Research methods for HCI, HCC Judy Kay CHAI: Computer Human Adapted Interaction School of Information Technologies

Research methods for HCI, HCC

Judy Kay

CHAI: Computer Human Adapted Interaction

School of Information Technologies

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Overview

• What is HCI?• What is HCC?• What is the hallmark of excellence in HCI/HCC

research?• Research methods• Case studies

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What is HCI? HCC?

definition – research methods

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HCI is....

1. Creating and studying new hardware and software architectures for building human-computer interfaces

2. Creating and studying new interactive techniques, metaphors and evaluation

3. Studying processes and techniques for designing human-computer interfaces

4. Studying users and groups of users to understand their needs

http://tochi.acm.org/charter.shtml

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HCI, HCC venues

• Journals– TOCHI, IJHCS, HCI, ...

• Conferences– CHI, INTERACT

– others, such as Pervasive, Ubicomp

– Regional eg OzCHI, Australian UIC

• Workshops

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Hardware and software architectures

• User Interface Management Systems - Models for specifying interactive dialogs. Algorithms for generating or interpreting user interface control from such descriptions.


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• Windowing Systems - Software architectures for managing the interactive workspace and the allocation of interactive resources such as screen space, interactive devices. This also includes architectures for integrated usage of multiple workstations by multiple users.


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• Interface Software Tools - for interactively designing user-based systems: including screen layout algorithms, design assistance tools and interface testing models and tools.

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• Interactive Devices - New hardware for accepting user input and displaying information. Examples of such are 3D input devices, head mounted displays, eye tracking devices, new keyboard designs etc.

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• Interface Aspects of Multimedia - Integration of sound, video, animation and other interactive media into the user environment.

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Interactive Techniques, Metaphors and Evaluation

• Interactive Techniques - New ways to express inputs. eg new ways to express searches, new menu models and techniques which exploit new input devices.

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• Workspace Models - New ways to organize work. New models for end users to customize their interfaces. New metaphors which make interactive processes concrete for their users.

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• Data Presentation - Models for mapping data into pictures. Models for editing data by interactively manipulating the visual presentation. Algorithms for visual layout including graph layout algorithms and picture prettification algorithms.

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• Tutorial and Help Systems - Studies of how help and instruction should be delivered. Techniques for integrating help and instruction into user interface support software.

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• Experimental and Empirical Studies - This includes laboratory experiments and field studies. Also included are case studies evaluating user interfaces, interaction techniques, tools, and methods.

• Empirical Studies of Programmers

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User Interface Design Processes

• Analysis and Evaluation Techniques - Methods for analyzing and evaluating the effectiveness of designs and implemented systems. New software tools for interface evaluations. Predictive models of user performance with an interface. Tools and methods for evaluating alternative designs.

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User Interface Design Processes

• Design Processes - Explorations of the design process, techniques for capturing designs, and methodologies for producing good interface designs. Models for integrating design tools with implementation and evaluation tools.

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Users and Groups of Users

• Universal Access - Techniques, devices, models which facilitate access to and use of computers by people with special needs.

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• Group Work - Explorations of people using computers to work together, and systems for enhancing group work. Software and hardware architectures which support simultaneous group work.

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• Organizational Context - Understanding how user interface design and implementation fits into the organizations that use and develop interfaces.

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• Application-Specific Designs - Interfaces for specific application areas in which the domain places significant constraints on the design or implementation of interfaces. This would exclude application areas explicitly covered by other transactions.

Halmarks of excellence

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Hallmark of excellence in HCI/HCC

• Addresses important problems for people– everyday activities for typical people

– special situations, people

– safety critical contexts

– when using technology

• Solid validation– building on existing theories

– studies

– comparisons

…. appropriate research methods

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HCI is....

1. Creating and studying new hardware and software architectures for building human-computer interfaces

2. Creating and studying new interactive techniques, metaphors and evaluation

3. Studying processes and techniques for designing human-computer interfaces

4. Studying users and groups of users to understand their needs


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Research methods - familiar

• Classic computer science – Design

– Methodologies

– Theories

– evaluations• Scalability

• Accuracy

• Effectiveness…

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Research methods – new for HCI

• Theories – eg Fitt's Law, Norman's interaction model....

• Design principles • User studies to determine needs

– eg. interviews, grounded analysis

• Evaluations– with users

– techniques that do not require users

– statistical methods

Case studies

Case study 1 – tabletop interaction

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Novel Interfaces: tabletop

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Case study: tabletop interaction

• Design of new interaction• New technology• Comparing two classes of interaction• Theoretical• Analytic

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Case Study 1:

• T. Apted, J. Kay, and A. Quigley. Tabletop sharing of digital photographs for the elderly. In CHI '06: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 781-790, New York, NY, USA, 2006. ACM Press.

• Goals:

– Design of new way to interact

– Challenging new software creation• Validation:

– Theoretical analysis

– User study, two populations

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Tabletop interaction – design issues

• Tables as social places• Interaction without keyboard or mouse• Usable by all• Interaction design to support co-located

collaboration and social interaction

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Evaluation of design: analytic

• Identify design drivers

• Identify suitable guidelines for design

• Analyse design according to these

• Value for future researchers, designers

• Demonstrates validity in terms of established guidelines which, in turn, are based on research

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Evaluation of design: user studies

• Design of user study

• Hypotheses and goals

• Participants

• Tasks

• Ethics clearance * aside for Hons

• Trial the study

• Actual study

• Analysis of results– Qualitative v quantitative

Case study 2 – tabletop file system

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Case study – file system interaction

Design issues

• tabletop file system interaction

• beyond hierarchies

• collaboration across different people's file systems

• very limited interaction

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Evaluation: comparative user study

• Comparing two ways to interact

• Double cross over user study

• New file-system v hierarchical

Case study 3 – new interface to support long term collaboration on trac

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Case study – Narcissus, WikiNavMap, EDM

Design issues• help people collaborate more effectively

in a group by gaining a better sense of the activity on a wiki

• long term collaboration is complexKay, J, K Yacef and P Reimann, Visualisations for team learning: small teams

working on long-term projects. In C. Chinn, G. Erkens & S. Puntambekar (Eds.), Minds, mind, and society. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2007) 351-353, New Brunswick, NJ: International Society of the Learning Sciences

.

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Narcissus

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Design of Narcissus

• user study

• select suitable users

• design questionnaire

• administer it

• analyse results

• common alternatives: focus groups, ethnographic studies, draw on literature

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Evakuation of Narcissus

• user study

• select suitable users

• design user tasks and questionnaire

• administer

• analyse results

• common alternatives: focus groups, ethnographic studies, draw on literature

Case study 4 – educational data mining – modelling users from trace data

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EDM

• data mining to learn about users

Perera, D, J Kay, K Yacef and I Koprinska, (2007) Mining learners' traces from an online collaboration tool, Educational Data Mining Workshop at Artificial Intelligence and Education, 60 – 69.

http://aied.inf.ed.ac.uk/AIED2007/AIED-EDM_proceeding_full2.pdf

Case study 5 – pervasive interaction

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Case study: Memento

• Design issues:

• future interfaces, current technology limitations

• Evaluation issues:

• proof of concept, usability evaluation

West, D, A Quigley and J Kay, (2006) MEMENTO: A Digital Physical Scrapbook for Memory Sharing, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(4), 313-328

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Summary

• HCI/HCC is broad and multi-disciplinary

• Research methods– For driving design and analysis (models)

– for creation of new things (architectures)

– for assessing whether you have succeeded (evaluation)

Documents

Research methods for HCI, HCC Judy Kay CHAI: Computer Human Adapted Interaction School of Information Technologies