Jim Foley Andy Pruett foley@cc.gatech.edu
andy.pruett@gatech.edu
This material has been developed by Georgia Tech HCI faculty, and continues to evolve.
Contributors include Gregory Abowd, Jim Foley, Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeff Pierce, Colin Potts,
Chris Shaw, John Stasko, and Bruce Walker. Comments directed to foley@cc.gatech.edu
are encouraged. Permission is granted to use with acknowledgement for non-profit purposes. Last revision: January 2012.

• Introductions
• Course Information
• Project Information
• Homework
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• Founded GVU Center @ GT in 1991
• Industry and consulting and education
• Direct MS-HCI
• Research Interests
 HCI - now focused on technology in education
 Information Visualization
 Computer Graphics (four books, no more!)
• Office hours
 I ’ m available a lot – almost always after class down the hall
 No one ever comes to my office in TSRB 355
 Arrange other times via email; foley@cc.gatech.edu
• Something about me …..
3

4

5

Half Dome at
Yosemite
National Park
MSHCI ‘14
BS CS, Physics. UGA
Summer Intern at
Ebay
Interests in InfoVis,
Agile, Natural-UI
I collect vinyl records, electric guitars, and coffee makers.
andy.pruett@gatech.edu

• Learn a four-step process for designing, prototyping and testing user-computer interfaces
• Learn theories, principles and methods relevant to the four steps
 How to understand users and their needs
 Principles involved in designing computer interfaces.
useful and usable user-
 UI styles and technologies
 Human perceptual and cognitive capabilities and how they apply to UI design
 Critique UIs in the context of user goals and objectives
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• Requirements Gathering
• Human abilities
• Design
• Prototyping
• Evaluation (without users)
• Evaluation (with users)
• Dialog & interaction styles
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• At least your degree program’s first programming course
• More is better
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•
•
, Third Edition, by
Preece, Rogers and Sharp. Wiley, 2011.
, by Donald
Norman. Currency/Doubleday.
 Any edition OK; new one preferred
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• Grading
 Test 1
 Test 2
 Test 3
 Homework
 Pop Quizzes
 Group project (4 parts)
– 10% per part
12%
12%
12%
20%
4%
40%
• Attendance and participation
 Expected
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• No late homework accepted without documented personal issues (serious illness, family emergency, etc.)
 Late = 0
• HWs done individually
• Group projects are the work of your group alone
 Talk to others for feedback; look at other systems for ideas; group synthesizes an original design
• Review the Georgia Tech Academic Honor Code
 http://www.deanofstudents.gatech.edu/Honor/
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• T-Square for turn-ins and grades
• Wordpress for assignments, schedule, class notes
 http://6750hcidesigngeorgiatech.wordpress.com/
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• What is the
?
 Is it the screen layout?
 Is it the documentation?
 Is it the interaction devices and techniques?
 Is it what the application does?
 Is it the help system?
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• What is the
?
 Is it the screen layout?
 Is it the documentation?
 Is it the interaction devices and techniques?
 Is it what the application does?
 Is it the help system?
• It is ALL of the above, and more..
 UX
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• Lots of other examples, such as
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4zSWaoEREM
• How many computationally-enabled devices are in your home?
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• Allow users to carry out tasks
 Safely (Three-mile Island, ATC)
 Effectively
 Efficiently
 Enjoyably
• Bottom line
 Lives or dollars or intangibles
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• User-friendly interfaces and
• Programmer-friendly interfaces?
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“ It is easy to make things hard. It is hard to make things easy.
” (Al Chapanis, 1982)
“ Learning to use a computer system is like learning to use a parachute – if a person fails on the first try, odds are he won ’ t try again.
”
(anonymous)
“ Pay Now or Pay Later. ” J. Foley
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How Does UI Design Fit in Overall
Software Development Process?
• UI design MUST start at beginning
 Do NOT wait ‘ til the end
 Good UI can not be pasted on top of poorly-designed functionality
• Integrate UI design methods, techniques and knowledge into standard software development methodologies
• Good paper “ How To Get Amazing Software Out
The Door Fast ” from Macadamian
 To retrieve, Google “ How To Get Amazing Software
Out The Door Fast ”
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• In the early days: Please evaluate our user interface and
• The early enlightenment: Please help us design this user
• The age of reason: Please help us find what the users interface
• The VC dream: Look at this area of life and find us
Panu Korhonen as reported by Liam Bannon “ Reimagining
HCI: Toward a More Human-Centered Perspective, ”
ACM Interactions, July+August 2011
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• …when a reporter asked Jobs how much market research Apple had done before introducing the iPad , he responded, “ None. It isn ’ t the consumers ’ job to know what they want.
”
– http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/the-man-whoinspired-jobs.html?emc=eta1
• “ It is in Apple ’ s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it ’ s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
”
– http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/ steve-jobs-pixar.html#ixzz1aINBFKjx
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• Focus of User Experience (UX) design is usability
– being able to get something done without too much effort
• You are like your users
• People always use your system the way you imagined they would.
• People can tell you what they want
• Icons always enhance usability
• Design is about making a user interface look good
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• User-Centered Design If you are Steve 
 Analyze (or imagine) user ’ s goals & tasks
 Create design alternatives
 Evaluate options (fail early, fail often)
 Implement prototype
 Test
 Refine
 IMPLEMENT THE REAL SYSTEM
 Be prepared for further iterative refinement
• This is NOT the classic waterfall development process!!!!!
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• Physical & cognitive abilities & special needs
• Personality & culture
• Knowledge & skills
• Motivation
• Two Fatal Mistakes:
 Assume all users are alike
 Assume all users are like you
– Please leave your ego at the door
You Are Here
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• “ Looks good to me ” is not good enough!
• Both subjective and objective metrics
• We can measure
 Time to learn
 Speed of performance
 Rate of errors by user
 Retention over time
 Subjective satisfaction
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3.
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4.
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5.
Etc
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• Basektball scorekeeper
• Pool tournament manager
• Movie selector
• Manage tasks in shared apartment
• Manage wine cellar
• Improved parking meter
• Improved MARTA ticket dispenser
• Fast food self-service ordering kiosk
• Tablet menu ordering
• Baby book builder/advisor
• Diabetes monitoring/insulin injector
• Google glass app for police
• Fitness tracker / game
• Home resource usage / competition
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• Diabetes test & meal planning
• Smart cupboard - food, menus, recipes, preferences
• Improved class scheduling system
• Google Glass XXX
• Smart Phone App for XXX
• Integrated social network manager
• Personal medical record manager
• PDA/GPS for about town to locate places
• Metro trip planner
• Kiosk for homeless to find resources
• Group picture share/organizer
• Backpackers planning kiosk at camp sites

