Category — Real Time Collaboration

What is Computing Transparency?

Computing Transparency is a vital aspect of HCI (human computer interaction) and is connected to issues of clarity and usability in user interface design (UI design). The Merriam Webster Dictionary lists a number of characteristics that show how the term transparency literally refers to the quality or state of being transparent: Fine or sheer enough to see through, free from pretense or deceit, easily detected or seen through, readily understood, characterized by visibility or accessibility of information especially concerning business practices. Transparent hence implies that actions or information are clear, truthful, and easy to understand.  So transparent is a good term to apply to usability or UX design.

In applying the term transparency to Computer Science we encounter the idea of Computing Transparency.  Computing Transparency refers to a system that incorporates user friendliness and alleviates the user of the need to worry about technical details (installation, downloading, updating or device drivers).  For example, this may mean detecting monitor resolution automatically rather than requiring the users to do so themselves and adjust the program manually, thereby easing the system usage for end users.  The term is thus straightforward: systems and programs that are transparent for the user mean that they can operate with ease and with little need for attention to detail.

Why is Computing Transparency important?

Computing Transparency is an important aspect of UI design since systems that are lucid and understandable will ultimately facilitate optimal usability.  The idea of a system or graphical user interface design being transparent means hiding or avoiding its complexities; the less users have to think about what their system is doing or how to make if function more optimally, the more likely they are to use it.  Since usability is the omnipotent force in interface design, Computing Transparency is a powerful principle with regards to usability.

Computing Transparency and Privacy

Another aspect of Computing Transparency is linked to privacy.  Programs and applications that guard or use personal data should be transparent in their method of doing so.  If user interfaces are in unclear about the way they deal with their customer’s private information, the results can be disastrous—as can be seen from the recent Facebook scandals.  When it comes to user privacy the term transparent is crucial.  Just as citizens beg their governments to practice transparent politics, so too do the clients of user interfaces.

Companies today realize the value of providing outlets for communication with their customers.  Blogging is an effective method to do so and has thus given rise to the corporate blog. However, corporate blogging is much different than the traditional personal blog, particularly in its purpose.  Let’s take a look at the main purposes for creating a corporate blog, in addition to pointing out how their purpose often differs from the traditional blogs.

This blog post is the first in a series of two about contextual design as a usability method

What is Contextual Design?

Contextual Design is a User-Centered Design process that was developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holzblatt. It gathers information for the purposes of understanding how users work in order to create user interface designs (or other products) that adequately support users and assist them with accomplishing their goals. According to Beyer and Holzblatt, Contextual Design “uses extensive field data as the foundation for understanding user’s and business’ needs”. It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering data relevant to the product, field studies, rationalizing workflows, system and human-computer interface designs. The ultimate goal behind Contextual Design could be described as producing user interface designs that are usable for a specific group of target users, a critical factor in achieving product success.

Contextual Design is important to interface design

Just like with many other products and services, contextual design is vitally important to user interface design. Successful UI (user interface) designs are the ones that help users accomplish tasks as easily and quickly as possible, and that requires some work on the UI designer’s part. Contextual design is all about knowing which functions and features and design characteristics are needed to accomplish that. It gives designers the ability to comprehend the context in which users employ a specific user interface.   Taking the time out to conduct research and identify with user contexts is intended to give user interface designers the knowledge required which they can then fashion into wireframes on the road to creating great user interface designs.

Welcome to my two-part blog on Ethnography and the role it plays in usability engineering and user interface design.

What is Ethnography?

Ethnography is an approach to research that involves in-depth study of population groups through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, and artifact analysis in an attempt to gain a thorough understanding from a number of perspectives. This research methodology is usually associated with the social sciences, in particular anthropology and sociology. Ethnography also takes place in the natural context of the subject being observed and, as such, the term is often interchangeable with phrases such as “field study” and “case report”. Traditional ethnography focuses on long-term studies spanning weeks, months, or even years. This is in order to understand, first-hand, fundamental answers in regard to the subject(s). Where do they live? How do they make a living? What do they eat? What are their linguistic, housing and marriage customs etc?

What does ethnography mean in the context of user interface design?

In the context of user interface design, ethnography is a valuable source of data for personas, scenarios of use, task analysis, requirements elicitation, and storyboards. Sometimes in life the laboratory setting can obfuscate data due to the very act of observation affecting the subject. Ethnography seeks to paint observations in their proper naturally occurring context, i.e. the point at which they would be using a software application and navigating its interface design in the course of their everyday life.

