Mockups & Prototypes

Feedback on Scenarios
•The “Goldilocks” Issue
–Too Detailed:
“Susie uses the mouse to move her cursor into the address bar. Once she sees the blinking bar in the address bar, she uses keyboard to type the URL and hits ‘Enter’ to bring up the site.”
–Too High-Level
“Susie opens the website to search for lesson plans.”
–Juuuuustright:
“Susie decides to go find lesson plans using uen.org. She opens a web browser and types the URL (www.uen.org) into the address bar.”

•How to decide on the right level of detail?
–Could someone who has never seen your system imagine your persona using it?
–You can assume that you don’t need to describe very common knowledge
•E.g., what it means to “click” or “type” or change text
–Does your scenario inform your design?

Mockups
•Definitions
–Pictures of screens as they would appear at various stages of user interaction
–Very early prototypes made of low-fidelity materials
–Prototypes with limited interactions and content
–Typically Paper (or Cardboard)
•Drawn or Created with software tools
(use something simple that you are most comfortable using)
–PowerPoint, Photoshop, Pencil, SmartDraw
–OmniGraffle is popular for Macs
•Use different pages for new windows
Mockups = Low-Fidelity Prototypes = Paper Prototypes

Example Mockups
PDA travel application
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq1rkVTZLtU&NR=1
Website design (Not in English …)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WbxisFDYk4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtfWM2jRS2w
Google Reader (Demonstration Prototype)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y

•Purpose
–Facilitate design evaluation BEFORE spending lots of time and money on a high-fidelity design
•Reduces programming time
•Can save money by identifying changes early
–Concrete design improves feedback/evaluation
•Prototyping: Same quality with 40% less code & 45% less effort (Boehm, Gray, Seewaldt, 1984)

•Use whatever is fast and easy for *you*
–Hand drawn?
–PowerPoint?
–Photoshop?
–Pencil (add-on to Firefox)
–Supports rapid paper prototyping for web/software interfaces
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8487

Local vs. Global Mockups
•Local
–Target selected aspects of the system
–Identify KEY issues. What is most tricky?!
•What terms to use in menus
•How to provide feedback, etc.
•Global
–Overall interaction with your system
–More holistic in nature
–Covers numerous tasks with the same prototype

Vertical vs. Horizontal
•Vertical <-> Local
–Implement one section of your system in detail
–Leave the rest as low-fidelity
•Horizontal <-> Global
–Implement all of your system in detail at high levels
–Make all high-level features interactive
–Leave in-depth content unspecified
•E.g., actual description of grants, actual help files

High-fidelity Prototypes
•Also known as
–Prototypes
–Version 0 systems
•Use after you have clarified your design requirements
•A working release of your system
•Developed with same tools as final system
•May lack some functionality/content

Design & Evaluation Plans

What is a Design Brief?
•Written plan
–Focuses on the design you want to achieve
•Captures goals you want to meet
•Identifies key components of success
•Explores challenges you’ll need to meet/resolve
–Ensures communication about priorities, milestones, and criteria for success
–Synthesizes important data & input
–Acts as a point of reference during the design process
•Does the solution fit the problem?
•How to prioritize issues in the design?

Components: Design Briefs
•Team Members
•Statement of Problem/Challenge
•Activities to Date
•Summary of User Interviews & Participant Profiles
•Design Priorities and Issues
•Quick Review of Related Products/Systems
•Persona(s)
•Task Statements
•Evaluation Plan
•Exposures
•Schedule of Design & Evaluation Activities
(Examples in blue are from the very first design brief I ever wrote.)

Team Members
•Specify the names and email addresses of all team members
•(If working alone, just name yourself!)

Statement of Problem/Challenge
•Should be one paragraph or less (short & sweet)
–What is the design challenge?
–What are you trying to accomplish?
–What will be the end result of your efforts?

The Center for Spoken Language Research (CSLR) has developed a series of interactive books and tutors that are designed to support the development of reading processes in children. Although there are a large number of existing, pre-defined tutors that ask the child to perform various tasks, it is not clear how to represent student performance in a clear and functional way. We will design the data display screens for the CSLR software so that it is useful and intuitive for literacy teachers working with these students.

