Human Computer Interaction

UI Design Principles
• Learnability
– Support for learning for users of all levels
• the ease with which new users can begin effective interaction and
achieve maximal performance
• Flexibility
– Support for multiple ways of doing tasks
• the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange information
• Robustness
– Support for recovery
• the level of support provided to the user in determining successful
achievement and assessment of goal-directed behaviour
 2. Flexibility Principles
• Multiplicity of ways that users and system exchange
information
– Dialog Initiative
– Multithreading
– Task migratability
– Substitutivity
– Customizability
 2.1 Dialog Initiative
• Who controls dialogue flow
– User pre-emptive (relating to the purchase of goods or
shares by one person or party before the opportunity is
offered to others).
• User initiates actions
• More flexible, generally more desirable
– System pre-emptive
• System does all prompts, user responds
• Sometimes necessary
 2.1 Dialog Initiative
• Freedom from system imposed constraints on input dialogue.
• User should be able to abandon, suspend or resume tasks at any point
• Modal dialog boxes (A modal dialog is a window that forces the user
to interact with it before they can go back to using the parent
application) are system pre-emptive.
• Direct manipulation (is of a virtual world representing the real world
and is a human–computer interaction style which involves continuous
representation of objects of interest and rapid, reversible, and
incremental actions and feedback) is user pre-emptive
• Minimize system pre-emptive dialogue and maximize user pre-
emptive dialogue .
 2.2 Multithreading
• Allowing user to perform more than one task at a
time
• Two types
– Concurrent
• Input goes to multiple tasks simultaneously
– Interleaved
• Many tasks, but input goes to one at a time
 2.3 Task Migratability
• How easily functions can be moved between user
and system.
• Passing responsibility for task execution between
user and system
– example: spell checking
 2.4 Substitutivity
• Flexibility in details of operations
– Allow user to choose suitable interaction methods
– Allow different ways to
• perform actions, specify data, configure
– Allow different ways of presenting output
• to suit task & user
 2.4 Substitutivity
• Drafting & page layout systems
– Indicate positions with cursor
or
– By typing in coordinates
• Point at spreadsheet cell vs enter name
• Give temperature via slider or by typing
• Other examples???
 2.5 Customizability
• Ability of user to modify interface
– By user - adaptability
• Is this a good thing?

– By system - adaptivity
• Is this a good thing?
Q&A