Ethnography as a usability method

Ethnography lends itself well to usability testing of user interface designs due to the principle of holistic human data collection. This works well in tandem with the fundamentals of user experience in user interface design. Ethnography brings with it a number of merits to usability testing. In comparison to observations conducted in the lab the authenticity of ethnographic reports is higher. Behavior observations are best understood within their natural environment and ethnography allows for this. As a usability method ethnography provides a much more comprehensive perspective of the users and their environment than other forms of research. Another advantage is that it employs a theoretical framework for contextualizing data.

When to use ethnography as a usability technique

According to usability expert James Horn, the use of ethnography as a usability method is “best used in the early stages of development, when you need to know more about the issues surrounding the use of a product rather than actual metrics.” In the very early stages of user interface design, using the ethnographic method will help you collect user requirements based on how users operate within their “native” environments, which is how they operate in the real world.  Obtaining these user requirements will then allow you to incorporate your findings into preliminary designs of a user interface. Of course, it is important to watch out for observer bias, as Information and results are highly dependent on the researcher’s observations and interpretations.

This blog post is the second in a series of two about Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Principles of User Interface Design for HCI systems

Since I am looking at HCI relative to interface design, it is important to underline how to improve the quality of user interface designs.  Thus, as interface designer one should be mindful of the principles of user interface design. According to Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood, these are:

1.    The structure principle – This is concerned with the overall user interface architecture and layout. An interface design should be organized in a way that is clear, apparent and intuitive to users. In other words similar things should somewhat resemble each other. For example, toolbar buttons should all look like toolbar buttons.

2.    The simplicity principle – The interface design should make simple, common tasks easy, communicating clearly and simply in the user’s own language. For example a search bar with the word ‘Search’ is usually better than the convoluted ‘Quick Keyword Search’.

3.    The visibility principle – All the options and tools needed to accomplish given tasks should be visible and easily accessible on the interface design without distracting the user with redundant information.

4.    The feedback principle – A good interface design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of condition or errors that are relevant through clear and concise language. This helps users feel in control of the process by being aware of their actions.

5.    The tolerance principle – The interface design should be able to accommodate a certain amount of failure from users (users, just like interface designers, are not infallible). A wrong click or some such other should be rectifiable. Undo and redo features that allow users to effectively time-travel through their steps are a good example of this principle.

6.    The reuse principle – An interface design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember. This is also referred to as the memorability of an interface design.

How to ensure that User Interface Design principles lead to optimal HCI systems

To ensure that these principles guide the interface design process and lead to optimal HCI systems, the use of wireframe tools can be useful. Often, the large number of stakeholders with various levels of technical expertise in the design process requires the use of such tools for visualizing requirements and concepts. Tools suitable for wireframing, such as Pidoco, a cloud-based rapid prototyping tool that works through a browser, allows interface designers to create wireframe prototypes of graphical user interfaces with simple drag and drop handling without the need for any programming. Interface designers can use this system to collaborate within a team through the cloud and get feedback from sharing prototypes, even going as far as conducting remote usability testing. This type of approach makes optimizing human computer interaction much simpler and safer and leads to more reliable results.

This blog post is the second in a series of two about accessibility design as a usability method

The aims of accessibility design

Accessibility design is specifically targeted at designing user interfaces that assist people with various disabilities.  The needs relative to disabilities that accessibility design specifically addresses include the following four categories:

•    Auditory: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those who have hearing impairments.
•    Cognitive/Intellectual: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those with developmental disabilities such as dyslexia or cognitive disabilities that affect memory, attention, developmental maturity, logic and problem solving skills etc.
•    Motor/Mobility: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those with difficulty or inability to use their hands (people with Parkinson’s disease etc.)
•    Visual: Creating interface designs for people with various visual impairments.

Why is accessibility design an important usability method?

Aside from the egalitarian implications, accessibility design is crucial to usability because it creates an interface design that can attract an even wider range of users and thus ensure more success for the website.  There are many users who are disabled and if a website is not designed with them in mind, they will not be able to use it.  This can be especially dangerous in the context of e-government where equal access is a must. It can also help to integrate accessibility design into the web development process because in addition to diversifying the number of users, it also makes for a development process that is suffuse with simplicity, as designers must find way to create a site that is universally usable for users of all abilities, thus diminishing their ability to create user interface designs that are too convoluted or contrived.

In this blog post, inspired by a German blog by Christian Seifert, I shall look at some of the interface design challenges that interface designers encounter when porting a website over to its Chinese version.

One of the very first things to consider is the text. In Chinese, the text length differs dramatically.  Chinese text takes up far less space than the Western script. This means you may have to rearrange parts of your interface design layout. So expect your translated text to do much more with much less on your interface design.

