Week 4 - Affordance

Affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment which allows an individual to perform an action.
And this is my own explaination : Affordance is how great or how strong the object or an environment that can be used or performed action by a person or an individual.

Affordance (perceptual psychology)

Affordance is a term created by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson to refer to the qualities of the physical world that suggest the possibility of interaction relative to the ability of an actor (person or animal) to interact. McGrenere and Ho presented three fundamental properties of an affordance as defined by Gibson:

1. An affordance exists relative to the action capabilities of a particular actor.
2. The existence of an affordance is independent of the actor’s ability to perceive it (emphasis added).
3. An affordance does not change as the needs and goals of the actor change. [2]

- http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/perceived-affordance.php

The affordance of an object depends on 
a. The quality of an object
b. The capabilities of an object
c. How the consumer understand about the object

The very important about the affordance of an object is when the object can explain itself and the people will understand about the use easily.


Question in the class : 
How do affordances apply to robotics?
How does a robot know what to do with a ball?
- Detection using the shape of the ball
- Detecting the measurement of the size of a circle

Perceived affordance
Refers to the perceived properties of the object that suggest how you / the user could use it.
And this is my own explaination : Perceived affordance is how the user perceive / imagine the object to do / function.


Elements of Perceived affordance : 
1. Context (where)
2. Culture (society)
3. Instinct (unconcious)
4. Mental models (expectations)

Forcing functions : 
- Interlock
- Lock-in
- Lock-out


Summary : 
1. All design is pursuasive
2. Profitable to the client = profitable to the user
3. Brainwashing to let the people to buy
4. The design is understandable easily
5. The most important things is fullfilling users' needs

Thanks.

Week 4 - Affordance by Eyok

Affordance- (explain in Chinese for me to understand more well)

功能可见性；自解释性；给养

功能可见性 示能性 启示

For me, Affordance is mean the function, the physical function of a certain object or environment.

In Wikipedia, they explain that an Affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action.

Example:

The shape of door knob. It will make u go to turn it by just looking it, although there are no instruction, no labels.

the hand shape make you want to shake hand with it.

Affordances in GUI's

-Important concept.

-Button drawn as 3D shapes appear to "stick out" and afford pushing.

-Sliders and scroll bars afford dragging.

"Design for good affordances"

Affordance: how an object communicates the way it is used

You will know how to use by just seeing the layout :)

Affordance:

-An affordance is a quality of an onject, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action.

meanwhile;

Perceived affordance:

-refers to the perceived properties of the object that suggest how you / the user could use it.

Elements of Perceived affordance:

-Context-where

-Culture-society

-Instinct-unconcious

-Mental Models-expectations

such as: How to apply it= Clicking an object (mouse)

Why have affordances in Design?

-Designing with Intent - designing specific affordances and constraints to guide users.

-Guilding Users = shaping perceptions of what actions are possible and making some actions intentionally more difficult / impossible

-The same is applied to Product Design.

Summary:

1. All design is persuasive.

2. Profitable to the client = profitable to the user

3. Persuasive technology is about persuading, although their aim is to make money.

4. The world very need persuasive technology.

5. Study affordance in Interaction Studies, is to understand what we can provide to fullfilling user's need.

reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and_design.html

Week 3 - Problem of HCI (Human Computer Interaction)

Hi, I am Hooi Khim 1081100604. As we all know, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) is the study,planning and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study. - Wikipedia.

In HCI its involved interaction between human and computer which is rely on User Interface.
There are variety of computer gadgets nowadays which all have different UI and input like touch screens the conventional method - keyboard and mouse and etc.

 However, there are many problems occurs for the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) due to the various problem of software hardware and etc.

The most common problem between the interaction of human and computer is the output of the machine is not always what the user wanted. For example, when we double click an application/program software in our computer, we expect it to run smoothly but sometimes it may have the problems like Fatal Error or the compatibility issues.

