HUMAN COMPUTER

INTERFACE
BCS (HONs) Computer Science
1/10/2017 Submitted to: Binary University
Submitted by: Maha Mazhar
 Human Computer Interface

Table of Contents:

1) Identify client population criteria for your system demonstration (be very specific... e.g. not
novices, but novices at email who are unfamiliar with any email client)
…………………………………………...…………………………...……………….02

2) Identify what the problem is with any existing system interface (only choose one thing, and
be specific again... not just 'it is confusing')………………………………………………..
……………………...…….……..05

3) Read several papers to identify other system development

approaches……………………………………………………………...……………..……...07

4) Integrate those ideas into a proposed solution. What makes a good interface?.......................10

5) References…………………………………………………………………………..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,12

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1. Identify client population criteria for your system demonstration (be very specific... e.g.
not novices, but novices at email who are unfamiliar with any email client)

Introduction: [1]

Microsoft Outlook is a versatile component of the Microsoft Office 2003 for users to manage
personal information and to communicate with others. It helps you in managing your email
messages, appointments, contacts, and tasks, as well as making reminders and tracking activities.

Some of the major functions of this software:

 Mail:

Outlook can function as an email client connecting to the Microsoft Exchange server using a
proprietary protocol, as well as to standard mail servers using POP3 or IMAP protocol. It
provides a multiplane view for easy browsing of your mailboxes. You can use Word to compose
email. Moreover, it is bundled with an effective client-side junk mail filtering tool.

 Calendar:

The calendar function is highly sophisticated and feature rich. After marking your appointments
and events on the calendar, you can add sound or message as a reminder. Calendar items can be
colored for easy identification. You can display the calendar in different views: a day, a week, a
work-week, and a month.

 Contacts:

Outlook comes with a powerful personal contacts database. Besides email addresses, you can use
it to store various pieces of information such as job titles, phone numbers, addresses, and notes
for each of your correspondents.

 Tasks:

The "Tasks" tool assists you to maintain a "To-do list" easily. It helps you to record the tasks of
your various duties and projects. You can set priority and due date to each task.

 Journal:

You can keep track of your activities using the "Journal" tool. Journal can automatically record
all the email your sent and received, and keep track of how long you spent in other Office
programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint .

 Notes:

The "Notes" tool provides an electronic version of the Post-it sticky notes. You can create notes
with different colors and set reminders for each individual note.

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Outlook is a popular email clients used in enterprises. It is included in Office 2003 standard,
professional as well as Academic-License editions. Its popularity keeps on increasing due to the
feature-rich functions and its ability to keep in sync with mobile and embedded systems

Design Goals of Microsoft Outlook: [2]

 Search:

Microsoft Outlook comes with an integrated search function that allows you to quickly find
whatever you're looking for. Search using keywords to find e-mails, contacts and dates. This
feature can be used in any of the Outlook programs, including Calendar, Task Manager and
Contact Manager.

 Security Features:

Microsoft Outlook has a few enhanced security features to protect your email account from
predators. This also includes protection from junk and phishing website email. Its built-in email
scanner alerts you when you are sent something from an untrustworthy sender. You can disable
live links and block senders through the security features.

 Easy Organization:

Because Outlook is an email management program, it doesn't just allow you to send and receive
e-mails; it allows you to sync your email directly into your calendar or your contact list. You can
make future plans by adding dates directly from your emails. Or you can send someone an email
or text message as you are jotting down a note in OneNote, Outlook's note-taking program.

 Connect With Others Easily:

Microsoft Outlook Calendar allows you to share your calendar with anyone that you choose. You
can create, edit and manage an online Calendar for any of your important clients to access at
their convenience. You can also share subscriptions and contact information. With the click of
just one button, you can send anyone in your contact list a text message directly to their phone.
Or send them a customized business card.

 Enhanced Connectivity:

Microsoft Outlook is more than just a program for your personal computer. Take it mobile by
connecting it to your phone. You can read and send out emails, edit your calendar and take notes
without being near your computer. Sync your Outlook account to your phone, and you can turn
the calendar on your phone into a portable planner. Get alerts while you are out of the office on
upcoming appointments.

