Readings-Cooper-Chapter 22-Menus

Cooper-Chapter 22-Menus

Below is my summary of what I found where the important parts of this chapter.

Cooper says that Menus are perhaps the oldest idioms used in Graphical Interface Design. Most users understand traditional menu design and thus most designers and programmers use menus for this very reason.

The command line interface is just what is says. You type in a programming command into the computer and you could complete a desired task. However, the command line interface required great memorization of the different programming commands and thus was soon replace by the sequential hierarchical menu. With the creation of the sequential hierarchical menu in the 1970’s users were now able to forget many of the commands  and option level details that were required by the command-line interface. So instead of memorizing the different programming commands one could now read them off the screen.

Cooper states that as modern GUI evolved, two idioms fundamentally changed the role of the menu in the user interface. These two idioms are Direct Manipulation and Toolbars.

Toolbars

• Swept the industry around 1989 and within a couple of years almost every Windows program had a toolbar filled with butcons.
• The butcons and other controls on the toolbar are usually redundant with commands on the menu.
• Butcons are immediate, where menu item commands remain slow and hidden.
• Menu commands are the most useful interaction technique for the purpose of teaching users about the capabilities of the product. Cooper says the in other words menu’s provide a pedagogic vector.

Standard Menu’s

• File
• Edit
• Windows
• Help

Optional Menus

• View
• Insert
• Settings
• Format
• Tools

Cascading Menu’s

• Variant of the standard drop-down menu and thus provides a secondary menu when a user’s selects a certain item or items in the primary menu.
• Presents some serious issues in the aspect of usability because of the issue of ease of use. Because standard drop-down menus provide clear and easy-to-navigate groupings, where cascading menus move us into a complex territory of nesting and hierarchies.

Adaptive Menus

• Display only items that our accessed most frequently by a specific user.
• Introduced by Microsoft for Office 2000.
• With adaptive menus. Microsoft attempted to make their products seem simpler and easier by hiding those items that users never accesses.

 

Readings: Cooper-Chapter 21-Controls

Cooper-Chapter 21-Controls

Below is my summary of what I found where the important parts of this chapter.

The main point of this chapter focuses on Controls. Cooper describes controls as manipulable, self-contained screen objects through which people interact with digital products. Controls are also known as widgets, gadgets and gizmos.

In relation to users goals, Controls are based on four different groups:

Imperative Controls:

• Used to initiate a function
• Commands immediate action. Imperative controls take action immediately.
• Examples of Imperative Controls are Menu items. Buttons are known as a quintessential imperative idiom, i.e. click on the button and the associated action-the verb-executes immediately.

Selection Controls:
• used to select options or data
• Cooper states that because the imperative control is a verb, it needs a noun upon which to operate. He says that selection and entry controls are the two controls that are used to define nouns.
• A selection control allows the user to choose this noun from a group of valid choices.
• Selection controls are also used to configure actions.
• Examples of selection controls are: check boxes, list boxes and drop-down lists.
• It should be known that selection controls do not directly result in actions-they require an imperative control to activate.

Entry Controls:
• Enable users to enter new information into an application.
• The most basic entry control is the text field
• Because combo boxes contain an edit field, combo boxes qualify as entry controls
• Entry Controls are any control that lets users enter a numeric value.
• Examples of Entry Controls are Spinners, Gauges, Sliders and Knobs.

Display Controls:
• used to directly manipulate the program visually.
• Examples include scrollbars, and screen-splitters.
• Also controls that manage the way objects are displayed visually on screen fall into this category.
Cooper also states that controls can be combined.

• Cooper also states that buttons are arguably the most visually completing control in our designer’s toolkit.
• Cooper states that Designers should use Hyperlinks/Links for navigation and buttons for action.
• Cooper states that the check box was one of the earliest visual control idioms invented and is the most used when presenting a single binary choice.
• A selection control to avoid is using flip-flop buttons. Designers use flip-flop buttons in order to save interface real estate. However, by doing this it’s at the expense of user confusion when using the buttons.
• List controls allow users to select from a finite set of text strings, each representing a command, object or attribute. List controls are also sometimes known as picklists, list boxes or listviews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooper-Chapter 11-Eliminating Excise

Below is my chapter summery taken directly from the book and which highlights some key points in the chapter.

