Discussion 1 post responses. Please respond to the following: "Creating an Interface" Please respond to the following: · Imagine you are managing a design project that will create an interface for automobile mechanics. The interface would be used by the mechanics to look up various fixes and parts for any number of makes or models of automobiles that may come through their garage. Decide what usability measures would be most motivating when designing this interface and describe the unique challenges you would have to plan for when designing an interface for an automotive repair shop. Use supporting evidence to support your response. · Physical, cognitive, perceptual, personality, and cultural differences introduce challenges when designing universally usable products. Choose one area from the list above and describe why it is the biggest challenge to overcome when creating universally usable designs. Support your response. MW’s post states the following:Top of Form Managing a design project that will create an interface for automobile mechanics today will certainly be demanding. The mechanic in the old days had a manual that detected the scenario of the issue and reference a location or page that defined the issue, provided instructions and schematics or diagrams that indicates how to correct the issue. The manual even provided a charge time allowed to correct the issue. The shop then billed the hours assigned to the issue. If you ever worked at an auto part store such as Pepboys or auto zone or even visited the establishment as a customer you will find a user interface for the parts manager/clerk to look up the part being inquired about. The interface would not only provide the part number and location of the part but often provides the customer an abstract on how to diagnose, install or replace the item. There was a time where it was that simple for those that preferred to DIY (Do IT yourself). Today the business demands for data as customer demands increase with the acceptance of the enhancements to modern vehicles and there adaptation of applications, and the communications to SMART Homes, Anominius Cars, Smart Appliances, Smart phones, tablets, buletooth communications, Web sites URL applications, the new RICH WEB applications, Blockchain, serves the development principles and Practices of Artificial Intelligence, to develop of the underlying activity are the driving trends in software development. Software Industry Trends to watch for are Job Polarization, Consumer Micro-Income Streams, Data Policies, Marketplaces, B2B Sharing Economy, Fintech Revolution, Blockchain, Smartphone Evolution, It reminds me of something from the science fiction movies and TV shows such as Star Trek, Quantum Leap, Stargate, Ironman and the like. I have discovered that there are several movements of the National Strategic Computing initiative (NCIS) to further these technologies. It is not only in the private interest but government interest ...

1. Discussion 1 post responses.
Please respond to the following:
"Creating an Interface" Please respond to the following:
· Imagine you are managing a design project that will create an
interface for automobile mechanics. The interface would be
used by the mechanics to look up various fixes and parts for any
number of makes or models of automobiles that may come
through their garage. Decide what usability measures would be
most motivating when designing this interface and describe the
unique challenges you would have to plan for when designing
an interface for an automotive repair shop. Use supporting
evidence to support your response.
· Physical, cognitive, perceptual, personality, and cultural
differences introduce challenges when designing universally
usable products. Choose one area from the list above and
describe why it is the biggest challenge to overcome when
creating universally usable designs. Support your response.
MW’s post states the following:Top of Form
Managing a design project that will create an interface for
automobile mechanics today will certainly be demanding. The
mechanic in the old days had a manual that detected the
scenario of the issue and reference a location or page that
defined the issue, provided instructions and schematics or
diagrams that indicates how to correct the issue. The manual
even provided a charge time allowed to correct the issue. The
shop then billed the hours assigned to the issue. If you ever
worked at an auto part store such as Pepboys or auto zone or
even visited the establishment as a customer you will find a user
interface for the parts manager/clerk to look up the part being
inquired about. The interface would not only provide the part
number and location of the part but often provides the customer