Activities to Date
•Meetings with Project Sponsor/Stakeholders?
–Summary
•User Interviews
–Summarize the number of interviews and the general user profile (e.g., To date, we have conducted 5 interviews with technology teachers who have varied levels of experience in schools)
–Interview Questions: OK to provide the most current set of questions.

Summary of User Interviews
•Provide a summary of your user’s activities, needs, and concerns.
•These draw upon your “key themes”, but are described in detail.

All the teachers we spoke to tend to work with small groups of children at a time (between 1 and 8) and keep written records on their students. By law, the teachers are required to set yearly goals for the students, which are formalized in either an IEP (Individual Education Plan: developed for all Special Education students, and reading is one component of this plan) and/or in an ILP (Individual Literacy Plan: developed for students who are specifically behind in reading; these students may or may not be in special ed). All teachers expressed a definite need for representing growth over time. The times in the year at which teachers tested their students’ progress differed, but all were concerned with understanding a child’s growth, and being able to communicate that to others (e.g., parents or the child’s regular teacher)… (ONE OF FOUR PARAGRAPHS)

Summary of Profiles
•OK to summarize in a table
•Always is anonymized
–no names or identifying information
•Focus on important characteristics for your user group (these likely will vary by project)
–Age?
–Gender?
–Experience?
•Career
•Computer

Design Priorities and Issues
•What will a successful design need to achieve?
–What is necessary to meet the needs of your users?
–What will be key components of your design?
•What are likely design problems or challenges that you’ll face?
–What do you foresee as barriers to success?
–Where is your design likely to break down?

Design Priorities and Issues
Priorities
•Allow teachers to compare growth over time.
•Breakdown data into useful categories: skills, types of errors, etc.
•Support comparison of performance to specific goals for the student.
•Support materials that can be used in conferences with parents.
•Grade level assessment broken down into component skills.
•Selected information from teacher report summarized for parents.
•Support comparison to benchmarks, rubrics, grade-level standards, etc.Issues
•The CSLR wants a basic design template for data design, but diverse data will be produced from the interactive books and tutors. Can a single format accommodate diverse types of data? These include:
•Comprehension data from interactive books
•Skill data from interactive tutors
•Performance data (such as fluency speed)
•Teachers not only want summary data on student performance, but also strongly desire a categorical breakdown of errors and performance. This categorization may be variable based on student performance and may require “smarter” technology than currently exists.
•One teacher has mentioned that the use of “Excent” –a database program to track special education students’ progress –is being introduced in the school district. If the use of this program becomes standardized, reports from the interactive books and tutors should easily export to this program.

Persona(s)
•You may include multiple personas, but you should identify your primary user(s).

Task Statements
•Task Statements
–Not a task analysis
–Choose 3-5 tasks that your users will need to accomplish with the system. Use your persona(s) to describe those tasks in a rich, narrative manner. (In your final report, these will become full scenarios).

Dorothy is a reading specialist who works primarily with small groups of reading disabled children outside of their regular classroom. She is concerned about the progress of Brett, a grade 2 student. Brett seemed to be making steady progress when she started working with him, she feels as though he may not be showing the same level of growth in his phonological awareness this past month. Dorothy wonders if there is one particular skill, like the pronunciation of long vowels, that is causing his slower progress or if the problem is more general. Dorothy would like to compare Brett's recent progress with his long-term growth and to find out if Brett is performing at the same level for all the component reading skills in the suite of interactive books and tutors he has been using.

Review of Related Products/Systems
•Identify 2+ systems that can inform aspects of your design
•Review these systems based upon your design priorities & issues
•Hint: Screen shots often will be helpful in your analysis

Although many existing software programs advertise that they provide “progress reports” on children’s performance (e.g., Reader Rabbit, Reading Blaster, Accelerated Reader), the form of these progress reports does not meet the needs expressed by literacy teachers. For example, in “Read, Write, and Type,” if the child selects to complete the auxiliary skills section (which is optional) they receive a score for typing accuracy (a score of the number of letters the child typed correctly/ the total number of letters typed) and a score for speed. However, there are no means of specifically evaluating areas where the child may be experiencing difficulties. The only way to discover where the child might be having trouble is to sit with the child and watch his or her progress as he or she plays with the program. This type of assessment clearly does not meet the needs of reading teachers, who express a desire for specific skill-based assessment as well as time saving features such as summarizing and listing errors.

