Human Computer Interaction

Introduction

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 Agenda
• Introduction to HCI
• HCI in Software Engineering
• Areas of Research in HCI
• HCI in India
• Course Outline

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• How do you measure the success of a software
product?
– Users who use the product
– Exception: Embedded software and Operating System code

• Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is concerned

with the theoretical and practical approaches to
making successful and usable software

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• “Human‐computer interaction is a discipline
concerned with the design, evaluation and
implementation of interactive computing systems for
human use and with the study of major phenomena
surrounding them.”

According to ACM SIGCHI

curricula on Human Computer
Interaction (www.sigchi.org):

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• What is not HCI?
– Not just about what it looks like

• What is HCI?
– About how it works

• HCI is concerned with the design of interactive

systems
– Focuses more on user performance than system
performance

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• The goal is to create products that enable the user to
achieve their objectives in the best way possible

• Interaction between a user and a product often

involves elements like aesthetics, motion, sound,
space, and many more
– Each of these can involve even more specialized fields like
sound design for the crafting of sounds in user interactions

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• Why it is important to have a good design?

• Some of the examples of bad design in next few

slides

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• Google wave – Web based computing platform for
collaboration (launched in 2010 and killed in 2012,
reason - complicated user interface)

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• Railway ticket design problem:

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• Railway ticket design problem:

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• Information overload in a parking lot at LA:

Designers are often faced with

situations where they have to design
for a lot of information to be displayed
in a small space.
For example, designing for mobile
apps means facing the same problems
as this parking lot.
Is there a way out? How can the
design be improved?

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• Good design for the parking lot problem:
This design works well because it is
user-centered. Designer realized that
drivers simply want to know whether
they can park at a spot. Yes or No –
that’s all drivers needed, and that’s all
this sign shows.

This design also made use of visuals,

rather than text, to convey information -
Green for OK, red for No Parking. Its
designed even for color blind, with
stripes for No parking
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• What are the lessons learnt in the parking lot design?
– Understand your users’ needs, then design based on that
– Need to pay attention to users, tasks and context

• Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible

(Jared Spool, usability expert).

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• Designing interactive systems – science or craft?
– Does it involve artistic skill and insight or reasoned
methodical science?

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• What HCI designers do?
– Apply design theories into solutions that work in the real
world

• Designing usable interactive systems requires knowledge

about:
– Who will use it
– What will it be used for
– Work context & the environment in which it will be used
– What is technically and logistically feasible

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usable systems useful systems

• easy to learn
• support users’ tasks
• easy to use
• easy to remember
• prevention of errors
• pleasant to use

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 Introduction
• HCI - Multidisciplinary

• Expertise in a range of topics

– Cognitive Psychology
– Ergonomics
– Sociology
– Ethnography
– Design and Art
– Information Systems / Management Information Systems
– Software Engineering
– Computer Science & Engineering to build the technology

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• According to ACM SIGCHI, Computer Science is the
basic discipline and other disciplines serve as
supporting disciplines

• Most important attributes for HCI experts are to be

both creative and practical, placing design at the
centre of the field.

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 HCI and Software Engineering
• HCI - concerned with “Increasing Usability” -
building usable systems

• Software Engineering - concerned with “System

Functionality” – building useful systems

• Interactive system design life cycle

– Key stages: Know the user, propose design, evaluate design
by users, refine design
– Iterative design process

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 HCI and Software Engineering
• Prof. Anirudha Joshi (IDC, IIT-Bombay) compares
Interaction design/HCI to be similar to film direction

• Requires creative and technical skills

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 Areas of Research in HCI
• Signal and Vision based Interaction
– Speech and Text processing
– Spoken dialog system
– Vision based face and motion capture
– Brain computer Interface
– Multi-modal interfaces (speech, vision, eye gaze, face,
physiological information etc.)

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 Areas of Research in HCI
• Intelligent Methods and Interfaces
– Natural language and processing
– Gesture recognition
– Cognitive models of intelligence
– Affective and emotional models
– Affective computing
– Intelligent wearable, mobile and ubiquitous interfaces

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 Areas of Research in HCI
• Modeling Human Cognitive Processes
– Modeling perceptual processes
– Modeling of learning and thinking
– Modeling of memory
– Collaborative learning
– Collaborative systems
– Computer supported assistive technology

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 Areas of Research in HCI
• Application domains
– Natural User Interfaces
– Human-robot interaction
– Virtual and augmented reality
– Remote and face-to-face collaboration
– Embodied conversational agents
– Mobile interfaces
– Technology for differently able person
– Health
– Games
– Education / Education Technology
– Social media analysis / Social computing
– Human Data Interaction (HDI)
– HCI for Development (HCI4D) Pallavi Rao G
 HCI research in Universities
• CMU
• Cornell
• MIT Media laboratory
• Georgia Tech
• University of Washington
• Queensland University of Technology
• Stanford Design school
• University of Michigan
• University of California, Berkeley
• Design schools – IITB, IITG, NID

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 HCI Research in Industry
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Google
• Nokia
• HP Labs
• Apple
• HP
• Intel

• Most of these IT companies have their usability team

working along side software team

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 HCI in India
• HCI is an emerging area of great potential in India
• Mostly part of design schools, CS/IT have started
taking interest
• Problems faced for HCI research in India
– Interdisciplinary
• No collaboration between fields
– Data collection
• Instruments (for ex. Eye tracker, EEG machine) cost high
• Difficult to get some type of data (for ex. Emotion recognition data,
fMRI)

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 HCI in India
• Some of the HCI research projects:
– Speech Based Mobile Interface for the Textually Low
Literate
– User Centered Design of a Collaborative Work
Environment in an Educational Scenario
– An Artificially Intelligent Recommender for enhancing
user's browsing experience.
– Role of Non-verbal communications in User Interactions
and Demonstration through Gesture driven interfaces.
– Interactive Information Platform for Remote Health Care
– Study of Mobile as a future strategic advertising medium in
India

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 Course Outline
• In this course, we shall learn about:
– Diverse users, their interaction with systems and the
importance of good interface design
– How interactive systems are designed and evaluated in
practice
– Guidelines and heuristics for interactive system design
(also how and why the guidelines work)

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 Course Outline
• Text book
– Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Abowd, Russel Beale, “Human–
Computer Interaction”, Pearson, 2009

• Assessment components
– Internal Continuous Assessment – 50 marks (scaled down to
30%)
• 2 tests (15 marks each)
• Term Work (20 marks)
– Tutorials: Design (5 marks)
– Design a mock interface (12 marks)
– Evaluate the mock interface (3 marks)
– Final Exam – 70 marks

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 Course Outline
• Lecture notes and other materials
– Blackboard
– Dropbox

• Instructional Method
– Lectures
– Seminars

• General Information
– Lecturer: Asst. Prof. Pallavi Rao
– Contact: pallavi.rao@nmims.edu

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