Ask Ghassem - Recent activity in Human Computer Interaction

design a computer-based system that will encourage autistic children to communicate and express themselves better.

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 07:04:59 +0000

a) A company has been asked to design a computer-based system that will encourage autistic children to communicate and express themselves better.

b) What type of interaction would be appropriate to use at the interface for this particular user group?

Reshown: How to calculate the entropy of stimulus and response in the Stimulus Response Matrix?

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 18:34:50 +0000

Could you please calculate Hr and Hs in the following figure?

https://i.imgur.com/4LBJ70O.png

What are the best website to find icons for our interfaces?

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:23:54 +0000

I am wondering if you can share a list of websites for designing interfaces.

Answered: What is the problem of putting a laptop hdd to desktop computer?

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 12:28:02 +0000

I think this is unrelated to the scope of this forum, but I do not see any problems for putting laptop hdd to desktop. It just needs to have correct voltage input and adaptors.

Answered: How can you design your UI to be at least somewhat navigable to people who do not speak English?

Sun, 03 Mar 2019 02:37:45 +0000

Probably using many visual cues is the best way to deal with this problem. They should be able to recognize the items by their well-known visual cues.

Answered: Can Natural Input methods such as Motion, and Voice have increased productivity over mouse and Keyboard?

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 23:45:02 +0000

Voice inputs are quite hard to get right and they have been working on them for quite some time now (multiple years). As of right now, traditional input methods are still preferred as most efficient but this also depends on the environment restrictions as well. In a car, voice input is good as it promotes hands free operation. As the likes of Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri become better over time, so will natural input.

That being said, natural input is okay but not yet good enough to match up to the effectiveness of traditional.

Answered: What are the best tools for creating a prototype for mobile applications?

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 15:30:40 +0000

Figma

PROS

- Online, web based. Users don't need to worry about downloading the application for each platform.

- Real-time collaboration. Users (including the client) can work on and discuss the same page at the same time.

- Simple versioning

CONS

- You must have an internet connection and signed into an account in order to use this prototyping tool

- No plugins to expand the capabilities of Figma

How to measure the usability of your prototypes on mobile devices?

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 17:46:58 +0000

Q1) Please answer these questions:

What are the best practices for UX surveys of a mobile application?
How to collect data from users?

Q2) Research about the following usability testing techniques:

Card Sorting
Tree Testing
Interview

Q3) Consider your specific application, and design your strategy for creating your Rapid prototyping. Review this article and see how you can apply the techniques mentioned in the article to your design.

Answered: What is information architecture?

Sat, 27 Oct 2018 13:53:26 +0000

“Information Architecture is an aspect of enterprise architecture that enables an information strategy or business solution through the definition of the company’s business information assets, their sources, structure, classification, and associations that will prescribe the required application architecture and technical capabilities.”

Information Architecture is an enabler for Big Data Analytics.

We need to remember that Big Data includes all data (i.e., Unstructured, Semi-structured, and Structured). The primary characteristics of Big Data (Volume, Velocity, and Variety) are a challenge to your existing architecture and how you will effectively, efficiently and economically process data to achieve operational efficiencies.

In order to derive the maximum benefit from Big Data, organizations must be able to handle the rapid rate of delivery and extraction of huge volumes of data, with varying data types. This can then be integrated with the organization’s enterprise data and analyzed. Information Architecture provides the methods and tools for organizing, labeling, building relationships (through associations), and describing (through metadata) your unstructured content adding this source to your overall pool of Big Data. In addition, information architecture enables Big Data to rapidly explore and analyze any combination of structured, semi-structured and unstructured sources. Big Data requires information architecture to exploit relationships and synergies between your data. This infrastructure enables organizations to make decisions utilizing the full spectrum of your big data sources.

Answered: What are the Interaction Design Basics?

