Human Computer Interactions (HCI)

Human Computer Interaction

Course code: : ITec4122

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 1

Instructor :Tewodrose A. (MSc)

 Human Computer Interactions (HCI)
Contents of the lecture:
• Definitions of HCI
• Other disciplines with HCI
• Components of HCI
• Goal (Aim) of HCI
• Why we need HCI
• Historical background of HCI
• Principles of HCI
• Summary
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 2
 Human Computer Interaction
Introduction
• Human–computer interaction (HCI), alternatively man–machine interaction
(MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI) is the study of interaction
between people (users) and computers.
• With today's technology and tools, and our motivation to create really effective
and usable interfaces and screens, why do we continue to produce systems that
are inefficient and confusing or, at worst, just plain unusable? Is it because:
• We don't care?
• We don't possess common sense?
• . We don't have the time?
• We still don't know what really makes good design?
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 3
 The world is full of badly designed
things…

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 4

 And well designed things…

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 5

And things that look good but don’t work

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 Does it matter?
If things are badly designed

• You may camp in the wrong place

• You may crash your car and get injured.. Or worse!
• … in the best case – you might angry, make mistakes
and
• things will take longer than they should

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 7

 The 2000 USA Presidential Ballot in
Florida

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 8

 HCI

Efficiency
Accuracy
Recall
Satisfaction

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 9

 HCI (human-computer interaction)

• Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a design field that focuses on the

interfaces between people and computers.
• HCI is the study of how people interact with computers and to what
extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with
human beings.
• As Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) explains “ Human-
computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design,
evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for
human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.”

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 10

 HCI

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 11

 What is HCI?
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people
and computers with the aim to understand and improve those interactions.

• HCI is principally concerned with understanding how people and computers

interactively carry out tasks, and how such interactive systems are designed.
• HCI is the study of how people use computer systems to perform certain tasks
• HCI tries to provide us with all understanding of the computer and the person
using it, so as to make the interaction between them more effective and more
enjoyable.

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 Questionnaire's about HCI
• HCI tackles questions concerning how people interact with computers
• Are computers intuitive or complicated ?
• Are computers rewarding or frustrating?
• How can computers be made accessible to everybody?
(e.g. different physical abilities, different language etc)
• To what level can computer interaction be standardize?
• Are computers user friendly?
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 HCI

HCI is :
Where people “meet” or come together with machines or
computer-based Systems.
 Physical interface (e.g. buttons, screens, menus, etc)

 Logical interface
 The model a system presents a user
 Set of tasks available and how they’re organized.
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 14
 HCI…continued

The H
Humans good at: Sensing low level stimuli,
pattern recognition, inductive reasoning, multiple
strategies, adapting “Hard and fuzzy things”.

The C
Computers good at: Counting and measuring,
accurate storage and recall, rapid and consistent
responses, data processing/calculation, repetitive
actions, performance over time, “Simple and
sharply defined things”.

The I
The list of skills is somewhat complementary.
Let humans do what humans do best and
computers do what computers do best.

15

HCI
 Relationship of HCI with other disciplines

 An inter-disciplinary discipline

 (engineering, CS, psychology, graphic design, ergonomics, etc.)

 Concerned with design, evaluation, and implementation
 Addresses people’s needs, capabilities, limitations from different field of studies.

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 Relationship of HCI to other disciplines

Introduction to HCI
 Disciplines involve in HCI
Social psychology is the Study the nature and causes of human behavior in a
social context and the relationship between a group and its members.
Ergonomics is the study of how humans interact with manmade objects. Tries
to define and design the environment so it suits the capacities and capabilities
of users..
Linguistic is the study of language and both the structure (syntax) and the
meaning (semantics). It being used to understand how users interact with
computers.
Computer science is provides knowledge about the capability of the
technology and how it works.

