Human Interface Engineering1 Main Title, 60 pt., U/L case LS=.8 lines Introduction to Human Interface Engineering NTU Seminar Amy Ma HIE Global Director.

Human Interface Engineering 1

Main Title, 60 pt., U/L caseLS=.8 lines

Introduction to Human Interface Engineering

NTU Seminar

Amy MaHIE Global Director

May 27, 2003


RUNNING HEADER, 14 PT., ALL CAPS, Line Spacing=1 line

Agenda

• HIE Key Functions

• UI Design– Product Usability and Look & Feel– What Is Usability? Why?– Design Usability into Products– User Centered Design (UCD) Process– Related Fields– UI Engineer Job Requirements



HIE Key Functions

• UI Design• User research• User interaction design• Graphic design

• Technical Writing• Technical documentation• Online help

• Localization• UI and manual translation into local languages



UI Design

• Be responsible for product usability and look & feel



What Is usability?

According to ISO 9241 Part 11:

Usability is the extend to which a product can be used by specific users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specific context of use.



What Is the Cost of Poor Usability?

To the customer:

•Lost productivity•Lost business opportunities•Increased training and support costs•Underutilized equipment and software To company:

•Lost revenue and market share•Slower customer acceptance of new products•Increased service and support costs•Public image as “unfriendly”



The User Interface

The user interface is a shared boundary between the user and the system, providing access to the system functions. It includes two parts:

•The visual (look and feel): Buttons, pull-down menus, checkboxes, layout, background colors, etc.

•The interaction: The coordination of the information exchange between the user and the system – the depth and scope of a system’s usability

To the user, the user interface is the computer…



Design Usability into Products

• Design Principles:

– Early and continual focus on users and tasks

– Early and continual user testing

– Iterative design

• Conscientious application of these principles guarantees acceptable usability

A simple usability design guideline: Minimize the effort to perform a given function or task



User Centered Design Process

• Know who the user is

• Understand user needs and tasks

• Be aware of product competitions

• Drive design based upon user goals and tasks

• Iterative design and evaluation



Requirement Phase

• User & task analysis via customer visit / interview



Customer Visit Example

Before Customer Visit• Product requirements included some reporting

features. Most features were based upon what data available from the system.

• UI engineers needed more customer data to drive design

UI engineers initiated customer visit and phone interview



After Customer Visit

• User friendly reporting functions are created…



After Customer Visit - Continued

• Report creation wizard is built…



Customer Visit Benefits

• Most effective for Requirement Phase

• Understand who we design for and in what context

• Derive realistic use cases and product goals

• Sometimes, validate product design by showing prototypes

• Feed customer data to functional groups

• Build customer relationship



Design Phase – High Level Conceptual Design

• Focus on concepts, navigation, user task modeling



Design Phase – High Level Conceptual Design

• Focus on concepts, navigation, user task modeling



Design Phase – Detailed Design with Specifications

• Include look and feel and final text strings



Design Phase - Usability Testing



Usability Testing Example 1

Before the testing

• Menu category design isbased upon the user senior

• Users had hard timefinding functions to perform tasks: – How to do “eMail scan” – What’s “my computer”– How to do “Schedule scan”– Firewall setting




After the testing

• Menu category isbased upon product feature categorized information

• Users found it is easyto find what they were looking for – more intuition




Before the testing

• Users had hard timefinishing the taskof creating anotification

• Notification had a high failure rate (90-100%) with many popupscreens




After the testing

• Re-designed notificationto use tabs insteadof popup screens

• This increased overall efficiency for the task of creating a notification



Usability Test Benefits

• Most effective for Design and Construction phases

• Identify show stopper before it is too late

• Locate problematic areas for usability improvement before it is released

• Capture feature requirements for next release

• Ideally, all project team members should observe how their products are evaluated by users



Construction, Alpha, Beta Phase

• UI Review– Ensure product UI is implemented according to the UI

design specifications– Conduct internal usability inspections – Keep track of UI defects and resolutions

• Beta Customer Survey– Collect customer feedback on early shipments of

product to evaluate product effectiveness in real world environments



UI Related Field - Human Factors

Human Factors are characteristics of people – capacities and limitations that set limits for the design of systems that we use. The characteristics include perception, learning, memory, and performance, that is, cognition or human information processing.

Human Factors is a discipline which applies concepts and research methods from these areas to the design of safe and usable systems.

Reference: Human Factors and Ergonomics Societyhttp://hfes.org/



UI Related field - Human Computer Interaction

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of people, computer technology and the ways these influence each other. We study HCI to determine how we can make this computer technology more usable by people.

Graduate Education in US• Human-Computer Interaction Institute - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA• School of Information - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI• Human-Computer Interaction - Stanford University, Stanford, CA

References: Human-Computer Interaction Resources

http://www.hcibib.org/



Requirements for a UI Engineer

• Experience developing GUI for enterprise software

• Familiar with HTML, XML, JavaScript, VBScript, CSS, Visual Basic, and C++

• Experience in User-centered design approach and user-research awareness

• Excellent communication and teamwork skills

• Bachelor/Master degree in HCI, psychology, cognitive science, or computer science



Q & A

Human Interface Engineering1 Main Title, 60 pt., U/L case LS=.8 lines Introduction to Human Interface Engineering NTU Seminar Amy Ma HIE Global Director.

Documents

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