Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design

Users’ tasks and goals are the driving force behind development

Users are consulted throughout development

All design decisions are taken from within the context of the users, their work, and their environment

Attentive to human abilities, goals, and desires

Why is HCI Important? UI is the major part of work for “real”

programs approximately 50%

Bad user interfaces cost money

5% satisfaction up to 85% profits reputation of organization (e.g., brand loyalty) lives (Therac-25)

User interfaces hard to get right people are unpredictable intuition of designers often wrong

Nearly 25% of all applications projects fail. Why? overrun budgets & management pulls plug others complete, but are too hard to learn/use

Solution is user-centered design. Why? easier to learn & use products sell better can help keep a product on schedule

finding problems early makes them easier to fix! training costs reduced

User Interface Development Process

Usability

According to the ISO: The effectiveness, efficiency, and

satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments

This does not mean you have to create a “dry” design or something that is only good for novices – it all depends on your goals

Usability/User Experience Goals

Set goals for early & later use to measure progress

Goals often have tradeoffs, so prioritize Example goals

Learnable faster the 2nd time & so on

Memorable from session to session

Flexible multiple ways to do tasks

Efficient perform tasks quickly

Robust minimal error rates good feedback so

user can recover Discoverable

learn new features over time

Pleasing high user

satisfaction Fun

Who Creates UIs?

A team of specialists (ideally) graphic designers interaction / interface designers information architects technical writers marketers test engineers usability engineers software engineers customers

Knowledge

Design Applied Psychology Computer Science

There are multiple strands, sometimes in parallel, sometimes cross-fertilizing. Goal is not to advocate, but explain.

History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

“Form Follows Function” -- Walter Gropius: funder of Bauhaus

school The shape of a building or object should

be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose

Design for People, design for manufacturing.

Le Corbusier’s assertion that “a house is a machine for living in.”

Vannevar Bush

Capturing, Storing, Retrieving, Sharing Information

Interactive! Human-Centered Founds NSF/DARPA

and of University research at scale as forming the leading edge of applied research

Memex system

The world’s first hypertext The idea is that all the world’s

information would be available on a knowledge worker’s desktop.

Information storage and retrieval were key parts of this vision.

What’s especially prescient is the vision outlined a plan for sharing ideas.

People could author “trails” through the world’s information, save them for later use, and share them with others.

But, you’re not always at your desk You want technology to come with you. And knowledge workers need to produce

content as well as consume it. And the world isn’t just textual, it’s also

visual. So, Bush imagined you’d wear a camera

and use it to capture stuff. -- most of us keep our mobile

computation and camera in our pocket.

Digital Computing

Feb 14, 1946 ENIAC -- Designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. was the first large-scale, electronic,

digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems

weighed almost 30 tons. Input was possible from an IBM card reader, while an IBM card punch was used for output.

Compilers The idea of creating tools to empower

users has a long and storied history, beginning with the first compiler -- Grace Hopper’s invention in the early 1950s She conceptualized how improved tools could

provide a much wider audience with access to computation.

In the intervening years, good programming environments for the desktop and web enabled legions of developers to create the content that helped put a PC on every desks.

Memex Inspires Doug Engelbart

Graphical UI

Memex inspires Mouse, Hypertext

Memex inspires Alan Kay

PARC, where he fleshes out his vision of a Dynabook – (laptop, tablet pc) “The best way to predict the future is to

invent it”

Inspiration

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal” - Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

19th century Fang sculpture

Course Values

This story demonstrates several principles that form the core values of this course. First, as Vannevar Bush showed us

Course Values

People

designs are for people. The success of our field is determined by how much we empower people. Second,

Course Values

People Prototype - rapid prototyping is both essential

and tractable, even for highly futuristic technologies, helps us evolve our ideas, learn from their use, and communicate to others.

Alan Kay built the Dynabook out of cardboard! Bush didn’t just say Memex would help knowledge work. He painted a rich picture of how, and even produce sketches and an implementation plan.

Course Values People Prototype Compare

Third, it’s essential to create, evaluate, and compare many alternatives. Doug’s group made a whole lot of input devices before settling on the mouse. Fourth, designs often improve through iteration.

Course Values People Prototype Compare Iterate

After the input bake-off, Engelbart’s group wasn’t done. They used the best ideas themselves, watched others use them, and continued both controlled and informal experiments. Fifth,

Course Values People Prototype Compare Iterate Principles

theory can help inspire designs, and clarify what their salient differences are. The theories of Alan Newell, Stu Card, and colleagues helped guide PARC’s designers.