 

Excise:

• Excise is the result of when software charges its users a tax or excise, of cognitive and physical effort every time it is used.
• Excise tasks are tasks that don’t contribute directly to reaching the goal, but are necessary to accomplishing it just the same.
• Excise is the extra work that satisfies either the needs of our tools or those of outside agents as we try to achieve our objects.
• However, the problem with excise tasks is that the effort we expend in doing them doesn’t go directly towards accomplishing our goals.
• A design principle in relation to excise is to eliminate excise when possible.

 

 

 

Common Excise Traps

• Don’t force users to go to another window to perform a function that affects the current window.
• Don’t’ force users to remember where they put things in the hierarchical file system
• Don’t force users to resize windows unnecessarily.
• Don’t force users to move windows
• Don’t force users to reenter their personal settings.
• Don’t force users to fill fields to satisfy some arbitrary measure of completeness.
• Don’t force users to ask permission
• Don’t ask users to confirm their actions
• Don’t let a user’s actions result in an error.

 

 

 

 

Cooper-Chapter8-Synthesizing Good Design: Principles and Patterns

My chapter summery of the most important points of the chapter is below:

• The chapter states that design principles are guidelines for design of useful and desirable products, systems,    and services, as well as guidelines for the successful and ethical practice of design.

• Design patterns are exemplary, generalizable solutions to specific classes of design problems.

• Interaction Design Principles: Are generally applicable guidelines that address issues of behavior, form and content.

• The book states that they encourage the design of product behaviors that support the needs and goals of users, and create positive experiences with the products we design.

• Design principles fall into the following categories:

• • Design Values: Describe imperatives for the effective and ethical practice of design and inform and motivate lower level principles
  • Conceptual Principles: Help to define what a product is and how it fits into the broad context of use that is required by its users.
  • Behavioral Principles: Describe how a product should behave.
  • Interface-level Principles: Describe effective strategies for the visual communication of behavior and information.

• Types of interaction design patterns
  • Postural Patterns
    • Can be applied at the conceptual level and help determine the overall product stance in relation to the user.
  • Structural Patterns
    • Solve problems that relate to the arrangement of information and functional elements on the screen.
  • Behavioral Patterns
    • Solve wide-ranging problems relating to specific interactions with functional or data elements.

 

 

 

 

 

Cooper Chapter 7-From Requirements to Design: The Framework and Refinement.

The first main point in this chapter talks about how the Design Framework defines the overall structure of the user’s experience. The book talks about how the Design Framework is made up of an interaction framework; a visual design framework, and sometimes an industrial design framework

1.  Interaction Framework : Interaction designers use scenarios and requirements to create rough sketches of screens and behaviors that make up the Interaction Framework

2. Visual Design Framework: is commonly expressed as a detailed rendering or a single screen archetype

3. Industrial Design Framework:  execute form language studies to work towards a rough physical model

The second main point in the book states that the interaction framework defines not only the high-level structure of screen layouts but also the flow, behavior and organization of the product.  There are six steps that describe the process of defining the interaction framework:

1.  Define form factor, posture, and input methods.

• Meaning you need to determine what form factor you are going to use. Are you using a web application, or a phone or maybe a kiosk?
• A products posture and interaction methods relates to how much attention the user will devote to interacting with the product.

2.  Define functional and data elements

• Functional and data elements are the representations of functionality and data that are revealed to the user in the interface.

3. Determine functional groups and hierarchy

• After you create a list of your top-level functional and data elements, you then group them into functional units and determine their hierarchy. The easiest way to do this is to group elements to best facilitate the persona’s flow.

4. Sketch and interaction framework

• Sometimes referred to as “the rectangles phrase”
• You start this phrase by sketching the interface and then from the sketch you need to subdivide each view into a rough rectangular area that correspond to panes and control points.

5. Construct key path scenarios

• The key path scenario describes how the personal interacts with the product, using the vocabulary or the interaction framework.
• Use storyboards to create a sequence of sketches with narratives of the key path scenarios that you want to create.

6. Check designs with validation scenarios

• During this phrase you need to ask the “what if” questions in order to poke holes in the design and thus adjust the design as needed.

Cooper Chapter 6-The foundations of Design: Scenarios and Requirements

The first main point in this chapter focuses on understanding people in order to design solutions that satisfy users while also addressing a business’s goals.

The second main point that the book states is that you should use personas as the main characters in a set of techniques that will help you quickly arrive at designs solutions in an iterative, repeatable and testable fashion. The book also states that this process involves four major activities:

1. Scenarios

• The concept of the scenario is commonly used to describe a method of design problem solving by concretization. By making use of a specific story to both construct and illustrate design solutions.
• The book states that Carroll’s use of scenario-based design focuses on describing how users accomplish tasks.