Evaluation Plan
•What will you do to test your design?
–High or low-fidelity prototypes?
–E.g., Cognitive Walkthrough or Heuristic Analysis?
–Testing with users?
•Who?
•Where?
•When?
–OK if this changes. Create a general plan for now and revise as needed.

Exposures
•What problems will you need to solve before/during system testing?
–Provide an anticipated solution, fall-back plan

•Seeding the prototype with realistic data (and data that can be interpreted independently of teacher observations of a student).
•One teacher has volunteered to share a “running record” with us. This may give us a good base for realistic and appropriate student data. However, it may be difficult to translate this qualitative record into quantitative data for testing.
•Meeting teachers at their schools for prototype evaluation may cause problems with platforms, software, & computer access. Teachers may not be able to come to campus for testing.
•One group member has a laptop available for use. We may use the laptop to provide a consistent computer environment even if we need to travel to the teacher’s location.

Schedule of Design Activities
•What are your key HCI milestones?
–User Interviews
–Prototype (low or high fidelity)
–Internal Evaluation (e.g., Cognitive Walkthrough)
–User Testing
–Final Report
•What are the tasks for each milestone?
•If in a team, who are the responsible members for each task?

Schedule of Design Activities Example
Deliverables
Completion Date
Responsible Member(s)
UserInterviews
3/07/2009
Create List of Interviewees
2/12/2009
Butcher,Baker
FinalizeList of Interview Questions
2/16/2009
Candlestickmaker
Schedule Interviews
2/20/2009
Candlestickmaker
Conduct AllInterviews
2/27/2009
Butcher, Baker
DevelopKey Themes, Summarize for Final Report
3/07/2009
Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker

Work on your design brief!
–Design briefs are due February 25th.

Interviewing Follow-Up, Scenario-Based Evaluation

Persona Exercise
Interviews:
Hardest Parts:

• designing interview questions
• non-leading questions

Suggestions:

• open-ended questions to just get them talking
• ex. How do you usually perform this task?
• If there is an existing product like the one you are creating, get them to use it and watch them. How are they using it? What problems do they encounter?
• If the interview goes in an unexpected direction, go with it for a while and find out why.
• It's okay to ask more specific questions that are related to your project, just avoid leading them and making them feel like they are supposed to give a specific answer.
• It really helps to record your interviews, but also take notes so you can have a quick record if you don't have time to listen to the entire interview again.
• If working as a team, one person can interview and one can record. It allows the interviewer to be more focused on good follow-up questions and the person rather than writing.
  
• Interview 6 to 10 people for your capstone project.

Deriving the Persona:

• If you interview enough people, the key themes tend to come together.
• You definitely may find that there are a couple personas, but you are going to need to decide on one persona for your design at least to begin with.
  

How did you decide who to interview?

• Develop a profile: who are the general users? What user characteristics are relevant to design and testing? What characteristics should all users have in common? (ex. Do they all have to be able to use e-mail?) What characteristics will vary? How will you define them?
• Try to interview between 6 and 10 people. Less makes it hard to identify patterns, more makes the info. not as useful.
• Having trouble finding people? Ask the first few users to suggest others.
• Do contextual interviews. Go to the users' relevant environment. (home, office, classroom)

How did you decide what to ask?

• Interview as a team. One interviewer, one scribe
• Explain why you are talking to them and they can end at any time for any reason
• Ask open-ended questions that allow elaboration
• Look for opportunities to probe interesting responses
• Be specific in getting how people already do tasks: verbal - tell me about the last time you... observational - walk me through how you'd....
• You can change/add questions as needed
• Ask about contrasts: best experience? worst? likes? dislikes?
• Last question: Can I contact you for a follow up interview? (It's okay if they say no)
• Don't use yes/no questions
• Be wary of leading questions -- Yes, Prime Minister youtube clip
  
• Avoid speculative questions: (ex. Would you use an electronic calendar?) If you must ask, do so at the very end of the interview. Don't put too much stake in this answer.
• Avoid specific design questions. Look for data to inform your design. Don't expect your interviewee to be able to solve your design problems.
  

