Human-Centered Design

1. Human-Centered Design

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. User Interface Development Process

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Knowledge • Design • Applied Psychology • Computer Science • There are multiple strands, sometimes in parallel, sometimes cross-fertilizing. • Goal is not to advocate, but explain.

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

11. “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.”

12. Vannevar Bush

13. 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

14. 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.

16. 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.

18. 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.

20. 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.

22. Memex Inspires Doug EngelbartGraphical UI

23. Memex inspires Mouse, Hypertext

24. 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”

25. Inspiration

26. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” - Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 19th century Fang sculpture

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

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

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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,

32. 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.