2. an abstract on how to diagnose, install or replace the item.
There was a time where it was that simple for those that
preferred to DIY (Do IT yourself). Today the business
demands for data as customer demands increase with the
acceptance of the enhancements to modern vehicles and there
adaptation of applications, and the communications to SMART
Homes, Anominius Cars, Smart Appliances, Smart phones,
tablets, buletooth communications, Web sites URL
applications, the new RICH WEB applications, Blockchain,
serves the development principles and Practices of Artificial
Intelligence, to develop of the underlying activity are the
driving trends in software development. Software Industry
Trends to watch for are Job Polarization, Consumer Micro-
Income Streams, Data Policies, Marketplaces, B2B Sharing
Economy, Fintech Revolution, Blockchain, Smartphone
Evolution, It reminds me of something from the science fiction
movies and TV shows such as Star Trek, Quantum Leap,
Stargate, Ironman and the like. I have discovered that there are
several movements of the National Strategic Computing
initiative (NCIS) to further these technologies. It is not only in
the private interest but government interest to take technology
to the next level for all and more of the benefit of mankind. The
perceive notion is to save humanity from its-self goes beyond
the profit notion. The intent is noble as we discovered with
WYAMO and other autonomous vehicles. You are right in it
would be interesting to follow the evolution and marketing of
these new technologies as they come into play. It is well noted
that the recent advances in the applied technology have
addressed several safety issues. The adoption the AI self-
learning model allows the vehicle to communicate with other
vehicles and detect the driving environment preventing possible
collisions. The vehicle has the ability to accelerate, brake and
sense the world around it with sound recognition. The added
partnership with GOOGLE, and leading technology companies
allows the ability to further enhance the related Human
interfaces to further improved and reduce number of HUMAN

3. operator errors on the highway. In addition the benefits of the
technology reduce the environmental impact with alternative
fuel inceptions. The cost element has become relevant to the
current manufacturing of traditional vehicles.
The user interfaces today are more or less required to be
designed with the human behavior at its core. The design has to
incorporate the human nature into the core functions in its look
and feel. The design also must be able to adapt to the human
determination to access shortcuts beyond the guided
infrastructure of the application. The text must be basic yet
distinct enough for all levels of expertise. The design must
accommodate the physical motion of the user, the user
preferences to access the functionality of the application. The
biggest challenge in the design of the interface would be in
creating a method that will go beyond the AI and predictability
of the solution and proceed to the adaptability of the end-user
experiences and expertise of the related model of the
manufactures. The design challenges due to the mass about of
data would be the performance with in the architecture
framework to access and retrieve the data in a timely manner.
The solution today is trending to the cloud services PAAS,
SAAS, and IAAS. The services can accommodate the large
organizations in the aspect of price and license services;
however the MOM and POP shop can be limited in some cases.
The issue of access and user compatibility or learning curve to
the application is the real issue. It is not like the old days for
the average mechanic either be corporate, or self-employed or
even the garage mechanic where once the knowledge was gained
the expertise came with experience. Example, I had a new
model of a Ford Ranger, The first year they put a box that
controlled the coolant levels, electrical system and
communicated with a mother board. The issue seemed to be
obvious a bad battery. The vehicle would start in the morning to

4. commute to work; however, the vehicle would fail to start at the
end of the shift when it was time to go back home. The dealer
replaced the battery several times to no avail. The battery was
discovered not to be the issue so the dealer suggested to leave
the car overnight. The overnight lead to six weeks of the dealer
evaluating the issue. Finally, the dealer sent for a SME. The
expert failed to resolve the issue. The dealer and d the expert
followed the design user-interface for the predicted solution but
failed time after time. It was not until a shop intern giggled a
wire to the box that the real issue was discovered. They replace
the box and the issue was resolved. The design failed not due to
user expertise but with the lack of direction from the provided
data. The design failed to insure that the basic data was imputed
correctly. One more example of how the user interface must be
accepted by the user. If the interface does not perform or times
out after input or inquiry, or if the input field demanded are not
aligned with the user sight and rotation of reading or if the
fields require the physical hand motion to experience dexterity
the user will be inclined to reject and not used the application.
The User interface must become the preferred method of access
any data required in an accommodating and pleasing manner.
My experience comes from a mail centralizing user interface
that combined several entities to reduce cost of the related
mailings. The user once used to a certain method of entering
data and a certain method of querying the data to get the desired
result. The first vision of the application the screen was busy
and had the menus giving to many options and the navigation
became difficult. The user intervened and soon discovered flaws
in the application causing the user interface to “HANG”. The
lesson learned were to accommodate the user with the minimum
of change and invasive action. The issues were resolved; thus,
the application became the preferred by the user community and
remained in production till the end of the lifecycle.
REFERENCES:

