Interaction Design – Beyond human-computer interaction

     This paper is a collaborative effort of different institutions to experiment and bring out various meanings of design in human life. It has justified the use and need of design in human life beyond any tangible aspect. The subject has been seen through the evaluation techniques that help experience even ambient by the display methods. As it interacts with the human mind, it even stands by the user of the design to support the interface. It considers the principle of human cognition to sync the interface with steps of manoeuvre that refines the core design. The interaction even appears at the metaphysical level where the human lives get into the system design for user friendliness and usefulness where the person involved may deciphers the interface to be justified, where as it is not. Thus, reflecting the separation, in doing the act of attachment; by the functions of system. The paper will discuss in three parts, the interaction of design that is beyond human or computer interface.

     Evaluating an Ambient Display for the Home: This part of the paper presents the experiences on the comparison; jointly presented by Intel Research Seattle and University of California, Berkeley; on the evaluation techniques. Along with the team of observers, the duo conclude the message clearly that considering the present ambient, designers of the ambient display have the luxury of the heuristic evaluation as an important evaluation tool to be access to. The evaluation technique has proved its criteria at claim successfully, discounting the counter idea of in situ technique of ambient display for the home.

     Sunny Consolvo of Intel Research and Jeffrey Towle of University of California, have described and logisised the absence of usability problems in the heuristic evaluation. The entire project began in supporting the network caregiver by designing technologies to reduce their workload. The idea has taken its shape, exploring the ambient display that has the capacity to ease the user with user-friendly information access system that is needed, shedding some supervision load off the caregivers (Mankoff et al., 2003). The ambient display includes the useful information that have emerged after a prolong interviews and discussions with the target group. The same have been used by the users for period of four 3 weeks in their home, with the counter technique in situ, wizard of Oz to several other caregivers network.

     The central theme, their creation of evaluation is known as the CareNet display (Consolvo, Roessler & Shelton, 2004). It is a revolutionary extension of Digital Portrait innovation. By design it is a digital picture frame that contains information related to the elder; bounder the portrait, which are needed by the caregivers. Elder’s meals, medications, outings, activities, mood, falls, and calendar are the chosen events that make up the display status of the design. All these are shown in icons, so that one can mark and maintain a status quo on daily basis. As a status, the information by icon gives an overall impression of the day in the elder’s life. To dig deeper into it the touch screen system reveals details of any particular information icon. In addition, it also provides a trend view, where it allows access to the previous day’s data (Mynatt, Rowan, Jacobs & Craighill, 2001). A very human aspect covered in this design programme is the privacy of the user group. The elders can decide which user can access which information and can lock any particular update from viewing.

     Two evaluations methods that are the In Situ and the heuristic been used as the research methodology of the evaluation of the CareNet Display. In Situ includes the mid-study questionnaire and telephonic conversation of a researcher with the user to gather daily update of the display on a remote basis. On the other hand, in the heuristic evaluation technique there was presence of evaluators connected with website that give a virtual experience of the CareNet display and how it works. They also had a digital display like the In Situ evaluation, except it display hypothetical information but the original updates from elders. Evaluators explained the violations as per the technique on the basis of the 12 parameters mentioned; Sufficient information design, Consistent and intuitive mapping, Match between system and real world, Visibility of state, Aesthetic and pleasing design, Visibility of system status, User control and freedom, Easy transition to more in-depth information, Peripherally of display, Error prevention, Flexibility and efficiency of use.

     With 60 violations reported in heuristic evaluation that are not present in In Situ has confirmed the technique to be the tool to redesign the user interface. Though In Situ spotted some violations including a violation common to heuristic, have been ruled out on the ground that the nature of violation is visual, and it will differ in the result of In Situ evaluation on the actual device and the heuristic image study through laptop (without the actual device) creating a difference in visual comprehension.

     Human Factors Testing in the Design of Xerox’s 8010 “Star” Office Workstation: William L. Bewley, Teresa L. Roberts, David Schrolt and William L. Verplank of Xerox Office Systems Division have applied the concept of deconstruction in their effort to experiment the three human factors that describe the meaning, significance and evaluation of the user interface for a point of entry to redesign the same. The Xerox 8010 office workstation is hit by the problem of the change in decision. Otherwise known as Star for its superior technical aspects and usage by the high profile professionals needs to be designed for the casual users with extensive functionality but small training cost. Recognising the new design for star became the innovative challenge as the perceptions of the designers could not meet the criteria for the see change in target segment. In search of an acceptable design the team has involved the principles of cognitive psychology too.

