Lecture 15

Interaction Techniques Discussion

This page is part of Human Computer Interaction E-Mail Discussion .

On this topic of Interaction techniques, Edward, Chris and Rovina iniated a class discussion. We asked the class to consider the following questions and send us a reply :

. Looking at visual output styles which were - text, diagrams, photographs, 3D graphics, virtual reality.

1. Have you come across any examples where any of theses were used inappropriately?

The first contribution was that text was pretty drab and dull especially when there is an excess of it and the screeen flickers on and off like a lightbulb. This can give you a sore head and aching eyes.

2. Have you any views on the appropriateness/usefulness of computer sound output ?

One student response finds computers sounds irritate her and she'd like to shut them off, especially when debugging in Pascal as the rest of the class is alerted with the beeping of errors that are found. On musical web sites, shutting off the sound loses the web page that she's looking at. She is unconvinced that they will be able to improve sound effects on standard user interfaces.

Another states that Occassional output of sound is helpful, for example the shutting down of minix prompts a series of bleeps on the Mac, which ishelpful because you have to shut minix down properly, but on Pascal such noises is more irritating.

3. Considering how we might think about defining either the input or the output (Inter-Referential IO), in terms of either one or the other - any thoughts about this would be appreciated ?

No responses to this question we're afraid.

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