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Sp02 Final Exam Review: HCI Design

A. "Know thy users for they are not you." When you're designing a program to be used by another group of people, the UI should be designed with those people in mind. Furthermore, you should have tested the UI with a few members of the target audience.

B. Many senior citizens have had their vision degrade. There's a good reason you see so many senior citizens with glasses, and senior citizens reading books with larger-than-normal text.

C. People who've used computers for any length of time have expectations as to how UIs work. By not abiding by these expections, you've confused the users. Without any directions on screen, it's no wonder they're confused. How should they know where to click? KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

(Sounds like these folks have earned themselves entrance into the Interface Hall of Shame.)

There's another way to think about (C). Mark Guzdial


B. An alternative is to make the "BIG FONT" option available for those that have trouble reading small fonts.

C. The system should be built to avoid user errors. The "OK" and "Cancel" choices were designed differently from what most users expect. This change may be great and revolutionize the design of UI; however, it must be clearly documented and tested with the user population prior to release of system (use of a control group). Most platforms have a guideline for creating UIs. If the designer of the system does not want to go through the hassel of testing a new UI design, he/she should follow the guideline to create an interface that is easy to use.

Johnny S. Yen


Avoiding user errors is good. What were the lessons from the Audio Notes case study that can be applied here? Mark Guzdial

A. and B. I agree with the above answers.
C. I also agree with the above answers but you may also want to include that when writing a UI you want to try not to surprise the user. Do what the user would expect to do by looking at your interface.
Eric Soto
its all about knowing the user... find out not only what the user wants, but what the user is like. get to know the user - what kind of special accessibility features - like bigger font sizes - will the user require? although you as a programmer may think standards like ok/cancel buttons are boring, you are not the user, and the user probably finds it very helpful. after you think you've found out everything about your users, get some of them to test your product... and then fix all the things you didn't realize before
ellie

possibly that option should have been exactly that, an option, so that when they demo'd the product to the very first customer, they could say "We've been experimenting with a new way of closing windows, what do you think about...". That would also make it very easy to remove.
Hank Wilde
"Make knowledge in the world visible" Isn't OK/Cancel important knowledge for the user? Shouldn't it therefore be visible? Mark Guzdial



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