The Interaction

 notion of interaction
 interaction frameworks
 ergonomics
 interaction styles
 context of interaction
 Interaction Frameworks

Interaction:
communication between the user and the system

Why have a framework?

• allows contextualisation
• presents a global view
 Interaction Framework

Donald Norman’s Interaction framework

• user establishes the goal
• formulates intention
• specifies actions at interface
• executes action
• perceives system state
• interprets system state
• evaluates system state with respect to goal

Norman’s model concentrates on user’s view of the interface

 Interaction Framework

Some systems are harder to use than others

Gulf of Execution
user’s formulation of actions
 actions allowed by the system

Gulf of Evaluation
user’s expectation of changed system state
 actual presentation of this state
 Interaction Framework

extended by Abowd and Beale:

their interaction framework has 4 parts O
output
• user
• input S U
system user
• system
I
• output input

each has its own unique language

interaction  translation between languages
problems in interaction = problems in translation
 Interaction Frameworks

user intentions translated into actions at the interface

 translated into alterations of system state
 reflected in the output display
 interpreted by the user

general framework for understanding interaction

• not restricted to electronic computer systems
• identifies all major components involved in interaction
• allows comparative assessment of systems
• an abstraction
 Ergonomics

Study of the physical characteristics of interaction

Also known as human factors.

Ergonomics good at defining standards and guidelines for

constraining the way we design certain aspects of systems.
 Ergonomics - examples

• arrangement of controls and displays

e.g. controls grouped according to function
or frequency of use, or sequentially
• surrounding environment
e.g. seating arrangements adaptable to cope with all sizes of user

• health issues
e.g. physical position ), lighting, noise,
environmental conditions (temperature, humidity

• use of colour
e.g. use of red for warning, green for okay,
awareness of colour-blindness etc.
 Interaction styles

Interaction: dialogue between computer and user

Some applications have very distinct styles of interaction.

We can identify some common styles

• command line interface
• menus
• natural language
• question/answer and query dialogue
• form-fills and spreadsheets
• WIMP
 Command line interface

Way of expressing instructions to the computer directly.

function keys, single characters,
short abbreviations, whole words, or a combination

• suitable for repetitive tasks

• better for expert users than novices
• offers direct access to system functionality
• command names/abbreviations should be meaningful

Typical example: the Unix system

 Menus

Set of options displayed on the screen

Options visible
– less recall - easier to use
– rely on recognition so names should be meaningful
Selected by using mouse, numeric or alphabetic keys
Often options hierarchically grouped: sensible grouping is needed
Menu systems can be
• purely text based, with options presented as numbered choices
• graphical selected by arrow keys
• graphical selected by mouse
• combination (e.g. mouse plus accelerators)

Restricted form of full WIMP system

 Natural language

Familiar to user

Use speech recognition or typed natural language

Problems
• vague
• ambiguous
• hard to do well!

Solutions
• try to understand a subset
• pick on key words
 Query interfaces

Question/answer interfaces
• user led through interaction via series of questions
• suitable for novice users but restricted functionality
• often used in information systems

Query languages (e.g. SQL)

• used to retrieve information from database
• requires understanding of database structure and
language syntax, hence requires some expertise
 Form-fills

Primarily for data entry or data retrieval

Screen like paper form.
Go-faster Travel Agency

Data put in relevant place. Bookings

Please enter details of journey:

Requires Start from: York

Destination: Pittsburgh
• good design Via: Birmingham

• obvious correction facilities First Class/Second Class/Bargain

Single/Return
Seat Number:
 Spreadsheets

sophisticated variation of form-filling.

• grid of cells contain a value or a formula
• formula can involve values of other cells
e.g. sum of all cells in this column
• user can enter and alter data
• spreadsheet maintains consistency
 WIMP Interface

• Windows
• Icons
• Menus
• Pointers
(or windows, icons, mice, and pull-down menus)

default style for majority of interactive computer systems,

especially PCs and desktop machines
 Windows

Areas of the screen that behave as if they were independent

terminals

• can contain text or graphics

• can be moved or resized
• can overlap and obscure each other,
or can be laid out next to one another (tiled)
• scrollbars allow the user to move the contents
of the window up and down or from side to side
• title bars describe the name of the window
 Icons

• small picture or image

• represents some object in the interface
often a window or action
• windows can be closed down (iconised)
small representation  many accessible windows
• icons can be many and various
highly stylized or realistic representations.
 Pointers

• important component
WIMP style relies on pointing and selecting things
• usually achieved with mouse
• also joystick, trackball, cursor keys or keyboard shortcuts
• wide variety of graphical images
 Menus

Choice of operations or services offered on the screen.

Required option selected with pointer

File Edit Options Font

Typewriter
Screen
Times

• problem - menus can take up a lot of screen space

• solution - menu appears when needed
 Kinds of Menus

Menu Bar at top of screen (normally), menu drags down

• pull-down menu - mouse hold and drag down menu
• drop-down menu - mouse click reveals menu
• fall-down menus - mouse just moves over bar!

