MDI/Interaktionsdesign
Interaction Design- Human Centred Design (TDA486)
 
 

 

Senast uppdaterad: June 16,  2008

Requirement of the course
The course is only accessible for students who have previous knowledge in design and human-computer interaction. The course will be taught in English.

Having successfully completed this course, the student is expected to have reached the following theoretical and practical goals.

Theoretical goals:

• To be familiar with user-centered design process and different usability test methods in deep levels.
• To have a good overview  of the broad field of Human-centered design theories and practices
• To have developed an understanding for both traditional ways and advanced methods in interaction design when human interests is lying in the centre
• To understand the advantages and limitations of different theories and methods in the area

Practical goals:

• To have practical experience on performing the human-centered design process for product development to be able to reach high usability level.
• To have experience in industry on how to improve the usability of different products

The course consists of both theoretical and practical parts. The theoretical part will present the history and development of human-centered design from research to industrial applications. Relevant design theories and process, such as user-centered design process,  ecological interface design methods and design for pleasure products will be covered in the course. Literature seminars provide additional theoretical grounding and reflection. The practical parts consist of laboratory practice of different lab and carry out an investigation project at industry.

Lecturers

Fang Chen, Docent, Associate Professor
fanch@cs.chalmers.se
031-772 1076

Course Materials:

Course book:

Compendium (availabe directly from Fang Chen, cost 200 kr each):

The material in the compendium include different chapters from the following books

Alistair sutcliffe. (2002). User-centred requirements Engineering. Springer, ISBN 1-85233-517-3 (pp1-77)

Philip B. Crosby  (1979), Quality is Free, McGraw-Hill Book Company, ISBN: 0-07-014512-1 (pp1-14, 119-126)

Randolph Bias and Deborah Mayhew (1994) Cost-Justifying Usability, Academi Press, ISBN: 0-12-095810-4, (pp45-110)
Eric Schaffer, (2004) Institutionalization of Usability, Addison-Wesley, ISBN: 032117934X, (pp 37-47, 67-133, 165-209)

Burns, C. M., & Hajdukiewicz, J.R. (2004). Ecological Interface Design. Florida, CRC Press LIC ISBN: 0-415 28374-4 (pp 1-45)

Time schedule
 

Lecture from April 1 to May 20th, totall 10 times, 2hr/per time.

1. Tis: April 1  (10-12; 13-15) von Neumman
• Introduction to HCD
• Practical issues
• Instruction to project work
• Short introduction to lecture 1.  The principles and challenges of human-centered design (reading materials 1: Gulliksen 2003, Earthy 2001, Norman 2005, macdonald 2005

  http://www.teced.com/services_design.html)

• Lab 1:
• Students in group read the material for Lec 1 and provide 3 questions for each group.
• Questions shall be presented to the whole class
• One group will collect all questions and will find the answers and present them in next lecture

2. Tis April 8 (10-12; 13-15) von Neumman
• Student presentation for Lecture 1 with discussions and references list
  
• Short introduction for lecture 2 readings
• Lecture 2, Requirement engineering (from compendium).Jokela 2006, Seffah 201, donzelli 2002,
  
• Lab 2:
• Same above for lecture 2

3. Fre: April 11 4 (10-12; 13-15) Linus Torvalds
• Student presentation for Lecture 2 with discussions. Presentation material part 1, part 2, part 3.
  
• Short introduction for Lecture 3 readings
  
• Lecture 3: Institutionalization of usability (from compendium). . Bloomer 1997
  
• Lab 3
• Same above for lecture 3

4. Fre: Apri 18 (Martin Börjesson, martin@futuramb.se, 0704262891) "Meeting the design challenges of uncertain future using Scenario Planning" (10-12, 13-15) von Neumman. lecture material  part 1, part 2
• Short introduction for lecture 4 readings
• Lecture 4 e-book: Cost-justifying usability: an update for an internet age, by Randolph G. Bias and Deborah J. Mayhew, ISBN: 9780120958115. Chapter 2 and 3.
  
