HCI and User Interface

Content:

HCI is the study of interaction between users and computers (wiki). The users interact with computers (or any intelligent devices) through interfaces. Interface plays a big role in an object's usability and usefulness. Interfaces also provide information to the users about what's going on inside a particular system.

I liked the poor design examples very much. The link that Nate mentioned is very useful (if somebody wants to design good interfaces; otherwise the website is only "usable" ;) .) Usability requirements is another critical issue while designing a good interface. Interface should be usable, useful and universal. This is the thing that Microsoft has been doing for years. Microsoft evolved from DOS (and the concept was copied from Unix). DOS had a command line interface where users had to type commands  to do something (there was no mouse at that time, and the funny thing is Gates and Jobs were together). Later on DOS was named MSDOS (by Gates) and Jobs wasn't there anymore. Since then, there's competition on how to create good interfaces.
There was also Linux, which was open source and mainly focused on computer security instead of good interfaces. Apple computers invented the concept of a "mouse" (that's why they are also called MACs: mouse activated computers). Gates "stole" that concept and developed different family of mouse: two-buttoned mouse. We can see several buttoned mouse these days. Macs still have single buttoned mouse to perform all its tasks. These are all interfaces to make things easier. Had not Gates focused on user interfaces, much lesser people would have used Windows. I believe MS Office Suite is the best product that Microsoft has ever made. They keep on changing the user interfaces according to the users' needs and always come up with something interesting. On the other hand, Apple has a big group of UI designers and their interfaces are always cool. When I used my first iPod, it was too difficult for me to use. Unconventional. As time elapsed, I am loving it.

Too much of windows/macs. Lets take a simple scenario. I take light rail to travel to downtown campus from tempe. Those who use light rails can see the map of whole route just above the doors. It has circles and caption for different stops. Passengers can see (or read) the stops, or if they dont want to have a look at that, they can hear audio that says "approaching stop..." and get alert. These are good interfaces, but we can make these better by showing the exact position of the rail on the map. This can be done by adding several leds on the map, and show its position using Google maps. We can get the coordinates of the train and based on those coordinates, we can update the position of the rail. duhhhh... who's gonna spend so much time on that right?? :P

I want to discuss about pros n cons of a mouse (computer peripheral). (Coloring style is copied from Debbie's post)

Pros:

It is used by almost everyone and is the most important device if you dont like typing.
There are so many buttons on newer breeds of mouse. Most of the page navigation can be done by clicking the buttons.
It can be used in different platforms (have their own "breed" of mouse).

Cons:
To use the mouse properly, we have to have proper settings for that. For example, if a left handed person (who uses a mouse with left hand) must change the default settings of mouse in Windows. There are so many buttons that we seldom use all of them.
I dont know whether a non-mac mouse can be used in macs.

According to lecture slide, Life Critical systems have requirements like reliability and effectiveness. I want to add accuracy and precision are the most important functions that define reliability and effectiveness. Most of the times, a system is usable or useful in a subset of a universal domain. We keep focusing on interested parties only. And it is important because that very thing might be no more interesting for others. The basic thing to consider is: interfaces should be flexible enough to be modified as per requirements.

Posted by
Prabal Khanal