Questions

Question Set of readings

Lecture Date	Reading	Questions
Set 1	The Psychopathology of everyday things	- What does the word "Affordance" means? Can you think about a couple of example from your everyday life? - What does the author mean when saying that features should be visible? Why are not all the feature in a typical cell-phone visible? - What is a conceptual model? How does it influence how we interact with the world around us? - Can you think about a couple of good mapping examples in your everyday life. Can you think about a couple of difficult to understand mappings? - Can you think about a couple example of poorly designed feedback from your everyday life? How causality influence feedback design? - Pick one product you are using on an everyday basis and propose 5 to 10 ways to improve it.
Set 1	The perfect brainstorm	- What are the differences between a brainstorm and a regular meeting? - Do you think "How can we improve the usability of MP3 player of our company?" is a good topic for brainstorming? If yes, why? If no, why not? - What are the expected results of a brainstorm ? - You found a person who seldom speaks during brainstorming. What is the best strategy you can take?
Set 2	The designer's stance	- What are the differences between designing and engineering claimed by David Kelly? Do you agree with him? why or why not? - Why successful design should be done by team not by individual? Compare the advantages/disadvantages of a big group and a small group in design process. - What is the benefit of taking extra effort at the beginning stage such as design (rather at the development or the production stages)? - What is the role of failure in design? - What is a good environment for conducting design? - What is a leading question? Provide a couple of examples from everyday life.
Set 2	Universal Tools: Recruiting and Interviewing	- Critic the questions below and change them if needed : "Do you think this keyboard is better than the traditional ones because it reduces the long-term wrist pain?" "Adding a sliding bar on MP3 player is a good idea for selecting a song to listen" "Do you think this functionality is good for students or businessmen?" "When you purchase a digital camera, what is the most important factor in your decision?" "Please choose your favorite design from the pictures below" "Are you willing to pay more (around 10%) for the products from well-known companies?" - Why is it useful to use artifacts during an interviews? - What are typical tools you should bring with you during a user interview? - What kinds of information can be acquired by videotaping that could not be captured on audio?
Set 3	Understanding users: Qualitative Research Modeling Users: Personas and Goals	- Which experience level of people (beginners, intermediates and experts) tends to change rapidly and why? - Among the tools listed below, which tool is more effective for each level of people (beginners, intermediates and experts)? why? Guiding dialog box, shortcut, tooltip, online help - Compare the archetypes vs. stereotypes and personas vs. user profiles. - You can't get the goal of the user directly since s/he would be inaccurate or unable to articulate. Then how can you get that information? - Make a context scenario from a primary persona for a portable MPEG-4 Video player. Create a narrative, and present your narrative to a friend to see if it is complete. - What does the author mean by Contextual Inquiry? - Why does the author believe that designers should focus on Perpetual Intermediates? - What is the difference between a domain expert and a technical expert? - Some people said that designer often has to serve several masters. What does that means? Provide an example from the reading, and from your everyday life. How can persona help addressing this problem? - In the early stage of the design, why is it important to focus on goals, instead of tasks?
Set 4	Making a Paper Prototype	- Do you agree on the idea that the paper prototyping is obsolete since we can easily get Wysiwyg editors (such as the modules in Frontpage, VB or Flash) ? Defend or criticize the idea. - For a web page design, which components could be omitted from the background in paper prototyping testing and why? - Assume you want to develop a program for DVD rental. You also want your program to work on PC and mobile phone. Read the opinions of two experts in page 78 and decide whether or not to consider the size constraints during a paper prototyping phase. - Is it a good idea to fake the images of the photos when you design a web site for digital photo albums? why or why not? - What kinds of interactions would be hard to simulate perfectly in paper prototyping ? Give 2 ~ 3 examples not written in pp.85~87.