What lessons learned for Capstone project?

• It will be beneficial to interview 6-10 people.
• Develop a user profile to help you decide who to interview and what questions to ask.
  
• You may have to narrow your project to one persona to be your primary persona.
• Are you going to focus on novice, intermediate, or advanced users? If the system is optional, you can focus on whichever group you want. But, if your system is required of a larger group of varied users, you may need to focus on the novice and just put in some short cuts to help the expert move through more quickly. (For me - links to get to what they want quickly, but detailed instructions for those who need it.
• Encourage and reassure your interviewees and later your testing and usability people so they don't get nervous and feel like they're not doing a good job.
• Adjust your questions for future interviews to avoid problems encountered in earlier interviews.

Analyzing your interview data:

• Flesh out notes from interview IMMEDIATELY.
• In teams, have each member start by analyzing separately. Look for patterns that concern design priorities, design issues, and deal-breaker (show-stoppers). Reconcile key themes identified by each team member.
• Use data to identify priorities
• Then derive tasks

Now you have personas & tasks … now what?!

Scenario-Based Evaluation
What is a scenario?
•Task + Persona = Scenario
•Idealized but detailed
•Describes a specific instance of interaction
•Tries to balance generality & accuracy
–Use persona
–Use common, general tasks
–Situate use in your design
•Scenario-Based Development
–Scenario-Based Evaluation

How to write a scenario
•Describe the situation of use that people (e.g., your persona) would experience
•Write it for what your persona would want (or need) to do
–Several scenarios for common tasks
•Include specific, realistic details from your data collection
•Scenarios tell a short story
–Represent the conditions, situations, and people that you’ll be designing for

*It's okay, initially, to have your scenario be idealistic because you will analyze problems with the system and where reality deviates from the scenario later during the analysis phase.

Scenarios for Design
•Usually, a collection of scenarios are used
–Should represent key priorities of your design
•Scenarios help you perform evaluations without the users
–Cognitive Walkthroughs
•Scenarios help justify & communicate decisions

HCI Exercise #3: Scenarios
•Due next week
•May work in teams
•Steps
–Use persona you created for HCI Ex #2
–Develop two common tasks
•Use an educational technology of your choice
•If possible, use your Capstone project
–Write two scenarios of use (one for each task), describing how your persona would engage with the technology to perform the task(s).

My Group's Practice Scenario:
Striving Stuart is currently enrolled in the Earth, Space and Geophysical Science course. His teacher, Ms. Rawlings, has just finished presenting the material on the forces that cause erosion to the class and assigned groups of students to work on a related project activity. Stuart needs to work with two other students, Bitter Betsy and Enigmatic Emily, to create a slide presentation reviewing the forces learned in class. Stuart is responsible for creating slides about wind, Betsy will create the slides about water, and Emily is in charge of slides about temperature. Stuart secretly has a crush on Emily and plans on sneaking in comments about how hot she is on her temperature slides. Betsy is very jealous of Emily. She plans on throwing a bucket of water on Emily. Since all three students have different schedules and they have existing gmail accounts, the group decides to create their presentation on Google Docs. Stuart creates a new presentation on Google Docs. He invites his group members to join the presentation via email. Using the information from his class notes, Stuart creates his slides about wind while the girls create their own. After every member has submitted their information, they add photos, proof read each other’s slides, and edit. Stuart watches to see when Emily signs on so he can daydream about her typing. He knows she is there because her name comes up on the screen. He waits until she is finished with her slides before trying to edit them since two people can’t edit the same slide at the same time. In class, the group simply pulls up their presentation on the web and each member takes turns speaking about their slides. The class enjoys the slide show, particularly because Stuart started the presentation with an “Earth, Wind and Fire” music video. After the presentation, Stuart asks Emily if she wants to ditch 8th period to go surfing with him.

Focus on key points of the system. Not to the point of task analysis, but do mention the general things he will do to accomplish the task.

Personas

Personas: From Theory to Practice
Question: The article mentions that some practitioners go to great lengths to represent their user as accurately and detailed as possible during their design process. Some even create "posters, websites, and real-size cardboards" of their poersona. Do we need to go that far in creating our personas? What is the benefit of going to such lengths?