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Early findings of Microsoft Outlook:

The criteria of client population in early findings of MS Outlook are classified into two main
groups of users:

1) Prowess users
2) Beginner users

Prowess Users in MS Outlook:

 Prowess users are the users which are expert in MS Outlook software
 Such users can easily use all the features in this software without facing any kind of
problems
 They can get a lot of benefits from this software’s features such as:

1. Outlook comes with solid and effective spam filtering and blocks phishing attempts.
2. Snappy, flexible search, virtual folders, conversations and mail grouping help you
organize mail.
3. Outlook integrates email messages, to-do lists, scheduling and social networking
updates well.
4. Tracking Feature: Most of the users want to know that how many peoples have read
the message sent by them. So MS Outlook has released a new features using it a user
can track the status of sent email messages.
5. Inbox Clean Up Tool
6. Work offline: It gives offline access to e-mails

 Can perform many tasks by using this software professionally in any organization
 They manage Schedule on a month by month basis
 Such users uses this software to send/receive e-mail
 List contact information for multiple users on a network
 Share information with contact list
 Can operate through other e-mail addresses for one centralized in-box

Beginner Users:

 Beginner users are the users who are not familiar with software, new to the software or using
it for the first time
 As such users are not familiar with software’s functionalities; they find that Microsoft
Outlook provides too much functionality, which may make it difficult to use simple functions
such as email and schedule.

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 Many commonly used features may be unknown or hidden because of the number of features
available in Microsoft Outlook.
 Beginner users faces several problems while using MS Outlook such as:

1) Countless e-mails sent with High Importance

2) Send and receive receipts to verify the opening of an e-mail
3) Constant management of schedule to avoid confusion
4) Slow to generate multiple windows

 Outlook is a bit confusing to set up for beginner users and can be confusing to use with its
myriad of options.
 Outlook lacks useful message templates flexibility.
 The lack of a customizable dashboard where you can mix elements of email, calendar, and
task into one starting point is again very odd.
 Outlook's intelligent use of virtual folders, fast message searching, flagging, grouping and
threading make beginner users dealing with even large amounts of problems as the features
are advance enough that it makes the use of MS Outlook difficult for the users.

Abstract Summary:

Microsoft Outlook software has been used by many users in this world, users who used this
software, gave their feedbacks about outlook and its functionalities

Some user’s feedbacks were satisfied, they liked the software and appreciated its features as MS
Outlook not only provides e-mail access but also give access to to-do lists, calendars etc.

On the other hand many users who used this software for the first time were confused and did not
get its functionalities or users were not able to become familiar with its features

As a result of such feedbacks, users were classified in two major categories one as prowess who
got familiar with outlook and other as beginners who were still struggling with its
functionalities. By classifying the users in these categories it made easier to check how efficient
the software is.

2. Identify what the problem is with any existing system interface (only choose one thing,
and be specific again... not just 'it is confusing')

Problems in Outlook’s Interface for both Novice & Prowess Users: [3]

Interface is not user friendly:

 Outlook’s interface shows folders and items in panes.

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 Other panes are used to navigate from folder to folder and display information such as
Help.
 In addition to panes, Outlook’s user interface uses menus, toolbars, and a status bar.
 The menu bar and Folder Display Pane are always displayed and cannot be turned off.
 The reading pane is displayed in all email folders and can be turned on if desired in other
folders.
 Task panes are not displayed unless you turn them on or use a function such as Help that
shows the help task pane.
 These type of manual functionalities can make novice users confuse and make the use of
such interface even harder

Send/Receive Groups:

 A send/receive group consists of one or more e-mail accounts and all the settings for
sending and receiving e-mail for the group.
 It is difficult for the novice users to open the send/receive group dialog

Outlook is too sluggish:

This is the most common of Outlook’s problems. Over time, emails, notes, calendar entries,
attachments etc. keep piling up in the Outlook PST making it abnormally large in size. It
eventually reaches to such an extent that working with Outlook becomes nearly impossible due
to its utterly slow speed.

Outlook crashes unexpectedly:

It’s ironical how something that’s meant to help can itself become a cause of the trouble. Many
Outlook add-ins claim to help around with Outlook’s working and make things easier for you but
heaven turns into hell when any of the add-ins corrupt. Sadly quite a few add-ins have bugs and
many are poorly written. A corrupted add-in can cause Outlook to crash without warning. And if
you were in the middle of composing a rather long and important email, the frustration can be
imagined. Installing too many add-ins can make Outlook slow too.