• Lab 4
• Same above for lecture 4

5. Tis April 22  (10-12; 13-15) von Neumman
• Student presentation for lecture 3 with discussions
• Short introduction for lecture 5 readings
• Lecture 5: Ecological interface design (from compendium), Rasmussen 1989, Vicenta 1992, Flach  1998, vicenta 2002
  
• Lab 5
• Same above for lecture 5

6. Fre: April 25  (10-12; 13-15) Grace Hopper booked
• Student presentation for lecture 4 with discussions
  
• Short introduction for lecture 6 readings
• Lecture 6: Challenges of usability measurements.Bevan 1999, Maguire 2001, Genov 2005 Hornbaek 2006.
  
• Lab 6
• Same above for lecture 6
• lab will be performed in your suitable time. But group questions shall be provided to group 6 before April 29th.
  

8. Fre Maj 9  (10-12, 13 -15) von Neumman
• Student presentation for lecture 5 with discussions
• Student presentation for lecture 6 with discussions
• Short introduction for lecture 7 readings
• Lecture 7: Design of Future Things (by Donald A. Norman 2007)
  
• Lab 7
  
• Same above for lecture 7
  
•  
9. Fre Maj 16 (10-12) von Neumman (The time is changed from 13th)
• Student presentation for lecture 7 with discussions
• Summary of the whole course
10. Maj 27: (10-12; 13-15) von Neumman
• Projects presentations

May 27, submit the individual reports (regarded as home examinations)
June 5, submit the project reports

Location at the IT University, Lindholmen campus

Examinations

The course is examined by means of laboratory work (pass only), seminars (obligation to attend the seminars, at least attend 9 seminars to be able to pass the course), home examination (grading), and project documentation (pass only). The project will be carried out in small groups.

A student who has failed the examination twice has the right to change examiner. Request for change of examiner should be put in writing to the Faculty Board of the IT-university.

The detail about examinations can be found from course introduction,

Marks

The course is graded with the following marks: U, 3, 4, 5.

The student can request to get the marks translated to the ECTS standard after consulting the examiner.

 Evaluation

Upon the completion of the course, there will be a written evaluation that conforms to the current evaluation standards of the IT University.

Questions of lecturesfrom each groups:

For lecture 1: The principles and challenges of human-centered design

Group 2

What attitude should the developers have? How can you measure their commitment to the principles behind HCD?

Are there cases when HCD is a burden for the developing process?

Are there cases when HCD can limit the understanding of the functionality, so that it limits the way users improve their skills?

Group 3

Which one is correct: Tools adapt to people or people adapt to the tools? Describe. 

What is innovation different from design perspective business perspective?

Why UCD/HCD consider as harmful? 

Group 4        

How can the importance of a UCD attitude be communicated to i.e developers? 

What decisions might result in breaking the twelve key principles, and what might the consequences be?

Some argue that the user stereotype in HCD is that of victimhood. What advantages would it bring to design more for users’ innate abilities and adaptabilities? 

Group 5

Should one keep the same group of people during the whole design process or should one choose new participants for each step? 

Give examples of products/projects where you would prefer using ACD and other projects where HCD is to prefer.

Should businesses interpret their own understanding of UCD or should they use some standard or build a consortium for standards? 

Group 6

Satisfaction of use is a part of the ISO definition of usability – But how can it be measured and is it always necessary to include? 

How do we avoid overuse and misuse of UCD principles?

Are there any agile Methods used in UCD today, and if so, how do they work? 

Group 7

How could we best link business success to pure design innovation in order to fill in the gap? 

How can we interpret the HCD principles according to our own design task and goal?

How can we enhance the communication between users and designers and developers besides prototyping? 