Set 5	Design: Evaluation	- How did the 80/20 principle influence the design of the Palm pilot interface? Provide two examples. - Rob pointed out that more often than not, literal translation from PC to PDA format does not work. Which examples did he give to support that statement? Could you think about other examples? - How did the Palm Pilot team came up with the overall shape of the device? How did that influence the screen design? In turn how did that choice influenced the interface design? - Why are hardware buttons so important for the Palm interface? Why will more flexible software buttons not do? - Why was the Synchronization feature so important to users? What made it successful? - Evaluation was used extensively during the development of the original Palm Pilot. From the reading, list the different techniques used, when they were used in the product development cycle, and the outcome for the product. - Explain how redesigning an interface could make a given processor feel faster. What was Haitani's response to the remarks such as "that's just one more tap" and "It would only take another second" on the interface design? - What is a "Phone test"? Why was it so useful for the team? - Why is it important to strike the right balance between predictability and consistency? - Do you think that it will be possible to build a PC interface without a Save feature?
Set 6	Historical perspective	- What was the key target persona for the Xerox Star? - What are the key technologies that made Xerox Alto/Star possible? - Give the advantage/the disadvantage of time-shared systems and stand-alone PCs. What did Xerox do to take advantage of these two apparently different types of systems. - Provides several examples where users studies were used to make decisions about the final design? - What are the key aspect of the Desktop Metaphor? How does it differ from the a simpler windows based interface? What are the key elements that will make the metaphor work? - What is direct manipulation? What are the key characteristic of a direct manipulation system? What are the key direct manipulation features of your favorite drawing program (or presentation program). - Why are mode considered harmful in interface design? How could Star avoid the use of modes? In what situations should the modes be allowed? - How does the progressive disclosure strategy works? Give specific examples. Which persona will benefit most from progressive disclosure? - What is the Tools metaphor? Why and how did the Star system departed from it? What metaphor is used in Windows XP or Mac OS X? - Do you think that the use of persona during the design process might have help avoid the system shortcomings? Provide a detail explanation for at least one of the lessons learned from experience.
Set 7	The Human Information Processor	- Why is "UMDMSNBC" much easier to remember than "MCUSMBDN"? How can you apply this fact to UI design? - What are the 2 big assumptions in Dorak keyboard calculation? - Among the physical match, name match and class match, which matching has the lowest reaction time? - What are the factors that reflect hidden constraints in Rationality Priciple(P8) in page 86? - Provide a 3 sentences description for each of the 3 sub-systems of the Human Information Processor (Henceforth, HIP). - Describe the basic steps in the human Perceive - Recognize - Act loop. For each steps describe which sub-systems are involved in this step. - What is Fitts' law? How can it be empirically derived from the HIP model? How could it be used while designing new computer interfaces (both hardware and software) - According to the HIP model, what are the key steps necessary to "understand" that a number presented of the screen is odd? - What is a perception quantum? How can the length of the quantum can be measured? - How can one explain figure 2.5 pare 35? - What is the working memory? How does it differ from the long term memory? Which everyday interface was designed with the limitation of the human working memory in mind? How did these limitation shape the system? - What is a chunk? Explain the effect of chunk-interference. What is the difference between interference and spontaneous decay over time? - Is the HIP serial or parallel? How do human do several things at once? - Who are the Slowman, the Middleman and the Fastman? - Explain how the HIP can be used to understand the limit of human performances? Provide one examples. What are the limitation of the models? - How can the HIP used to derived an optimal rate for motion movie pictures? - How two events should be related to be believed to be causally related? What is the implication for HCI in term of system performance? - The HIP model states that the basic Perceived - Recognize -Act loop is around 240ms. How come then that pianist can play so fast? - What is the power law of learning? How does it relate to the statement by Alan Cooper that most interfaces should be designed for perpetual intermediates users? - What is Hick's law? How could it be applied to the actual UI design?
