SKM 3463: Human-

Computer Interaction

Week 3: The Interaction

Outline

1) Models of interaction
2) Ergonomics
3) Interaction styles
4) Interactivity
5) Context: experience and engagement
6) Physical design
What is interaction?
communication

user system

•a two-way effect is essential in the concept

of interaction
•Human uses the computer as a tool to
perform, simplify or support a task
•To do this the user must communicate his
requirements to the computer
1. models of interaction
Donald Norman’s model
• Seven stages of actions
• user establishes the goal
• formulates intention
• specifies actions at interface
• executes action
• perceives system state
• interprets system state
• evaluates system state with respect to goal

• Norman’s model concentrates on user’s view of the

interface
1. models of interaction
Donald Norman’s model
 Donald Norman’s model

execution/evaluation loop
goal
execution evaluation
system
• user establishes the goal
• formulates intention
• specifies actions at interface
• executes action
• perceives system state
• interprets system state
• evaluates system state with respect to goal
execution/evaluation loop
goal
execution evaluation
system
• user establishes the goal
• formulates intention
• specifies actions at interface
• executes action
• perceives system state
• interprets system state
• evaluates system state with respect to goal
execution/evaluation loop
goal
execution evaluation
system
• user establishes the goal
• formulates intention
• specifies actions at interface
• executes action
• perceives system state
• interprets system state
• evaluates system state with respect to goal
Using Norman’s model
Some systems are harder to use than others

Gulf of Execution
- The difference between the intentions and the allowable actions
- user’s formulation of actions
≠ actions allowed by the system
Gulf of Evaluation
- the amount of effort that the person must exert to interpret the
physical state of the system
- user’s expectation of changed system state
≠ actual presentation of this state
Using Norman’s model
• The 7 Stages of Action can be broken down into 4 main principles of
good design:-
• Visibility- By looking, the user can tell the state of the device and the
alternatives for action.
• A Good Conceptual Model - The designer provides a good
conceptual model for the user, with consistency in the presentation
of operations and results and a coherent, consistent system image.
• Good mappings - It is possible to determine the relationships
between actions and results, between the controls and their effects,
and between the system state and what is visible.
• Feedback- The user receives full and continuous feedback about the
results of the actions.
Human error - slips and mistakes
slip
understand system and goal
correct formulation of action
incorrect action

mistake
may not even have right goal!

Fixing things?
slip – better interface design
mistake – better understanding of system
2) Ergonomics

• Study of the physical characteristics of interaction

• Also known as human factors – but this can also be used to

mean much of HCI!

• Ergonomics good at defining standards and guidelines for

constraining the way we design certain aspects of systems
2) Ergonomics - examples
• arrangement of controls and displays
e.g. controls grouped according to function or frequency of use, or
sequentially
• surrounding environment
e.g. seating arrangements adaptable to cope with all sizes of user
• health issues
e.g. physical position, environmental conditions (temperature,
humidity), lighting, noise,
• use of colour
e.g. use of red for warning, green for okay,
awareness of colour-blindness etc.
Industrial interfaces

Office interface vs. industrial interface?

Context matters!

office industrial
type of data textual numeric
rate of change slow fast
environment clean dirty
Glass interfaces ?

• industrial interface:
• traditional … dials and knobs
• now … screens and keypads
• glass interface
+ cheaper, more flexible,
multiple representations,
Vessel B Temp
precise values
• not physically located, 0 100 200
loss of context,
complex interfaces
113
• may need both

multiple representations
of same information
Indirect manipulation

• office– direct manipulation

• user interacts
with artificial world
system

• industrial – indirect manipulation

• user interacts
with real world
through interface
• issues … interface plant
• feedback immediate
• delays feedback

instruments
 3) Interaction styles
Common interaction styles
a. command line interface
b. menus
c. natural language
d. question/answer and query dialogue
e. form-fills and spreadsheets
f. WIMP
g. point and click
h. three–dimensional interfaces
 3) Interaction styles
a) Command line interface
• Way of expressing instructions to the computer
directly
• function keys, single characters, short abbreviations,
whole words, or a combination

• suitable for repetitive tasks

• better for expert users than novices
• offers direct access to system functionality
• command names/abbreviations should be
meaningful!