Discussion: The more detail and effort you go to, the more concrete your persona will become. This will help you better design, especially if you are on a design team.
You could overdo it and waste time, money, and resources that aren't necessary.
What about recording the persona on a video? Either just describe the persona or hire an actor to portray the persona?
The more real it feels to you, the more detailed your design will be. Maybe not a life-size cardboard cutout, but detailed.

Q: The section "What Shapes a Persona?" quotes a designer saying, "Every product we build is a product we build for ourselves to solve our own problems." The figure (Figure 2) shown in this section also shows that, in practice, the designer's ideas play a large role in shaping a persona. To what extent do designers put themselves into a shaped persona?

D: Can you entirely separate yourself from a persona? Maybe not entirely.
It's hard to pull yourself out of it.
You are not the user.

Q: Do you get better Instructional Design when your group has concrete, defined personas, or can the design be just as good, or better, when given more creativity using no personas, (or unspoken personas)?

D: How do you know when you have the right persona? Your user analysis and research should lead you to the right persona.
If you only have one persona, are you leaving out a lot of your audience? Using multiple personas can help. You also have to realize that a business model is ok with leaving a few users behind if they don't fit your personas. This is contrary to what we do in education.

Q: Is there a time when we would choose not to use a persona?

D: Maybe not, but there are certainly times when it is difficult to pin down who your persona should be. When a large, diverse group of people are required to use a system. Mass use of a product creates a side range of users.

Child Personas: Fact or Fiction?
Q: Can a ten-year old child explain how they think to an adult? If not, are personae an adequate substitute? If not, what other methods could be brought into the process in order to improve the project?

D: You can have very good results, but there are some ways to make it more successful. If they have a relationship with the interviewer and are comfortable giving their opionions, you will have better response. If you didn't know the kids already, you would benefit from warming them up to you.
An unbiased, uninvolved interviewer (or at least someone the kids think don't care whether they liked it or not) might help because the kids would be willing to say what they really felt without worrying about offending the creator.
It seems more important to observe kids because they may not have the words to express their thoughts and they may have more surprising interactions with the program.

Q: Do you think we need to be more careful about putting our own views into child-personas than we need to be with adults?

D: I think so. I think if "you are not the user" as an adult, you are REALLY not the user when the user is a child. They are different than you were as a kid. You don't remember things as well as you may think. Designers may not be used to working with children.
I think it is a mistake not to use a child-persona. I think a child-persona will really help and can be created.

The Origin of Personas
Alan Cooper (1999, 2004) "The Inmates are Running the Asylum"

• Personas Goal: "Develop a precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish"
• User is a resiurce, but won't know solution!
• "Make up pretend users and design for them"
• Failure = design for borad, abstract groups
• Success = design for a single (archetype) user

Personas: Definition
Description of a specific, fictitious person
-Written in the form of a narrative
-Represents gathered info about a group of users with common characterisitcs (single users are too quirky!)

• Usually given both a name and a face
• May contain personal information (family members, friends, occupations, possessions) make the persona more "real"
• Focuses on the goals, needs, and frustrations of the persona when using the product being designed

-3 to 7 personas usually created for a project (three is probably good for our capstone project)

• Some advocate using on primary persona

Personas: Key Considerations
"Pretend" but not "made up"
-Based on data with users

• interviews - phone or face-to-face interviews can be better than email surveys because people self-correct in email, but when you are talking to them you get them more free-flowing
  
• Observations - watch them use the system
  

Presented as a story about a believable person
-Project team should refer to the persona by name

• Stop talking about abstract "users"!

Focused on enabling effective design decisions
-Should explicitly define the needs, goals, and frustrations of the persona

• Designers should be able to infer what features are needed and how they should be designed

What are personas good for?
Assisting communication
-Easier to talk about "James" and his needs
-User is too abstract -> doesn't drive decisions

Informs design decisions
-What does James need to do with the new system?
-How do you meet James's goals?
-How do you resolve James's frustrations?

Supports design evaluation
-Where will you trip up James?
-Will he know what to do? How to interact with the system?
-Will he even use the system?