2. Requirements

• Known as the “What” of Interaction Design
• The requirements phrase determines the what of the design: what information and capabilities our personas require to accomplish their goals.
• A key concept to remember in the requirements phrase is to define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.

3. Interaction Framework

• The framework phrase answers questions about how a product behaves and how it is structured to meet user’s goals.

4. Narrative

• Use Narratives as a design tool
• Narratives are very powerful when using as a way to communicate ideas.

To summarize the chapter. The most important thing I learned in this chapter was the first part of the design process focuses on how you need to develop scenarios to create ideal user interactions, and then your need to define the requirements from these scenarios.

 

 

AA4: Using Eye Tracking to Compare Web Page Designs: A Case Study

Summary

The Bojko research article focuses on a proposed website design for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The primary reason for the redesign was that users were finding it difficult to find the information they were looking for and were also finding site navigation difficult.  The author conducted a usability study in which he compared his design against the original (ASCO) website design. His usability study focused on the ease with which the right starting points for key points were located and processed.  What makes his usability study unique is that he used a research method called eye tracking while conducting his usability study.

According to the article eye tracking has been successfully used in perception and visual search research for many years.  One of the ways eye tracking benefits user experience research is by providing an additional measure which helps to compare different designs of the same interface. Another way eye tracking benefits user experience research is that the data collected from eye tracking is more reliable.  This is because eye movements help revel the process, that led to the observable outcomes.

The purpose of the research study was to use an eye tracker to compare users visual search behavior on the original ASCO home page and the redesigned home page and assess the key components that the users are accessing the most. To conduct his study Bojko collected two types of data. The first type of data was behavioral data, which for example could be location of mouse clicks and task time. The second type of data was eye movement data which focused on the number and location of the user’s different eye positions.  To validate his redesign, Bojko conducted a series of evaluation activities which mainly focused on eye tracking. The specific goals he hoped to achieve with eye tracking were to assess whether his redesigned home page would make it easier for users to locate the right starting points for their tasks.

To conduct his research experiment Bojko used 12 people from the ages of 30 to 55 who were members of the ASCO website and who frequent the website one or more times a month. To test was conducted on a 17” monitor with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. The usability group used a mouse to indicate their responses and eye movements were recorded with a Tobil 1750 eye tracker. The usability group participants were asked to perform different tasks using both the original and resigned home pages.

The study found that when comparing the two websites users found that overall the original and proposed redesign did not differ in terms of efficiency(average time on task) and accuracy(percentage of correct mouse clicks) However, the study did find several differences between the two sites in accuracy when compared on a per task basis. The table below summarizes the search accuracy and efficiency results for all three tasks.

Task 1: Find a list of upcoming conferences

Task 2: Join ASCO

Task 3: Find ASCO’s position statements

Analysis

What I took away from reading this article was the advantages and disadvantages of using eye tracking for usability studies. The advantage with this usability study in particular was that it showed the researcher where some of the key issues were with his design. The most important advantage eye tracking provides is that it shows researchers the actual processes that led to user outcomes. What I mean by user outcomes is that with conventional testing techniques such as mouse clicks, users process a lot more information than is indicated by their mouse clicks.  I also learned that while eye tracking is very beneficial there are also some very big limitations and disadvantages where eye tracking is concerned. Some of the disadvantages of eye tracking are the high cost of equipment, increase in preparation time and increase in analysis time. The biggest limitation of eye tracking in my opinion is that when using eye tracking you have to include two or more interfaces in your study to obtain the best results. The research article states that this is because there are no absolute standards for eye movements in human computer interaction, so the data collected with one interface needs to be evaluated relative to the data collected with another interface.

In my opinion the disadvantages of eye tracking outweigh the benefits. I believe you can obtain somewhat the same results using conventional techniques, without the high cost of equipment and long preparation time and long analysis time. What do you guys think? Can you think of any usability study you might conduct where using eye tracking would be beneficial?

