CMSC 434 Sample Questions
These are based on things like contributed ideas for questions.
This is not exhaustive, but should provide
a sense of the types of questions that could come up
on the final exam.
Exam questions could merge related things into a single
question with sub-parts, or might have a picture of something
or some interface and ask questions tied to that specifically.
- What is the idea behind Miller's 7±2 rule and
how does it apply to menu design?
- Give an example of a metric by which we can judge the success of a user
interface. Explain whether it is a qualitative or a quantitative measurement.
- First, explain the concept of card sorting within the context of HCI in
a way that a non-HCI-educated person would understand the process and the
potential usefulness of it. Second, extend the discussion to distinguish
open from closed card sorting.
- What does the term "direct manipulation" mean in the context of HCI and
how does it relate to information visualizations?
- How does motion and animation play a role in the design of modern
GUIs? What are the pros and cons of relying on animations?
- Identify three things that you should do before beginning an experiment
with a subject.
- What is the "breadth -vs- depth" issue in navigation? Do the issues related
to this change if we are talking about local applications -vs- web pages?
- Describe the notion of "internal consistency" and "external consistency"
in a way that clearly separates them. Give a practical example of each.
- Explain the different between dependent and independent variables in
research, and provide a simple experiment with one of each.
- Give a brief definition of both within-subject and between-subject testing.
Given three button designs and 24 participants, explain how you would make use of
the participants to test the buttons using those two approaches.
- For each of the nine "heuristics" from class, state and define each, and
for each give an example of something that would violate it and why.
- Provide a fully formed heuristic evaluation entry, with all of the
elements it should have, if a piece of software requires you to type
the name of a program at the command line to have it start running.
- What are some examples of quantitative user performance data that
can be collected as part of trying to test improvements to a GUI?
Are there any metrics of success that aren't quantitative?
Are there any "downsides" to this certain types of data collection?
- Within the concept of having a null hypothesis, explain what
the concepts of Type I and Type II errors are. Given an example
of each.
- In what context does the idea of "information scent" most apply,
and how can you give good information scent?
- Describe how an operating system could allow a user to delete 5
files using an Action-Object model, and then describe how it could
allow them to do it using an Object-Action model.
- Is there any way to deal with the fact that some people might
be naturally faster or slower at something when working with people
to decide the best way to do something?
- In the Belmont Report, what were "Justice" and "Beneficience"
about?
- Give a realistic example of one way to make it easy for someone
to spot all of the places where there are intersections with curb
cutouts for wheelchair access on a aerial map of a city.
- Which effect (Hawthorne, Pygmalion, or Clever Hans) could come
into play if a teacher tried a new approach to introducing a topic
and then wrote a new exam to test the students? Explain the effect
and why it could come into play in this situation.
- Of the list of properties of good information visualization
from class, which are the three you think are most important, and
why?
- If you have a scrollable list of things on a smartphone, what
is an example of a navigational cue and what roles does it play?
- How can grids help with consistency on a project with several
different people working on different parts of the system?
- What challenges could language and culture present to the
designer of an interface?
- What is the primary lesson interface designers have taken from
Fitts' law in general? Where are the best places to put a button
if you want it to be easy to click?
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