Tutorial 3 Week 4
Interaction Design and Human Capabilities:
A. Practical Exercises
Activity 1: Project Proposal
Examine the specifications for the Project required for your assessment. Come up with a short (1 or 2 paragraph) report outlining your proposal. Discuss this with your tutor to refine or change the proposal if needed. This MUST be done during the tutorial.
Physical Health has to be logged, so physical progress can be monitored. The project being put forward will be a physical exercise logging website. The website will record generic data such as the name of the exercise, length average heart rate and exercise intensity. The site will then produce a chart showing the user their overall progress.
Activity 2: Emotions and HCI
Go through the presentation on Emotions and HCI and report why understanding emotions is important in HCI. What are the various effects of emotions?
Emotions are incredibly important when it comes to HCI. The reason for this is because emotions affect the way in which a user will use a interface. A user's emotions will result in how the user pays attention, remembers, performs, and perceives the interface. This is vital to the success of the interface. If a user is in angry they will perceive the interface in a negative way, but if the user is happy they will perceive the interface in a positive way. Therefore making sure the user is keep in the emotional state of happy is a requirement of any Human Computer Interaction.
Below is a break down the the affects of user emotions:
1. Attention: Emotions have the ability to capture attention by making objects and situations being perceived as important.
2. Memory: When emotions are at play certain stimuli is remember in more detail then others. For example a negative experience with an interface will be remember more then a positive one.
3. Performance: If a user is in having an negative emotion, for example angry, they will be closed off to creativity a lot more then if they were in a positive state. This affects the way in which the user will navigate the interface.
4. Assessment: They way in which the user assesses an interface will be determined by their emotional state. For instance if a user is in the state of being happy they will assess the interface in a more positive light.
Activity 3: Social Interaction Design
Go through the Social Interaction Design guide. Report some of the social practices (such as psychological, communication, and Sociological) supported in a service like mySpace in the example given in the guide.
Social interaction is used all over the web, and is seen even more prominent in social networking sites. The reason for this is to promote interaction with the system. If social interaction is promoted then social interaction will be carried out. These social networking sites like online dating sites, MySpace, and Facebook all use different aspects of social interaction. For example online dating sites focus on the communication that is encouraged on the site. Communication that is about work or social activity would be damaging to the overall sites social interaction, therefore the site focuses it's communication around a user's passions and interests. If you look at MySpace or Facebook you would also see that they incorporate a type of communication style to promote their social interaction. The communication depends on the context of the social site. A online dating site is not MySpace or Facebook, but in saying that they still realise that they have to implement certain psychological, communication, and Sociological aspects. Such as:
· Mirroring: A user copying or 'mirroring' another users behaviours, so they can fit in and become part of a new group.
· Word of Mouth: The act of a user passing knowledge on via their activity on and off the site, which allows for greater exposure for the site to new potential members. It also allows users to participate in the online community.
· Self-Promotion: Having some kind of presence online allows a user to get feedback and activity from other members.
· Peer Selection: Having a user being able to select their peers and groups in which they associate with, builds a user's identity and self-importance online.
· Public Journaling: Even though quite new, a user being able to report on their daily activities or other subjects gives a feeling of importance online.
· Opinionating: When a user comments on any one of these social sites, they give their opinions which promote feedback and commentary by other members. This links in with Self-Promotion and Public Journaling.
These are obviously only a few of the psychological, communication, and sociological aspects of social interaction, in saying that, one can see that there is a vast difference of what needs to be analysed to promoted for user interaction to take place. This is a of course has made approaches to designing User Interfaces move past the conventional.
B. Independent Exercises
Activity 4: Data Gathering - Assignment Chapter 7
Answer the Assignment question below in relation to your own project (see Activity 1 this week). Put your answer in your Portfolio and Yola site. You can use the information collected as part of your project.