Typical example: the Unix system

 3) Interaction styles
Menus
• Set of options displayed on the screen
• Options visible
• less recall - easier to use
• rely on recognition so names should be meaningful
• Selection by:
• numbers, letters, arrow keys, mouse
• combination (e.g. mouse plus accelerators)
• Often options hierarchically grouped
• sensible grouping is needed
• Restricted form of full WIMP system (“Windows,
Icons, Menus and Pointing device”)
 3) Interaction styles
Natural language
• Familiar to user
• speech recognition or typed natural language
• Problems
• vague
• ambiguous
• hard to do well!
• Solutions
• try to understand a subset
• pick on key words
 3) Interaction styles

Query interfaces
• Question/answer interfaces
• user led through interaction via series of
questions
• suitable for novice users but restricted
functionality
• often used in information systems

• Query languages (e.g. SQL)

• used to retrieve information from database
• requires understanding of database structure
and language syntax, hence requires some
expertise
 3) Interaction styles
Form-fills
• Primarily for data entry or data retrieval
• Screen like paper form.
• Data put in relevant place
• Requires
• good design
• obvious correction
facilities
Spreadsheets

• first spreadsheet VISICALC, followed by Lotus 1-2-3

MS Excel most common today
• sophisticated variation of form-filling.
• grid of cells contain a value or a formula
• formula can involve values of other cells
e.g. sum of all cells in this column
• user can enter and alter data spreadsheet maintains consistency
WIMP Interface

Windows
Icons
Menus
Pointers

… or windows, icons, mice, and pull-down menus!

• default style for majority of interactive computer systems,

especially PCs and desktop machines
Point and click interfaces

• used in ..
• multimedia
• web browsers
• hypertext

• just click something!

• icons, text links or location on map

• minimal typing
Three dimensional interfaces

• virtual reality
• ‘ordinary’ window systems
• highlighting
• visual affordance flat buttons …
• indiscriminate use
just confusing!
click me!
• 3D workspaces
• use for extra virtual space
… or sculptured
• light and occlusion give depth
• distance effects
elements of the wimp interface

windows, icons, menus, pointers

+++
buttons, toolbars,
palettes, dialog boxes
Windows

• Areas of the screen that behave as if they were independent

• can contain text or graphics
• can be moved or resized
• can overlap and obscure each other, or can be laid out next to one
another (tiled)

• scrollbars
• allow the user to move the contents of the window up and down or
from side to side
• title bars
• describe the name of the window
Icons
• small picture or image
• represents some object in the interface
• often a window or action
• windows can be closed down (iconised)
• small representation fi many accessible windows
• icons can be many and various
• highly stylized
• realistic representations.
Pointers
• important component
• WIMP style relies on pointing and selecting things
• uses mouse, trackpad, joystick, trackball, cursor keys or
keyboard shortcuts
• wide variety of graphical images
Menus

• Choice of operations or services offered on the screen

• Required option selected with pointer

problem – take a lot of screen space

solution – pop-up: menu appears when needed
 Kinds of Menus
• Menu Bar at top of screen (normally), menu
drags down
• pull-down menu - mouse hold and drag down
menu
• drop-down menu - mouse click reveals menu
• fall-down menus - mouse just moves over bar!

• Contextual menu appears where you are

• pop-up menus - actions for selected object
• pie menus - arranged in a circle
• easier to select item (larger target area)
• quicker (same distance to any option)
… but not widely used!
Menus extras
• Cascading menus
• hierarchical menu structure
• menu selection opens new menu
• and so in ad infinitum

• Keyboard accelerators
• key combinations - same effect as menu item
• two kinds
• active when menu open – usually first letter
• active when menu closed – usually Ctrl + letter
usually different !!!
Menus design issues

• which kind to use

• what to include in menus at all
• words to use (action or description)
• how to group items
• choice of keyboard accelerators
Buttons

• individual and isolated regions within a display that can be selected

to invoke an action

• Special kinds
• radio buttons
– set of mutually exclusive choices
• check boxes
– set of non-exclusive choices
Toolbars

• long lines of icons …

… but what do they do?

