Human-computer interface design and implementation details

Abstract

The paper presents a model of how the availability of implementation details affects performance in designing a human-computer interface. Two experiments have been used to test the validity of this model. The experiments involved varying the amount of implementation detail presented to interface designers and having the designers perform an interface design task. The amount of work performed and the quality of the resulting human-computer interface design are analysed.

The results presented in this paper show that the quality of a human-computer interface design improves if the designer is presented with some information about implementation details. However, presenting a designer with all implementation details of the system functions results in a lower quality design. The relevance of these results to human-computer interface design and future directions for research are discussed.     

A hypernetwork-based context-aware approach for design lesson-learned knowledge proactive feedback in design for manufacturing

Design lesson-learned knowledge (DLK) clearly describes various design quality problems exposed in past manufacturing stages, solutions and preventive measures. If knowledge management system could proactively feed DLK back into design process, many previous quality problems would be avoided, thus helping designers better implement design for manufacturing (DFM) in a smarter manner. However, since design quality problems are not pointed out in design process, problem-relevant information extracted from design contexts might be inaccurate. In this situation, traditional context-aware approach is prone to acquire design quality problems that designers do not need. Facing these challenges, a hypernetwork-based context-aware DLK proactive feedback approach is proposed to construct hypernetwork-based DLK representation model and predict possible design quality problems in the design process, thus providing corresponding DLK and helping designers reduce the reoccurrence of previous quality problems in DFM. Specifically, hypernetwork-based DLK representation model is first constructed, which consists of designer context network, task context network and DLK network. Based on this model, a context-aware collaborative reason strategy is constructed to predict possible design quality problems according to complex design contexts. To validate the proposed approach, a practical product development case on the shipbuilding design is implemented, and some comparative experiments are conducted. Experiment results show the proposed approach is effective and has a positive performance in DFM. It is anticipated this work opens up a promising way to help designers reuse DLK for reducing the reoccurrence of previous design quality problems in a smarter manner, thus better implementation of DFM.     

Designing for user benefit: a methodological cautionary tale

This paper is concerned with the problem of ‘losing sight’ of the user during the design of human-computer interfaces. A methodological practice is proposed which enables the designer to track the implications of design proposals with respect to both the benefits they confer on the user and their goodness of fit with user characteristics. The methodological practice, which is seen as a technique for early or formative evaluation, is then applied in retrospect to two adaptive prototypes which are currently being incorporated into a Multi-Author Document Preparation System. The results of this process are intended as a methodological cautionary tale for other designers, illustrating the potential consequences of failure to evaluate the implicit assumptions that are being made about users by the designer.     

The Society's Lecture 1987 The Use of Models in Human-Computer Interface Design

A user-centred approach to human-computer interface design requires that the designer has appropriate tools to aid in the design process and employs iterative design procedures which incorporate user evaluations. The concept of using models of the user as an interface design tool is discussed, and several approaches to user modelling are described. These approaches are divided into the broad categories of conceptual and quantitative models. Conceptual models deal primarily with representations of users1 cognitive processes, structures and strategies. Quantitative models include performance, ergonomic, computer simulation and statistical models. Examples of both a conceptual and a quantitative model are provided to illustrate human-computer interface design implications. Some unresolved issues pertaining to both categories of models are discussed, and recommendations are made to improve modelling as an interface design tool.     

A visual tool for user-interface development

VITUID is a visual tool for user interface development. It aims to help user-interface designers, who may be non-programmers, to specify and create interactive, graphical user interfaces through graphical interaction. VITUID lets designers specify the user command set and the human-computer dialogs by building a tree and specifying the behavior of each dialog via a dialog-control word, adopting the object-oriented approach. The main strategy of VITUID is to separate a user interface into an application-dependent part and an application-independent part and then let the designer specify only the application-dependent part.     

Evaluating the performance of a user interface

A considerable amount of research has been done in the area of human-computer interaction. High quality human-computer interfaces are especially important when a program needs to perform in nearly real-time. In this paper, a particular human-computer interface is analyzed. The observations made are abstracted and generalized to problems in interfaces for process control. Specific benchmarks for evaluation of interfaces in a real-time or near real-time setting are developed. We show that these benchmarks are more useful than general performance measures of computer systems for estimating computer performance. We develop general guidelines for designing interfaces which satisfy severe time constraints and determine to what extent they follow generally accepted principles for interface design.     

自适应网络学习用户界面设计和实现

An adaptive user interface helps to improve the quality of human-computer interaction. Most people at present join to Web-Based Learning by common browser. Due to the one-fits-all user interface, they have to face with the problem of lack of the support on personalized learning. The design and implementation of the adaptive user interface for Web-based learning in this paper is grounded in our work done before, for example interaction model,adaptive user models including domain models. The adaptivity is mainly expressed on learning contents and representation including layout as well as operation.     