Fatal Error is when the software suddenly killed and the compatibility issues is when the software is too much to support the application for example a windows 7 computer runs a Windows Me compatible software and sometime the programme will have problem.
Most of this are cause by the way of how software programmer design the program algorithm, if it is a bad design.
The people especially the software designer are still developing and enhancing in order to decrease the barrior between the human and the computer.

Thank you.

Week 3 - Problem of HCI

Majority of my post come from lecturer notes.

Human + Computers

Information Processing:

-Memory, Perception, motor skills, problem solving, ...

Language, communication and interaction:

-Aspects of language, syntax, pragmatics, body language, ...

Ergonomics:

-Relationship to environment: health, furniture, lighting, designs for disabled, ...

Input and output devices:

-hardware, software, ...

Dialogue techniques:

-Basic software architecture and techniques for interacting with humans: interaction styles, ...

Dialogue genre:

-Interaction, technical ,metaphors, style, aesthetics, ...

Computer graphic:

Dialogue Architecture:

-software architechture and standards for interfaces: look and standardisation, window managers, ...

Archieving fit???

1. Expressive interfaces:: the "appearance' of an interface.

2. User frustration.

3. Persuasive technologies.

4. Anthropomorphism.

Affective Aspects of HCI

In the past, HCI was about designing efficient and effective systems

Today, more about how to design interactive systems that make people respond in certain ways.

Expressive Interfaces

Colour, Icons, sounds, graphical elements + animations to make interface appealing.

-Building a relationship between the user and machine

-Making it more natural, human-like.

These gimmicks affect the usability of an interface.

People are prepared to put with certain aspects of an interface (e.g. slow download rate) if the end result is appealing + aesthetic.

which design you prefer?

Overall? Female? Males?

Conclusions from Marcus (1992) and Teasley (1994)

-some likes / dislikes are shared.

-But remember, ONE SIZE DOES NOT ALWAYS FIT ALL! just like cloth, got XS, S, M, L, XL and even XXL...

Error messages:

"the application Word has unexpectedly quit due to a type 2 error."

why not instead: "the application has expectedly quit to poor coding in the operating system. "

Shneiderman's 5 guidelines for error messages:

-Avoid using terms like FATAL, INVALID, BAD.

-Audio warnings.

-Avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers.

-Messages should be precise rather than vague.

-Provide context - sensitive help.

Should computers Apologise?

Reeves and Naas (1996) said that computers should be made to apologise. Agree?

-I am agree that, if computer apologise to me such as "I'm crashed. I'll try not to do it again", I probably would be not so angry and frustrated at first. Rather than I keep get "error 3215, please reload". This error message still ok for me, but if I get this error message again and again, and things doesn't solve, it will drive me mad..! And now I am frustrated with this.. :P

to be continue....

week 3: Anthropomorphism in HCI

According to Wikipedia .org, anthropomorphism is defined as attribution of human characteristics or any characteristic that assumed to belong to human being on living thing other than human being or non human being. It can be animal, phenomena, concept or even artistic subject. In other word, it attributes human qualities on anything other than human.

Nowadays, anthropomorphism is applied on HCI (Human computer interactive). Supporting anthropomorphism is used in HCI. For example, human liked visual character is creating in the education application to lead the user in the application. These kinds of anthropomorphism character used in education application have positive impact by flatter and praise users.

Even though anthropomorphism has a positive impact in education softway, but the critics of anthropomorphism do exist. People feel stupid when lead by the visual character in the software. Beside than that, people also feel dislike when the visual screen character point out their mistake.

This kind of visual character can increase the appearing on our screen. It provides a persona that welcoming people while using it.

One of the anthropomorphism that I known in is the mascot character that create for Microsoft Window 7 OS Japanese version , OS-tan Nanami Madobe.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-tan )

By-Sam Lee

Source of Info: Wikipedia.org and lecture class

week 3 interactivity between human with computer

In week 3, we are learning " Human to machine interaction, techniques for achieving fit, how interfaces affect usage and users."