Furthermore, the calligraphy can be read in any direction but the familiar Western layout of horizontal rows from left to right, read from the top of the page to the bottom, has become more popular.  Nevertheless, it may not suffice to translate the text of your website into one Chinese version. In order for your interface design to succeed in China, a localization and adaptation to the expectations of Chinese users is required.

The images will also have to be different to reflect the Chinese market. Websites in China tend to be more colorful than those in Europe or North America. Bright, cartoony colors abound on Chinese websites. So, be sure not to simply retain the “Western” interface design asthetics, but rather do some research on the perceptions held by Chinese users. Utilizing usability tests may be a powerful avenue.

Interface designers would do well to follow Chinese design conventions. An example of this is with Yahoo. To a European-language speaking eye, the Chinese version of Yahoo looks very noisy and busy. In addition, a European reader may find the contrast of colors within the interface design astonishing. Yet, this style is customary in Chinese websites and will have to be emulated in your interface design to appease a Chinese audience.

In addition to the purely software-related factors, you need to consider the technological environment in which your Chinese website will be used. One important example is that your interface design should be optimized for Internet Explorer which is far and away the most popular browser in China.

Besides interface design concerns, other things to consider include hosting your website on local servers in china to ensure faster access. As far as search engine optimization goes Baidu.cn’s 62% market share dwarfs Google’s so you can’t afford to overlook it. Furthermore, websites ending with a .cn domain name are ranked higher on Chinese websites.

As is true so often in multi-cultural contexts, whenever in doubt, you may consider involving experts, both in questions of porting the website into Chinese and testing its usability with Chinese users.

In part 2 of this blog post on context of use I shall look more intricately into the relationship between context of use analysis and user interface design.

Context of use analysis and user interface design

The importance of understanding the context of use when producing successful interface designs has lead to the creation of a usability method called context of use analysis that is commonly used by interaction designers and interface designers. Analysis is arrived at via a brainstorming methodology in order to devise successful usability tests during the development process of a website or application. Successful user interface design requires the analysis of user experience feedback in order to create a user interface characterized by optimal usability. However, collecting meaningful user experience feedback and interpreting it is not always simple, especially when interface designers lack a solid methodology or have not thoroughly thought through their usability tests.

The name of the game here is to be well prepared. Being able to define a site’s target users or knowing what kinds of tasks they will need to perform and what types of goals they want to achieve through the interface design is key. When interface designers are unclear about these salient usability test questions, creating a test that is realistic and relevant and results in meaningful knowledge about the new interface design concept becomes difficult. Without knowing about the context of use, interface designers run the risk of creating interface designs that do not satisfy the requirements dictated by the way the products will be used in a real-life context.  The resulting interface designs are often not sufficiently usable. This is why context of use analysis is a crucial usability method: it allows designers to create tests based on predetermined context-specific user needs and performance paradigms. Thus, designers not only learn what user experience feedback to elicit and how, but also have a framework to interpret the feedback in order to create a solid interface design that works for the user.

Why is context of use analysis a vital usability strategy?

When developing a website or application interface designers need to uncover crucial usability “probe” questions that speak to the usability heart of the matter. These questions seek to ascertain valuable information and insight that may not yet have been thought of by the interface designers. These questions, often derived through collaborative brainstorming sessions, help interface designers to tackle critical usability issues head-on when they design and distribute their usability tests. The deeper understanding of the design of a system relative to the context within which it is used can be a vital contribution in saving time and money during the testing and development process. It can also lead to significantly more successful products.

Other top stories appear in the top right for easy access followed by the most popular stories on the website. This is really great for people to have access to them without even visiting the main page (particularly if they just opened a direct link to the story). Below each story are related stories as well as more on the story from other news sources. The video player is now bigger and has better quality video. Previously, video was squeezed in the middle with the navigation on the left and other video suggestions on the right. The new video page now has a wide range of video, also classified under the different sections of the website.

All these changes to the interface design show that the BBC is aware of the importance of usability and is keeping a close watch on interface design practices of its competitors. With the new layout it may be on to a winner.

What are the drawbacks of imitating the desktop interface design?
Despite all the advantages, a drawback that I found with the interface design was that I found myself at times trying to use the same keyboard shortcuts etc. that I would use on a Mac to manipulate the various apps on Kohive. But instead of manipulating Kohive functions, I was affecting native apps on my desktop. An example of this was when I had various apps open in Kohive that cluttered the interface. I would inadvertently enable the Exposé feature which allows a user to quickly locate an open window, or to hide all windows and show the desktop without the need to click through many windows to find a specific target. However this applied to my desktop and still left the Kohive interface design as cluttered as before. Despite drawbacks such as these I find that this interface design scheme is very promising.