The aim of this assignment is for you to practice data gathering. Assume that you have been
employed to improve an interactive product such as mobile phone, an iPOD, a VCR, a photocopying machine, computer software, or some other type of technology that interests you. You may either redesign this product, or create a completely new product. To do the assignment you will need to find a group of people or a single individual prepared to be your user group. These could be your family, your friends, or people in your class or local community group.
For this assignment you should:
a) Clarify the basic goal of ‘improving the product’ by considering what this means in your circumstances.
The basic goal of this exercise is to perform user analysis. Understand who the user is, and how they will interact with the system. Knowing these items will allow the exercise logger to fulfil the users needs and will allow the user to interact with the system at a higher level.
b) Watch the group (or person) casually to get an understanding for you doing this assignment and information that might enable you to refine your goals.
Done
c) Explain how you would use each of the three data gathering techniques: interviews, questionnaires and observation in your data gathering program. Explain how your plan takes account of triangulation.
For interviews I would formulate questions to ask relating to how they exercise and what type of exercise they do. I would also ask question like what they would like to record when they log their exercise.
For questionnaires I would give basic true or false questions with a couple of rated questions as well. This way I could get a better understanding in what the like and how they would interact with the system
From an observation point, I would find users that already have a manual log of their exercise and observe directly how they have filled/logged the exercise they have done.
The way in which this plan takes triangulation into account is by all areas focusing on the same line of questioning and context. One method will not focus on one area and another method focus on another. Having the data gathering techniques like this will result in reliable data.
d) Consider your relationship with your user group and decide if an informed consent form is required.
No a consent form is not needed
e) Plan your data gathering problem in detail:
a. Decide what kind of interview you want to run, and design a set of interview questions for your study. Decide how you will record data, then acquire and test any equipment needed and run a pilot study.
The interview that will be carried out will be semi-structured. This means the interview will be around the area of exercise and logging exercise with open and closed questions. Hopefully this will allow for the interviewee to present rich data on what they would like to see. The way in which the data will be recorded is through note taking during the interview.
The following are some questions that will be used:
· What do you class as exercise?
· What kind of exercise would you like to record?
· If you were to record your exercise what types of things would you like to record?
· When looking at your exercise progress how do you want it presented and why?
· If a site allowed you to log you exercise how often would you login to log your exercise?
1. Everyday
2. Once a week
3. Once a month
4. Less often then once a month
· Which sites do you visit now that provide you with exercise advice and/or logging?
b. Decide if you want to include a questionnaire in your data gathering program, and design appropriate questions for it. Run a pilot study to check your questionnaire.
· Do you perform exercise? Yes/ No
· If you perform Exercise how often to you perform it?
o Once a week
o Twice a week
o Three times a week
o Four or more times a week
o I do not perform exercise
· Have you ever logged exercise before? Yes/No
· Would you log exercise? Yes/No
· If you were to log exercise what types of things would you like to log? (Circle relevant)
o Heart Rate
o Length (time)
o Distance
o Intensity
o Type of exercise
o Kilojoules burned
· When presented with exercise results how would you like them presented?
o Raw
o Facts and Figures
o Charts/Graphs
o All of the above
· What type of exercise do you do? (Circle Relevant)
o Walking
o Running
o Cycling
o Swimming
o Weight Training
o Other ___________________
o Don’t perform exercise
· If you were to scale yourself on how well you can use a computer 1 for being illiterate and 10 being expert where would you lie?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
c) Decide whether you want to use direct or indirect observation and where on the outsider-insider spectrum of observers you wish to be. Decide how you will record data, then acquire and test any equipment needed and run a pilot study.
The observation will be direct. I will also be a insider observer. The data will be recorded by taking notes while observing. Observation will only be done on users that perform manual logging already.
d) Carry out your study but limit its scope. For example, only interview to or three people or plan only two half-hour observation periods.
e) Reflect on your experience and suggest what you would do differently next time.
After I asked the questions in the interviews I didn’t elicit more information out of the individual. What I would do differently next time is to encourage more information by asking the question and encourage more information. For example, so you’re saying if you had a exercise logger you would do x, why?
