HCI 454

Spring 2017

Craig Miller

Weekly Notes

Assignments

Final Project
Identify and Apply Design Principles
Due Saturday June 10 before 11:30pm

Overview

For this "final project" you will select 10 design principles. For each principle, you will define it, provide an example and present its general value for design.

Detailed Instructions

Select 10 principles from the following list:

  • affordances
  • bottom-up vs. top-down information processing
  • chunking human memory vs. visual display (understand distinctions)
  • cognitive load theory
  • consistency (aesthetic, functional, internal, external)
  • cost-benefit
  • control-effect mapping
  • degree of control (as a function of user expertise)
  • depth of processing
  • difference threshold (also signal detection theory)
  • earcon
  • Fitts's law
  • flexibility-usability tradeoff
  • Gestalt principles (closure, common fate, good continuation, law of Prägnanz, proximity, similarity)
  • Gutenberg diagram
  • Hick's law, effect on practiced users
  • inattentional blindness
  • information foraging theory
  • interference effects (e.g. Stroop effect)
  • locus of attention
  • modal error
  • Occam's Razor
  • one-to-many (data entity relationship)
  • priming
  • post-completion error
  • recognition over recall
  • reference-point error
  • satisficing
  • signal-to-noise ratio
  • uncanny valley

If you can think of a useful IA or IX design principle that's not from this list, just ask me. I will probably let you use it as one of your 10 selected principles.

For each principle, provide the following:

  1. A definition or explanation of the principle, written in your own words
  2. An interaction design (or IA) example that exemplifies the principle
  3. How the principle can be generally applied to improve interaction design (or IA)

While not required, you are encouraged to draw upon examples from class projects, exercises and presentations.

Evaluation

Each principle may receive up to 6 points, based on the following criteria:

  • Correctness --- definition should accurately identify the principle; example should address the principle; application should be based on the principle
  • Presentation --- clear, concise and well written; note that long responses are generally not good responses (see example below)
  • Insight --- shows an understanding of the principle; provides an application with general use; shows originality of thought.

Example

A post-completion error occurs when a user skips a step that does not contribute to the user's primary goal. For example, a user's principle goal at an ATM may be to withdraw cash. However, this operation requires that the user inserts the ATM card. Since retrieving the ATM card is not central to the user's goal (withdrawing cash), the user may forget the card. One solution for preventing the error is to require the step (e.g. take the ATM card back) as a precondition to achieving the user's primary goal (e.g. withdrawing cash).

Submission

The submitted document should use a common presentation format, ideally PDF. Submit the document through D2L.