Personas: Drawbacks?
Bad personas won't help you

Some consider them too "artsy"

User interviews can be costly
-Recruiting users
-Conducting interviews
-Transcribing protocols
-Time to analyze data, extrat themes
-Some estimates (Forrester Research): $47,000 for commercial apps

Creating Personas
Interview potential users. Take good notes! Or record it.

Identify key observations ("factoids")
-10-12 per interviewee is typical

Sort individuals into groups based on observations

Cluster key observations from multiple interviewees
-Look for patterns/themes
-Typically, 3-4 characteristics from each person are relevant to the group

Interview Data
-Look for common goals
-Look for common frustrations
-Look for common perspectives, approaches

• Technophlie vs. Technophobe?!

Observational Data
-How do users interact with existing technology?
-Do they take shorcuts?
-Frustrations? How quickly do they opt-out?
-Do they know how they use things? (Are they actually doing what they said they do when you interviewed them?)

Persona Template
Name
Role
Daily Tasks/Relevant
Experience
Likes
Dislikes
Goals? Needs?
Frustrations?
What interview questions should we ask?

Usability, HCI, Task Analysis

Usability

1. (Jennifer Hogle) According to Smith and Ragan (2005), the goal of instructional design is to create instruction that is "effective", "efficient", and "appealing". On page 27 of the Leventhal & Barnes chapter, usability is defined as, "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use." What comparisons can be made between the usability and instructional design? How can understanding the process of instructional design help us in understanding usability?

*If you have bad ID, there probably wouldn't be good usability.
*If there is good ID, there is probably going to be good usability.
*Usability is a subset of ID. ID is the bigger umbrella. It's possible that in you ID process you would decide not to use computers at all. (Of course, usability can refer to non-computer based tools too.) But usability, although part of the whole ID process in some aspects, is more focused on the final product. It seems like a smaller part of the entire ID.
*Is there ever a time when good ID will violate good usability?
Maybe when it is done on purpose -- making something hard so that the user has to struggle a little to learn more. (Cognitive Load) But this would be intrinsic cognitive load, not extrinsic.

2. (Joanna Gibb) Nielsen & Shackrel are similiar in that their definition of 'usability' is a sytem; is valid or usable if it is found useful. How many systems are usable, easy to learn, but have no use once they have been learned? How useful will the final project be once it's completed? Easy to access only, or worthwhile and applied once it's been presented?

*There are times when it seems a system has been created that really is of no use to the the user. They did not task match. There wasn't the need for it. They didn't use participatory design.

HCI

1. (Kevin Dolan) The study and research of HCI is evident back to the 1980's - even as a multidisciplinary science and investment topic. Can we determine that there is measurable progress in the evolution of HCI over the years; i.e., is the software and computer development world improving the effort to connect humans and computers or are we just getting better at paying lip service to this area of interaction?

*Companies are having to pay attention to what customers want and need and want. If they don't pay attention to HCI they don't sell as much and people will go to another product.
*Web 2.0 has made user wants and needs more obvious. People are "talking" online about their opinions, wants, needs, etc. and they can't be as easily ignored or unknown.
*It seems that education is a niche that gets ignored. HCI principles aren't used as well because of limited funding and because they don't feel like they have to. Things are also designed top-down and then mandated to the users. They aren't driven by marketing, but the irony is they are in fact wasting money if they make a system that people will really use.

2. (W Scott Slade) If there is too much fragmentation, too many theories, too many methods, too many application domains and too many systems, is simplification possible?

3. (Shannon Ririe) Is there/should there be a committee or organization that defines what HCI is or isn't?

*Remember: You are not the user! You can't ever think like a novice again. It is really important to involve your user in the design process.

Tasks

Usability for Ed Tech
•Not just whether system is used (cf., Eason)
•System Functions should include
–Outcome of use(!)
•Task Characteristics should include
–Desirable difficulty
•Task match will need to include relevance to mental models/cognitive processes

Usability Engineering
•Works best early in design/development
•Good interface won’t solve all your problems
•HCI Usability Engineering builds on foundation of:
–Task
–User
–Context of use

Developing Useful Systems
•Slightly more than 30%of the code developed in application software development ever gets used as intended
•Likely because developers do not understanding what users need

Maybe also because the basic tasks were made usable and the rest was not

Maybe because the designer got excited after the basic user needs were designed and added a whole bunch of other stuff

Maybe the extra/advanced stuff too difficult to find users to test

The questions is do you want it this way so that as users become more proficient they can move on? or does the extra stuff get in the way?

