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58 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is scenario-based usability engineering? |
a technique using a scenarios to design user interface design. An attempt to formalize User Centered Design. |
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What is a scenario? How are scenarios used in user interface design? How do scenarios contribute to the design of easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, and useful human-computer interfaces? |
a story about people carrying out activity let use cases continually modify design throughout development. Problem scenarios help show design issues. Design scenarios describe a new vision for how a human need might be addressed. |
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What is a prototype? How are prototypes used in the design and development of user interfaces? (p.8) |
an operation model, developed to demonstrate a design idea. Implements ideas that are abstract making them concrete, viewable, and testable. |
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What is iterative development? Why is iterative development a critical component of interface design? (p.9) |
an operation model in which design documents are produced as an output of each phase, but they are continually modified through prototyping and testing. |
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How is the expression “there is no silver bullet” used in the context of computer science? (p.6) |
Since software requires complex, abstract design, it inherently will have no single innovation that will drop costs as much as hardware costs. |
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Usually, in a design process, there is one correct answer, and the goal of the design process is to find that one answer. Do you agree or disagree? (Hint: Read the “Tradeoffs in Design” box on p.7.) |
Disagree, there are always tradeoffs involved. One should keep track of these tradeoffs with the creation of a design rationale (documentation of tradeoffs of specific design ideas). |
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Why is it useful to have a “design rationale” at the end of a design process? (p.7) |
You need to keep track of why design ideas have been rejected or accepted. It can be time consuming, but very valuable when developing and maintaining complex systems over a long period of time. |
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What is usability? How can it be measured quantitatively? (pp.9-11) |
the quality of a system with respect to ease of learning, ease of use, and user satisfaction. Can be measured quantitatively through human performance, human-computer interaction, and collaboration and group interation. |
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What was Card, Moran, and Newell’s noted contribution to human-computer interaction? Why was this an important contribution? (pp.11-12) |
GOMS , an early HCI project, was used to analyze the goals, methods and actions of routine human computer interaction. This was an advance in human performance testing, because it addressed the mental activities that guide behavior |
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What is GOMS? (p.12 and p.235-238, but the “select insertion point” method in Figure 7.2 is wrong)PLEASE FILL IN THE "CARD BACK"tR |
user model Goals Operators Methods and selection rules goals name users intention, methods that list the steps needed to achieve the goal, operators that implement the methods, and any selection rules needed to choose among multiple possible methods or operators |
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What is cognitive science? How can user interface design benefit from cognitive science? (p.12) |
A new branch of science created by people interested in how people solve problems and learn new things. User interface design could benefit in usability with a design rooted in cognitive science, since it will be adapted with knowledge about how people may interact with a given interface. |
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What is participatory design? (p.23) |
work that takes place as a collaboration between developers and the people who will use the system |
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What is requirements analysis? |
phase of software development in which the needs of clients with respect to a proposed project or technology are analyzed. |
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Work can be characterized as having three dimensions: activities, artifacts, and social context. Describe each of these. Why is it important to consider each in the design of a user interface? (pp.38-39) |
activities personal/organizational goals that individuals or groups pursue and the actions necessary to complete them. artifacts: what info is retrieved or created in the course of activities, what tools are needed. social context: include of structure/organization individuals/groups, what roles defined (imp/expl) , dependence requirements between people for goals |
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3. What is hierarchical task analysis (HTA)? (pp. 39-40 and Annett, 2003) |
an approach for analyzing activities in a process, where individual tasks and subtasks are iddentified and organized into a hierarchy. Each task with more than one subtask gets a plan that defines ordering of subtasks. |
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4. Which of the three dimensions of work are best captured by HTA? Which are not so well captured by HTA? |
activities, somewhat artifacts but not so much social context |
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5. What is ethnography? (pp. 41-42) |
an analytical technique, used by anthropologists to gian insights into the life experiences of people whose everyday reality is vastly different from the analyst's . |
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6. What are stakeholders? Why is it important to get all stakeholders involved in the requirements analysis phase of a system design? (pp. 43-44) |
