Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [courses] [this page]
Norman D.A. (1988) The psychology of everyday things (Basic books: New York).[now The design of everyday things]
Norman D.A. (1998) The invisible computer: why good products can fail, the personal computer is so complex, and information appliances are the solution (MIT press).
Landauer, T.K. (1987) Relations between cognitive psychology and computer system design ch.1 pp.1-25 in Interfacing Thought (ed.) J.M.Carroll (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.).
Landauer,T.K. (1995) The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability, and productivity (MIT press; Cambridge, MA)
Preece,J., Sharp,H., & Rogers,Y. (2001) Interaction Design: Beyond Human-computer Interaction link
For the methods (thinkalouds etc.) see the big handout, which also contains further reading for each instrument.
For wayfinding, see the report by Nina Webster. You may borrow it from Lynda Young (at reception) to copy.
Carroll J.M. (1998) (ed.) Minimalism beyond the Nurnberg funnel (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.)
Shneiderman, B. (1982) "The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation" Behavior and information technology vol.1 pp.237-256.
Shneiderman, B. (1987) Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interation (Addison-Wesley: Reading, Mass.).
Laurel, B.K. (1986) "Interface as mimesis" in D.A.Norman & S.W.Draper (eds.) ch.4 pp.67-85 User Centered System Design (Erlbaum: London).
Laurel, B. (ed.) (1990) The art of human computer interface design (Addison-Wesley: New York)
Csikszentmihalyi,M. (1990) (Harper & Row) Flow: the psychology of optimal experience
Jens Rasmussen
(1986) Information Processing and Human-Machine Interaction: an approach to
cognitive engineering
(1992) "The ecology of work and interface design" Proc.
HCI'92
Susanne Bødker (1989) "A human activity approach to user interfaces" HCI (journal)
Reason, J. (1990) Human Error (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).
Don Norman (1991) "Cognitive artifacts" in Carroll's (ed.) Designing Interaction
Draper, S.W. (1992) "Activity theory: the new direction for HCI?" in International Journal of Man-Machine Studies vol.37 no.6 pp.812-821.
Nardi,B.A. (ed.) (1996) Context and consciousness: Activity theory and Human-Computer Interaction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press)
Draper, S.W. (1999) "Analysing fun as a candidate software requirement" Personal Technologies vol.3 pp.117-122 Also at: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/fun.html
D.L.Morgan Focus groups as qualitative research (1988) (Sage: London) [SocSci A370 MOR2]
R.Foshay Guidelines for evaluating PLATO programs TRO technical paper no.2 (1992) p.23; available at: http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper50/paper50.pdf or locally here.
[For each lecture I give a) the lecture summary b) the learning objectives.]
27-28a Wayfinding in the university. A case study of applying psychology to a
practical problem: how people find their way around campus.
27-28b Students should be able to relate different kinds of study to aspects
of a practical issue: establishing what the problems are, and testing attempted
solutions.
26a Introduction to HCI and applying psychology to design.
26b Students should be able to discuss critically issues of how psychology may
be applied to design, and to problems requiring redesign as a solution.
29-30a An introduction to the concepts of user centered design and the
prototyping approach, and the contribution psychology can make.
29-30b Students should be able to discuss what user centered design may mean,
and to describe the prototyping cycle.
31-33a Minimal manuals: a user-centered approach to designing computer
documentation. One of the few outcomes of direct commercial value from HCI
research is the minimalist technique, derived by a psychologist in the course
of a long series of studies.
31-33b Students should be able both to describe the technique, and to apply
it.
34a Thinkaloud protocols
34b Students should be able to administer a thinkaloud protocol, and to
discuss its strengths and weaknesses as in instrument.
35a Incident diaries
35b Students should be able to design and administer an incident diary, and
to discuss its strengths and weaknesses as in instrument.
36a Focus groups. When subjects outnumber the investigator: using peer
interaction as an elicitation probe, and trying to learn about issues in the
subjects', not the investigators', language.
36b Students should be able to design and administer a focus group, and to
discuss its strengths and weaknesses as in instrument.
37-38a Semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and feature checklists.
The difference between unstructured, semi-structured, and fully structured
interviews; and their use in eliciting attitudes, facts, and open-ended
issues.
37-38b Students should be able to design and administer these instruments,
and to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
39-40a Direct manipulation and Activity Theory. Direct manipulation is a
phenomenon achieved by many of the best user interfaces. Activity theory is a
Russian psychology theory. Both are unusual in regarding consciousness as a
defining feature of the mental states they seek to explain.
39-40b Students should be able to describe and discuss the concept of direct
manipulation, and to outline the main features of activity theory.
