Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Diary Entries for Website Design
Programming
At least 6 entries
We want every student to keep an “HCI Diary” during this quarter, and to record bad and good usability experiences whenever you encounter them. Often these instances are fleeting and subtle; you may think you’ll remember and write it down later, but chances are you won’t. That’s why we expect you to carry appropriate recording devices with you at (nearly) all times. The best might be some sort of [phone] camera, a device on which to make screen shots, and some note-taking tool like a piece of paper, Evernotes or an audio recorder. You may be able to combine all this functionality on a single device, like a smartphone or tablet, but this is not a requirement.
Whenever you observe a particularly bad (or a particularly good) example of human-computer interaction on the web, in an app or with a physical device, copy the URL, take a picture or screenshot, and jot down the details and your thoughts in your notebook. It will be helpful to write a note or two about the usability principles that apply to the example. Your analysis should focus on usability issues rather than pure functionality; while the line is sometimes hard to draw, don’t try to solve the problems by making the system into something that it wasn’t intended to be.
Start your diary at the beginning of the quarter, and make entries whenever you see something interesting (plan on doing at least one entry per week). Your diary entries will be useful in assignments and in classwork throughout the quarter. We encourage you to get back to your old entries once in a while, and to reanalyze them taking new HCI knowledge into account that you have learned in class. Also expand your diary from a memory aid that maybe only you can understand to a report that is comprehensible to others (so if you have used a voice recorder to help you remember when you encountered the issue – convert/ transcribe that into text and put it in the diary entry).
(For each entry write a brief description (a paragraph) what is the issue, then in another paragraph describe the usability principles that apply)
Otherwise, I will give the lecture slides for this homework to connect and work on the HCI diary after you confirm this.