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 05:47:51 +0000

- Design ( what it is, interventions , goals, constrains)

- The design process ( What happens when)

-Users (Who they are, what they are like)

-Scenarios (rich stories of design )

- Navigation (finding your way around a system)

- Iteration and Prototypes (Never get it right first time)

Answer edited: Why does human and computer interaction have to do anything with psychology and anthropology?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 21:34:17 +0000

The reason Psychology and Anthropology is used because both sciences study how the human mind works and human behaviors works which are important when designing interaction between human and computer because those sciences allows UI designers to create a interface fun or easy for the User to use or follow.

Edited: What are the two stages of vision?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 21:33:21 +0000

What are the two stages of vision?

Answered: why is QWERTY layout chosen as optimal layout as suppose to alphabetic and dvorak layouts?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 21:28:38 +0000

QWERTY layout was chosen because it prevented the typewriter from jamming. Furthermore, alphabetic layout was not considered to be optimal layout because placing keys in alphabetic order did not increase typing speed for typist and beginner. Lastly, dvorak layout was not considered due to its bias for right handed typists.

Answered: What three individual differences must a designer be aware of? Give an example of each.

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 21:18:26 +0000

The three Individual differences a designer must be aware of are short term, long term and changing.
An example of a short term difference is emotions and effect of fatigue. An example of a long term difference are physical and intellectual abilities. An example of changing difference is age.

Answered: What are the different types of text storage formats ?

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 20:19:47 +0000

Different types of text storage formats are:

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) common text format for computers, each character and letter is represented by 7-bit binary code
UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8) almost like a extension to ASCII, UTF-8 represents characters, letters in 8-bit binary code
RTF (Rich text format), a text format used by different word processors. It allows for formatting, use of different font styles and images
SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) used to store structured text in a reasonable extensible way
XML (Extensible Markup Language), simpler version of SGML. It is used mainly for web based applications

Answered: What are the issues with the QWERTY keyboard layout?

Sat, 06 Oct 2018 18:40:14 +0000

The QWERTY keyboard is the dominant keyboard for entering text, but not because it's the best. To someone just learning, keys on the QWERTY keyboard are hard to find as there is no obvious method of placement. As a standard per language, the alphanumeric keys have a fixed placement. The non-alphanumeric keys vary by region. The QWERTY keyboard also changes its alphanumeric character placement based on national language.

Recategorized: How do we tie into Microsoft's Kinect Hardware for application development?

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 17:02:17 +0000

At the Gym i go to, they have a body scanning set up that lets you know information like BMR, weight etc. This setup includes a spinning platform that im assuming calculates weight and BRM and then theres a kinect that scans you as the platform spins. The result is a 3-d model of the body with measurements of every area. It would be cool to know how they tie in to the hardware of the kinect (is there a software that needs to be used?)

Commented: What are two methods for detecting motion in a computer mouse?

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 21:06:03 +0000

When you write a question, make sure it does makes sense. I have added "computer mouse" to the title

Reshown: What are the most important things to consider when making you website usable to people who do not speak English well?

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 06:32:53 +0000

Answer edited: How is the Model Human Processor woking?

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 04:10:48 +0000

In the very beginning, there are 3 processors, which is perceptual processor, motor processor,cognitive processor as it is shown in the figure below:
https://i.imgur.com/enKuJfq.png

Perceptual processor means the eyes vision to process information outside the body, the motor processor means the body's physical response according to the memory. The next part is the working memory , which means the short term memory, and also called the working memory. The most inside part is the long-term memory to store the information for long term.

The process is as following: Human beings use the eyes, ears or 5 senses of organs to accept information, it can be in the format of image or audio. Then there are two types of storage, one is Visual Image Store, another is Auditory Image Store, and they are served like a buffers in short term memory, Visual Image Store works for image and Auditory Image Store works the audio information from ear. The short term(working) memory can respond and process the information ,and then the motor processor get the response and that is why our hands, eye, feet, can operate together for a new mission for the working memory's response. in addition to that, the cognitive processor could get the response from working memory, too, which means our cognitive ability get improved because of then the working memory could be converted into long term memory if it gets repeated enough to become long term memory, the long term memory can also improved the cognitive process.