The notion of interaction design is strongly tied to usability and human centred design. Can you find examples of interaction design focused on activities (ACD) rather than users (HCD)?

group 1

1. How do you best make sure that the information elicited is "true"? (i.e. not false information)?
2. How will you balance the "usability - Centered and "user case - driven" when there is collision between them during your design process?
3. Should we prevent non-functional requirements? and how do we do it?

group 3

1. Not always requirements comes from people, what are the other ways?
2. In software engineering usability is trade off? explain.
3. There are four worldviews effects to requirement changes, what are they, how they ca participate in different view points, How do they can manage?

group 4

1. What precautions need and should be taken in the field of requirement engineering to ensure full understanding to avoid system difficulties and disasters?
2. The human mind works kind of a RAM (random access memory) with several triggers for certain fragment, and a categorical structure to types of memories. How can we take advantage of this to make the learning curve as plain as possible with ACD systems?
3. How to facilitate human-to-human collaboration amongst the users, stakeholders, usability engineers and software engineers during the requirement process?

group 5

1. There can be a mistake while understanding a person when doing a requirement analysis, due to cognition memory. How do you think we can address mistakes due to lacking the knowledge in a particular domain?
2. Customers are regarded always right. But validating the requirements can be a problem due to factors like functional / non functional requirement that change over time, how to address them?
3. Should we regard a product as a success even if the designers didn't fulfill the requirement but the product sells?

group 6

1. Are There ways to safeguard against the limitations of human memory when electing requirements?
2. How should we deal with contradicting requirements in the best way?
3. Are there smart ways to deal with NFR that can't be broken down to fr? (except for goal-question-metric strategy)

group 7

1. To enhance understanding between different stakeholders of a RE process, there are methods for developing a mutual language such as Lingua Francas (Thomas Erickson). Could it be worth the time and effort to construct a common language for the stakeholders, considering what you get out of it?
2. How can RE help reduce the number of human errors in a developing process?
3. In todays RE process, �automatic support� is almost an unskippable phase of the functional allocation. How could we best use �automated support� in order to help user archive their goals?

For lecture 3 Institutionalization of usability

Group 1
1. How to convince the developers the benefits of the usability and persuade them working with usability specialists pleasantly?
2. How can the executives choose innovative ideas which will make improvement to the usability?
3. What is the most effective way that is helpful to reduce the resistance from organization when usability is executed?

Group 2
1. With a new institutionalization effort there are clashes including problems with funding, staffing etc ever specific design decisions. Mostly project leader of central group try to resolve these issues. But this approach not always work so what is the other way to resolve these conflicts?
2. What can go wrong while testing abroad and what can be done to minimize the risk of things goes wrong?
3. Classic software development methods, waterfall model are often criticize because of the lack of involving users in the development process can you how ever find some examples of cases of when  the waterfall model is useful/ preferable?

Group 4
1. How can proactive organization increase usability?
2. Is it always important to introduced usability and try to convince the company of the benefits can it sometimes is better to skip usability and how do you really know that usability will help. May be it just a fancy new concept?
3. Design must be beyond usability and be entertaining, inspiring and pleasant as well. How can this added value entertainment and pleasures look like. Is the graphic designer the only one responsible for that by creating nice colors and pictures or which other roles are responsible and how.  Furthermore is it possible to define applications which needs this entertainment values and which don’t?

Group 5
1. There are methods for international testing in international culture like “Bolly wood” which plats a hypothetical scenario. Don’t you think product should be tested in real scenario?
2. What should we consider when developing a strategic plan and what questions should we address?
3. Is there other method like the Schaffer method, what advantage, disadvantage can you see with the different methods?

Group 6
1. How can user tests in labs be designed to take context more into accounts?  How can we know when context is crucial?
2. Are there alternatives to having a usability champion?
3. Can you give some examples of real companies and where in the organization they have placed usability group?

Group 7
1. How can we make use of the benefits of a user-centered methodological standard, and still maintain high designer creativity?
2. If an executive champion does not need a background in usability engineering and can just learn about usability through a course or some reading; why can’t we consider such a course for all the employees and make them all take care of usability related issues? Why do we need an executive champion?
3. Where do you think is best to put the central usability team in: Quality assurance department; IT department; Marketing Department; CXO?