5. Shneiderman, B. (2018). Designing the user interface:
Strategies for effective human-computer interaction.
https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-
report/waymo-safety-report-2017.pdf
https://letstalkselfdriving.com/
https://waymo.com/
NM’s post states the following:Top of Form
The User Interface design focuses on anticipating what users
might need or want to do and ensures that the interface has
features that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate
those actions. Designing an interface everything stems from
knowing the user, understanding their goals, skills, preferences,
and behaviors.
The first step would be to gather information and assess the user
needs and wants so that the UI can be designed according to
those needs. Once this information is gathered, there are
certain considerations that should be made that includes
keeping the interface simple, creating consistency and use
common UI elements, page layout, strategically use attractive
color and texture, use typography to create hierarchy and
clarity, make sure the UI elements communicate status and next
steps, and create defaults. Using an adaptive design, which
supports a wide range of technologies and diverse users it will
accommodate the diversity of the mechanic user base.
Defining the usability metrics is also essential in the
comparative process. The usability can be measured to a
comparative to users' performance on a given set of test tasks.
According to the ISO 9241-11 standard usability is defined as
“the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to

6. achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction in a specified context of use”. Usability cannot be
measured or agree on the interpretations of usability in some
measurable way, then it becomes impossible to know if any of
the user activities make the product more usable.
There are several measurements that can be used in any
usability evaluation. The SUM usability measurement would be
the best measurement to use when designing the interface for
the mechanic shop. The SUM measurement includes four
common usability metrics. These metrics include task
completion rates, task time, satisfaction and error counts.
Summative evaluation is used to give use a before and after
impact evaluation of the design changes. Summarization of the
variances can be used for analyzing and reporting usability
metrics.
This usability measure is a standardized, single usability metric
made up of multiple measures that all measure usability. This
measurement was developed to represent the majority of
variation in four common usability metrics used in summative
usability tests to include task completion rates, SUM has two
additional advantages which are it provides one continuous
variable that can be used in regression analysis, hypothesis
testing and in the same ways existing metrics are used to report
usability. Secondly, it is a single metric based on logical
specification limits provides an idea of how usable a task or
product is without having to reference historical data.
Physical, cognitive, perceptual, personality, and cultural
differences introduce challenges when designing universally
usable products. Choose one area from the list above and
describe why it is the biggest challenge to overcome when
creating universally usable designs. Support your response.
Computer systems vary in their structure, functionality,

7. purpose, size and the way in which they represent their internal
workings. Humans differ in background, sex, education,
personality, cognitive skills and preferences. The challenge
when designing universally usable products is to meet the
requirements of consistency and continuity across these
platforms to ensure the inter-usability of the
system. Consideration of characteristics of the individual and
the characteristics of the task to understand how these interact.
Cognitive skills describe the methods by which humans process
information. Cognitive abilities are relatively stable human
characteristics which change very slowly over time (months or
years) (Carroll, 1983). Accessibility for users with cognitive
disabilities can be a greater challenge than for those with other
types of disabilities. Cognitive individual differences in
cognitive preferences and abilities affect performance on
computer tasks. While the use of computer technologies has
been proven to be effective in teaching students with cognitive
disabilities, the diversity of ability and experience of users with
cognitive disabilities can create problems.
There is no set rubric for designing for users with cognitive
disabilities. Designing accessible and usable interfaces for users
with cognitive disabilities can present many challenges such as
individuals with learning disabilities frequently have trouble
processing language and numbers, interpreting audio input, and
with three-dimensional orientation. Furthermore, in order to
understand material, users must be able to identify information
and integrate it into meaningful portions. Multiple windows,
complex or cluttered displays can create distractions and
processing problems and sequential operations can be likewise
distracting to those with memory deficit problems. Furthermore,
the use of right and left click buttons on a mouse can create
difficulties for users with memory, perception or reflex
problems.
Response