Set 8	Skill Acquisition Book: "Learning and Memory", by J. Anderson	- What are the stages of skill acquisition? Using your favorite sport, illustrate each stage. What kind of knowledge is used in each stage? - What are the key experimental results that lead us to infer the existence of motor programs? - Not all motor controls involve cognitive control. For example imagine that while cooking, your hand touch a very hot plate. What will happen next? At which stage do you think your higher cognitive functions got involved? - What are production rules? Provide two examples drawing from your personal experience. - In figure 9.6 subjects often have difficulty moving from state 6 to 7. How does the reading explain this fact? Can you think about a similar example which happened to you? - What are the key concepts used to describe human problem solving? Explain them. As an example, contrast the problem solving description page 330 and page 331. - How flexible are motor programs? Provide example(s) of how they can or cannot be re-targeted. - What is the role of feedback in skill acquisition? Which experiment seems to validate Schmidt schema theory? Why? - Provide two examples in which the theory of skill acquisition could help interactions designer (one for which it will predict how a feature will improve performance or comfort, and one for which it will predict a possible problem). - Compare recall memory and recognition memory and explain how do they interact. Which one is more difficult: recognition or recall?
Set 9	Information Processing and Skilled Behavior Book: "HCI Models, Theories, AND Frameworks : Toward A Multidisciplinary Science", By J. Carroll. Chapter 4.	- Why is it that low level models such as Fitts' law are not always sufficient to perform successful task analysis? - What are the key elements of a GOMS description? Describe each of them. What are the assumptions made by this family of models? What are the key restrictions of such models? - You are in front of your computer about to write the answer for Question #4 of HW#4. Describe your goals and sub-goals to carry this task. Imagine now that you are performing the same task in front of a new word processor you have been using for a day or two. How will your goals and sub-goals change in that case? - How many ways are there to select a paragraph in your favorite text editor? Describe them all using CMN-GOMS. - Looking back at all the possible way to select a paragraph, what are the heuristics a typical users will use to know which techniques to use? - Build a CMN-GOMS description of the following task: copying a paragraph from the beginning to the end of a long document. - What is the KLM model? How does it relate to the CMN-GOMS? What are the pros and cons of this model? For what kind of analysis is this model used? - Compare and contrast the KLM, the CMN-GOMS and CPM-GOMS. Make a schedule chart of CPM-GOMS model of typing "hello world" (Use extreme-expertise assumption). Do you think the total predicted time of CPM-GOMS is significantly different from the estimation of KLM or CMN-GOMS? Why? - What was the goal of Project Ernestine? What were the results? How come the predictions of CPM-GOMS were more accurate than the non-cognitive predictions? - In Project Ernestine, the manufacturer of the new system claimed that it significantly simplified the operator task. Is it true? Why did this simplification backfire?
Set 10	Cognitive engineering; Direct Manipulation Interfaces Book: "User Centered System Design", by Donald Norman and Stephan Draper	- What is Direct Manipulation? What are the key aspects of a direct manipulation interface? Provide some examples from an operating system you are using on an everyday basis. - What are the claimed benefits of direct manipulation interfaces? Do you agree with them? - What is a gulf of execution? What is the gulf of evaluation? Using everyday life example describe for each gulf a case in which the gulf is narrow and the case in which the gulf is wide. How can computer interface help in reducing these gulfs? Why isn't automation always the answer? - What is the concept of engagement? How odes that relate to direct manipulation interfaces? What are the key interface characteristics that will promote engagement? Are this concept task or expertise specific? - What are semantic and articulatory distances? How can one reduce semantic distances? How can one reduce articulatory distances? - What is the concept of inter-referential I/O? How does it relate to direct manipulation? - Do you think that a direct manipulation interface is always the best solution? Justify your answer. - Give a class of tasks for which a textual interface might be faster than a direct manipulation interface. - Some well known and accepted interface has been voluntary designed with a large Gulf of Execution. In which class of tasks a wide gulf of execution might be a desirable feature? - What is the Turing tar-pit? How does it apply to the design of human computer interfaces? - How can expertise (or training) "reduce" the gulf of execution and evaluation. Give one example in each case. - Classify these interfaces in the space of interfaces in Figure 5.8. Deleting a file by drag-and-drop to the trash can icon on the computer desktop. Changing the current directory by typing "cd" in Unix terminal when the prompt shows the current directory Handling an icon of a file with no extension and no linked application Deleting a file by "rm filename" in Unix Mounting a disk on to a specific mount point in your Unix directory structure Programming a complex interface using a visual programming environment - Looking at a typical word processor, when do you think the direct manipulation approach break down?
