SWE 205 - Introduction to Software Engineering

Lecture 27 User Interface Design (Chapter 16)

Lecture Objectives

To explain the principal activities in the user interface design process To introduce usability attributes and approaches to system evaluation

Information presentation

Static information

Initialised at the beginning of a session. It does not change during the session. May be either numeric or textual.

Dynamic information

Changes during a session and the changes must be communicated to the system user. May be either numeric or textual.
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Information display factors

Is the user interested in precise information or data relationships? How quickly do information values change? Must the change be indicated immediately? Must the user take some action in response to a change? Is there a direct manipulation interface? Is the information textual or numeric? Are relative values important?
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Alternative information presentations

Jan 2 84 2 Feb 285 1 Mar 3 164 April 2 789 May 12 73 Jun e 2 83 5

4000

300 0

2 00 0

1 00 0

0 Jan Feb Mar April May Jun e

Analogue or digital presentation?

Digital presentation

Compact - takes up little screen space; Precise values can be communicated. Easier to get an 'at a glance' impression of a value; Possible to show relative values; Easier to see exceptional data values.
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Analogue presentation

Presentation methods
1 4 3 2 0 10 20

Dial with need le

Pie chart

Ther mo meter

Ho rizontal bar

Displaying relative values

Press ur e 0 1 00 200 300 40 0 0 25

T emper atu r e 50 75 100

Data visualisation

Concerned with techniques for displaying large amounts of information. Visualisation can reveal relationships between entities and trends in the data. Possible data visualisations are:

Weather information collected from a number of sources; The state of a telephone network as a linked set of nodes;

Data visualisation

Chemical plant visualised by showing pressures and temperatures in a linked set of tanks and pipes; A model of a molecule displayed in 3 dimensions; Web pages displayed as a hyperbolic tree.

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Colour displays

Colour adds an extra dimension to an interface and can help the user understand complex information structures. Colour can be used to highlight exceptional events.

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Colour displays

Common mistakes in the use of colour in interface design include:

The use of colour to communicate meaning; The over-use of colour in the display.

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Colour use guidelines

Limit the number of colours used and be conservative in their use. Use colour change to show a change in system status. Use colour coding to support the task that users are trying to perform. Use colour coding in a thoughtful and consistent way. Be careful about colour pairings.
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Error messages

Error message design is critically important. Poor error messages can mean that a user rejects rather than accepts a system. Messages should be polite, concise, consistent and constructive. The background and experience of users should be the determining factor in message design. 14

User error

Assume that a nurse misspells the name of a patient whose records he is trying to retrieve.
Pleas e type th e p atient s name in the bo P atien t s n ame MacDo nald , R. OK Cancel x then c lick o n OK

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Good and bad message design

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The UI design process

UI design is an iterative process involving close liaisons between users and designers. The three core activities in this process are:

User analysis. Understand what the users will do with the system; System prototyping. Develop a series of prototypes for experiment; Interface evaluation. Experiment with these 17 prototypes with users.

The design process

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User analysis

If you dont understand what the users want to do with a system, you have no realistic prospect of designing an effective interface. User analyses have to be described in terms that users and other designers can understand. Scenarios where you describe typical episodes of use, are one way of describing these analyses.
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User interaction scenario

Jane is a student of Religious Studies and is working on an essay on Indian architecture and how it has been influenced by religious practices. To help her understand this, she would like to access some pictures of details on notable buildings but cant find anything in her local library. She approaches the subject librarian to discuss her needs and he suggests some search terms that might be used. He also suggests some libraries in New Delhi and London that might have this material so they log on to the library catalogues and do some searching using these terms. They find some source material and place a request for photocopies of the pictures with architectural detail to be posted directly to Jane.

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Requirements from the scenario

Users may not be aware of appropriate search terms so need a way of helping them choose terms. Users have to be able to select collections to search. Users need to be able to carry out searches and request copies of relevant material.
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Analysis techniques

Task analysis

Models the steps involved in completing a task. Asks the users about the work they do.

Interviewing and questionnaires

Ethnography

Observes the user at work.

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Interviewing

Design semi-structured interviews based on open-ended questions. Users can then provide information that they think is essential; not just information that you have thought of collecting. Group interviews or focus groups allow users to discuss with each other what they do. 23

Ethnography

Involves an external observer watching users at work and questioning them in an unscripted way about their work. Valuable because many user tasks are intuitive and they find these very difficult to describe and explain. Also helps understand the role of social and organisational influences on work.
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Ethnographic records
Air traffic control involves a number of control suites where the suites controlling adjacent sectors of airspace are physically located next to each other. Flights in a sector are represented by paper strips that are fitted into wooden racks in an order that reflects their position in the sector. If there are not enough slots in the rack (i.e. when the airspace is very busy), controllers spread the strips out on the desk in front of the rack.
When we were observing controllers, we noticed that controllers regularly glanced at the strip racks in the adjacent sector. We pointed this out to them and asked them why they did this. They replied that, if the adjacent controller has strips on their desk, then this meant that they would have a lot of flights entering their sector. They therefore tried to increase the speed of aircraft in the sector to clear space for the incoming aircraft.
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Insights from ethnography

Controllers had to see all flights in a sector. Therefore, scrolling displays where flights disappeared off the top or bottom of the display should be avoided. The interface had to have some way of telling controllers how many flights were in adjacent sectors so that they could plan their workload.
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Key points

User interface design principles should help guide the design of user interfaces. Interaction styles include direct manipulation, menu systems form fill-in, command languages and natural language. Graphical displays should be used to present trends and approximate values. Digital displays when precision is required.

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