Contextual menu appears where you are

• pop-up menus - actions for selected object
• pie menus - arranged in a circle
- easier to select item (larger target area)
- quicker (same distance to any option)
… but not widely used!
 Menus extras

Cascading menus
• hierarchical menu structure
• menu selection opens new menu
• and so in ad infinitum

Keyboard accelerators
• key combinations - same effect as menu item
• two kinds
- active when menu open - usually first letter
- active when menu closed - usually Ctrl + letter
- usually different
 Menus design issues

• which kind to use

• what to include in menus at all
• words to use (action or description)
• how to group items
• choice of keyboard accelerators
 WIMP look and feel

Lots of things you can interact with:

• main WIMP components (windows,menus,icons)
• buttons
• dialogue boxes
• pallettes
Collectively known as widgets

appearance + behaviour = look and feel

 Buttons

individual and isolated regions within a display

that can be selected to invoke an action.

Special kinds
• radio buttons - set of mutually exclusive choices

• check boxes - set of non-exclusive choices

 dialogue boxes

information windows that pop up to inform of

an important event or request information.

E.g: when saving a file, a dialogue box is displayed to allow

the user to specify the filename and location. Once the file
is saved, the box disappears.
 Pallettes and tear-off menus

Problem
• menu not there when you want it

Solution
• tear-off off and pin-up menus
stay around when
• pallettes little windows of actions
shown/hidden via menu option
e.g. available shapes in drawing package
 Social and Organizational Context

Interaction affected by social and organizational context

• other people
- desire to impress, competition, fear of failure

• motivation
- fear, allegiance, ambition, self-satisfaction

• inadequate systems
 cause frustration and lack of motivation
Principles to support usability

 A structured presentation of general principles to apply

during design of an interactive system.

 Learnability
 the ease with which new users can begin effective interaction
and achieve maximal performance
 Flexibility
 the multiplicity of ways the user and system exchange
information
 Robustness
 the level of support provided the user in determining
successful achievement and assessment of goal-directed
behaviour
Principles of learnability

 Predictability
 determining effect of future actions based on past
interaction history
 operation visibility
 Synthesizability
 assessing the effect of past actions
 immediate vs. eventual honesty
Principles of learnability

 Familiarity
 how prior knowledge applies to new system
 guessability; affordance
 Generalizability
 extending specific interaction knowledge to new situations
 Consistency
 likeness in input/output behaviour arising from similar
situations or task objectives
Principles of flexibility

 Dialogue initiative
 freedom from system imposed constraints on input
dialogue
 system vs. user pre-emptiveness
 Multithreading
 ability of system to support user interaction for more than
one task at a time
 concurrent vs. interleaving; multimodality
 Task migratability
 passing responsibility for task execution between user and
system
Principles of flexibility

 Substitutivity
 allowing equivalent values of input and output to be
substituted for each other
 representation multiplicity; equal opportunity
 Customizability
 modifiability of the user interface by user (adaptability) or
system (adaptivity)
Principles of robustness

 Observability
 ability of user to evaluate the internal state of the system
from its perceivable representation
 browsability; defaults; reachability; persistence; operation
visibility
 Recoverability
 ability of user to take corrective action once an error has
been recognized
 reachability; forward/backward recovery; commensurate
effort
Principles of robustness

 Responsiveness
 how the user perceives the rate of communication with
the system
 Stability
 Task conformance
 degree to which system services support all of the user's
tasks
 task completeness; task adequacy
Questions?
Exercises
Write your answers in a word editing software(e.g. MSWord, Google Docs)
and email it to me at [email protected] with the subject indicating
your name and append ex#1. (e.g. Subject – ERVIN SIBONGA ex#1)

1. Find out all that you can about natural language interfaces. Are there
any successful systems? For what applications are these most
appropriate?
2. What influence does the social environment in which you work have
on your interaction with the computer? What effect does the
organization (commercial or academic) to which you belong have on
the interaction?
3. Look up and report back guidelines for the use of color. Be able to
state the empirical psychological evidence which supports the
guidelines. Do the guidelines conflict with any other known
guidelines? Which principles of interaction do they support? (You
can use the following resources to support your answer)
Brown, C. Marlin, Human-Computer Interface Design Guidelines, Ablex,
1988.
Mayhew, Deborah J., Principles and Guidelines in Software User Interface
Design, Prentice-Hall, 1992
Sun Microsystems, Inc., OPEN LOOK Graphical User Interface
Application Style Guidelines, Addison-Wesley, 1990.
Exercises
Write your answers in a word editing software(e.g. MSWord, Google Docs)
and email it to me at [email protected] with the subject indicating
your name and append ex#1. (e.g. Subject – ERVIN SIBONGA ex#1)

4. Discuss the ways in which a full-page word-processor is or is not

a direct manipulation interface for editing a document using
Shneiderman’s criteria. What features of a modern word
processor break the metaphor of composition with pen (or
typewriter) and paper?
5. It has been suggested in our lecture that consistency could be
considered a major category of interactive principles, on the
same level as learnability, flexibility and robustness. If this
had been the case, which principles discussed would appear
in support of consistency?
Further Readings

 Read the following report on DRL from the following link

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4404925.pdf

Construct a narrative answering the following guide questions:

1. What Is DRL and its impact to HCI?
2. What do you think is the importance of DRL to the improvement of
the field of HCI and the enhancement of technology in terms of HCI

Write your answers in a word editing software(e.g. MSWord, Google

Docs) and email it to me at [email protected] with the subject
indicating your name and append ex#2. (e.g. Subject – ERVIN SIBONGA
ex#1)