Set 11	Evaluating the design without users Book: "Task-Centered User Interface Design"	- When and why is it useful to perform software evaluation without users? - Compare the 3 approaches for evaluating an interface in the absence of users. Can we find the same problems with each approach or each approach uncover different problems? What is the authors' recommendations on how to use these approaches in the design process? - What are the risks associated with any of the "without users" evaluation techniques? How could one alleviate such risks? - How can the design of persona help a designer to perform a effective walkthrough? Provide one or two examples. How can a paper interface help a designer during a walkthrough evaluation? - Given a 2 columns by 4 row table in Excel (or any other spreadsheet program), perform a cognitive walkthroughs for creating a bar-graph based on this data. Perform a heuristic analysis for the same task. - How much can the designer experience (both in general and with respect to a specific group of users) influence the result of "without users" evaluation? Why? Does it depend on the technique? - Looking at these techniques, how useful will it be for a young designer to be attentive to every mishap that happen to him/her and people around him/her? Explain your answer. - Explain the difference between evaluating and validating an interface. - What are the 9 heuristics proposed by Nielsen. For each heuristics describe one example where the heuristic has been respected, and one when it was violated. For both case explain the impact on users. What class of problem will these heuristics have difficulty to identify? Why? - Compare and contrast the use of the "formal" and "back-of-the-envelop" action analysis. In particular which one is most likely to be used as a validation technique and which one is most likely to be used as an evaluation techniques? Perform a back-of-the-envelope action analysis for taking a picture with your cell-phone (or playing a given piece of music on your MP3 player).
Set 12	There's more to interaction than meets the eye, Book: "User Centered System Design", by Donald Norman and Stephan Draper	- What are pragmatics? Why are they so important to the design of efficient interfaces? - According to Bill Buxton, what is the main problem with interface design from and ergonomic point of view? How can a physical anthropologist (described page 319) conclude that we human have two hands, but one arm larger than the other? - What is a virtual device? From an implementation point of view why is it useful to talk about virtual devices? Do the two device presented figure 15.2 A and 15.2 B belong to the same virtual device class? Why? Are they equivalent from a user perspective? - Why is the idea of "making task specific device" unrealistic? - What is a cross-modality mapping? Why can it cause problem? Give an example. - Buxton describe a drawing game using a Skedoodle and a Etch-a-Sketch device. Why is it that you will always win the game? Explain your answer in term of device design. Can you come up with the always-win strategy on "mouse" vs. "keyboard" for drawing. - What is a the Nulling problem. How can it be addressed? - What does Buxton means by phrasing of gestural input? - How two-hand interactions might help user during everyday computing tasks. What are the possible drawback of two handed interaction? In non-computer related task how often does one used both hands? Do you think that the role of each hand is symmetric? Why don't most systems encourage two-handed multiple device input? - What is the lesson we can learn from it in designing system in a layered manner?
Set 13	Organization and visual structure, Book: "Design Visual Interfaces", by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano	- Briefly explain key benefits introduced by structure. - What is the meaning of gestalts? Briefly describe the Gestalt principles. - First, look at the Figure 97 in page 92. Can we say similarity is more important than proximity in grouping ? If yes, why? If no, why not? - How can asymmetric layout achieve balance (not producing a sense of instability) and equilibrium? How can you balance the window in Figure 114 (page 104) ? - List the advantages/disadvantages of symmetry. - What are the two important tools for constructing visual hierarchies? And which one of the two is the most important (perceptually powerful and immediate) means of establishing relationship among elements? - How can we produce optically equivalent scaling for circles, squares and diamonds when we design icons ? - What is negative space? What is the use of negative space? Isn't it a waste of expensive space? Should we consider this shaping technique even when we design UIs of handheld devices (such as Palm pilot)? - Using the techniques described in this chapter, how can one influence the way users will naturally scan a display. Pick two ads in a magazine and analyze their layout. What is the author of the ads is trying to do? - Propose a new design for Figure 119 or Figure 120a.