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 Disciplines involve in HCI
• Cognitive psychology:- Studies the human information processing and
explains the capabilities and limitations of users. Important topics are
perception, attention, memory, learning, thinking and problem solving.
• Artificial intelligence: design of intelligent computer programs which
simulates different aspects of intelligent human behavior.

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 Human–computer interaction
 (HCI) involves the study, planning, and design of the interaction between
people (users) and computers.
 It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral
sciences, design and several other fields of study.

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 What is the main concern of human-computer interaction (HCI)

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of how people interact

with computers and to what extent computers are or are not developed
for successful interaction with human beings.
• HCI concerns the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive
usable user interfaces.

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 Components of HCI
• As its name implies, HCI consists of three parts:
 the user (people),
 the computer itself and
 the ways they work together/Interaction /.

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 HCI concerns:
• process: design, evaluation and implementation
use prototyping and iterative development from
software engineering
• on: interactive computing systems for human use
• plus: the study of major phenomena surrounding them
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 23
 Why we need HCI /Importance /
• HCI is a key consideration when designing systems that are not only usable, but
also accessible to people with disabilities.
• The core philosophy of HCI is to provide safe, usable, and efficient systems to
everyone, and this includes those with different sets of abilities and different
ranges of expertise and knowledge.
• User-centered design is getting a crucial role!
• It is getting more important today to increase competitiveness via HCI studies
(Norman, 1990)
• High-cost e-transformation investments
• Users lose time with badly designed products and services
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 Goals of HCI
• A basic goal of HCI is
• to improve the interactions between users and computers
• by making computers more usable and receptive to the user's
needs.
• A long term goal of HCI is
• to design systems that minimize the barrier between the human's
cognitive model of what they want
• to accomplish and the computer's understanding of the user's
task
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 Goals of HCI
• Allow users to carry out tasks
– Safely
– Effectively
– Efficiently
– Enjoyably
– Put people first

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 Usability

• Usability and HCI are becoming core aspects of the system

development process to improve and enhance system facilities
and to satisfy users’ needs and necessities.
• HCI will assist designers, analysts and users to identify the system
needs from text style, fonts, layout, graphics and color, while
usability will confirm if the system is efficient, effective, safe,
utility, easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to use and to
evaluate, practical visible and provide job satisfaction to the users.

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 Usability …

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 Usability

Should include the following Important issue

 Ease of learning
 High speed of user task performance
 Low user error rate
 Subjective user satisfaction
 User retention over time

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 Usability Requirements
• Goals:
• Usability
• Universality
• Usefulness
• Achieved by:
• Planning
• Sensitivity to user needs
• Devotion to requirements
analysis
• Testing
30

HCI
 HCI Goal Example
• Use Microsoft word an example:

Goal Achieve Design

d?
Safety Yes Warning for “Exit before Save”
Utility Yes A lot of word processing function is provided
Effectiveness Yes A science student can edit questions
Efficiency Yes Default template avoid initial document setting
Usability Yes Icon help ease of learning
Appeal Yes Interface is attractive

HCI 01/27/2022 31
 The Evolution & History of HCI

 Series of technological advances

 lead to and are sometimes facilitated by a
Series of paradigm shifts that in turn are created by a
 Series of key people and events

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 Where HCI came from!

• Until the late 1970s, the only humans who interacted with computers were
information technology(IT) professionals and dedicated hobbyists. This
changed disruptively with the emergence of personal computing (PC) in the
later 1970s. Personal computing, including both personal software
(productivity applications, such as text editors and spreadsheets, and interactive
computer games) and personal computer platforms (operating systems,
programming languages, and hardware), made everyone in the world a
potential computer user, and vividly highlighted the deficiencies of computers
with respect to usability for those who wanted to use computers as tools.