Answered: Why we need to allow Users to Use Either the Keyboard or Mouse?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 17:34:50 +0000

Because the different users have different habits, for the user interface, some users like using keyboard only, while other users like the mouse only, or someone even like switch between keyboard and mouse. In order to satisfy all the users habits for sure, the best solution is to enable both keyboard and mouse at same time and their operation can be the same but won't affect each other.

Answered: What are the limitations when creating an interactive performance in terms of a computer?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 17:05:49 +0000

Creating an interactive performance on a computer requires heavy use of resources. These are categorized into four distinct sections:

1. Computational limitation

To have multiple tasks running requires a lot of computation power. If the time for tasks to complete takes to long, this forces users to wait until all tasks are completed creating frustration for users and loss of time.

2. Storage channel requirements

If the threshold of data being transmitted is saturated and tasks related to the storage medium is forced to wait, slowdown and bottlenecking may occur. Bottlenecking is where you have multiple tasks trying to access the same storage channel, it will cause everything to slowdown which would make the interactive experience less than ideal.

3. Graphics bottlenecking

If the computer does not have enough graphical horsepower to update the display, another bottleneck would occur. Interactive experiences heavily rely on graphics to guide users through the task they are trying to complete. An ideal solution would be to allocate more resources for graphic intensive applications by adding a stand-alone gpu to aid in graphics.

4. Network restrictions

Because files and data are transmitted over networks and not usually stored on local disks anymore, the need for a fast and reliable network is very important. If the interactive experience is being delivered over a network, this network must be fast as having for example, games streamed on a slow network could cause freezing and overall unpleasantness to the interactive experience.

Answered: The Difference Between Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality And Mixed Reality

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:31:20 +0000

Virtual Reality: fully immerse user into the digital reality

Fully artificial environment
Examples: VOLVO Reality, Oculus Rift games, PlaystationVR

Augmented Reality: overlay virtual objects in real-world environment

real-world enhanced with virtual objects
Example: Pokemon Go

Mixed Reality: overlay and anchor virtual objects in real-world environment

Interact with both real and virtual objects
Hololens

You also might be asking which reality is the future. Well the answer is ALL. The reason being is that they all have their own uses. Just like

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/02/02/the-difference-between-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-and-mixed-reality/#2a3f87f32d07

Answered: What do all computer displays consist of ?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 15:19:08 +0000

Almost all (If not all) computer displays consist of some sort of Bitmap which is made up of pixels within a rectangular grid. pixels are given color according to the image which needs to be displayed.
These pixels may be limited to black and white, gray scale or full color (RGB)

Answered: Explain how a LCD screen projects images to the user

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 15:11:34 +0000

Light is projected through a horizontal polarized filter, so all light that is vibrating horizontally comes through. The liquid crystals are switched off, and twist 90 degrees as light travels through them. Light waves moving through horizontally are rotated by this to emerge vibrating vertically. The final polarizing filter is vertical, and since the light is vibrating vertically now, it emerges and lights up the pixel.

Answered: Give two reasons why don't people act rationally?!

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 12:53:54 +0000

Processing problem: Humans are cognitive misers, solving problems "in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and more effortful ways, regardless of intelligence"
Content problem: Humans acquire knowledge differently from one to another

Answered: What is kinesthesia and what does it affect?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 12:52:22 +0000

Kinesthesia is the awareness of body position and it affects comfort and performance.

Answered: How are elderly users different than 18-65 year old users?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 12:51:13 +0000

The elderly have reduced:

Motor skills
Perceptiion
Vision, hearing, touch, mobility
Speed
Memory

They also have varying technology experience and may be uninformed in how technology could help.