the many different groups of people who will be impacted by the development of the system. since any group of stakeholders cannot adequately communicate the perspectives of the others, many details of their work are simply invisible to those in the supervisory roles. |
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7. What is “tacit” knowledge? How can you get it from someone? (p.44) |
"unofficial" knowledge, learned when deailing with the specific needs of different situations, exceptions, particular coworkers, etc. you can get from observation and discussion (contextual inquiry, participatory analysis). |
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8. What is a field study? What is the goal of a field study? What kinds of data should you collect in a field study? What kinds of analyses would be useful to conduct? (pp. 51-64) |
a method where normal work activities are studied in a normal work environment. Usability evaluation. Collect observations, and interview notes. usability inspection, claims analysis |
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9. When interviewing a user or potential user of a system, why is it sometimes useful to start the interview with open-ended questions? What is an example of an open-ended question? An example of a question that is not open-ended? |
Your interview data can get more varied results than specific questions How/why, why did you become a computer science student too specific, doesn't leave answerer much room for elaboration: what year did you start school |
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10. What are hypothetical stakeholders? (Note: They are also known as personas.) Why is the role of hypothetical stakeholders in a design process? (pp. 66-67) |
imaginary people with characteristic you think are typical of a stakeholder group. they serve as actors in the problem scenarios and the background and motivation for each helps us to imagine how a specific scenario might unfold |
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In scenario-based design, a “claims analysis” is a consideration of design tradeoffs, a sort of cost-benefitanalysis. Why is a consideration of design tradeoffs important in a design activity? (pp. 72-75) |
the tradeoff could have good or bad effects to each group of stakeholders, so ideally you'd minimize bad effects. |
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What is interaction design? Why is it difficult to represent interaction design? What are three differentways to represent an interaction design? |
technique focused on making sure people can do the right thing at the right time. Because user interaction tasks have a complex state, it is hard to represent all of the goals of tasks. Dialog design (step by step exchange between humans/system), Storyboard |
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What are the seven stages of action? (Figure 5.1 on p. 160) |
task goal (decide on something to check/do) system goal (need to open xxx file to check) action plan (point at shortcut, dbl click, go to place in file to check data) execution (do action plan) perception(pointer over icon, hi lighted., point at data, hi lighted.) interpretation (i opened file, should see answser xxx) making sense(data looks ok, move on) |
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What is the “gulf of evaluation” and the “gulf of execution”? How can an interface reduce these “gulfs”? |
eval:steps 5-7 exec:steps 1-4 They are concepts that provide an overarching framework for understanding the planning and execution of interaction sequences. Feedback as to what state you are in and when tasks are complete can help. |
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What is an affordance? What is the best way to figure out if something that you think is an affordance isreally an affordance? |
is an aspect of an object that makes it obvious how the object is meant to be used. if an object visual nature inherently implies an action, it may be an affordance. |
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What is a direct manipulation interface? What is a command language interface? |
is built from objects that are direct analogs of objects/actions in the real world. command language interface consists of a vocabulary and composition rules used to identify and manipulate task objects indirectly. |
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What are two advantages of direct manipulation over command-based interaction? Of command-based interaction over direct manipulation? |
less training to pick up and use no vocabulary /syntax to remember more precise commands allow more system goals not all goals have visual analogs |
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What is an action sequence? (pp. 164-171) How does a user put together an action sequence? What is therelationship between planning an action sequence and HTA? |
the planned steps needed to reach a goal users don't usually do this consciously they are the same roughly, in as much as their planning. |
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What is a chunk? (p. 166; and slides) |
organize several interrelated bits of information into a single unit. |
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Give an example of a task for which it would be best to provide a direct manipulation interface and a task for which it would be best to provide a command based interaction. (pp. 161-163) |
open files (filefolder in w7, filecabinetdrawer, ubuntu) list attributes of files in certain folder |
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What are keyboard shortcuts? How are they usful? How are they not so useful? (p.177) |
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What is a storyboard? (p.190) What aspect of a user interface does a storyboard help to convey? |
a graphical event by event enadctment of a complex or crucial sequence of user-system interactions (a lofi prototype) |
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Name and briefly describe the two basic types of user errors. Which are more common for novices? Whichare more common for experts? Give a specific example of each, and provide a general design guideline forminimizing each type of error. |
mistake (novice) when user selects wrong goal slip (expert) when user selects correct goal, but there is a problem in execution. |
