Human Computer Interaction

In many ways, the most creative challenging and under-appreciated aspect of interaction design is evaluating designs with people. The insights that you’ll get from testing designs with people can help you get new ideas, make changes, decide wisely and fix bugs. One reason I think design is such an interesting field is its relationship to truth and objectivity. I find design so incredibly fascinating because we can say more in response to a question like: “ How can we measure success ?” than “It’s just personal preference” or “Whatever feels right.” At the same time the answers are more complex and more open-ended, more subjective and require more wisdom than just a number like 7 or 3. One of the things that we’re going to learn is the different kinds of knowledge that you can get out of different kinds of methods. Why evaluate designs with people? Why learn about how people use interactive systems? One major reason for this is that it can be difficul...

A prototype is the best place to start building your project.  I’ll introduce you to the meaning  of prototyping and why I think it is so tremendously important. This is going to serve as a framing for later that we’ll use to introduce concrete techniques. Today when we talk about prototyping, what we mean is rapidly creating an approximation of a design idea so that you can quickly get feedback and learn. Prototyping is the pivotal activity in structured innovation, collaboration and creativity in design. Prototypes embody design hypotheses and enable designers to get feedback. It’s what Donald Schon calls “ a reflective conversation with materials ”.By trying things out and learning from that exploration you are able to improve your design and be able to gain insights that you otherwise may not have. It’s important to remember that the goal in prototyping is not the artifact it’s feedback : Build some prototypes, try them out, and usually you’d learn to try t...

"The 10 most general principles for interaction design. They are called 'heuristics' because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines." These are one of the most used heuristics for User Interface Design. They were developed by Jakob Nielsen together with Rolf Molich in the early 90's. The final set, which you see here, was released by Nielsen in 1994. Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design Visibility of system status The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. User control and freedom Users often choose system functions by mistake...

Human computer interaction  (commonly referred to as  HCI ) researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people ( users ) and computers.Basic goal in the field of HCI is to observe the ways in which humans interact with computersIt encompasses multiple disciplines, such as computer science, cognitive science, and human-factors engineering. .   The term was popularized by  Stuart K. Card ,  Allen Newell , and  Thomas P. Moran  in their seminal 1983 book,  The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction , although the authors first used the term in 1980. What is HCI composed of? HCI is the design, implementation and evaluation of user interfaces. This course is going to teach you a set of tools for doing this effectively. At the onset of the design project, we often don’t know what the problem is or what the space of possibilities might be, let alone what the solution should be. Consequently, real-...