For lecture 4 Cost-justifying usability

Group 1
1. Although lots of data proves that expenses / costs of usability is a necessary expense for a company, many project managers still think it is added costs to the design. How will you persuade them?

2. When cost-justifying usability engineering, we can calculate the task cost, but how can we measure the potential benefits?
3. How do you calculate return on investment of usability (ROI)?

Group 2:
1. Are they cases when usability can be considered as a burden instead of a benefit?
2. Non financial benefirs from Usability Analyze

Group 3
1. Explain the different UCD persons' (UC Designer, Usability Engineer and Graphic Designer) effect on product cost-justification in an organization?
2. How can the maintenance costs be decreased?
3. Why should the cost-benefits of human factors be measured?

Group 5
1. Cost-justifying methods in chapter 2 has mainly been focused on reducing money cost. There might be projects when meeting a deadline is more vital than keeping the budgets. How do you motivate the use of HCD methods in these situations?
2. Examples have showed that HCD methods heads to decrease cost for companies. Are there other examples where HCD has resulted in decreased cost? Give other example where HCD has resulted in increased cost? Give suggestion on how to avoid these traps?
3. How can one cost-justify usability tests in the later phases of a development process if the results from the user tests lead to an expensive re-design?

Group 6.
1. Are there examples of successful (user/costumer) feedback incentives other than prizes or product discount?
2. How can Usability be taken into account during the QFD process . Is there any example ?
3. How can usability effect the speed of the development progress , except of Agile programming  or any programming technique ?

Group 7.
1. t is said that usability can speed up the development process. It is also said that the developers are difficult people to deal with, when it comes to changing their ideas and solutions regarding the project for usability sake. How can we best make developers believe in usability and the help it can offer them?

For lecture 5 Ecological interface design

Group 1

1. One design problem is the different levels of the users. The novices prefer an interface that is simple to use while the expert prefer an interface with as much information as possible. How can you balance these requirements in EID?

2. What are these terms “ecology”, “context” and “situation”? What their relationships and what’s the difference between them?

3. Does theoretical framework bring improvement to EID processing? Please give some examples.

Group 2

1. There are 4 different approaches to interface design. What advantages use-centered approach (ecological) has over other 3 approaches?

2. Can EID be used together with UCD? How could this be done?

3. How do the EID minimize the supporting recovery from errors?

Group 3

1. Explain how the values of a work domain model contribute to EID?

2. How we can handle unanticipated events based on design constraints?

3. How important is the users capacity and expectations from user center perspective?

Group 4

1. Are there situations where EID is more efficient than HCD?

2. Can EID be considered as a subcategory of HCD? If not are they compatible?

3. Is EID applicable on anything else than interfaces? Give examples!

Group 6

1. What is the next step after having performed a work domain analysis? How is the data to be used in the actual design of the interface?

2. Are there instances where EID can be applied in the design of less complex systems?

3. Are UCD and EID mutually exclusive or can they be combines successfully in interface design? If so, how?

Group 7

1. One argument for EID is that it’s suitable “when asking users doesn’t work”. Even when developing non-complex systems, study of context is needed to get a complete list of requirements. Isn’t that a reason to use EID when developing those non-complex systems as well?

2. In order to properly control the system and processes, the human-machine system must embody constraints inherent in the work domain. What are those constraints and how can we best deal with them?

3. Does keeping the design in the low level worth’s the effort? Aren’t human beings smart enough to take case of some difficult issues in design and learn the possible solutions easily?

Questions for lecture 6 (Challenges of usability measurements)

LABORATORY TESTS VS FIELD STUDIES,
G1, Q1:

Both laboratory studies and field observations are seen as acceptable for product evaluation. What is best then; to do a combination of both or just choose one? Think of time and cost issues as well as what kind of data is elicited in the different methods.

G3, Q2:

What are the differences between laboratory tests and field studies?