• fast access to common actions

• often customizable:
• choose which toolbars to see
• choose what options are on it
 Palettes and tear-off menus
• Problem
menu not there when you want it
• Solution
palettes – little windows of actions
• shown/hidden via menu option
e.g. available shapes in drawing
package
tear-off and pin-up menus
• menu ‘tears off’ to become palette
Dialogue boxes
• information windows that pop up to
inform of an important event or request
information.
e.g: when saving a file, a dialogue box is
displayed to allow the user to specify the
filename and location. Once the file is saved,
the box disappears.
4) Interactivity

easy to focus on look

what about feel?
Speech–driven interfaces

• rapidly improving …
… but still inaccurate

• how to have robust dialogue?

… interaction of course!

e.g. airline reservation:

reliable “yes” and “no”
+ system reflects back its understanding
“you want a ticket from New York to Boston?”
Look and … feel

• WIMP systems have the same

elements:
windows, icons., menus, pointers, buttons,
etc.

• but different window systems

… behave differently
e.g. MacOS vs Windows menus

appearance + behaviour = look

and feel
Initiative
• who has the initiative?
old question–answer– computer
WIMP interface– user

• WIMP exceptions …
pre-emptive parts of the interface

• modal dialog boxes

• a modal window is a child window that requires users to interact with
it before they can return to operating the parent application
• come and won’t go away!
• good for errors, essential steps
• but use with care
Error and repair

can’t always avoid errors …

… but we can put them right

make it easy to detect errors

… then the user can repair them

hello, this is the Go Faster booking system

what would you like?
(user) I want to fly from New York to London
you want a ticket from New York to Boston
(user) no
sorry, please confirm one at a time
do you want to fly from New York
(user) yes
………
Context

Interaction affected by social and organizational context

• other people
• desire to impress, competition, fear of failure
• motivation
• fear, allegiance, ambition, self-satisfaction
• inadequate systems
• cause frustration and lack of motivation
5) Experience, engagement and fun

designing experience
physical engagement
managing value
Experience?

• home, entertainment, shopping

• not enough that people can use a system
• they must want to use it!

• psychology of experience
• Csíkszentmihályi – a theory that people are most happy when they are in a
state of flow (concentration/so involved)
• balance between anxiety and boredom

• education
• zone of proximal development
• things you can just do with help

• wider ...
• literary analysis, film studies, drama
6) Physical design

• many constraints:
• ergonomic – minimum button size
• physical – high-voltage switches are big
• legal and safety – high cooker controls
• context and environment – easy to clean
• aesthetic – must look good
• economic – … and not cost too much!
Fluidity
• Extent to which the physical structure and manipulation of the device
naturally relate to the logical functions it support.
• do external physical aspects reflect logical effect?

logical state revealed in physical state?

e.g. on/off buttons

inverse actions inverse effects?

e.g. arrow buttons, twist controls
inverse actions

• yes/no buttons
• well sort of

• ‘joystick’

• also left side control

spring back controls

• one-shot buttons
• joystick
• some sliders

good – large selection sets

bad – hidden state
physical layout

controls:
logical relationship
~ spatial grouping
compliant interaction

state evident in rotary knobs reveal internal state and can

mechanical buttons be controlled by both user and machine
Managing value

people use something

ONLY IF
it has perceived value
AND
value exceeds cost

BUT NOTE
• exceptions (e.g. habit)
• value NOT necessarily personal gain or money
Weighing up value

value
• helps me get my work done
• fun
• good for others
cost
• download time
• money £, $, €
• learning effort
Summary
• if you want someone to do something …
• make it easy for them!
• understand their values
• Interaction between human and computer must be effective to allow
user to get the required job done: Norman’s execution-evaluation
model; interaction framework

• Role of ergonomics for effectiveness of the interaction:

• Physical characteristics of interaction; interface styles

• Interaction between user and computer does not take place in a

vacuum, but it is affected by numerous social and organizational
factors.

• Awareness of interaction between user and computer can help limit

any negative effects on the interaction.