Set 14	Escaping Flatland, Book: "Envisioning Information", by Edward Tufte	- How does the "small multiples" display shown page 28 work? For what kind of data can this kind of display be used? - When do you think that using a table of number might be more powerful than using a graph representing the same numbers? - What are the key features of a "Micro/Macro" display? Explain your answer using the figure page 23 as an example. How many dimensions are displays on the figure page 23? - What is Chartjunk? How can it distract viewer for the underlying information represented by a graph? - What are the differences between data, information and knowledge? How can information visualization reduce the gap between data, information and knowledge? - What does Tufte means when it say that information visualization designers are attempting to escape FlatLand? - How did Galileo come to the conclusion that the sun spots were on the surface of the sun? How important was information visualization to convey his discovery to others? - Is the display shown on page 25 useful for train passengers? Is it useful for the train operators? Assuming one is using the notation of the display on page 25, is it safe for the lines representing two trains to cross on a single track section of the line? Why? - What did Paul Klee write on the reasons that make it difficult to have a conception of a whole constructed from parts belonging to different dimensions? - Why does the author think the "planetary machines" in page 16 committed a grave sin of information design? - Compare the time table for a JAVA railroad line and the timetable of AMTRAK Northeast Corridor 2 line. - Is bilateral symmetry always a waste of space? What are the benefits of bilateral symmetry. - What are the requirements of high quality map? Compare the concepts of maps and posters in this reading. Do you agree with author's thought on maps and posters?
Set 15	Setting the Stage for Discovery, Book: "Science And Its Ways Of Knowing", by John Hatton and Paul Plouffe	- Answer the 5 questions in page 118. - What is the difference between the discovery and the validation process? Are both equally methodical? - What does Albert Szent Gyorgyi mean by: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"? - What is the role of failure in the discovery process? Should a failure be seen as a negative or a positive part of the discovery process? Explain your answer. - What does it mean to set the stage for discovery? How could you change you everyday routine to enhance your change of making a discovery? - Compare and contrast the commonly believed story about Pasteur discovery of immunization and the way it really happened. - What is the role of playfulness in the discovery process? How a playful mind might help seeing what others have not seen? - What is the definition of "intuition" by this reading? What is the meaning of the sentence "The reward for the internalization (personal engagement) of subject matter is intuition" ? What's the role of intuition in the discovery process? Does the use of intuition mean that the discovery process mostly random of influenced by chance events? - Criticize the claims below: "Since in many cases, by no means all, the main activities related to discovery are not acknowledged by the prevailing views of how scientists use logic and reason, the process of discovery is illogical by nature" "The noble discovery can be found only through the anomaly or unexpected results"
Set 16	Introduction to Usability Test Facilitation Book: "Paper Prototyping", by Carolyn Snyder Usability Tests Book: "Observing The User Experience", by Mike Kuniavsky	- What are nonspecific utterances and why are they important? - Give 2 examples of users with agenda. How can the experimenter keep them focused? - Why is being funny as a facilitator during the usability test not encouraged? - In most cases, usability tests are done after the feature set has been locked and it's too late to make any fundamental changes. Some people criticize that the usability tests are solely for the next version. Do you agree on their opinion? Support or refute it. - What is a competitive usability test? What are the pros and cons of it? - What are the task-based interview and a hybrid interview? Compare them. - Explain the 3 stages of analyzing process and 3 sets of observation to be collected. Which set of observation is most important? why? - What is the primary purpose of an Informed Consent Form? What are the key parts of that form? When shall it be used? - Carolyn Snyder highlight 3 main roles for the facilitator. Name and describe each role. - What are the advantages and possible drawback of co-discovery? Do you think it is best to use strangers or friends as co-discoverer? - During user testing, what the facilitator should do if a participant get stuck? What are the possible drawbacks of offering help too rapidly? In what kind of circumstances, can a moderator suggest an idea to a user without giving any bias? - During user testing, how important is it to carefully select the participant? What are typical criteria used? Who are the best people to invite during recruiting step and why? What groups of people should be considered as being not eligible? - What is a reasonable number of participant in a qualitative study? What parameters might influence your answer? Given a fix number of participants, is it better to run several small study or one big one? Why? - What are the pros and cons of writing a script for usability studies? - Describe a typical usability study setting. What elements might feel threatening to participants? How can this problem be alleviated? - Is it important for the development team to witness usability testing? Why?