An email on the office PC doesn’t show up on your laptop:

When Outlook is installed on more than one computer, user may find that the email set on one
doesn’t match the other. Downloading an email on both would also lead to an inconsistency.

Users sending out Spam emails:

Users may get to know from their contacts that they’ve received unwanted emails from users
while users may not be aware of sending them. This could prove to be quite embarrassing if the
receiver is an important business associate and the sent out email is inappropriate.

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Outlook PST has corrupted:

You’ll know if your PST has corrupted if you start seeing errors pointing out the same on
opening Outlook. A corrupted PST can lead to inaccessibility of all data within your Outlook
since it won’t allow it to open.

Too much functionality:

Some users feel that Microsoft Outlook provides too much functionality, which may make it
difficult to use simple functions such as email and schedule. Many commonly used features may
be obscured or hidden because of the number of features available in Microsoft Outlook.

Integration: [4]

Microsoft Outlook is a proprietary software application. Therefore, there is very little integration
with other programs, such as Google Calendar. If you currently are using a Google Calendar or
other scheduling application, you will need to download and install a 3rd party application to
maintain all of your current information or input it manually into Outlook again. In addition, the
web-based version of Microsoft Outlook offers more features in the Internet Explorer browser
and does not support a full-featured version other common Internet browsers, such as Mozilla
Firefox.

Poor error handling:

During the interaction this interface displays the errors and after that restart or crash the
application so there is no good handling of errors that may leave the interface in the previous
situation rather than restart.

3. Read several papers to identify other system development approaches

System development approaches in HCI using SDLC. [5]

1. Predictive approach to the SDLC – an approach that assumes the project can be planned in
advance and that the new information system can be developed according to the plan

2. Adaptive approach to the SDLC – an approach that assumes the project must be more flexible
and adapt to changing needs as the project progresses

Some SDLC models used in HCI:

1. Waterfall model – an SDLC approach that assumes the phases can be completed sequentially
with no overlap

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2. Spiral model – an adaptive SDLC approach that cycles over and over again through
development activities until completion

3. Incremental development – an SDLC approach that completes portions of the system in small
increments across iterations, with each increment being integrated into the whole as it is
completed

Some Phases used in every project those are all related groups of development activities, such as
planning, analysis, design, implementation, and support

Approach of the SDLC used in Human-Computer Interaction:

This approach has two types:

1. Conventional Predictive approach

2. Newer Adaptive approach

Conventional Predictive Approach:

Every project there must be activities associated with project initiation, planning, analysis,
design, implementation, and deployment. Each of these sets of activities are called a phase.
There is another phase, called support, which consists of those ongoing activities to maintain the
system once it is in production. The following list identifies the objective of each of the six
phases in SDLC:

 Initiation – activities to get the project identified, approved, and budgeted

 Planning – activities to scope the project, plan and schedule the work, and identify the
required resources
 Analysis – activities to understand the user requirements
 Design – activities to define and structure the solution system
 Implementation – programming activities and other activities to build the solution and
database
 Deployment – activities associated with data conversion, final testing, and putting the
system into production

The SDLC that is the most predictive is called the waterfall model, an SDLC that assumes the
various phases of a project can be completed sequentially—one phase falls into the next phase,
and there is no going back. This approach is almost never used any more. It never worked very
well. Modified waterfall approaches are more flexible and allow considerable overlap of the
phases. The six phases tend to follow one after the other, but there is always a lot of overlap.

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Modified waterfall more effective, it is more efficient by allowing developers to multi-task with
analysis, design, and programming. However, the overall approach is to have one big project and
to develop the system in one large continuous sequence of activities.

