Human Computer Interaction
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is about trying to make programs and applications as useful, usable and accessible as possible to humans. It is strongly influenced by how people interact with these programs and applications through their digital devices, which means that the person creating a program, application or device for the public to use needs to take into consideration if they’re making it usable and useful for humans of all generations to use and try to minimalize as many errors as possible between the human and the program, application or device or even get rid of it.
HCI PROBLEM!!!
To ensure a program, application or device has good HCI, we use Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics to compare the positives and negatives of the program, application or device. One problem I had was with my smartphone when taking a picture. I thought that when I use the volume buttons on the side of the phone it would zoom in or out, but instead it just takes another picture and I didn’t know why. This breaks the recognition rather than recall heuristic (Heuristic #6) as the camera application should have informed me about what I should do if I wanted to zoom in or out. I figured out that I needed to spread my two fingers across the screen in/outwards but I should have been informed prior to me having to figure it out.
YOU WILL NEED TO TALK ABOUT HCI PROBLEMS IN YOUR REPORT! REFER TO NIELSEN"S HERSITICS WHEN DOING THESE. INCLUDE THEM WHERE POSSIBLE TO PROVE YOUR HCI PROBLEMS!!!
Usability Evaluation
You will need to do this. This involves evaluating the usability of a program, app or device and making judgements about where it could improve. This will involve you needing to mention Nielsen's again to say if they're following a heristic, or violating it. Include images on the way.
Do this with a parent or caregiver. It'll be easy this way. Say what you are going to evaluate, list the steps you are going to take to evaluate it e.g. getting mum to make a gmail account on an Android smartphone, step 1: step 2 : step 3 etc.... Make sure you describe what is going on as each step is occuring. Use images, say what heristics are being used well and/or being violated.
And in the end, make a list of the things that could be improve as part of the evaluation:
- Do this
- Implement this to make it easier on the user
- Make text brighter so it's easier for users to read...
- Are you getting the point? You are trying to improve the heuristics from the evaulation by suggesting how to make it better
In my honest opinion HCI is really easy to nail as you've done before in level 1 so you already know stuff about it. You're just adjusting it to work for level 2!