chapter 6

HCI in the software

process
HCI in the software process

• Software engineering and the design process

for interactive systems

• Usability engineering

• Iterative design and prototyping

• Design rationale
the software lifecycle

• Software engineering is the discipline for

understanding the software design process, or
life cycle

• Designing for usability occurs at all stages of

the life cycle, not as a single isolated activity
The waterfall model
Requirements
specification

Architectural
design

Detailed
design

Coding and
unit testing

Integration
and testing

Operation and
maintenance
Activities in the life cycle
Requirements specification
designer and customer try capture what the system is
expected to provide can be expressed in natural language or
more precise languages, such as a task analysis would
provide

Architectural design
high-level description of how the system will provide the
services required factor system into major components of the
system and how they are interrelated needs to satisfy both
functional and nonfunctional requirements

Detailed design
refinement of architectural components and interrelations to
identify modules to be implemented separately the
refinement is governed by the nonfunctional requirements
 Verification and validation

Real-world
requirements
and constraints The formality gap

Verification
designing the product right
Validation
designing the right product

The formality gap

validation will always rely to some extent on subjective means
of proof
Management and contractual issues
design in commercial and legal contexts
The life cycle for interactive
systems
Requirements cannot assume a linear
specification
sequence of activities
Architectural as in the waterfall model
design

Detailed
design

Coding and
unit testing

Integration
lots of feedback! and testing

Operation and
maintenance
Usability engineering
The ultimate test of usability based on measurement of user
experience
Usability engineering demands that specific usability measures
be made explicit as requirements

Usability specification
– usability attribute/principle
– measuring concept
– measuring method
– now level/ worst case/ planned level/ best case

Problems
– usability specification requires level of detail that may not be
– possible early in design satisfying a usability specification
– does not necessarily satisfy usability
part of a usability
specification for a VCR

Attribute: Backward recoverability

Measuring concept: Undo an erroneous programming
sequence
Measuring method: Number of explicit user actions
to undo current program
Now level: No current product allows such an undo
Worst case: As many actions as it takes to
program-in mistake
Planned level: A maximum of two explicit user actions
Best case: One explicit cancel action
ISO usability standard 9241

adopts traditional usability categories:

• effectiveness
– can you achieve what you want to?
• efficiency
– can you do it without wasting effort?
• satisfaction
– do you enjoy the process?
some metrics from ISO 9241
Usability Effectiveness Efficiency Satisfaction
objective measures measures measures

Suitability Percentage of Time to Rating scale

for the task goals achieved complete a task for satisfaction

Appropriate for Number of power Relative efficiency Rating scale for

trained users features used compared with satisfaction with
an expert user power features

Learnability Percentage of Time to learn Rating scale for

functions learned criterion ease of learning

Error tolerance Percentage of Time spent on Rating scale for

errors corrected correcting errors error handling
successfully
Problems with Usability
Engineering
• The problem with usability metrics is that they
rely on measurements of very specific user
actions in very specific situations.
• We should recognize another inherent
limitation for usability engineering, that is it
provides a means of satisfying usability
specifications and not necessarily usability.
• The designer is still forced to understand why
a particular usability metric enhances usability
for real people.
Iterative design and
prototyping
• Iterative design overcomes inherent problems of incomplete
requirements
• The only way to be sure about some features of the potential
design is to build them and test them out on real users. The
design can then be modified to correct any false assumptions
that were revealed in the testing.

• Prototypes
– simulate or animate some features of intended system
– different types of prototypes
• throw-away
• incremental
• evolutionary

• Management issues
– time
– planning
– non-functional features
– contracts
Throw-away prototyping within
requirements specification
Incremental prototyping within
the life cycle
Evolutionary prototyping
throughout the life cycle
 Techniques for prototyping
Storyboards
need not be computer-based
can be animated
Limited functionality simulations
some part of system functionality provided by designers
Many tools available
Wizard of Oz technique: Domain expert user types inputs
to a system, a human at backend translates them to valid
system input and presents output to user.
• Another example is the original
Mechanical Turk
Limitations

• Time
• Planning Most project managers do not
have the experience necessary for
adequately planning and costing a
design process which involves
prototyping.
• Non-functional features
• Contracts Prototypes and other
implementations cannot form the basis
for a legal contract.
Warning about iterative design

design inertia – early bad decisions stay bad (also next slide)
diagnosing real usability problems in prototypes….
…. and not just the symptoms
pitfalls of prototyping

• moving little by little … but to where

• Malverns or the Matterhorn?