Apr. 28	Quantitative analysis of scrolling techniques by Ken Hincley, Edward Cutrell, Steve Bathiche and Tim Muss, Published in SIGCHI 2002.	- Fitts' law has been known as a method to predict the time required to move from a starting position to a final target area (pointing action). How can we apply Fitts' law to a scrolling task? What is the appropriate interpretation of D and W for a scrolling task? Compare the goal of the traditional Fitts' law and that of Fitts' law for scrolling in this paper. - Explain figure 1. Why is the crossover effect important in comparing scroll techniques? - What is the "two-handed approach" on document navigation techniques? From your experience, do you think that the two-handed approach would be better than the one-handed approach? - What are the main hypotheses presented in this paper? - What are the main contributions presented in this paper? - According to authors, what are the pros and cons of the ScrollPoint device? What about the scrollwheel? - How do the authors propose to address the main limitation of scrollwheel? Which observation did lead the authors to this solution? Is this method used for other input devices? - Which tasks were selected for this experiment and why? Do you think that these tasks are representative of users activity and make it easy to gather reliable measurements? - What is the experimental design? - How were subjects selected for this experiment? What was the experimental procedure? - What are the results of the experiment? - What are the qualitative feedbacks gathered by the authors? - Looking at the results presented in this paper, propose a new design for a mouse based scrolling mechanism.
May. 3	The computer for the 21st century (handout)	- What is the meaning of the sentence that "the most profound technologies are those that disappear" ? Explain the previous sentence with a case of computer technology. - Give two examples of technologies which "weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life"? How do you think these technologies were received when they were first introduced? - What does the author think problematic about virtual reality? How could you explain his point of view? Do you think that his claims are application dependent? - What are the three scale of computing according to this paper? What is the mapping between devices and scale of use in the system presented in this paper? What are the main functions of each device? - What is the crucial difference between a pad and a conventional portable computer? - What are the 3 parts of the technology required for ubiquitous computing? Rank them by the degree of difficulties and give a plausible solution for the problem of each part. - What kind of social issue does the author point out on the scenario of Sal's day? - Do you think that the vision proposed here will help everyday users address the information overload many are facing? - For each prediction presented in the paper, present how accurate this prediction was. What was the role of technology and/or social constrains in making a prediction succeed or fail? - In the scenario presented at the end of the article, Sal found her manual because it was equipped digital tag. As illustrated by the story, there is a drawback of such approach for a manual. What is it? How will you address it?
May. 10	Growing Up: Moving from Technology-Centered to Human-Centered Products Book: "The invisible computer", by Donald Norman	- Pick a technology used extensively today and draw a parallel between this technology and the watch technology. When did the technology you picked cross the Chasm described by Moore. - What is the posture of the popular press during the technology-driven (or feature-driven) phase? What are the problems with their approach? How valid are their measurements? What is the effect of such measurements on products? In the long run, does this feedback help the intended users? - Compare early adopters and late adopters. Give examples on each adopter. What do they want from the products? What would be appropriate strategies to develop or sell your products for/to the early/late adopters? - What are the key characteristics of mature markets? What are the driving forces in such mature markets? Explain them. Provide an example of mature markets today. - Since the market is dominated by late adopters in number, sometimes we underestimate the importance of early users. What is their role in the development of a new industry? - As a CEO of a company, what problems are you facing while crossing the chasm (what Moore calls the Tornado)? - What are the 3 legs of human-centered product development? Describe them and explain how they relate to each others. - Some might think that you should focus more on the user experience from the beginning of the product development because eventually late adopters choose the product by it. Criticize this way of thinking using the case of the Xerox Star and IBM PC (or Apple II). - What is a "killer application"? Using the case of Gertrude, explain how a killer application can bootstrap a full industry. What is the meaning of the "positioning" of the product? Why are they important? - What is the difference between users and customers?