Another, more conventional kind of question, would just pick an obvious topic from the learning objectives. E.g. "Discuss the properties of focus groups". This would expect a description of what they are, with a little example of an application: the purpose, the agenda used etc.; and a discussion of the properties as given in the handout. Examples drawn from focus groups you and run yourself would attract extra credit, especially if this make you critical of problems not well discussed in the lectures, or able to illustrate their good points from your own experience.
Answer sketch:
Chief virtues: on the spot data gathering (does not depend on subjects'
memories), and combining data on behaviour and intentions. Limitations
include cost in investigator and subject time, and interference of the
thinkaloud task with the task being studied. Incident diaries save the
investigator cost (but have compliance problems). Variations include
videotaping subjects without thinkaloud, and asking the subject to add
commentary when later reviewing the tape. Illustrations with examples will
be important for a high mark.
Qu.2
Describe the documentation technique of minimal manuals, how it contrasts to
other writing tasks, and its relationship to the design of user interfaces to
software.
Answer sketch:
An invitation to reproduce the theory and practice of minimal manuals with
special mention of how different it is to normal writing (assume the reader
has the software in front of them and do not describe what they can see or
experience, only what is invisible), and of how this writing is designed and
modified identically (by prototyping and iterative design) to how user
interfaces are developed. In fact, manuals are really paper screens, to be
designed and used as part of the software.
Qu.3
Using the example of how people find their way around campus, discuss how bits
of theory and different kinds of empirical study can be brought to bear on a
single applied problem.
Answer sketch:
There is a literature on the stages people's representation of a place such as
a campus goes through, and on the skills involved in finding one's way. Many
types of study are relevant, and are much better when used in combination.
Lab studies can probe what people remember: both place names, routes, and
ability to sketch maps. New designs of aids, such as signs and maps, can be
tested in some ways in the lab e.g. timing how long it takes a subject to find
and point to a target on the map. Field studies following subjects around can
investigate how well they actually perform on complete tasks. They can also
observe where, and in what way, they experience difficulties. Interviews can
probe people's accounts of their worst experiences, and so focus an
investigator's attention on current bottleneck's in performance on a
particular campus. All these methods are subject to criticism: but in
combination become much stronger as evidence.
Answer sketch:
Questionnaires, diaries, checklists are all paper instruments with
pre-designed questions. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and
thinkalouds (though usually this doesn't involve prepared questions) all
involve interviewing people. The set of properties (retrospective? costs?
....) used in the handout gives a way of comparing them.
Qu.2
Studies of wayfinding on this campus led to some recommendations for improving
the campus map. Discuss how well founded these recommendations were, both in
themselves and with respect to whether they addressed the most important
issues. For each criticism you offer, propose how it could be addressed by
further simple studies.
Answer sketch:
The recommendations included redesigning the map index in several respects
(including all building names and all department names, sorting
alphabetically, changing the map key system e.g. "A3"), changing from 3D to 2D
style, and including pictures of key landmarks. These were based on empirical
studies, but small ones; and improved studies of the basic findings are easy
to suggest, as are studies of the effectiveness of the proposed changes.
Qu.3
Discuss usability and user centered design for both computer software and more
generally. Why are they important, and which of the reasons offered are the
most important? What, in your opinion, is the best formulation of the aim or
aspiration, out of the variety put forward in the literature and computer
industry?
Answer sketch:
This invites an answer from the first 3 lectures, covering the prototyping
cycle but also with a discussion on the different senses of "user centered":
as on behalf of the user, asking the user, inviting users to participate in
the design.
Answer sketch:
I.e. the on the spot instruments: thinkalouds, diaries, experiments. Drop
marks for including wrong instruments. It's important because people remember
such a small proportion of the little actions and thoughts that make a
difference in interaction. Extra marks for examples not given in the lectures
and handouts, because that demonstrates thinking about the material.
Qu.2
Discuss the view that minimalist manuals are just the application of user
centered design to documentation rather than to software. Does this lead to a
method of writing that contrasts to normal recommendations for writing?
Answer sketch:
(only) one view of minimal manuals is that you just apply the prototyping
cycle to a manual and keep changing the design until it best supports what
users want the manual for. The principles were arrived at on the basis of
essentially that kind of research, and it also needs to be applied in
developing any particular manual (though hopefully with fewer iterations, if
the principles are indeed a useful extraction of general lessons).
Qu.3
Consider a practical problem you have not studied before, such as developing
novel improvements to home security systems. How might you begin to address
this empirically, and what does your education as a psychologist contribute to
this?
Answer sketch:
An invitation to apply a general applied psychology approach to a novel
problem: multiple small studies, peferably of different kinds
("triangulation"), with the early studies leading to the questions and
instruments used in later studies. Psychology training principally helps by
supplying ideas on the instruments to use and how to use them.
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