• Project could be front-end of a Convergence Innovation Competition entry for this spring – for more ideas and info, see
 http://cic.gatech.edu/spring-2014/
• Automobile navigator
• Improved cell phone UI
• Wardrobe planner
• Teacher-parent communicator
• Tourist guide
• Vacation planner
• Menu planning / grocery list creation
• Shopping list creator and store guide
• Calendar agent (speech)
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• 4 people
 Self-forming but MUST be diverse w/r to
– Skills, gender, major
 Group formation facilitated in next few classes
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• Design and evaluate an interface
 0 - Team formation & topic choice
 1 - Understand the problem
 2 - Design alternatives
 3 - Prototype & evaluation plan
 4 - Evaluation
• Parts 1-4 count 10% each
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• Part 0 - Topic definition
 Identify team & topic, create web notebook
• Part 1 - Understanding the problem
 Describe tasks, users, environment, social context
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• Part 2 - Design alternatives
 Storyboards, mock-ups for multiple different designs
 Poster session 1-3pm (combined with a 3750 section)
• Part 3 - System prototype & eval plan
 Semi-working interface functionality - enough to evaluate
 Plan for conducting evaluation
 In-class walkthrough
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• Part 4
 Conduct evaluation with typical users
 Characterize pros and cons of the UI
 Fix the easy to fix UI problems
• Present results to class
 Last few class meetings
 PPts plus demo
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• Do all teams work on same project? NO, each team works on project of interest to them. Several teams may tackle the same general issue, coming up with different approaches.
• Can we pre-form a team or partial team? YES, but with caveat. No team can have all CS majors. No team can have more than one member who is neither CS nor CM.
• Do you do peer reviews on project participation. YES, AND I DO
ADJUST GRADES BASED ON PEER FEEDBACK.
• Can we get extra credit for doing a back-end to our system? NO, emphasis is on project stages – how well you do each. Building the prototype is just one of four steps, and there emphasis is on UI quality, not overall functionality.
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• Wednesday – sit where you expect to sit for rest of semester
 Name in big letters on folded paper tent
 Helps me associate names and faces :-)
• Be on look-out for really good or really bad Uis - Hall of Fame / Hall of Shame
• Don’t forget HW0 – be ready with 30second “elevator pitch”
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Some users expect the computer-based system to be just like the old system….
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Other users expect the system to work magic…..
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