Human factors. (a brief introduction) comp march 2008 slides originally by daniel sandler

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1 Human factors (a brief introduction) comp march 2008 slides originally by daniel sandler

2 Warm-ups

3 How do I Zoom?

4 How do I Zoom?

5 How do I Eject a disk? delete???

6 How do I Eject a disk? But the Trash still works, too it changes to an eject ( ) icon when you start dragging a disk

7 How do I Turn on the front-right burner????

8 How do I Turn on the front-right burner?

9 Other classics ejector seat digital metronome

10 Human Factors Also called ergonomics (Europe) How people interact with things The human side of work, systems, etc. how the human body uses senses and limbs to work with tools Alan Kay Factors: Psychology Physiology

11 (An aside about Alan Kay) coiner of the phrase personal computer early member, Xerox PARC designer of Dynabook inventor of Smalltalk pioneer of OO and UI co-creator, OLPC Randy Marsh Alan Kay

12 Goals of human factors Make better tools Better how? Minimize: errors Caused by: confusion, fatigue, inaccessibility, Maximize: safety, performance, accuracy, comfort, fun,

13 How do we get to better? Study existing tools How? Observe people using them! The designer is a bad test subject Mantra: you are not your user

14 History of HF If it is the study of how we interact with tools, how far does it go back? Pre-history! (The invention of tools.) The unknown designer who first put a haft on a hand axe was trying not just to increase leverage but also to make it an extension of the arm, not just the fist. Alan Kay (again) Industrial revolution [Gilbreaths, 1900s] Manufacturing (fatigue) Surgery (time spent looking for blades)

15 Late 19th century: Typewriters Mechanism: key lever hammer ribbon paper Problem: nearby hammers will jam one another errors poor performance frustration

16 QWERTY Idea: sequential letters to be typed should result in hammers from opposite sides Design: QWERTY layout 1872: The Type-Writer, invented by Christopher Latham Sholes for the Remington Arms Co. U.S. Pat. #207559, Improvement in Type- Writing Machines, 1868 It s still with us today Hidden assumption in QWERTY?

18 Late 20th century present: HCI Human-computer interaction (or interface ) (also CHI, but recently the human has been put first) HF applied to computer systems (an increasingly large subset of all man-made systems)

19 Interface?

20 interface? HCI: kind of like a software interface Except your customer isn t code it s a human! public interface IHuman?

21 IHuman An interesting discussion what might be the methods on an IHuman? see(image i) // may be repeated for dramatic effect hear(audiosample a) say(string s) // may result in hear() elsewhere move(limb l) touch(object o) touch(object o, Force f, Limb l, Digit d...)

22 HCI: a brief history

23 Before computers Vannevar Bush, As We May Think Atlantic Monthly, Post-WWII mission for military researchers: organizing information Idea: the memex Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, memex will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. Vannevar Bush, 1945

24 Memex

25 Early computers IBM System 360 (mid-1960s)

26 Operator console You might not even consider it a user interface Direct-manipulation (switches, dials) Small readouts (lights) Batch input (cards) Batch output (line printer) Batch vs. interactive

27 Even Fred gets it wrong sometimes Multics (and following it, IBM's TSS) differs in concept from other interactive computing systems in exactly those respects necessary for systems programming: many levels of sharing and protection for data and programs, extensive library management, and facilities for cooperative work among terminal users. I am convinced that interactive systems will never displace batch systems for many applications. But I think the Multics team has made its most convincing case in the system programming application. There is not yet much evidence available on the true fruitfulness of such apparently powerful tools. There is a widespread recognition that debugging is the hard and slow part of system programming, and slow turnaround is the bane of debugging. So the logic of interactive programming seems inexorable. Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, 1975

28 Jumping forward: NLS The online System (1960s) Doug SRI

29 Interaction with the NLS Display-Selection Techniques for Text Manipulation, William K. English, Douglas C. Engelbart, and Melvyn L. Berman, IEEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, March 1967, Vol. HFE-8, No. 1, pp Abstract: Tests and analysis to determine the best display selection techniques for a computer-aided text-manipulation system Besides a light pen, several cursor-controlling devices were tested, including a joystick and an SRI-developed device known as a mouse. Task: Manipulate the text cursor, a/k/a the bug, around the screen

30 Joystick, Grafacon, and the mouse

31 The Knee Control

32 Jumping forward again Xerox Alto, then Star Alan Kay, again! Many windows Alto: overlapping Star: tiled (seemed easier ) Progressive disclosure Pop-up menus

33 The Alto

34 The Star

35 Progressive disclosure & pop-ups

36 And then

37 No, silly, it s the Lisa No, not that one, the other one The graphics code and UI were both designed by one guy Bill You know, the most important Bill in the history of computing

38 LisaGraf Bill s graphics package for Lisa Fast graphics on slow computers Lines, ovals, RoundRects Regions Allowed for real overlapping windows

39 The Menu Bar Bill s polaroids during the development of Lisa, 1981

40 File Management: beyond lists Seen here: early Microfinder Insp d by MIT Dataland demo Spatial file organization & interaction My file is right there.

41 Sidebar: User Testing Most dialog boxes had two options: Cancel Do It Users would stare for a while and then click Cancel (erroneously) Why?

42 I'm not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt? Thus: OK was born

43 MacPaint

Object-oriented interface: MacPaint Bill s LisaGraf (now QuickDraw ) playground Flicker and Double Buffering Marching Ants Paint Bucket & Lasso (Seed Fill) Palette

44 Object-oriented interface: MacPaint Bill s LisaGraf (now QuickDraw ) playground Flicker and Double Buffering Marching Ants Paint Bucket & Lasso (Seed Fill) Palette of always-available features Originally: tools, palettes hidden in menus Evolution: always-available icons Principle: Direct selection Spawned a thousand imitators

45 Photoshop 1.0

46 Photoshop CS2 (Colorful, but otherwise not so different from MacPaint.)

47 (end of day 1) next time: designing user interfaces

History. A (brief) history of interaction. Outline. Major paradigms of interaction. Visionaries who inspired advances

History. A (brief) history of interaction. Outline. Major paradigms of interaction. Visionaries who inspired advances History A (brief) history of interaction Outline Major paradigms of interaction - Batch interfaces - Conversational interfaces - Graphical interfaces Visionaries who inspired advances - Vannevar Bush -