G5, Q1:

Usability testing is an important method for examining how system users understand and use the system to complete the tasks. Consider you have to do some usability tests on a real-time system, how will you identify the testing requirements, data collection approach, and how will you analyze the task duration versus usability errors?

CTS, G2, Q2:

CTS (Control System Theory) is a useful theoretical framework for usability testing but are there any disadvantages when using it?

G4, Q3:

Alex Genov argues that the CST metaphor can be used for communicating the value of iterative usability testing to development teams and management. Do you agree? Why or why not?

G7, Q2:

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE USABILITY:

G2, Q3:

Could you explain differences between subjective and objective measures of usability? Give examples.

G3, Q3:

How will subjective and objective usability measurements effect an ongoing product development process of usability evaluation?

G5, Q2:

Out of objective and subjective measures in usability, which do you think is the most important for the success of the product in the market?

G7, Q1:

Does objective user satisfaction exist and if so; how can it be measured?

G4, Q2:

QUALITY-IN-USE:

G3, Q1:

What are the potential benefits of quality-in-use?

G1, Q3:

The INUSE project has developed methods for assessing an organization’s position on a quality-in-use maturity scale. Much of European industry is at level 1, 2, or sometimes 3 on this scale. How can you help them to increase there levels?

G2, Q1:

Nigel Bevan states: “To achieve a good quality-in-use you need a good external quality and a good internal quality. Is this always true or are there other ways to design good quality-in-use?

CONTEXT OF USE + MEASUREMENT OF USABILITY + ISO

G1, Q2:

Maguire argues that context of use is a very important issue when assessing usability. But how can you know and predict context of use of a totally new product? In many cases the actual use is not what designers originally intended. How does this then effect the usability of the product if the intended context of use is not the same as the actual context?

G4, Q1:

What precautions should one take when operationalizing usability for purpose of measurement to keep the validity untainted?

G5, Q3:

Is it the only way to measure usability by comparing it to known facts about human cognition?

G7, Q3:

How does the change in the ISO/IEC 9126 affect the developing process when designing software?

Questions for lecture 7 (Design of future things)

Group 1:

1. In “ Human- Centered Design considered harmful” Norman advocates all HCD approach: How does that fit with his opinions in “The design of future things”?

2. There was some criticism on his paper” HCD considered harmful” This criticism was mainly that Norman took old things and made it look as it was brand new, How was this book received?

3. The communication with machine are mostly one way, unlike communication between human that we can have debutes and conversations, so should the emotion be considered in the design of future thing?

1. How do changes in technology affect the evolution of human beings?

2. Who should have control, the user or the device? Why ?

1. Explain the fundamental limitation in human machine interaction

2. What are the disjunction between people and machine explain

1. Norman provides six design rules of interaction in "The Design of Future Things". Are any of these conflicting, and how should these conflicts be balanced?

2. What kinds of decisions are appropriate for machines to take, and which should better be taken by humans?

3. Some systems are highly automated, the operator just monitoring the processes and only taking action when errors occur. How should these systems be designed to keep up the operators' attention so that they are able to quickly react when needed?

1. Introducing risks in system , as said by Norman, induces alertness to the users and hence induce safety. However, from our own experience, we humans try to take things for granted once we are familiar with new environments. Do you think introducing risks (apparent) would really help improve the product? Give your own views.

2. Considering the technology development, it seems like we are moving towards a time when machines will be more aware of the environment and be able to convey emotions. In other words the human-machine interaction is becoming more like the horse-rider interaction. Is this really a good thing? Isn't it better to use machines as tools and let the human have full control over the interaction?

3. The horse + rider symbios explained in chapter 2 are interesting. Can you think of a similar example of a natural symbiotic interaction that exists today which can be applied to some human + machine interaction other than car + driver?

1. What are the potential problems with users assigning human characteristics to machines? Is there a risk that users put too much trust in machines?

2. If yes on question 1: How can such risks be avoided?

3. Is there a method for deciding what tasks and responsibilities to allocate to the users and what ones to allocate to the machine?