User Interface - Personal Report

User Interface Personal Report

Introduction to usability

Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object.

The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything

a human interacts with.

about the “Usability motivations” that allows the user to have a good and easy-

We talk

understandable interface when he/she uses services or software (banking system, corporate

databases and intranets, transportation tickets, airline check-in, mobile phones and other gadgets).

The “Usability goals” are : Effectiveness, efficiency & satisfaction. They are measured by: time to

learn, speed of performance, rate of errors by users, retention over time and subjective

satisfaction.

When a software is designed, you have to think that there are eight mainly golden rules to

considerate in the interface : strive for consistency, cater to universal usability, offer informative

feedback, prevent errors, design dialogs to yield closure, permit easy reversal of actions, support

internal locus of control, reduce short-term memory load.

Usability analysis of simple devices teacher’s

During the working group lab each team had to choose one of the devices showed in the

list and starting to work with them : comparing usability features and different alternatives.

Me and my group members have focused our attention in “Travel card and the reader in Helsinki

: a great service offered by Helsinki

area transportation compared with other bus ticket system”

region. 2

User Interface Personal Report

Usability and Web Design

Usability is the practice of designing and architecting websites to focus on the user's experience.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) official definition, usability is "The effectiveness,

efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a

product. High usability means a system is easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing

and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors."

To understand the concepts of Usability and Web Design we have done it in practical.

We spent the majority of time to do the lab part that consisted in choosing one of the site showed

in the teacher’s list and using it to test the usability.

Me and my group chose the “University of Helsinki” site. It is a good site where it is easy to find

information an user needs. It is not required to do lots of clicks to get the information you are

looking for and it is well-built site with a good user interface.

“The Web Usability Guidelines” which you can check here :

To evaluate the site we took a look to

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html . 3

User Interface Personal Report

Psychology of interface design

Usability is a standard, definite in ISO 9241.

It is the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular

environment of a product. High usability means a system is easy to learn and remember; efficient,

visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors.

The concept of “usability” should be universal and designed for everyone. We have to consider

person who has : disability’s problems, diverse cognitive abilities, personality differences, cultural

and international diversity, special user groups, etc.

It is needed to design a specific user face for each category mentioned above.

Making an interface design for everyone is not easy. There are some points which should be

considerate for a good-understanding and an easy way to find concepts you are looking for.

Here some of the main points you are not allowed to skip :

- Familiarity in interface

- Layout : patterns and perception

o Regular shapes

o Proximity

o Continuity

o Recognition

o Grouping

- Logical structure

If there is something with a regular shapes (and which is familiar), the human can understand

immediately and put it in a certain contest. is not a bad idea. “I’m smiling so I must be happy”.

To recognise the emotions, using the smile

The brain doesn’t realize if that is a natural smiling or not, just know that it is a smile. 4

User Interface Personal Report

Try to take a look at the imagine below. There are three Pac-man but you might see also the

pyramid.

It is a question of interpretation, how you think and how the brain is elaborating the information. It

depends from people to people.

GRIDS & FORMS

If you want to make a site, especially using some input forms which can be filled by the user, you

have to use a correct layout, design on a grid : easy to align, using the same template and first of

all make it using only black and white colours.

In this grid there is something wrong. It is not done using a simple layout or, at least, using a

standard one.

The button to confirm the form is on the right-top of the application but usually it should be on the

right-button of it.

Each text field is near to a label. The address field is composed by three parts and this is a good

point because it can be seen as a data structure.

HOW TO LAYOUT PAGES AND/OR FROMS?

- Left-aligned

- Vertical alignment of texts

- Grid for forms : something is smaller (some information is not needed or considerate as

“extra-information”) and something is bigger (to emphasize what is more important).

- Fastest spotting of items (there should be some groups where you can put the things you

wish) 5

User Interface Personal Report

- Efficient dialogue

- Grouping the objects with same purposes or functionalities

- Regular size input fields

The main points to build a Web site are the following :

- Using a clear structure : it should be easy, for a user to find the information he/she is

looking for

- Consistent outlook and layout : the buttons should be in the right places. For example,

usually, the button for the confirmation in a form should be in the right-button of the page,

under the filled fields

- Functionalities give feedback : the user should have the possibility to express

himself/herself regarding the site he/she is visiting. That is also useful for the web designer

to improve the site made.

- Right amount of information at right time

- Summary on top level (it should be clickable) and details on lower levels

- Groups and outlines (same things should be regrouped together, in this way, it easier

finding the information you need)

- Familiarity

only some of the “Usability guidelines” for web sites. You can find more of them

These are

checking this site : http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/taskchecklist.html . 6

User Interface Personal Report

Rackspace discovers the formula for the

perfect web site

Users want to keep it speedy, simple and easy when on the web

London - 16 November, 2006 - Rackspace® Managed Hosting, the UK's most recommended

hosting specialist*, today launches its formula for the perfect website:

Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) +

(10.89*Up)) - ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26

The Formula explained

Pwebsite = the degree of perfection of the website

EaseNav = ease of navigation

Speed = the speed at which pages load

CleanDes = clean and simple design

Func = functionality -' does what it says on the tin'

Up = the site is always alive

And:

Pops = the site tries to give you pop-ups

Ads = excessive advertising

MultiM = Flash and other multimedia

In my personal opinion I think this formula can be universal cause these are the main criteria that a

web site should respect regardless of the purpose of the site.

Even if that is true I guess that a real formula cannot be used as a real parameter to evaluate a

web site but it can give to the user, at least, general information concerning how good it is.

This because designing a good web site and good pages is not simple. There are more things that

should be evaluated and also each parameters in the formula contains lots of subsections that

should be take care of in the final evaluation.

In conclusion, as I mentioned above, this formula can be used just for extracting the general scope

and guidelines of each site but it should not be taken as a real evaluation (there are lots of

parameters to take care of). 7

User Interface Personal Report

Psychology of usability, part 1

Human brain is quiet complicate because it has to adapt in lots of situation and, the way of

thinking, the way of doing something is very different between people and people and that depends

of lots of situations she/he has been in.

Many things are caused by the behaviour, by the cultural rules where a people live and how the

person is growing up (which kinds of stimulus they get from the environment).

For example, babies start to listen to the voice of the mother and father, then they are able to

memorize the sound of the language and step by step learning the mother-tongue.

Our brain knows how can information be interpreted. There are mainly two areas in our brain :

- Working memory

- Stored experience : Memory, Emotions, Movement

The brain receives some inputs from the outside environment as :

- Chemical sense : Smell, taste

- Audition

- Vision

- Mechanical senses : touch, hear, pain

- Body state : hunger, vestibular sensation and other kind of inputs from our body

These inputs are elaborated and then, they become actions.

HUMAN PERCEPTION

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to

represent and understand the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system,

which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs.

For example, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by

odours molecules and hearing involve pressure waves. Perception is not the passive receipt of

these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory, and expectation.

People can see from an aggregation of patterns different kind of shades or colours. Depends how

our brain elaborates input information.

SYSTEM 1 & SYSTEM 2

All persons have got two systems in their brain : System 1 and System 2.

System 1, is also known as “rapid thought” that do things like : driving in a street where

- there are no persons, know that an object is nearer than another one. 8

User Interface Personal Report

System 1 does everything automatically, quickly, with a little or no effort and above all,

without any voluntary effort.

- System 2 is the reflective thinking. It does all of that actions that determine the performance

as : driving, holding the right, counting how many times a letter appears in a sentence, etc.

Looking at the following imagine :

Which one is the longest segment ? –

This experiment is the famous illusion of Muller Lyer.

The two horizontal segments are of the same length.

Now, yo