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 The Meteoric Rise of HCI
• HCI surfaced in the 1980s with the advent of personal computing,
just as machines such as the Apple Macintosh, IBM PC 5150 and
Commodore 64 started turning. For the first time, sophisticated
electronic systems were available to general consumers for uses
such as word processors, games units and accounting aids.
Consequently, as computers were no longer room-sized, expensive
tools exclusively built for experts in specialized environments, the
need to create human-computer interaction that was also easy and
efficient for less experienced users became increasingly vita up in
homes and offices in society-changing numbers.

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 History of HCI…

• Digital computer grounded in ideas from 1700’s &

1800’s
• Technology became available in the 1940’s and 1950’s

• The “user” concept is relatively new.

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 Batch Processing
• Computer had one task,
performed sequentially.

• No “interaction” between
operator and computer
after starting the run
• Punch cards, tapes for input
• Serial operations/one task after the other.

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 Paradigm Shifter: Vannevar Bush

• Postulated Memex device.

• Stores all records/articles/communications
• Items retrieved by indexing, keywords, cross references
(now called hyperlinks)
• (Envisioned as microfilm, not computer)

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 Mid 1960’s
• Timesharing mode of computing
• Computers too expensive for individuals .
• timesharing increased accessibility
• interactive systems, not jobs
• text processing, editing
• email, shared file system

Need for HCI

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 Paradigm Shifter: J.R. Licklider
• 1960 - Postulated
“man-computer symbiosis”

• Couple human brains

and computing machines
tightly to revolutionize
information handling.
•

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 Paradigm Shifter: Ivan Sutherland
• Sketch Pad - ‘63 PhD thesis at MIT
• Hierarchy - pictures & subpictures
• Master picture with instances
• Constraints
• Icons
• Copying
• Light pen for input
• Recursive operations
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 Paradigm Shifter: Douglas Engelbart

• Landmark system/demo:
• Mouse, windows
• Hypertext
• Multimedia
• High-res display,
• Shared files,
• Electronic messaging, teleconferencing, ...

• Inventor of mouse
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 Paradigm Shifter: Alan Kay
• He is best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and
windowing graphical user interface design
• Personal Computing”
• Studies in Stanford university
• Dynabook: Notebook sized
computer loaded with
multimedia and can
store everything
• Desktop interface metaphor
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 Paradigm Shifter: Ted Nelson
• Computers can help
people, not just business

• Coined term “hypertext”

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 Personal Computers

• 1974 IBM 5100

• 1981 Data master
• 1981 IBM XT/AT
• Text and command-based
• Sold lots
• Performed lots of tasks the
general public wanted done
• A good basic toolkit
• 1978 VisiCalc
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 Personal Computing
• System is more powerful if
it’s easier to use
• Small, powerful machines
dedicated to individual
• Importance of networks
and time-sharing
• Kay’s Dynabook, IBM PC

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 Beyond the desktop

• In 1980s , one of biggest design ideas of the early 1980s was the so-called
messy desk metaphor, popularized by the
• Apple Macintosh: Files and folders were displayed as icons that could be,
and were scattered around the display surface. The messy desktop was a
perfect incubator for the developing paradigm of graphical user interfaces.
(GUI)
• Perhaps it wasn’t quite as easy to learn and easy to use as claimed.

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 Beyond desktop…

Figure 2.6: The early Macintosh desktop metaphor

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 WIMP

• Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers

• Timesharing=multiusers; now we need multitasking
• WIMP interface allows you to do several things simultaneously
• Has become the familiar GUI interface
• Xerox Alto, Star; early Apples.

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 The WIMP Plateau

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 PCs with GUIs

• Xerox PARC - mid 1970’s

• Alto
• local processor, bitmap
display, mouse
• Precursor to modern GUI,
windows, menus, scrollbars
• LAN - Ethernet

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 Xerox Star - ‘81
• First commercial PC designed for
“business professionals”
• desktop metaphor, pointing,
consistency and simplicity
• First system based on usability
• Paper prototyping and analysis
• Usability testing & iterative refinement
• Commercial flop
• $15k cost
• closed architecture
• lacking key functionality (spreadsheet)
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 Apple Lisa - ‘82
• Based on ideas of Star

• More personal rather

than office tool

• Failure (why?)