The development of a theoretical framework and design tool for process usability assessment

The purpose of usability engineering is to facilitate the deployment of new products by decreasing development costs and improving the quality of systems. This paper will discuss the development and delivery of a unique, theoretically based software tool that provides engineers and designers with easy access to the most recent advances in human-machine interface design. This research combines several theoretical views of the interaction process into a hybrid model. Based on this model, a software tool was produced that allows engineers to model the human interaction process within their design. The system then provides feedback on the interaction process through items such as: the amount of mental effort required by a user, the degree to which the system conforms to human capabilities, the expected time to complete the interaction, where potential human error may occur, as well as potential misunderstandings or points of confusion to the users. The designer may then use this information to improve the design of the system. Validation of this technique indicates that the hybrid model produces accurate predictions of usability attributes and that the technique transfers from the laboratory to the real world.     

The development of a theoretical framework and design tool for process usability assessment

The purpose of usability engineering is to facilitate the deployment of new products by decreasing development costs and improving the quality of systems. This paper will discuss the development and delivery of a unique, theoretically based software tool that provides engineers and designers with easy access to the most recent advances in human-machine interface design. This research combines several theoretical views of the interaction process into a hybrid model. Based on this model, a software tool was produced that allows engineers to model the human interaction process within their design. The system then provides feedback on the interaction process through items such as: the amount of mental effort required by a user, the degree to which the system conforms to human capabilities, the expected time to complete the interaction, where potential human error may occur, as well as potential misunderstandings or points of confusion to the users. The designer may then use this information to improve the design of the system. Validation of this technique indicates that the hybrid model produces accurate predictions of usability attributes and that the technique transfers from the laboratory to the real world.     

Computer Graphics System for Reproducing Three- Dimensional Shape from Idea Sketch

This paper describes the technical features and method of implementation of our designer support system which enables reproducing a three-dimensional shape from an idea sketch speedily and modifying the reproduced shape easily, thereby facilitating the consistency of the shape to be checked from a design viewpoint. The designer support system was developed as a tool to cut the time and labor designers have to spend in the design process and help designers to fully display their creativity–the essential attribute of designers. This system uses cross-section lines of an idea sketch of an object drawn by an industrial designer as input data to reproduce automatically a three-dimensional wireframe model of the object by a newly developed three-dimensional graphic algorithm including graphic constraints. In addition, it automatically creates planes by scanning the area enclosed by reproduced curved lines and subjects them to shading. In this process, the dimensions of the object need not be input to the system. The designer can operate the system simply by using the mouse to input appropriate data. Thus, the system permits the designer to easily express his idea in the form of a three-dimensional shape and study idea variations on the display screen without creating a mockup.     

Control centric approach in designing scrolling and zooming user interfaces

The dynamic systems approach to the design of continuous interaction interfaces allows the designer to use simulations, and analytical tools to analyse the behaviour and stability of the controlled system alone and when it is coupled with a manual control model of user behaviour. This approach also helps designers to calibrate and tune the parameters of the system before the actual implementation, and in response to user feedback. In this work we provide a dynamic systems interpretation of the coupling of internal states involved in speed-dependent automatic zooming, and test our implementation on a text browser on a Pocket PC instrumented with a tilt sensor. We illustrate simulated and experimental results of the use of the proposed coupled navigation and zooming interface using tilt and touch screen input.     

Context-aware cognitive design assistant: Implementation and study of design rules recommendations

Design rules are an essential interface to facilitate the information exchange between designers and experts. Despite many innovations in Knowledge-Based Engineering and Knowledge Management, unstructured design rules documents are still widely used in the manufacturing industry. Due to the complexity of the design process, these documents often contain hundreds of design rules, applicable in varying design contexts. Searching for the right rules according to a design context is demanding in time and cognitive resources. In this paper, we propose a Context-Aware Cognitive Design Assistant (CACDA) to capture the design context and perform tasks such as the recommendation of design rules, the verification of design solutions, or the automation of design routines. Contrary to existing works in model quality testing, the CACDA uses a proactive approach of design rules application and helps designers to provide error-free designs on first attempt. In this paper, we present the design rules recommendation system of the CACDA, its capabilities and its implementation. Then, to measure the impact of design rules recommendations on the design process, we compare our approach with the use of traditional design rules documents. Results show that the use of the CACDA’s design rules recommendations lower the perceived difficulty of design rules retrieval from 75 to 43.5 on a scale of 100. On average, participants that used the demonstrator successfully applied 8.6 design rules on the 25 applicable design rules of our set. Participants that used unstructured documentation correctly applied 4.3 design rules. The global cognitive weight of the design activity as well as the design rules retrieval performances appear to be unchanged. These results demonstrate the usability of the demonstrator and show a positive impact on the design process and on the quality of CAD models. Future works will focus on the overcome of the main limitations of our current experiments, with a panel of professional designers, a lager design rules set and the implementation of several lacking features of the CACDA into the demonstrator.     