Sources:

Link: http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2006_may/bojko_eye_tracking.pdf

Author: Agnieszka Bojko

Journal of Usability Studies, Issue 3, Volume 1, May 2006, pp. 112-120

AA3: Beyond Specifications: Towards a Practical Methodology for Evaluating Web Accessibility

AA3: Beyond Specifications: Towards a Practical Methodology for Evaluating Web Accessibility

Summary

In this research article the authors Koutsabasis, Vlachogiannis, Darzentas talk about how web accessibility on websites, is in most cases non-existent  to those who need it most. i.e. people with disabilities. The authors use the analogy  “at the click of the mouse, the world can be at your fingertips—that is, if you can use a mouse…. and if you can see the screen… and if you can hear the audio”. The authors explain that in this way, web accessibility has come to mean taking into account the needs of people with disabilities whether it is physical impairments and or cogitative impairments. The authors believe that the lack of web accessibility on most web sites is due a majority of factors. However, the main factor being a set of very confusing accessibility guidelines for web designers.

The authors also talk about how website usability at its core should mean “Access by everyone regardless of disability should be the essential aspect of web accessibility”.  However, while it’s widely understood that web accessibility concerns everyone from users to designers and even business owners, nothing much has been done to address this growing issue. Research estimates believe that people with disabilities in most western countries make up between 8 % to 20% of the total population, not counting senior citizens. Yet even with large amount of work that has been done on web accessibility,  studies are still finding that the majority of web sites on the internet today are still not accessible to people with disabilities.  Research studies have indicated that only 23% of the U.S.‘s federal homepages were accessible, while only 11% for non-profit organizations are accessible and finally only 6% for corporate homepages are accessible to people with disabilities.

Lastly, the authors talk about how while its widely understood by web designers that the accessibility of content make the usability of sites better, the key issue that seems to be preventing them from incorporating web accessibility “guidelines” into their websites stems from the lack of time, lack of training, lack of client support, lack of software tools and very confusing accessibility guidelines. The authors say that the key issues that web designers face in relation to web accessibility is that the current “set of web accessibility tools have a highly technical orientation and need expert knowledge for their comprehension and application,  and that there are not “any widely used methodologies that encompass these into some practical form for practitioners.“

Analysis

My analysis of the subject of web accessibility is best summed up by a quote the authors used from Tim Berners-Lee.  Mr. Lee noted that “The Power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect and one that is often forgotten for many different reasons.”  Mr. Lee describes the issue of web accessibility perfectly with the above quote. If you are a web designer accessibility is at the very bottom of your do to list in relation to your website, if it’s even on your to do list at all. We has designers have very short deadlines to meet and because of said short  deadlines we have to cut certain things from our websites in order to make the client happy and meet our deadlines, which in most cases means cutting out something like web accessibility in order to meet the deadline.

I also think the one of the biggest issues concerning web accessibility is that either web designers are just not informing their clients the importance of web accessibility or that clients/businesses are just not understanding the importance of having web accessibility on their web sites. In my opinion web accessibility should be very important to businesses because it can have a huge impact on the businesses web based business. If you take into account people with special needs, these are not only people with disabilities but also other groups such as senior citizens. If you own a web based business and don’t take into account these groups of people you could be losing hundreds maybe even thousands of potential customers whose money you will lose.

Lastly, something that most of us probably don’t know is that the biggest misconception that people have about accessibility is that it only refers to people with special needs/disabilities. However, designing for accessibility addresses some other very important user access issues as well, such as, “performance for low network speeds and usable access under constrained environmental technical point of view.” Another important fact that we as web designers seem to forget is that designing for accessibility promotes good technical design/implementation and makes web site maintenance in relation to content, easier to maintain in the long run.

So now I leave you with a couple of important questions. Why do you think most web designers and clients tend to forget about web accessibility?  For businesses, do they not realize the potential profit loss from the groups of people they are excluding? For web designers do you think it’s a time issue or a lack of accessibility guidelines issue?

Authors: Panayiotis Koutsabasis, Evangelos Vlachogiannis, and Jenny S. Darzentas

Source: Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 5, Issue 4, August 2010, pp. 157 – 171

Link: http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2010august/JUS_Koutsabasis_August_2010.pdf

AA2: Is Technology Becoming More Usable—or Less—and With What Consequences?

Summary

The goal of the Bonneau research article focused on whether technology is becoming more usable –or less—and with what consequences?  The author questions just how effective both professions –human factors and usability-have been in the larger scheme of things, when more and more of the world’s population are seeming to struggle with technology. The author talks about how it is as if the threshold has been raised for what constitutes “basic” usability requirements and that the minimum level of human competence assumed at the start of the design process is such that many potential users are being left behind.

The author is an older human factors specialist who feels like technology has left her behind. She talks about some of the usability studies that she has conducted with older adults and people with disabilities. The main point the author makes is that with many different types of technology older people and people with disabilities seem to be left behind in relation to the actual usability/accessibility of the technology/product.

