Throughout the tutorial your awareness of human–computer interaction (HCI) and its importance to your task as a systems analyst has grown. While awareness is important, by now you recognize that you need to master the concepts surrounding HCI as well as become proficient at assessing human information requirements and incorporating your findings into your designs…. [Continue Reading]
Human–Computer Interaction
Understanding Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Designing for HCI means “Ensuring system functionality and usability, providing effective user interaction support, and enhancing a pleasant user experience.” Furthermore, “The overarching goal is to achieve both organizational and individual user effectiveness and efficiency. To reach these goals, managers and developers need to be knowledgeable about the interplay among users, tasks, task contexts, information… [Continue Reading]
Usability (Human-Computer Interaction)
Usability is a term that is defined differently depending on which branch of science you are investigating. For our purposes in exploring usability through an HCI lens, we will try to focus on usability as a way for designers to evaluate the systems and interfaces they create with an eye toward addressing as many HCI… [Continue Reading]
Physical Considerations in HCI Design
In Chapters “Designing Effective Output“, “Designing Effective Input“, and “Designing Databases” you learned the basis for sound design of screens, forms, Web sites, and databases. This included the special use of fonts, color, and layout design to communicate to users and to help them do the right thing with the input and output they encountered…. [Continue Reading]
Considering Human Limitations, Disabilities, and Design (HCI)
All humans have limitations in their physical capabilities. Some are immediately visible, others are not. When designing from an HCI perspective, you start realizing that limitations are often discussed in terms of disabilities. The application of HCI to supporting and enhancing the physical capabilities of humans is one of the most promising application areas. Strides… [Continue Reading]
Types of User Interface
In this section, several different kinds of user interfaces are described, including natural-language interfaces, question-and-answer interfaces, menus, form-fill interfaces, command-language interfaces, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and a variety of Web interfaces for use on the Internet. The user interface has two main components: presentation language, which is the computer-to-human part of the transaction, and action… [Continue Reading]
Guidelines for Dialog Design (HCI)
Dialog is the communication between the computer and a person. Well-designed dialog makes it easier for people to use a computer and lessens their frustration with the computer system. Recall the elements of the TAM (technology acceptance model) indicating that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use will lead first to an intention to use… [Continue Reading]
Feedback for Users (Human-Computer Interaction)
All systems require feedback to monitor and change behavior. Feedback usually compares current behavior with predetermined goals and gives back information describing the gap between actual and intended performance. Because humans themselves are complex systems, they require feedback from others to meet psychological and cognitive processing needs discussed earlier in this chapter. Feedback also increases… [Continue Reading]
Special Design Considerations for Ecommerce
Many of the user interface design principles you have learned concerning feedback also extend to designing ecommerce Web sites. A few extra considerations shown in this section can give your Web interface designs improved functionality. Soliciting Feedback from Ecommerce Web Site Customers Not only do you need to give users feedback about what is happening… [Continue Reading]
Designing Queries (Human-Computer Interaction)
When users ask questions of or communicate with the database, they are said to query it. Six different types of queries are among the most common. Your careful attention to query design can help reduce users’ time spent in querying the database, help them find the data they want, and result in a smoother user… [Continue Reading]