8. I agree personality differences is a hurdle to overcome when
creating a universally usable design In fact, in addition to
personality individual characteristics such as culture, age, and
experience all impact a user’s performance or preference for a
visual design. Designing a personalized interface for every user
is clearly impractical. However, given the increasing number of
known individual differences that impact interaction, the user
interface should be based on user input. Adaptive graphical user
interfaces (GUIs) is one way of addressing this issue die to the
fact that the design automatically tailors functionality to better
fit an individual user’s tasks, perceptions, usage patterns, and
abilities.
References
Nielsen, J. (2001). Usability Metrics. Retrieved from:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-metrics/
Sauro, J. (2005). SUM: Single Usability Metric. Retrieved
from: http://www.measuringu.com/SUM/index.htm
Usability.gov. (2016). User Interface Design Basics.
Retrieved from: https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-
interface-design.html
Discussion 2 post responses.
Please respond to the following:
"Goal Setting" Please respond to the following:
· Early computers were only usable by experts with strong
technical knowledge. Examine how interactive systems have
changed throughout the years to accommodate average users and
describe two advantages and two disadvantages associated with
these changes.
· From the e-Activity, examine the two articles you selected on
universal usability and discuss one topic of interest that was
addressed.

9. MW’s post states the following:Top of Form
The computer evolution has certainly come a long way since
before 1960. While I disagree with early computers only being
usable by experts with strong technical knowledge. I do agree
those user interfaces such as the CICS screens needed the
technical expertise to design. I have been around this industry
since the days of the old mainframe screens, punch-card, and
real to real tables, dot-matrices commercial printers and
removable disk storage. I first hand experiences with seeing the
integration to the data-processing arena of the PC88 and floppy
disk drives. I have the real world going from close mainframe
systems to open ended data driven applications. The mainframe
actually physically to the space from one end to the other end of
the room. The 8 track tapes were stored in almost like a
warehouse before the robot silos. Do you remember the free
distribution of the operating system DOS, the difference
between Windows, UNIX flavors, and the MAC? I grew-up in
the industry from a mainframe operator to an old COBOL
programmer. The internet was free and related to the academic
research world. Then came the emerge of the Wildcat bulletin
boards with the introduction of open systems or the mainframe
sources where open to direct connection form unsecure mediums
like PRO COM plus. The prominent languages were any flavor
of basic (GW-BASIC) then came application builded in C, C##,
PowerBuilder. MS Excel was in its beta stage. The user
interfaces grew and adapted to the changing battle between
Mainframe and client server the somewhere along the way the
two merged and we have data lakes, big data, cloud services
from PAAS, SAAS, IAAS. Today we can access an interface
from are phones, laptops, and a great mix of home devices from
the so call app world. The change in platforms came from
advances in technology from storage to the evolution of chip
instruction. The example today is the current open source
project for the 50 QBIT processor by IBM as named the IBMQ.
One can gain more knowledge of this project on the GITHUP

10. and the IBMQ.com. The development is to become live in the
year 2020 and is predicted to lead another software evolution as
the architecture and infrastructure instruction speed increase by
2 X 50. The progress in the processor will enable the software
development to be responsive 10 times fold thus the need for
the Extreme XP, UP, and scum adaptive nature of object
oriented approaches with the AGILE methodology will give
way to a transition to another round of enhancement to AJAX,
JAVA< C, C++ to be layered under the software language
application. The end result is the stack layer of applications
controlled by a complex user interface that is user friendly or
build to interact seamlessly with human behavior. Four of best
known of the leading integrators are GOOGLE, IBM, Xerox and
Microsoft in the user interface applications rather at the
enterprise level or stand-alone. One needs to look at the time
line of integration by these companies. One example that I am
best acquainted with is the evolution of Xerox with the
transition to a data services company called Conduent LLC.
Conduent has several research and development campus around
the world working of several interfaces such the one in North
Carolina working with the Blockchain technology to merge with
financial transactions.
REFERENCES:
Goldberg, A., Association for Computing Machinery., & ACM
Conference on the History of Personal Workstations. (1988). A
History of personal workstations. New York, N.Y: ACM Press.
Kamran, R., Muhammad, I., Muhammad, N., & Muhammad, I.
(2017). A Study On Traditional And Evolutionary Software
Development Models. International Journal Of Scientific &
Technology Research, Vol 06, Iss 07, Pp 214-218 (2017), (07),
214.
https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/uist/history.html
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-