Answered: Why do smart people make dumb decisions or do foolish things?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 04:19:21 +0000

This is more of an abstract question rather than most HCI related questions because there is no one answer. I can definitely list couple major reasons on to why people make dumb decisions or do foolish things:

Overcomplicate things
- We have natural tendecy to overcomplicate things. If one person is able to solve a calculus probem because they understand it and if a second person does not undertsand calculus then in the second person's eye the first person is "smart". If the question was 2+2 then both would be concidered "smart". Point is that if a problem is complex and you are able to solve it, you are concidered smart. The smarter people are, the worse at keeping things simple. It's almost as if they need to create complex solutions to prove how smart they truly are. But as Tony Robbins says "Complexity is the enemy of execution," and if we hamper our ability to execute, then we limit the results we can achieve.
Accepting Feedback
- "Smart" people tend to undervalue the opinions of other, meaning they have trouble believing that anyone is qualified to give them useful feedback. Not only does this tendency hinder their growth and performance, it can lead to toxic relationships, both personally and professionally.
100% readiness then execution
- Often they do NOT execute a plan until they are 100% ready. And sometimes creating that perfect plan can make you waste your time and it can make you loose great oppertunities

There are definetly more reasons but these 3 reasons are perfect for HCI question. When creating a UI if the designer over complicates things then they can loose customers. In UI/UX simplicity is better. Accepting feedback because if you do NOT take customer feedback and improve your UI/UX you will loose customers and in return affect your revenue. And finally over planning, there is always something better that you can do. Always create the plan refine the plan, execute and analyze the customer feedback and refine again. That way you will at least start getting some users/customers.

What are some methods that can help you retain information in long term memory?

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:16:04 +0000

Describe three ways to improve the process of storing information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Answered: In user-centered design and web interfaces, what are the 3 facts of life? Give a reason for each fact of life.

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 23:30:23 +0000

The first fact is that we scan pages instead of reading them because we are in a hurry. The second fact is that users don’t always choose the best option because there are no penalties for making mistakes. The third fact is that users don’t always know how things work but they will find a way to muddle through it. They muddle through it because it is not important for them to become an expert.

Answered: What is the trick to implementing the Interface Design Principles?

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 22:48:41 +0000

To implement the user interface design principles you will need to make tradeoffs based on the principles that are most important to your design. You will need to choose principles based on the goals and objectives of the interface. Some principles may conflict with each other. The principles are a guideline to design good interfaces.

Answer selected: What are Cognitive Frameworks?

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 17:28:26 +0000

There are internal frameworks that focus primarily on mental processes together with three more recent external ones that explains how humans interact and use technologies in the context in which they occur.

Internal:

1. Mental Models

2. Gulfs of execution and evaluation

3. Information processing.

External:

1. Distributed Cognition

2. External Cognition.

3. Embodies Interaction.

Answered: The extent to which the process of attention is easy or difficult depends on what two factors ?

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 16:57:31 +0000

The extent to which the process of attention is easy or difficult depends on these two factors :

1. If the goals are clear to the person

2. Whether the information the person needs is very noticeable in the environment.

Answered: Why is reading from a computer screen slower than reading from a book?

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 16:18:20 +0000

It is slower to read from a computer screen compared to a book due to several factors such as longer line length, fewer words to a page, orientation and the familiarity of the medium of the page. These factors can be reduced by careful design of textual interfaces.

Answered: When considering the usability of a design, what are the two factors that should be taken into account?

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:57:26 +0000

When considering the usability of a design, the two factors that should be taken into account are WHERE the product is going to be used and WHO is going to use the product.

Take into account a marble messaging machine, that shows the amount of phone messages you have represented by physical marbles. While this design is aesthetically pleasing and user friendly, it would be best suited in a home designed for a single person/family rather than a hotel setting where the messages aren't personalized .

Answered: What are the design implications for Memory?

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:34:19 +0000

Do not overload users' memories with complicated procedures for carrying out tasks
Design interfaces that promote recognition rather than recall be using menus, icons, and consistently placed objects.
Provide users with a variety of ways of encoding digital information to help them access them again easily, through the use of categories, color, tagging, time stamping, icons

Answered: What are the design implications for attention?

