Midterm Review Session

1. Midterm Review Session November 2/3 2006

2. Norman: “Design of Everyday Things” • Key Terms: • Affordances • Constraints • Conceptual Models • Mappings • Visibility • Feedback • Consistency Ubicomp

3. ID 6.1 – ID 6.3: Interaction Design • Identifying Needs • Prototyping (Developing alternative designs) • Implementation (Building interactive versions of the design) • Evaluating designs Ubicomp

4. IDEO • Understand steps of iterative design Process (also covered in lecture) • Needs -> Design -> Implement -> Test • HiFi / LoFi Prototype differences • When to use particular methods (lecture, not really reading) Ubicomp

5. ID 7.4: Data Gathering • Questionnaires • Interviews • Focus Groups and Workshops • Naturalistic observation • Studying documentation Ubicomp

6. ID 9.1 – ID 9.3: User-Centered Approaches to Interaction Design • Know your users • Iterate a lot • Measure Ubicomp

7. ID 12.1 – ID 12.5: Observing Users • Observation types: Quick and Dirty, Usability testing (video and logs), Field studies • How to observe: In controlled environments, In the field, Ethnography (this just means you are accepted by the group, as opposedto being an outsider) • Data collection: Notes+Camera, Audio+Camera, Video (and tradeoffs) • Indirect observation: Diaries, Interaction logging (in the program) Ubicomp

8. Hutchins • What direct manipulation means (definition, properties) • Virtues of direct manipulation according to Shneiderman • Aspects of directness: "distance" and "engagement“ • Distance gulfs: "Gulf of Evaluation" vs. "Gulf of Execution“ • Forms of distance: semantic and articulatory -- what this distinction means and how the distance can be reduced • “Direct engagement": what it means and how it is produced • Problems with direct manipulation, and reassessment of Shneiderman's claims Ubicomp

9. Cooper: The Myth of Metaphor • Understand Cooper's 3 paradigms of software interfaces. • What do you get/lose by using a metaphor? • What makes a good idiom? Ubicomp

10. Liddle: "Design of the Conceptual Model" • Understand the different between recognition and recall • Be familiar with progressive disclosure • Why did the Star system fail? • Be familiar with the 3 phases of technology development (also covered in lecture) Ubicomp

11. Winograd: The Alto and the Star • Useful to know the main contributions of Alto/Star, such as: • direct manipulation • WYSIWIG • consistent commands Ubicomp

12. Doyle: “What Goes Wrong at Meetings" • Practical tips for making your group meetings more effective • common meeting problems • advice for group member roles at meetings • “Interaction Method" for keeping meetings on track by splitting up roles Ubicomp

13. Norman: BDS • Design as practiced is different from design as taught • In the actual situation, cultural, social, and organizational issues can dominate the user-oriented aspects of design. • Understand the story of the Mac power switch and how it applies Ubicomp

14. Mullet: Chapter 2 • Be familiar with the benefits of simplicity in visual design • Be familiar with common visual design pitfalls • Understand what it means to reduce, regularize and combine visual elements. Ubicomp

15. Mullet: Chapter 4 • What does a good visual structure provide? • Be familiar with the relevant/described gestalt principles of grouping • Understand what a visual hierarchy is and the utility of balance, symmetry and negative space in creating it • Be aware of common visual design problems errors in software interfaces Ubicomp

16. Waern • Understand the overall Cognition system • Yerkes-Dodson Law – Performance vs Arousal • Selective Attention – Concept of needing to choose what to pay attention to • Understand relationship between Effort and Attention • Implications of above for HCI • Quantitative aspects of vision/audition • Understand the: • similarity law • proximity law • continuity law • law of closure • gestalt shifts • impossible objects • and how those principles apply to HCI design • Understand Motor characteristics, especially Fitts law • Understand how short term memory works (from lecture, but similar topic) Ubicomp

17. Van Duyne • Stages of the iterative design process • Design principles • Types of rapid prototyping • Stages of prototyping: paper prototypes, medium and hi-fi prototypes • Evaluation techniques: think-aloud protocol, heuristic evaluation, expert reviews, formal usability studies: understand what each technique is and to which situations it best applies Ubicomp

18. Rettig • Problems with Hifi prototyping and advantages of doing Lofi first • Tips for creating a paper prototype (useful for group project assignment) • How to run user tests with a paper prototype (also useful) Ubicomp

19. Nielsen: History • Generations of user interfaces: batch processing, command line, full screen, graphical, etc. • Understand the hardware technology, operating mode, and UI paradigm of each • Impact and contributions of various historical systems (e.g. Sketchpad, Augment, Alto/Star) • Advantages of the GUI and direct manipulation • History of interaction styles and evolutionary trends Ubicomp

20. Krug: "How We Really Use the Web" • People don't generally use your website the way you design it because • They scan instead of reading details • They “satisfice" instead of making optimal choices • They "muddle through" instead of figuring out how things really work Ubicomp

21. Hinckley:"Input Technologies and Techniques" • Be familiar with the various properties of input devices • Why has the mouse stayed around so long? Why are keyboards hard to replace? • Be familiar with Buxton's 3 state model for devices • Understand Fitt's law and its implications Ubicomp

22. Dourish: "Getting in Touch" • Ever-lower cost of computation opens new uses • Ubiquitous computing – Use / Importance of context in software • Virtual vs Physical interaction -- Tangible interfaces • Virtual vs Augmented reality • Ambient Interfaces Ubicomp