LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
COMP 4026 – Advanced HCI
Semester 5 - 2016
Mark Billinghurst
University of South Australia

Lecturer
• Mark Billinghurst
• PhD University of Washinton
• Director of the Empathic Computing Lab
• Expert in AR, 3D user interfaces
• mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au

Class Logistics
• Weekly lecture (2 hrs)
• Thursday 11am – 1pm
• Room D2-34
• Assessment
• Project Concept Design – 10%
• Class participation/Design journal – 40%
• HCI Project – 50%
• What you will need
• Design Journal/Sketch Book

HCI Project
• Pick an advanced interface technology
• Wearable, AR/VR, Bio sensor, Computer Vision
• Identify a user need that it addresses
• Product a concept design
• Develop an interactive prototype
• Conduct a user evaluation
• Write a research report
• 8-10 pages conference format

Project Technologies Available

What You Will Learn
• History of HCI Trends
• Interaction Design Fundamentals
• Design Thinking Processes
• Advanced Interface Technology
• Wearable Computing
• Augmented/Virtual Reality
• Sensing systems
• Experimental Design/Evaluation
• Research Directions

TRENDS IN HCI

Processing Power

Courtesy Matt Rettig, CMU

SpaceWar Demo
• http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/

Doug Englebart Mouse (1968)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MPJZ6M52dI

Ivan Sutherland Sketchpad Demo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAIp3t6SLU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA

Xerox Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVw86emu-K0

Processing Power
Operate
Experience
Adapt

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

“The product is no longer the basis
of value.The experience is.”
Venkat Ramaswamy
The Future of Competition.

Experience Economy

experiences
services
products
components
Value
Sony CSL © 2004
Gilmore + Pine: Experience Economy
Function
Emotion

Good Experience Design
• Reactrix
• Top down projection
• Camera based input
• Reactive Graphics
• No instructions
• No training

Reactrix Demo – car race

Reactrix Demo – Coke interactive

How to improve experience of picking up rubbish?

World’s Deepest Rubbish Bin
• The Fun Theory – http://www.funtheory.com
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrhp-IWK2w

Improve the experience of walking up stairs?

Musical Stairs
• The Fun Theory – http://www.funtheory.com
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

What to do?
• Imagine
• You re bringing a new product to market
• Your #2 competitor has been in the market for
over a year, selling millions of units
• Your #1 competitor launches the same month
• Your technology is slower than your competitors
• Your technology is older than your competitors
• Your last product failed in the market

• Do you compete on Price ?
• Do you compete on Technology ?
• Do you compete on Features ?
Wrong: Compete on user experience !

NintendoWii
• Cheap - $500
• Unique game play
• Wireless 3 DOF controller
• Position and orientation sensing
• Aiming to broaden user base
• Can play previous games/downloads

Sales to Sept 2011

Using the N-gage

SideTalking
• www.sidetalkin.com

INTERACTION DESIGN

Interaction Design
Designing interactive products to support people
in their everyday and working lives
Preece, J., (2002). Interaction Design
• Design of User Experience with Technology

Bill Verplank on Interaction Design
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk6XAmALOWI

• Interaction Design involves answering three questions:
• What do you do? - How do you affect the world?
• What do you feel? – What do you sense of the world?
• What do you know? – What do you learn?
Bill Verplank

• Artist/Engineer:
• concerned with what’s on the screen

• Interface Designer:
• concerned with person in front of the screen
• often takes static view of interface

• Interaction Designer
• Concerned with engaging with technology over time
• Creating two way conversation with machine

What is Interaction Design?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZPLCjrewj8

HCI and Interaction Design

Interaction Design Process
Evaluate
(Re)Design
Identify needs/
establish
requirements
Build an
interactive
version
Final Product
Develop alternative prototypes/concepts and compare them
And iterate, iterate, iterate....

DISCOVERY

Interaction Design Process
Evaluate
(Re)Design
Identify needs/
establish
requirements
Build an
interactive
version
Final Product
Develop alternative prototypes/concepts and compare them
And iterate, iterate, iterate....

Goal
Create a deep understanding of the
user and problem space

Who are your Users?
Everyone!

