Reading Assignment 8
Why HCI (see 2011 notes)
Usability vs. Games
Nobody learned to play the violin because it was easy (or play chess, or baseball)
How does usability matter?
Frustration vs. Challenge
Design Principles
Don Norman boils it all down to 2:
- Visability
- Conceptual Models
Is needing an instruction manual a cause or a cure?
Other key concepts:
- Affordances
- Natural Mappings
- Constraints
- Indicators of actions
- Feedback
- Hidden state (and making it visible)
Elevator button example.
Engineering Tradeoffs
What do you trade usability for?
- Efficiency
- Fun
- Aesthetics
- Cost
- Space/Size
Evaluation and Execution
Basic steps:
- form goal
- execute
- evaluate
Detailed steps (from Norman)
- Form Goal
- Form Plan
- Specify Action
- Execute Action
- Perceive what happened
- Interpret
- Evaluate
Important: usability issues in ALL of the above stages.
- Gulf of Execution
- Gulf of Evaluation
Notes from student example
- Me: elevator (old w/o numbers to new)
- Shree – Water tap (when things go wrong)
- Scott – Multimeter (why still need to re-plug probes?)
- Drew – Thermostat
- Zhouyuan – washing machine (coin op)
- Mik – Vacuum cleaner (feedback, affordance, constraint, …)
- Joey – PC
- generic vs. special purpose
- internal state (debuggability)
- Eric – Pandora
- Zach – Dropbox
- Sam – Chrome