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 Apple Macintosh - ‘84
• Aggressive pricing - $2500
• Not trailblazer, smart copier
• Good interface guidelines
• 3rd party applications
• High quality graphics
and laser printer.

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 Multimodality

• Mode is a human
communication channel
• Not just the senses
e.g., speech and non-speech audio
are two modes

• Emphasis on simultaneous
use of multiple channels for I/O.
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 Ubiquity
• Person is no longer user of virtual device but occupant of virtual,
computationally-rich environment
• Can no longer neglect macro-social aspects
• Late ‘90s - PDAs, VEs, ...
• Now?…

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 Basic Principles of HCI

It is a difficult task to have great HCI design due to its multi objective task
to be performed so you need take into account for considering simultaneous
operations or events like:
 types of users, characteristics of the tasks
 capabilities and cost of the devices, lack of objective or exact quantitative
 evaluation measures, and changing technologies
 Considerable knowledge in different fields …
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 Basic HCI principles

 Know The User

 Understand the Task
 Reduce Memory Load
 Strive for Consistency
 Remind Users and Refresh Their Memory
 Prevent Errors/Reversal of Action
 Naturalness
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 Summary
• Human computer interaction will continue to strongly influence
technology and its use in our every day life.
• In order to help develop more “usable” technology that is “human/user-
centered”, we need to understand what
• HCI can offer on these fronts: theoretical, procedural, social, managerial,
and technical.
• Compared to Human civilizations ,innovations it is relatively is young
discipline.

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 Summary…
• HCI it no longer makes sense to regard HCI as a specialty of computer
science; HCI has grown to be broader, larger and much more diverse than
computer science itself. HCI expanded from its initial focus on individual
and generic user behavior to include social and organizational computing,
accessibility for the elderly, the cognitively and physically impaired, and
for all people, and for the widest possible spectrum of human experiences
and activities.

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 59

 Home Work

• List 5 most important reasons to study Human-Computer Interaction

• What are Challenges of HCI?
• Explain HCI relations with regard to Information
Technology sciences as a discipline. Is IT broader than
HCI or the reverse is true?

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 60

 Continued…
List 5 most important reasons to study Human-Computer Interaction
 Attractive Career Opportunities:
 The average annual salary of a human-computer interaction designer is
$104,762. according to pay scale
Know How to Do Things Better:
 It is a people-centric discipline that will allow you to create more
functional and practical designs. With the right knowledge, you can come
up with effective solutions to boost productivity, improve sales, and
deliver better customer satisfaction, among other things.

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 61

 Continued…

It Will Shape the Future

 It is going to shape our overall experiences and by studying human-
comput
 Uncover New Technologies
 Achieve Competitive Advantage
 has plenty of benefits. The most important is that it can open attractive
career opportunities.
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 62
 What are Challenges of HCI?

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 63

 Is HCI or CS broader ?
• … it no longer makes sense to regard HCI as a specialty of computer
science; HCI has grown to be broader, larger and much more diverse
than computer science itself.
• HCI expanded from its initial focus on individual and generic user
behavior to include social and organizational computing, accessibility for
the elderly, the cognitively and physically impaired, and for all people,
and for the widest possible spectrum of human experiences and activities.

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 64

 Continued..
• It expanded from desktop office applications to include games, learning and
education, commerce, health and medical applications, emergency planning and
response, and systems to support collaboration and community. It expanded
from early graphical user interfaces to include myriad interaction techniques
and devices, multi-modal interactions, tool support for model-based user
interface specification, and a host of emerging ubiquitous, handheld and
context-aware interactions.”
— John M. Carroll, author and a founder of the field of human-computer
interaction.
Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 65
 Boarder scope of HCI

Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 66

 n e
d t er O
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Introduction to HCI 01/27/2022 67