, D, A Quigley and J Kay, (2006) MEMENTO A
  Digital Physical Scrapbook for Memory Sharing,
  Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(4), 313-328

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Summary

• HCI/HCC is broad and multi-disciplinary
• Research methods
• For driving design and analysis (models)
• for creation of new things (architectures)
• for assessing whether you have succeeded
  (evaluation)