11. us/windows/forum/all/windows-experience-index-
score/b2e253d2-e87c-4196-8688-ac17e266b85a
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/controlling-
individual-atom-qubits/
https://www.ibm.com/quantum-computing/
JN’s post states the following:Top of Form
Greetings Class,
When the post states early computers, is it going back to
systems like the engima machine,; if not that far back than
reviewing how most systems 30+ years ago were all command
line terminals. I remember using one of my Dad's "computer's"
which was really just a "smart type writer", I was able to have a
running display of everything typed, and once verified all good
hit print. Most early systems, from all intense purposes only did
a couple of things and were therefore somewhat simple to
navigate. I believe systems today are for more advanced and
often require much more technical knowledge then simply
plugging in the power and going to town. Most take highly
trained specialist and often many different types of specialists.
For instance think of a pump at a gas station, there are multiple
systems within in working together to not only tabulate the gas
pumped, but also the charge, run the credit/debit, communicate
across the Internet with the payment card provider and then
complete everything, all that happens in seconds (well minutes
if filling the tank). Not a single person developed that entire
system, it took different groups/teams and companies to slowly
make the pumping experience faster and easier than having to
pay someone $20 and watch them fill the tank with a
mechanical type counter pumping the gas.
Interactive systems have changed over the years and two
advantages are they have begun to easily accommodate for those
that are unable to see; for instance teletype//teletext, having the
ability to see is a huge challenge to face and not entirely a large
market. Thanks to advances in technology is relatively cheap, as

12. opposed to having a braille computer system. A second
advantage is universal usability, a goal that attempts to develop
a system for the 95%. Something simple and complete enough
to work for most people, because of this concept users will be
more likely to utilize the system. (Leblanc, J., 2016) Two
disadvantages of newer systems is that many times they are
way too complicated to use all of the given features and at times
some may feel lost. A second disadvantage is in fact a mix of
the advantage attempting to make the 95% percent happy and
utilize the system. People are very different and trying to
accommodate all of them can be a very difficult process. When
my organization develops or looks to develop a new system,
rather than try and make everyone happy, we gather
requirements that must be met and meet those. Sometimes it's
not the prettiest, but it will get the job done.
One of the topics I found was that usability is about
satisfying experiences. (Horton, S., 2014) I must say i truly
agree, I've been on several different types of interfaces for
system information logging and correlation; for
instance, Splunk. Our organization chose to go with the system
that was in fact simpler, easier to use, and very satisfying when
compared to the competitors. The organization chose this even
though it was nearly twice the cost; because, of the fact the
employees and leadership would want to use it. Most of these
systems are often purchased and never used again, but when a
company makes the right call to invest in the system that will be
used. It makes for a truer ROI, rather than an anchor in the
server room.
-John
References:
Horton, S. (2014, April 11). Toward Universal Usability: An
interview with Ben Shneiderman. Retrieved from
https://rosenfeldmedia.com/a-web-for-everyone/toward-
universal-usability-an-interview-with-ben-shneiderman/
LeBlanc, J. (2016, February 8). Eight Golden Rules: Rule 2 -
Cater to Universal Usability. Retrieved from

13. https://www.ics.com/blog/eight-golden-rules-rule-2-cater-
universal-usability