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11. What is a user interaction “mode””? Are modes generally considered to be a good or bad idea in userinterface design? Why? Give two examples of when an interaction mode would be a good design decisionand explain why. |
a restricted interaction state, where only certain actions are possible. |
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What is cognitive psychology? How can cognitive psychology inform the design of easy-to-use, easy-tolearn,and useful computer systems? (p.5) |
is a branch of experimental psychology, the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. it has special focus on acquisition and application of knowledge and skill, based on experimental results. this information could help design of an easy to use/learn/useful computer system. |
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What are are two kinds of knowledge that people have about systems? (p.6) Which is more important forthe user? |
knowledge of the system (only useful if it supports task relevant inferences about procedures). procedural knowledge (how to use the system to perform task) (less required the better, but more important still) |
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What is the Model Human Processor (MHP)? (pp. 9-24) |
an information processing model of human cognition with overall structure of processors and storage systems, and some basic principles of operations |
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Draw and label the major components of the MHP. |
p 10 |
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What is a fundamental difference between hearing and vision, specifically in terms of memory decay? |
visual 200ms 17 letters auditoray 1500ms 5 letters |
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What are saccades and fixations? What are their typical durations? |
eye movements in jumps, followed by fixations jump 30 ms fix 60-700ms |
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What is working memory (WM)? (p.14) What are chunks? (p.14) What is a user interface design guidelinethat relates to WM? |
also known as short term memory, scratch pad memory |
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What are the two kinds of knowledge that are represented by two distinct memories in the MHP? (p. 17)Give an example of each kind of knowledge. What is the capacity of long term memory (LTM)? |
procedural declarative how to do something my bday is xxx theoretically infinite since we can't really measure yet |
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What is the role of the cognitive processor in the MHP? |
does 'thinking' by manipulating wm contents |
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What is the motor processor in the MHP? What is some specific motor activity that is not represented in theMHP? |
causes motor movements in response to instructions in wm involuntary muscle controls, such as heartbeat |
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Trace the flow of processing through the MHP for the processing that would occur if a person were to pusha button as soon as they see a light on a display |
display>eye>visualproc>imagestore>patternrecog>working m>cognitive processor if stimulus in wm, put push button in wm mp > if pushbutton is in wm, then activate button pushing muscles>muscle control output> |
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What are some design considerations that should be made when designing a pushbutton-input auditoryoutputinterface, as you did for Project 1, specifically given the human capabilities and constraintscharacterized by the MHP? |
the state either needs to play in a timed interval or by a keystroke to remind users their state since the auditory image store is merely 1500ms |
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What characteristics of human information processing, as described in the MHP, make keyboard shortcutsuseful, and what characteristics make keyboards not so useful. |
have to use more procedural and long term memory for commands |
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What is HTA? |
Hierarchical Task Analysis Organized system of actions required to complete goal. process to decompose tasks into subtasks to any desired level of detail into a tree structure.. subtasks ordering is through a plan for any node of over 1 in size. |
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What is a task? |
piece of work that has to be done |
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HTA addresses what shortcoming in traditional time and motion studies? |
they were inadequate to describe tasks of increasing complexity and ever more important mental content. |
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What is the role of the “plan” in the HTA? Where does it appear in a diagram? What are the three commontypes of plans discussed in the reading? |
cognitive task analysis it appears in the edge between parent and children. The plan is to provide the sequence of sub-task execution. fixed sequence routine procedure (do this, do that, and then this) time sharing/dual task plan for when two or more operations to be pursued in parallel |
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To what level of detail should you take an HTA? |
stop when the product of the probability of failure and the cost of failure is judged acceptable p x c criterion. |
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What is the value in carrying out an HTA as opposed to simply listing the sequence of steps that a personneeds to take to accomplish a task, such as in a flowchart? |
the plans in an hta can impart more infomation than simple decisions in a flowchart. |
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How is HTA useful for building easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, and useful computer systems? |
if you decompose the steps required to complete action fully, you can easier see steps you may overlook as a seasoned user.. and address problems earlier on. |
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what are human factors |
study of people interacting with systems to perform goals |
