Introduction to HCI Alexey Zagalsky CSC 106, University of Victoria, 2016 Images used in these slides are used for educational purposes only and I claim no credit for any of the images. Images are copyright to its respectful owners.
What do we mean when we talk about HCI? Human the end-user of a program the others they work or communicate with Computer the machine program runs on split between clients & servers Interaction user tells the computer what they want computer communicates results
What makes a good (User Interface) design? “Facilitating the user to perform a specific task in a specific context in a fast and efficient manner by leveraging the power of technology and design.”
What problem or need are you addressing? Try to find a real problem and describe it - maybe something you always wanted to build Example: Allow users to find dog walkers in their neighborhood
Who are the users? Come up with personas Persona Jane, 62 Lives in Victoria, BC Has 3 grandkids in Toronto Loves to draw pictures with them Wishes she could interact more often
What kind of questions should you ask? - Would you use this app/feature? - Do you have challenges with ? - Would you prefer to on your mobile phone? - How would you design ? - What feature would you like to have? - Is there a reason for not doing an ?
What kind of questions should you ask? - Would you use this app/feature? - Do you have challenges with ? - Would you prefer to on your mobile phone? - How would you design ? - What feature would you like to have? - Is there a reason for not doing an ?
What kind of questions should you ask? “The best predictor of future behaviour is current behaviour” - Tomer Sharon Don’t ask about the future, or the distant past Don’t ask for opinions Ask about recent behaviour (yesterday, earlier this week)
Explore existing solutions How did others solve the same problem? Gain insights on user intuitions and expectations Users don’t want to invest time to learn the application Take advantage of existing usability knowledge
Develop use cases and prototypes Personas Scenarios Use Cases Prototype Scenarios describe interaction of how the product or system would be used by personas in real life Uses cases describe a simple template for the one goal the user wants to do with your product (e.g., send email)
Prototypes: Low to high fidelity Low fidelity prototypes are used for conceptual UI design High fidelity prototypes showcase the graphic design, are close to the finished product
Balsamiq -- low-fidelity, conceptual design prototypes Tutorials https://support.balsamiq.com/tutorials/ Alternatively, you can use pen and paper http://sketchsheets.com/
Evaluate your product Example methods: - Survey - Interviews - Observations - Diary study - A/B testing Learn how to come up with alternative designs and be able to compare them systematically
Ethics - Facebook Incident “Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone. I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused. In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.” source: https://www.facebook.com/akramer/posts/10152987150867796