Ben Shneiderman
(ben@cs.umd.edu)
Director, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Professor, Department of Computer Science
Member, Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies &
Systems Research
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Interdisciplinary research community
- Computer Science & Psychology
- Information Studies & Education www.cs.umd.edu/hcil

User Interface Design Goals

Cognitively comprehensible:
Consistent, predictable & controllable

Affectively acceptable:
Mastery, satisfaction & responsibility
NOT:
Adaptive, autonomous & anthropomorphic


User Interface Design Goals
Consistent
Predictable
Controllable
Cognitively comprehensible:
Consistent, predictable & controllable

Affectively acceptable:
Mastery, satisfaction & responsibility
NOT:
Adaptive, autonomous & anthropomorphic

Design Issues

Input devices & strategies

Keyboards, pointing devices, voice

Direct manipulation

Menus, forms, commands

Output devices & formats

Screens, windows, color, sound

Text, tables, graphics

Instructions, messages, help

Collaboration & communities

Manuals, tutorials, training www.awl.com/DTUI hcibib.org
usableweb.com

Scientific Approach (beyond user friendly)
 Specify users and tasks
 Predict and measure
 time to learn
 speed of performance
 rate of human errors
 human retention over time
 Assess subjective satisfaction
(Questionnaire for User
Interaction Satisfaction 7.0, www.lap.umd.edu/QUIS/index.html)
 Accommodate individual differences
 Consider social, organizational & cultural context

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1) Visual Design

Visual bandwidth is enormous

Human perceptual skills are remarkable

Trend, cluster, gap, outlier...

Color, size, shape, proximity...
 Human image storage is fast and vast

Opportunities

Spatial layouts & coordination

Information visualization
 Scientific visualization & simulation

Telepresence & augmented reality

Virtual environments
Consistent
Predictable
Controllable

Treemap - view large trees with node values
 Space filling


Space limited
Color coding
  Size coding
Requires learning
TreeViz (Mac, Johnson, 1992)
NBA-Tree(Sun, Turo, 1993)
Winsurfer (Teittinen, 1996)
Diskmapper (Windows, Micrologic)
Treemap97 (Windows, UMd)
Shneiderman, ACM Trans. on Graphics , 1992 www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemaps

Treemap - Stock market, clustered by industry

2) Social Support: Concepts

Online communities

E-commerce customer service & consumer conversations

Medical support groups & information exchange

Educational discussions & teamwork
 Neighborhood forums & political organizing

Technologies

Synchronous text: Instant messaging, chat rooms

Asynchronous text: Listservs, bulletin boards, newsgroups

Audio,video, virtual realities

2) Social Support: Active Worlds

2) Social Support: Goals

Supporting Sociability

People: Target a population

Purposes: Clearly state focus

Policies: Make expectations explicit
 behavior, privacy, moderation, joining rules
Consistent
Predictable
Controllable

Designing Usability

Users: Know the users

Tasks: Understand frequencies and sequences

Systems: Choose seamless combinations of tools
Online Communities: Supporting Sociability, Designing Usability
Jenny Preece, John Wiley & Sons, June 2000


Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest, and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of the members of that community.
- Francis Fukuyama, Trust , 1995

Trust indicates a positive belief about the perceived reliability of, dependability of, and confidence in a person, object, or process.
- B. J. Fogg, CHI99


Trust is the positive expectation a person has for another person or organization that is based on past performance and truthful future guarantees

People rely on tools or processes
Person
Trusts
Rely on
Person
`
Tool
Process
Truthful
Future Guarantees
Responsible

2) Social Support: Trust
 Invite participation by ensuring trust
 Disclose patterns of past performance
 Provide references from past and current users
 Get certifications from third parties
 Make policies for privacy & security easy to find & read
 Accelerate action by clarifying responsibility
 Clarify each participant's responsibilities
 Provide clear guarantees with compensation
 Describe dispute resolution and mediation services
Communications of the ACM, Dec. 2000, Special Issue on Trust

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3) Universal Usability Consistent
Predictable
Controllable
 Technology variety :
Support broad range of hardware, software, and network access
 User diversity :
Accommodate users with different skills, knowledge, age, gender, literacy, culture, income, disabilities, disabling conditions (mobility, injury, noise, light)...
 Gaps in user knowledge :
Bridge the gap between what users know and what they need to know
Communications of the ACM , May 2000

Technology variety: Support broad range of hardware, software, and network access
1 to 100 range in processor speeds
286 486 Pentium
Device Independence
Input: keyboard, speech,...
Output: visual, auditory,...
Conversion: Text-speech
Speech-text,...
1 to 100 range in screen sizes
Palm devices Laptops Large Desktop or Wall Display
30,000 480,000 3,840,000 pixels
Software Versions
Compatibility
File conversion
Multiple platforms
1 to 100 range in network bandwidth
9.6K 56K 10,000Kbps

User diversity : Accommodate different users
Language & Culture
Western, Eastern, developing...
Personality
Introvert vs extravert
Thinking vs feeling
Risk aversion
Locus of control
Planful vs playful
Age
Disabilities
Visual, auditory, motoric, cognitive
Disabling conditions
Mobility, injury, noise, sunlight
Young to old
Skills
C omputer newbie to hacker
Gender
Male or Female
Knowledge
Income
Impoverished to wealthy
Domain novice to expert

Bridge the gap between what users know and what they need to know
Design
Layered
Level-structured
Task-oriented
Online Learning
(evolutionary, phased)
Introductory tutorials
Getting started manuals,
Cue cards
Walkthroughs/Demos
Minimalist/Active
Training
Fade-able scaffolding
Training wheels
Minimalist
Online help
Context sensitive, tables of contents,
Indexes, Keyword search,
FAQs, Newsgroups, Chat rooms
Online communities
Customer service
Email
Phone
Help desks

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may...reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.
-- Reply to American
Philosophical Society, 1808

Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory www.cs.umd.edu/hcil