     To clear the bottleneck, a prototype has been made to be used on the user interface environment that may answer the queries about the design and the usability. Various analysis were performed on different models, where the Card model was finalised to study the number of steps involved in usage and the time taken for it. This became the key factor following which the functional test group experiments the formal human factors. The device is a powerful computer supported one with all the attributes of computer and the unique projection capacity of displaying the exact resulting image of the printed copy of the document (Seybold, 1981; Smith, lrby, Kimball, Verplank ; Harslem, 1982; Smith, Harslem, Irby ; Kimball, 1982). To dissect the product selection tests have been conducted where in the 1st test has been conducted on the mouse button and its three functions. Selection time and error are dependent variables, as the test has 6 schemes which are been assigned to 6 different groups. The 2nd test is about scheme design, where connecting the selection error result of the 1st test, this one focused on developing scheme for quick selection of standard text unit.

     Next in the line is the icon shape test. It is concern about the design of the icons in relation with user interface, difficulties and desired directions to the design. Naming, Rating and Time tests are the sub-sections of the same parent test. The third and final is the graphic test, which is complicated and leads to the redesigning of the prototype to finalise. It gives a detail explanation of the structured graphic approach of making line drawings (Lipkie, Evans, Newlin ; Weissman, 1982). The test has been revised to modify the graphic selections and commands. It upgraded the qualitative behaviour of the design system by eliminating the multiple-clicking and adding graphics only commands for sketches and lines thus simplifying the selection process. As the question to be addressed is less well defined, the focus went more into the different levels and schemes of experiments. Though the Star user interface achieved a quantum progress, but the project gave us a ratification of the Star’s design process rather than an end to end solution experiment.

     Designing for Usability – Key Principles and What Designers Think: John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis of IBM Research Center describe the four principles, elaborating the basis for a general methodology of designing a new computer system for the end users. These principles suggest that the designer must study and understand the users and their expected nature of tasks. In this effort the designer is involving in the interface while developing the system but without involving them as the user. Next, there exist joint executions of the designing team with the expected user to extract perceived information during the development. Then the future users are introduced to the prototype to get the feel of the real atmosphere and their experiences and reactions are measured for any future scope. Findings from user experience, the problems; if any, are rectified, which gets into the cycle of retesting and redesigning as needed.

     The principles recommended in 1970s, though not employed but the carried out experiments have concluded the key step as the goal for a system development. This is where the principles are providing a process to ensure in meeting the goal. It recommended that the user interface design should take place before the system design as what is meant is not that exactly what is said or measured. We feel the designer is governed by the feedbacks of the user as described in the principles. But it is of great importance to consider the cognitive and the emotional aspects of the users related to the system in progress. For this, the designer evaluates the primary data from the course of the principles and act on the notion created from the information surrounding the principles. The same has been performed by Apple for its product Lisa (Morgan, Williams ; Lemmons, 1983 and Williams, 1983).

     There are users who work in their very own way and hardly become part of the designing team. For them the system includes the Interactive Design where the user can discover the functionality of the system. An empirical measurement has been drawn by assigning task to the users and recording their performance, attitudes and thoughts to asses the behavioural targets of the prototype (Lewis, 1982).

     Initially the experiment failed as our common sense principles are extremely compelling but seldom applied. factors like; underestimated user diversity, pro to power of reason than to user involvement, user’s lack of user’s knowledge of what on offer in the market, too much of dependency on user manual and more have threw the project off the track. Nevertheless, a second approach is made before it was too late; by the fine tuning of iteration. Including one case history and indicators of principles, lead to usable systems confirms the principles are not intuitive, and the whole is supported by a survey data too. In addition the team assured the 4 principles can be extended and co-ordinated to update a holistic approach to user interface development, which will be achieved within a longer duration of the project (Gould ; Lewis, 1983).

Reference

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Mynatt, E.D.; Rowan, J.; Jacobs, A. & Craighill, S. (2001). “Digital Family Portraits: Supporting Peace of Mind for Extended Family Members,” Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI ‘01, pp.333-40.

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