CS/Psych 6750
Human Computer Interaction
Jim Foley
foley@cc.gatech.edu
Kerry Young
kerryyoung@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.
Agenda for Today
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Introductions
Course Information
Project Information
Homework
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Introductions - Jim Foley
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Founded GVU Center @ GT in 1991
Industry and consulting and education
Direct MS-HCI and Barcelona Summer Program
Research Interests
 HCI - now focused on technology in education
 Information Visualization
 Computer Graphics
• Office hours
 MWF 12-1 in CCB, location TBA
 Or by email arrangement in TSRB355; foley@cc.gatech.edu
• Something about me …..
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Introductions – Kerry Young
• Second-year MS-HCI Student
 Research in BrainLab
• GTA for 3750 (undergrad version) last
semester
• Several years work experience
• kerryyoung@gatech.edu
• Office hours / location TBA
• Something about Kerry
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Textbooks
• Interaction Design – beyond humancomputer interaction, Third Edition, by
Preece, Rogers and Sharp. Wiley, 2011.
 Second edition, 2007, also OK
• The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald
Norman. Currency/Doubleday.
 Any edition OK
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Course Information
• Grading
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Mid-term
Final exam
Homework
Group project (4 parts)
18%
18%
20%
44%
– 11% per part
• Attendance and participation
 Expected
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Policies
• No late homework accepted without
documented personal issues (serious illness,
family emergency, etc.)
 Late = 0
• Individual HWs and LHWs 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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Web Site
• Grades and turn-ins on t-square web site:
 t-square.gatech.edu
• Lecture notes, supplemental materials,
assignments on regular web site at URL
TBA prior to Wednesday.
• Project description on t-square under
resources.
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Course Goals
• 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 useful and usable usercomputer interfaces.
 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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Course Topics
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Requirements Gathering
Human abilities
Design
Prototyping
Evaluation (without users)
Evaluation (with users)
Dialog & interaction styles
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HW0- Due Wednesday 
• Put up on the class T-Square Wiki
 A paragraph about yourself
– Home town / state / country
– Undergrad major / school
– GT major
– Work experience – both general and UI-related
– Programming languages / tools
– Design skills / tools
– Something most people don’t know about you
– Picture of yourself
 One-paragraph description of a project idea
 Count of number of computers in your home
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And we’re off!
• What is the User Interface?
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Is
Is
Is
Is
Is
Is
it
it
it
it
it
it
the screen layout?
the documentation?
the interaction devices and techniques?
what the application does?
the help system?
the code?
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UI
• UI is at the interface between a human and a
computer performing a task
 Task - write document, calculate budget, solve equation,
learn about Bosnia, drive home, find a friend...
 Task might be work, play, learning, communicating, etc
etc
• Essential user activities:
 Express task (execution)
 Interpret results (evaluation)
• Not just on the desktop! Everywhere!
• How many computers in your family home?
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Who Cares?
• Computers (in one way or another) now affect
every person in our society
 Increasing % utilize computers at work and home
– Tonight - count how many in your home/apt/room
• Product success may depend on ease of use,
not necessarily power
 But not always – Macintosh OS vs. Microsoft
Windows
• Goal – increase satisfaction, utility, efficiency,
and safety
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UI Influences Product Ratings
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Goals of HCI
• Allow users to carry out tasks
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Safely (Three-mile Island, ATC)
Effectively
Efficiently
Enjoyably
• Bottom line
 Lives or dollars or intangibles
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What is difference between
• User-friendly interfaces
and
• Programmer-friendly interfaces?
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Famous Quotations
“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)
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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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The Evolving Role of HCI
• In the early days: Please evaluate our user interface and
make it easy to use
• The early enlightenment: Please help us design this user
interface so that it is easy to use
• The age of reason: Please help us find what the users
really need so that we know how to design this user
interface
• The VC dream: Look at this area of life and find us
something interesting
Panu Korhonen as reported by Liam Bannon “Reimagining
HCI: Toward a More Human-Centered Perspective,”
ACM Interactions, July+August 2011
Where Does Steve Fit in?
Where Does Steve Fit In?
• …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
UI Design / Develop Process
• 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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Know Thy Users!
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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
You Are Here
– Please leave your ego at the door
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User Expectations (1)
Some users expect the computer-based
system to be just like the old system….
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User Expectations (2)
Other users expect the system to work
magic…..
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Design Evaluation
• “Looks good to me” is not good enough!
• Both subjective and objective metrics
• We can measure
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Time to learn
Speed of performance
Rate of errors by user
Retention over time
Subjective satisfaction
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Characteristics of Great UIs?
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Characteristics of Great UIs?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Aaa
Bbb
Ccc
Ddd
Etc
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And now – more about that
project
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Project Theme this Semester
• Health IT
 Unless you are passionate about something
else
• Post idea on Wiki for Wednesday
• You choose platform
 Computer, tablet (such as iPad), smart phone
(such as iPhone), Kiosk, new type of device
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Project Groups
• 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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Project Structure
• Design and evaluate an interface
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4
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Team formation & topic choice
Understand the problem
Design alternatives
Prototype & evaluation plan
Evaluation
• Parts 1-4 count 11% each
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Project Details
• 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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Project Details
• 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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Project Details
• 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 – poster session(s)
last one or two days of class
 With 5-minute PPt
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Project Ideas
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On Wednesday I will talk about a few project ideas
Convergence Innovation Competition projects welcome
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One category is Health IT
http://cic.gatech.edu/drupal/categories
Past projects include:
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Automobile navigator
Improved cell phone UI
Wardrobe planner
Teacher-parent communicator
Tourist guide
Vacation planner
Menu planning / grocery list creation
Self-service restaurant ordering system
Basketball scoring system
Shopping list creator and store guide
Roommate task management system
Calendar agent (speech)
Audio / Web sites
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Introductions - You
• Name, major, area of specialization, home
town
• Previous HCI experience
• An interesting fact about yourself
• Project idea (optional)
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Coming up
• Wednesday – sit where you expect to sit
for rest of semester
 Helps me associate names and faces :-)
• Be on look-out for really good or really
bad UIs
 Hall of Fame / Hall of Shame
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