Advantages of Conventional Predictive Approach:

1. Clear project objectives.

2. Stable project requirements.

3. Progress of system is measurable.

4. Strict sign-off requirements.

Disadvantages of Conventional Predictive Approach:

1. Time consuming

2. Never backward (Traditional)

3. Little room for iteration

4. Difficulty responding to changes

Newer Adaptive Approaches:

In contrast to the predictive SDLC, the adaptive SDLC assumes project activities have to be
adjusted as the project progresses. This is necessary because aspects of the project are not well
understood at the beginning. An early version of an adaptive SDLC is called the spiral model,
which cycles over and over again throughout development activities and makes adjustments until
the project is complete. After each cycle or iteration, a working prototype is available as a initial
model that shows some aspect of the system that is ready for testing and user evaluation.
Iteration is one cycle in the spiral model during the work activities like analysis, design, and
implementation. Iteration is used to complete a version of the working prototype. For the
completion of a project using multiple iterations which breaks the problem of system
development into more manageable mini-projects.

Related to the idea of an iterative project is the concept of incremental development. Obviously
by having a limited scope for each interaction, we are only developing a portion – and increment
– of the total system. An increment may be completed in one or more iterations. Sometimes this
is also referred to as a gradual approach because the system is growing during the life of the
overall project.

One approach to incremental development is to build the overall structure of the system first, but
with very limited functionality. This is usually called a walking skeleton. The system is “fleshed
out” over time as it is built tested.

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Advantages of Newer Adaptive Approach

1. Avoidance of Risk is enhanced.

2. Strong approval and documentation control.

3. Implementation has priority over functionality.

4. Additional Functionality can be added at a later date.

Disadvantages of Newer Adaptive Approach

1. Limiting re-usability

2. Applied differently for each application

3. Risk of not meeting budget or schedule

4. Integrate those ideas into a proposed solution. What makes a good interface?

I have preferred to use Iterative Model to develop my Interface because: [6]

In Iterative model, iterative process starts with a simple implementation of a small set of the
software requirements and iteratively enhances the evolving versions until the complete system
is implemented and ready to be deployed.

An iterative life cycle model does not attempt to start with a full specification of requirements.

Design Technique of My Interface using Iterative Model:

I will develop my interface by Iterative process which starts with a simple implementation of a
subset of the software requirements and iteratively enhances the evolving versions until the full
system is implemented.

At the each iteration, design modifications are made and new functional capabilities are added.
The basic idea behind this method is to develop a system through repeated cycles (iterative) and
in smaller portions at a time (incremental).

Following is the pictorial representation of Iterative and Incremental model Which I Prefer to
develop my Interface:

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Iterative and Incremental development is a combination of both iterative design or iterative

method and incremental build model for development.

"During interface development, more than one iteration of the software development cycle may
be in progress at the same time." and "This process may be described as an "evolutionary
acquisition" or "incremental build" approach."

In incremental model the whole requirement is divided into various builds. During each iteration,
the development module goes through the requirements, design, implementation and testing
phases. Each subsequent release of the module adds function to the previous release. The process
continues till the complete system is ready as per the requirement.

The key to successful use of an iterative software development lifecycle is rigorous validation of
requirements, and verification & testing of each version of the software against those
requirements within each cycle of the model. As the software evolves through successive cycles,
tests have to be repeated and extended to verify each version of the software.

Iterative Model Application

Like other SDLC models, Iterative and incremental development has some specific applications
in the software industry. This model is most often used in the following scenarios:

 Requirements of the complete system are clearly defined and understood.

 Major requirements must be defined; however, some functionalities or requested
enhancements may evolve with time.
 There is a time to the market constraint.
 A new technology is being used and is being learnt by the development team while
working on the project.

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 Resources with needed skill set are not available and are planned to be used on contract
basis for specific iterations.
 There are some high risk features and goals which may change in the future.

Iterative Model Pros and Cons

The advantage of this model is that there is a working model of the system at a very early stage
of development which makes it easier to find functional or design flaws. Finding issues at an
early stage of development enables to take corrective measures in a limited budget.

The disadvantage with this SDLC model is that it is applicable only to large and bulky software
development projects. This is because it is hard to break a small software system into further
small serviceable increments/modules.

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References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook [1]

https://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/ee483695 [2]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/21/8634979/microsoft-outlook-email-service-new-features-
user-interface [3]

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/osettings-oemailset/i-do-not-like-the-
new-outlookcom-user-interface/0afd36b9-f524-45fb-9ae5-b2aa4b4e9908 [4]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220892325_Integrating_Human-
Computer_Interaction_Development_into_SDLC_A_Methodology [5]

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/human_computer_interface/quick_guide.htm [6]

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