concept design

Advanced HCI Theory & Methods

Advanced HCI Theory & Methods

The Advanced Human-Computer Interaction module is part of the Masters course and refreshes and develops upon qualitative and quantitative research methods.

There were five assignments in total. The first four assignments involved creating a presentation and/or a report within a team.

  1. Here a study was conducted which gathered data about the perceptual accuracy of throwing different weighted objects at targets while both blindfolded and not blindfolded.
  2. Interviews about people’s daily physical activities were conducted and subsequently analysed and coded.
  3. Research and presentation about diary studies.
  4. Contextual inquiry and work models – this study was conducted within a bakery and one of it’s employees.

Final Project: This was an individual project with the requirement of examining transport and technology. I decided to conduct a study on the acceptance of technology in casual cycling. The study was composed of a short semi-structured interview and a cooperative design approach. This user-centered design approach involved sitting down with the user and giving them the tools to create their desired imaginary bicycle. These tools included a sheet showing a human body and a bicycle, some technology cards and tokens. The user was given the freedom to explore the design space and verbally explain their reasoning for their choices.

Afterwards the recorded videos and images were analysed, with the technologies created by the users being coded into ten themes. The top themes to emerge from the study included Safety, Comfort and Convenience.

Technologies coded into themes

Table of codes from final report

Cinestar Usability Prototype & Evaluation

Cinestar Usability Prototype & Evaluation

As part of the Usability Testing course of my Master’s degree we were asked to analyse a website we felt was not very usable, built iterative prototypes and subsequently do a quantitative usability evaluation.

Our team for the project chose the Cinestar.de website. The first part of the course was analyzing the chosen Cinestar website including picking out violations of Norman’s Usability Principles. Personas were created to explore the potential variety of users of the system.

Persona for cinestar website

Next was requirements analysis, building of two low-fidelity prototypes and then quantitative analysis. Two low fidelity prototypes were made using Moqups.com, each one created by one half of the team.

One Low Fidelity Prototype

To close off the course a mid-fidelity prototype was made and then analysed with users. The mouseflow Javascript library was used to gather visual data on how the user traveled through the website, how long they took and what were the most viewed and clicked sections.

Homepage Mid-Fidelity

Movie info Mid-Fidelity

Ticket purchase Mid-Fidelity

Mouseflow analysis Mid-Fidelity

Foundations Of Interaction Design – First Year (Semester 2)

Foundations Of Interaction Design – First Year (Semester 2)

Introduction

This module introduced some basic Interation Design (IxD) concepts. This included a description of the IxD process which is split into different phases, which are: the ‘Understand Phase’, the ‘Design Phase’ and the ‘Prototype Phase’. Throughout the year these steps were followed, where the aim was to simulate the practice of an actual IxD project, with the exception of a working interactive installation. The topic of the project was ‘Environmental Awareness On The Campus‘.

IxD Process

By using diagrams, keywords and brainstorming, problems with environmental awareness were identified and a topic was chosen for our team. We decided on ‘power consumption on campus’. In order to understand the topic we used IDEO cards. These cards outlined:

  • The use of secondary research
  • Surveying and behaviour tracking methods
  • The importance of first hand evidence (i.e. Photos, Videos)

During the ‘Design Phase’ the IDEO ‘Try’ cards were used. Narratives and storyboards were then made to conceptualize our imagined interactive installations.

Finally, a paper prototype was constructed and filmed. This video, entitled: ‘Battery Hunt’ was then edited and put online.