Human–computer Interaction (HCI) is the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both software and hardware; for example, characters or objects displayed by software on a personal computer's monitor, input received from users via hardware peripherals such as keyboards and mouses, and other user interactions with large-scale computerized systems such as aircraft and power plants. The Association for Computing Machinery defines human-computer interaction as "a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them."An important facet of HCI is the securing of user satisfaction (see Computer user satisfaction).

Because human-computer interaction studies a human and a machine in conjunction, it draws from supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side. On the machine side, techniques in computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages, and development environments are relevant. On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive psychology, and human factors such as computer user satisfaction are relevant. Engineering and design methods are also relevant. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of HCI, people with different backgrounds contribute to its success. HCI is also sometimes referred to as man–machine interaction (MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI).

Example

Attention to human-machine interaction is important, because poorly designed human-machine interfaces can lead to many unexpected problems. A classic example of this is the Three Mile Island accident where investigations concluded that the design of the human-machine interface was at least partially responsible for the disaster. Similarly, accidents in aviation have resulted from manufacturers' decisions to use non-standard flight instrument and/or throttle quadrant layouts: even though the new designs were proposed to be superior in regards to basic human-machine interaction, pilots had already ingrained the "standard" layout and thus the conceptually good idea actually had undesirable results.


Information sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/human_computer_interaction_hci.html

Week 3 PROBLEM

Well, the lecture given by lecturer this week was "Problem", what problem is that? actually she talks about the problem of interactivity between human with computer.

Human:

Information Processing :

• memory, perception, motor skills, problem solving

Language, communication and interaction :

• Aspects of language : syntax, pragmatics, body language

Computer:

• Input and output devices- hardware, software
  
• Dialogue technique

Affective Aspect of HCI
1. Expressive interface (appearance): colour, icons, sound, graphical element, and animation to make interface appealing

2. User's Frustration: loading time, crashing, hardware problems, page under construction, if a web page consist of these few problem, they should be a poor design.
we will always receive error message, there is 5 guidelines for error messages:

• Avoid using terms like FATAL, INVALID.
• Audio warnings.
• Avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers.
• Messages should be precise rather than vague.
• Provide context - sensitive help.

These are the question we discuss in class:

• If the loading time is slow, are you willing to wait?
  Well, I would say I'm not going to wait because I have no any patient to wait it..XD
  

• Should computer apologize?
  " I'm really sorry I crashed, I'll try not to do it again"
  I would say, if every page or every error would have all this apologize message, then may be the page will takes more time to load? because it is too heavy? =D so I think that is no need for the computer to apologize.

3. Persuasive technologies: deliberately designed to change people's attitude.
example: Nitendo Pocket Pikachu- it was design to changing bad habits, improving well being, owner is required to train it, design to motivate children into being more physically active on a consistent basis.
is it effective?
well, I don't have any toys like this, but for me, I think it would work on some people,but not all. and interactive game to persuade always effective than non-interactive game.I have seen 1 interactive game last time when I was shopping with my friends, actually the game is persuade people to exercise, it is very persuasive but it is too expensive for me.=(

4.Anthropomorphism: attributing human like qualities to inanimate objects or anything not human advertising, well known phenomenon.

Criticism of Anthropomorphism:

• Deceptive, make people feel anxious, inferior or stupid.
• People tend not to like screen characters that point out mistakes.
• Many prefer the more impersonal.
• Studies have shown that personalized feedback is considered to be less honest + makes users feel less responsible for their actions.

5. conceptual model/ virtual character
advntageas: increasingly appearing on our screens, provides a persona that is welcoming and has personality to makes user feel involved with them.
disadvantages:

• Do virtual character elicit an emotional response in you? Do you thrust them?
• What is the style of interaction?
• What facial expression do they have?
• Are they believable, pushy, helpful?