Analysis

The author talks about how in preforming research with older adults and people with disabilities, she has seen them struggle with the most mundane tasks as attempting to open a child-proof medicine bottle, struggle to read the very small type on a medicine bottle, or hang up the telephone when an automated voice system talks so fast that it gives them very little time to respond. The author points out that with the observations of older adults/people with disabilities having usability/accessibility issues with preforming some of the most mundane everyday tasks how “successful have our professions been in the grand scheme of things, when these basic sorts of usability elements are apparently ignorable by designers?”

I bet everyone is wondering what have we learned that we didn’t already know, and/or why should we care? Well anyone with common sense should already know all the things that I talked about above. It’s a pretty common known fact that older adults and people with disabilities have the most accessibility/usability issues with products/interfaces. But do we actually follow what we know? Meaning, we all should know that most of the technology of today is not very user friendly in relation to older adults and people with disabilities. However, in all honesty do we as usability students/professionals really think about these consumers when we are designing our interfaces?

So back to my point of why should we care if older adults are being left behind in relation to technology  I learned from reading this article that Japan has been learning a very hard lesson in relation to ignoring the needs of its older adults as technology advances. With Japan being the oldest country in the world in terms of adults over the age of 65, it’s finding that the “lack of basic accessibility and usability with respect to all aspects of the technology the older adults encounter in daily life is negatively impacting both its older adults and its younger adults, who now must expend extra effort and energy to care for their elders, whose independence and basic functioning has been compromised by utterly unusable technology. “ This was something that I never even considered as a result of ignoring older adults in relation to accesaabilty and technology and one that could affect us all if usability designers keep ignoring some of the basic usability elements.

The biggest question I have for all you is how do we as usability students/professionals go about creating interfaces that everyone will be able to use? At least from my experiences when creating an interface, the first thing you do figure out your target audience and build your interface from that. But what if you didn’t have a target audience? What if the interface you are building has to be usable for all age groups? I know that as usability students/professionals this is what we are supposed to achieve. We are supposed to design an interface that anyone can use. Yet, in most cases is this even possible?  Can anyone name one user interface that works for children, adults, older adults and people with disabilities? I can honestly say I can’t think of one. Thus the main point of my article being that no matter what someone is going to be left behind in relation to technology/accessibility.

Reference: Daryle Gardner-Bonneau (2010) Is Technology Becoming More Usable—or Less—and With What Consequences? Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 5, Issue 2, Feb 2010, pp. 46 – 49.

Link: http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2010february/gardner-bonneau2.html

AA1: A Study of the Effect of Thumb Sizes on Mobile Phone Texting Satisfaction

The purpose of Balakrishnan’s and Yoew’s usability study was to research what effect varying thumb sizes have in relation to using cell phone keypads for sending text messages. The key points of this study focused on the central design factors of cell phone keypads such as: key size, shape, texture, space between keys, layout and simplicity, and how thumb size and circumference relates to these aspects

In order to conduct this research, the researchers recorded over 110 participants thumb lengths and circumferences. The researchers then looked at the participant’s positive or negative satisfaction when using different types of cell phone keyboards in correlation with the participants thumb length and circumference.

The study found three interesting findings about users with large thumb lengths and circumferences. The first finding found that users have a lower satisfaction towards key size and space between keys, as the biggest problem these users face is accidentally hitting the wrong keys because of the small key size and space between keys. The second finding found that users had a very hard time accessing keys 3, 6, 9 and the pound key (#). The third and final research finding found that users had difficulty  reaching certain keys on the keypad and experienced physical discomfort in the first joint of thumbs (from the tip) when trying to reach these keys.

Analysis

I completely agree with all of research findings in the article. The size and portability of cell phones vs. the size and usability of the keypad have been at odds since the development of the first QWARTY cell phone keypad. For years cell phone manufactures have been trying to create a cell phone that will have a keypad that is fully functional, and yet still keep the small size that cell phone users are accustomed to. In my opinion we are moving in the right direction with the development of the next generation cell phones, such as the Apple IPhones and Motorola Droids. However, how do you design a phone that is small enough to fit in a pocket vs. design a keyboard that males/big thumbed users can use comfortably and effectively?

Reference:

Balakrishnan and Yoew(2008) A Study of the Effect of Thumb Sizes on Mobile Phone Texting Satisfaction, Journal of Usability Studies.

Link: http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2008may/balakrishnan1.html