Useful Systems Support Tasks
•Task ≠ User can use the system
•Tasks:
–Specific
–Observable
•Will you know if you’ve successfully accomplished it?
–Reflects end-goal of a user session
–Relate to key aspects of system components
•What do you think are the key parts of the system?
•What will be frequently used?

–Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, "Contextual Design: A Customer-Centric Approach to Systems Design," ACM Interactions, Sep+Oct, 1997, iv.5, p. 62.

What is a Task Analysis?
•Analysis of how a task is performed
–Detailed description of behaviors in interface
•Highly detailed
•Step-by-Step
•Procedural (ignore mental processes for now)

How is Task Analysis Useful?
•Specify problems/gaps in process
•Highlight unnecessary or inconsistent steps
•Specifies procedural aspects of key tasks
•Requires concrete analysis of user actions

For next week:
•DUE:HCI Exercise: Task & Task Analysis Exercise - Something in education - Keyboarding for kids? - goal is to login and practice a lesson
•Read:2 articles on personas
•Post:2 questions per article on WebCTdiscussion area
–Due by 12 noon on day of class

First Day of Class

Class Objectives
Define human-computer interaction
Define usability and its relation to HCI
Identify important considerations for education technology

What is Human-Computer Interaction?
What you're doing with the system
Your experience with how those interactions are going
How you are going to accomplish your goals with the software
Depends on your user goals
Visual appeal, layout, design, perceptual aspects
Bulk and speed of the program
Design so it runs the way we want it to so it is functional and quick enough
The use of the user's time
Does the interface match what the user is used to and wants and can utilize?
Usability

What is usability? Is it the same thing as HCI?
Usability is only part of the entire picture of HCI
It's how we access a tech tool in the first place so we can interact with it at all
Our standards of usability are rising. We no longer are willing to use things that aren't user friendly.

Educational Technology: Do our definitions need revising? (If so, how?)
Your target audience might be a lot more specific (ie. are you trying to reach teachers, students, what age or level?)
Motivation and attention-getting becomes more necessary
Training people to use the technology - how quickly can they learn and be trained?

Formal Definition of HCI:
A discipline concerned with the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of the major phenomena surrounding them

HCI vs. CHI
Some think we should put the Human first, not the computer, but sometimes you'll still see CHI. :)

Usability:
Usability is typically the goal human-computer interaction methods
Technology is usable if:

• appropriate for the target users
• allows users to accomplish their goals

Usability ≠ user friendly

HCI & Educational Technology
•Usability not necessarily end-goal
–Goals may be educator’s (not student’s)
–Learning processes?
–Learning outcomes?
•Learner Characteristics Complicate Usability
–Prior Knowledge
–Personalized technology

Desirable Difficulty
–Desirable Difficulty
•Learning can be triggered by impasses (VanLehn1991; 1995)
–The “Assistance Dilemma” (Koedinger& Aleven, 2007)
•Key problem for interactive educational technology.
•When to let students struggle, when to provide support
•How much struggle is productive may be personal

Prior Knowledge
•Expertise Reversal (Kalyugaet al., 2003)
–Experts: Visual representations
–Novices: Need plenty of textual instruction
•Expert knowledge structures (e.g., Chi et al, 1981)
–Experts have conceptual knowledge organization
–Integrate incoming information
•Self-Regulated Learners
–Hypermedia requires self-regulation (e.g., Azevedoet al, 2004)

Personalization
•Increases HCI & usability demands
•Intelligent tutors
–immediate feedback
–custom selection of content
–customized hints and help messages
•Automated knowledge analysis
–recommended materials
–provide customized prompts

HCI & Ed Tech: What Doesn't Change?
•Importnce of
–task
–users
–scenarios of use
•Useful methods for analysis
–cognitive walkthroughs
–heuristic analyses
–learner interviews & tests

For Next Week:
•2 chapters (one is short)
•Post questions on WebCT discussion area
–Due by 12 noon on day of class