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:16:28 +0000

Make information salient when it needs to attend to
Use techniques that make things stand out like colour, ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing and animation
Avoid cluttering the interface with too much information
Avoid using too much because you want to impress or the software allows it

Answered: What colour combinations should be used to maximize readability?

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 18:26:14 +0000

In general, the colour of text should contrast with the background. A bright colour on a dark background will show up well, as will a dark colour on a light background. You also need to make sure that the reader does not experience visual fatigue, which tends to happen if the colours are too vibrant.

Here are some examples of good and bad colour choices:

Source: https://www.lifewire.com/contrasting-foreground-background-colors-4061363

Answered: Why are user interface hard to get right?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 06:07:27 +0000

Because people can be unpredictable, and often intuition of designers can be wrong.

Answered: Why is human computer interaction needed?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 06:06:48 +0000

Because it can help find a balance between design, and technology.

Answered: What is a user's mental model?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 03:16:19 +0000

When interacting with a system, there are two types of knowledge the user may have/gain with regular use of the system. They may know exactly how the system works, or they may know how they need to interact with the system... or both!

For example, an expert in computers may know exactly how they work and all the components they are comprised of as well as how to use one. This would mean they have a deep or strong mental model of how computers work, as well as a deep or strong mental model of how to use a computer.

On the other hand, grandma may have a good mental model of how to use a computer because she is able to turn it on an play solitaire, however she would have a weak or poor mental model of how computers work because she has no experience in working with the physical structure of a computer.

Answer edited: What kind of cognition usually leads to new ideas and creativity ?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:42:09 +0000

Reflective cognition and slow thinking: usually leads to new ideas and creativity, requires decision making and attention judgment, unlike its other counterpart experiential cognition.

Both cognitive models are required to accomplish daily tasks in life eg: reading a book, riding a bike, designing an application or prototyping an application and implementing it.

Reference:http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/units/hit381/resources/popups/cognitionmodes.html

Answered: Why is user-centered design important ?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:35:31 +0000

User-centered design is a design process in which the user is the primary focus. It mainly involves thinking from the user’s perspective and how the application will behave when the user interacts with it. UI that does not focus on users creates a unfamiliar user experience that can hinder the success of the product, knowing who the user is and what problem the product is trying to solve plays a major role towards the overall product experience.

What is difference between annotating and cognitive tracing ?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 21:43:56 +0000

Answered: What is the two main theories of forgetting information ?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 21:42:03 +0000

The two main theories are:

Decay - Information held for long term will eventually be forgotten.
Interference - Information is lost due to interference, taking in new information causes old information to get lost.

Answered: What is the Problem Space Theory?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 21:04:03 +0000

The Problem Space Theory in which people try and solve problems by looking at the problem space.

The problem space consists of multiple states being:

Initial or Current State
End or Goal State
All Possible States in between

Actions that we take in order to move into another state are known as Operators. As humans, we take short-cuts known as heuristics in order to solve problems that we do not have any knowledge in. Heuristics also operates within the human processing system which can be applied to solve problems in areas that are well defined. A common heuristic is "means-end analysis" where an operator is used to shorten the length between the Initial and Goal States. Sub-goals can also be defined in order to make the overall problem easier to execute which a "Divide and Conquer" method could be applied to reach the Goal State faster.

Recategorized: What are the design implications for perception?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 20:43:37 +0000

Answered: What is the definition of Human Computer Interaction

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 20:41:30 +0000

Human computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

Answered: What two things should an interface designer be aware of?

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 20:41:08 +0000

Geometric Shapes because we do not perceive geometric shapes exactly as they are drawn. We tend to magnify horizontal lines and reduce vertical. So a square needs to be slightly increased in height to appear square and lines will appear thicker if horizontal rather than vertical.

Page symmetry because we tend to see the center of a page as being a little above the actual center In graphic design this is known as the optical center–and bottom page margins tend to be increased by 50% to compensate.