Understanding Specific Needs

Designing for Everyone
Designing for Everyone pleases No one

Who REALLY are your Users/Stakeholders?
• Not as obvious as you think:
— those who interact directly with the product
— those who manage direct users
— those who receive output from the product
— those who make the purchasing decision
— those who use competitor’s products
• Three categories of user (Eason, 1987):
— primary: frequent hands-on
— secondary: occasional or via someone else
— tertiary: affected by its introduction, or will influence its purchase

Smart Shopping Cart

Smart Shopping Cart
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeSqnLZXKM4

Who are the Stakeholders?
Check-out operators
CustomersManagers and owners
• Suppliers
• Local shop
owners

99
What do we mean by ‘needs’?
• Users rarely know what is possible
• Users can’t tell you what they ‘need’ to achieve goals
• Instead, look at existing tasks:
– their context
– what information do they require?
– who collaborates to achieve the task?
– why is the task achieved the way it is?
• Envisioned tasks:
– can be rooted in existing behaviour
– can be described as future scenarios

Consider theWhole User

NeedsAnalysis Methods
Learn from
people
Learn from
analogous
settings
Learn from
Experts
Immersive
yourself in
context

Learn from People
• Who
• Brainstorm interesting people to meet
• Think of extremes
• How
• Plan the interaction and logistics
• Invite participants
• Create a trusted atmosphere
• What
• Pay attention to your environment
• Capture your immediate observations

Interviewing
• Understanding people’s thoughts, emotions, motivations
• Understanding people’s choices and behaviours
• Key way to identify needs

Learn from Experts
• Experts have in-depth knowledge about topic
• Can give large amount of information in short time
• Choose Participants
• Expertise, radical opinion, etc
• Set up for productive conversation
• Plan, capture, document

Immersive yourself in Context
• Observing the problem space around you
• Plan observations
• What emotions do you experience?
• What challenges?
• Explore and take notes
• Sketches, notes, photos
• Capture what you have seen
• Reflections, post-it notes

Understanding the User
A day in the Life of.. Cultural Probes.. Role Playing..

Cultural Probes:Equator Domestic Probes

What? How?Why?
• Observation analysis
• Start from Concrete Observation
• What is the person doing?
• Move to Understanding
• How are they doing it?
• Finish with interpretation
• Why are they doing it?

Seek Inspiration inAnalogous Setting
• Inspiration in different context than problem space
• Eg redesign library by going to Apple store
• Think of Analogies that connect with challenge
• Similar scenarios in different places
• Make arrangements for activities
• Logistics
• Absorb experience
• Observe, ask

Analogous Settings
• Analogies provide way to get fresh perspective
• Identify key aspects of problem space
• Look for opportunities for analogies

Define the Problem
• Expresses the problem you are addressing
• Defines your unique point of view
• Unique design vision based on needs analysis
• Two Goals
• Deep understanding of users and design space
• Actionable problem statement (point of view)

Stakeholder
• Identify key elements of target person
• Demographics
• Occupation
• Motivation
• Express as adjective description
• Develop typical persona

Personas
• Personas are a design tool to help visualize who you are
designing for and imagine how person will use the product
• A persona is an archetype that represents the behavior and
goals of a group of users
• Based on insights and observations from customer research
• Not real people, but synthesised from real user
characteristics
• Bring them to life with a name, characteristics, goals,
background
• Develop multiple personas

Persona
• Capture elements relevant to problem

Empathy Map
• Synthesize observations and draw out insight
• 4 quadrant layout
• SAY: What are some quotes and defining words your
user said?
• DO: What actions and behaviors did you notice?
• THINK: What might your user be thinking? What does
this tell you about his or her beliefs?
• FEEL: What emotions might your subject be feeling?

Empathy Map

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyMqNFG1wgM

Example

Expressing the Problem
[User] needs [verb phrase] in a way that [way]
How might we [verb phrase] ?

Need
• Human emotional or physical necessities.
• Needs help define your design
• Needs are verbs not Nouns
• Verbs - (activities and desires)
• Nouns (solutions)
• Identify needs directly out of the user traits you
noted, or from contradictions between
• disconnect between what she says and what she does..

Insight
• A remarkable realization that you could leverage to
better respond to - a design challenge.
• Insights often grow from contradictions between two
user attributes
• either within a quadrant or two different quadrants
• Asking “Why?” when you notice strange behavior.

Problem Definition Creates Insight
User + Need = Insight

www.empathiccomputing.org
@marknb00
mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au