1. need a good start point

2. need to understand what is wrong
Design rationale

• Rationale: “a set of reasons or a logical basis

for a course of action or belief.”

• In designing any computer system,

many decisions are made as the
product goes from a set of vague
customer requirements to a deliverable
entity. Often it is difficult to recreate
the reasons, or rationale, behind
various design decisions.
Design rationale

Design rationale is information that explains why

a computer system is the way it is.

Benefits of design rationale

– communication throughout life cycle
– reuse of design knowledge across products
– enforces design discipline and detailed thinking
– presents arguments for design trade-offs
– organizes potentially large design space
– capturing contextual information, environment, etc.
(e.g. used old version of some s.w because user did
not want to buy license for new)
 E.g.
• There is usually no single best design alternative.
More often, the designer is faced with a set of trade-
offs between different alternatives. For example, a
graphical interface may involve a set of actions that
the user can invoke by use of the mouse and the
designer must decide whether to present each
action as a ‘button’ on the screen, which is always
visible, or hide all of the actions in a menu which
must be explicitly invoked before an action can be
chosen. The former option maximizes the operation
visibility but the latter option takes up less screen
space.
• Design rationale relates to an activity of
both reflection (doing design rationale)
and documentation (creating a design
rationale) that occurs throughout the
entire life cycle.
Design rationale (cont’d)

Types of DR:
• Process-oriented
– preserves order of deliberation and decision-making
– for use during actual design discussions
• Structure-oriented
– emphasizes post hoc structuring of considered
design alternatives

• Two examples:
– Issue-based information system (IBIS)
– Design space analysis
Issue-based information
system (IBIS)
• basis for much of design rationale research
• process-oriented
• main elements:
issues
– hierarchical structure with one ‘root’ issue
positions
– potential resolutions of an issue
arguments
– modify the relationship between positions and issues

• gIBIS is a graphical version

 structure of gIBIS
supports
Position Argument
responds to
Issue
responds to
objects to
Position Argument
specializes

Sub-issue generalizes

questions

Sub-issue

Sub-issue
• Other versions of the IBIS notation, both
graphical and textual, besides gIBIS.
• Some add extra nodes while some add richer
language.
• Use during design meetings as a means of
recording and structuring the issues
deliberated and the decisions made.
• Historically accurate description of a design
team making some decision on a particular
issue for the design..
Design space analysis

• structure-oriented
• (Questions, Options, Criteria) QOC –
hierarchical structure:
questions (and sub-questions)
– represent major issues of a design
options
– provide alternative solutions to the question
criteria
– the means to assess the options in order to make a choice

• (Decision Representation Language) DRL –

similar to QOC with a larger language and
more formal semantics
the QOC notation
Criterion
Option

Question Option Criterion

Option Criterion

… Consequent …
Question
Question
QOC
1. Decompose your problem into
interaction problem questions.
– E.g. How can users of an online community
be assigned rating?
2. Think of Options
– By polling.
– Performance over time automatically.
– How many connections (s)he has.

Next slide
3. Decide criteria. It should be
– Objective
– Specific
– Non-overlapping
• E.g. Usability criteria: Learnability,
Efficiency, Effectiveness, User
satisfaction…..
• The key to an effective design space
analysis using the QOC notation is
deciding the right questions to use to
structure the space and the correct
criteria to judge the options.
• An advantage of the post hoc technique
is that it can abstract away from the
particulars of a design meeting and
therefore represent the design
knowledge in such a way that it can be
of use in the design of other products.
Psychological design rationale

• to support task-artefact cycle in which user tasks are

affected by the systems they use
• aims to make explicit consequences of design for users
• designers identify tasks system will support
• scenarios are suggested to test task
• users are observed on system
• psychological claims of system made explicit. E.g. The
psychological claim of demo system is that the user
learns by doing, which is a good thing.
• negative aspects of design can be used to improve next
iteration of design
E.g.

• What can I do: that is, what are the

possible operations or functions that
this programming environment allows?
• How does it work: that is, what do the
various functions do?
• How can I do this: that is, once I know
a particular operation I want to
perform, How do I go about
programming it?
Summary

The software engineering life cycle

– distinct activities and the consequences for
interactive system design
Usability engineering
– making usability measurements explicit as
requirements
Iterative design and prototyping
– limited functionality simulations and animations
Design rationale
– recording design knowledge
– process vs. structure
References

• http://usabilitygeek.com/white-spaces-
improving-usability-web-designs/
• https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2009
/07/08/the-what-and-whence-of-issue-
based-information-systems/
• http://www.slideshare.net/koenvanturn
hout/how-to-perform-a-qoc-analysis