A physical database design evaluation system for CODASYL databases

An interactive design tool for designing CODASYL databases is described. The system is composed of three main modules: a user interface, a transaction analyzer, and a core module. The user interface allows a designer to enter interactively information concerning a database design which is to be evaluated. The transaction analyzer allows the designer to specify the processing requirements in terms of typical logical transactions to be executed against the database and translates these logical transaction into physical transaction which access and manipulate the physical databases. The core module is the implementation of a set of analytical models and cost formulas developed for the manipulation of indexed sequential and hash-based files and CODASYL sets. These models and formulas account for the situation in which occurrences of multiple record types are stored in the same area. Also presented are the results of a series of experiments in which key design parameters are varied. The system is implemented in UCSD Pascal running on IBM PCs     

人机交互界面测试研究

人机界面是软件与用户最直接的交互层．界面的好坏决定用户对软件的第一印象。良好的界面设计越来越受到系统分析、设计人员的重视,但是如何对人机界面进行测试并给出客观、公正的评价,却没有一个统一的标准。从通用规则和个性突出的角度,给出一些人机界面的测试原则和建议。     

Prototyping synchronous group applications

Cooperative team-based activities are changing the nature of work. Current frameworks provide the necessary base communication and coordination tools but require application designers to handle low-level details such as defining a communication protocol. They also provide limited support for prototyping such applications and experimenting with alternative designs. We introduce a sharing style called strong sharing. Its implementation in Object World insulates application designer from low-level communication details. CoSARA, a system built on Object World, lets application designers prototype synchronous group applications by graphically specifying the multiuser interactions. After we describe strong sharing, we describe Object World and how it facilitates building synchronous group applications. Then we describe the CoSARA design methodology for prototyping synchronous group applications and show how we used it to build a multiuser block diagram editor     

Embarking on Spoken-Language NL Interface Design

Natural language (NL) user interfaces are growing in popularity. Unfortunately, the complexity of NL interaction makes these interfaces difficult to design. For NL interfaces to become successful, universal tools are needed to help support the NL design process. What work practice should these tools explicitly support? Interviews with NL designers and our own experiments have identified a specific work practice that designers should consider as they begin to incorporate NL into user interface designs. The work practice study highlights the value of using Wizard of Oz prototyping in NL design. We describe a tool that we have built, called SUEDE, to explicitly support the first stage of NL design for spoken-language user interfaces. Our tools and tools like it will help make NL in human-computer interaction (HCI) more commonplace.     

Innovative potential of 3D software applications in fashion and textile design

Advanced cloth simulation plug-in tools are increasingly being used by designers in movies, television, advertising and computer games, to take the strain out of creating and simulating realistic cloth effects for dressing virtual characters. This paper describes experiments into designing textiles and clothing using 3D graphics software and a digital cloth dynamics plug-in, which are an integral part of PhD research in progress. The methods used in testing the 3D software and the cloth dynamics plug-in illustrate the experiences of a designer/learner. The results identify designer/learner needs and expectations for the further educational development of the research and use of cloth simulation tools in textiles/fashion design in the near future.     

浅析3D动漫造型协同创新设计方法

动漫造型的设计是一项依赖于脑力、创造力以及想象力的活动,能够体现出知识经济的特点,其中需要交互式的图形系统和分析计算为主的计算机辅助设计系统,这样才能为设计人员提供工具,实现人机交互．但是这并不能为设计人员的创造性思维有所帮助,也不能支持协同设计。本文首先对3D动漫造型的发展情况进行简述,之后分析3D动漫造型协同创新设计研究现状,结合现状提出3D动漫造型协同创新设计方法,从而引发动漫产业在国际市场上的发展,保证期发展前景的广阔性。     

以交互为中心的Post-WIMP界面模型

随着硬件设备和软件技术的发展,国内外开展了大量基于Post-WIMP界面的新型交互技术的研究.面对多种交互设备以及使用环境,在界面设计的过程中,根据上下文选择适当的交互组件或技术,并有效地进行组合与评估,成为构造Post-WIMP界面的关键问题.将界面设计与应用语义分离,使设计者能够灵活地置换各种交互技术.通过对Post-WIMP界面交互过程与界面设计层次的分析,建立起以交互为中心的分层Post-WIMP界面模型,将交互的各个层次进行分离.在模型的基础上,描述一个了Post-WIMP界面生成工具.借助该工具,设计者能够在设计过程中方便地引入新的交互技术,并能在最终的软件系统中加以灵活应用,从而可以快速、有效地进行界面原型实现和迭代评估.应用实例表明,Post-WIMP模型的建立以及生成工具的实现,有利于设计者确定设计方案及对方案的整体评估.