Week 3 / Second Lecture: Human to machine interaction [Wong Mann Ee]

Lecturer : Miss Edina
Date : 1 Nov 2011

The Human-Machine Interface (ak.a: Man-Machine Interface) is quite literally where the human and the machine meet. It is the area of the human and the area of the machine that interact during a given task. Interaction can include touch, sight, sound, heat transference or any other physical or cognitive function. For Examples: A typical computer station will have four human-machine interfaces, the keyboard (hand), the mouse (hand), the monitor (eyes) and the speakers (ears). Whenever a user pushes a button, turns a switch, clicks with a mouse, writes a command, or in any other way issues a command to a machine, there must be a feedback telling the user that the command has been understood. The feedback can be a sound, a lamp lighting, a text on a screen, etc. The ideal form of feedback is allowing the user to see things happen.



General Principles:

• Feedback to user
• The user should be in control
• Predictability
• Transparency
• Never interrupt the user
• Can I guess what the user wants?
• Error tolerance
• WYSIWYG
• Speak the user's language
• Avoid anthropomorphic interfaces
• Design should reflect the user's logic, not the constructor's logic
• The design of a button should reflect its importance
• Provide alternative ways out of a situation
• Accessibility to handicapped users
• Novices versus experienced users
• Standardization
• Open standards

Human-machine interaction engineering is to produce a user interface which makes it easy, efficient, and enjoyable to operate a machine in the way which produces the desired result. This generally means that the operator needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output, and also that the machine minimizes undesired outputs to the human. 

How Interfaces Affect Usage and Users??

Expressive interfaces

•          What makes us happy, sad, annoyed, anxious, frustrated, motivated, delirious and so on

–        translating this into different aspects of the user experience

•          Why people become emotionally attached to certain products (e.g. virtual pets)

•          Can social robots help reduce loneliness and improve wellbeing?

•          How to change human behavior through the use of emotive feedback 

User-created expressiveness

•          Users have created a range of emoticons - compensate for lack of expressiveness in text communication:

Happy  :)

Sad  :<

Sick :X

Mad  >:

Very angry >:-(

•          Also use of icons and shorthand in texting and instant messaging has emotional connotations, e.g.

“LOL, I 12 CU 2NITE “


Frustrating interfaces

Causes:

-When an application doesn’t work properly or crashes

-When a system doesn’t do what the user wants it to do

-When a user’s expectations are not met

-When a system does not provide sufficient information to enable the user to know what to do 

-When error messages pop up that are vague, obtuse or condemning

-When the appearance of an interface is garish, noisy, gimmicky or patronizing

-When a system requires users to carry out too many steps to perform a task, only to discover a mistake was made earlier and they need to start all over again

Anthropomorphism

-Attributing human-like qualities to inanimate objects (e.g. cars, computers)
-Well known phenomenon in advertising 
（Dancing butter, drinks, breakfast cereals)
-Much exploited in human-computer interaction
(Make user experience more enjoyable, more motivating, make people feel at ease, reduce anxiety)


Criticism of anthropomorphism

•          Deceptive, make people feel anxious, inferior or stupid

•          People tend not to like screen characters that wave their fingers at the user and say:

–        Now Chris, that’s not right. You can do better than that.Try again.”

•          Many prefer the more impersonal:

–        “Incorrect. Try again.”

•          Studies have shown that personalized feedback is considered to be less honest and makes users feel less responsible for their actions (e.g. Quintanar, 1982)

Summary:

•          Emotional interaction is concerned with how interactive systems make people respond in emotional ways

•          Well-designed interfaces can elicit good feelings in users

•          Expressive interfaces can provide reassuring feedback

•          Badly designed interfaces make people angry and frustrated

•          Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities to objects

•          An increasingly popular form of anthropomorphism is to create interface agents and robot pets

•          Models of affect provide a way of conceptualizing emotional and pleasurable aspects of interaction design

Resource: Wikipedia, Compendium on user-friendly design by A. Fog, Copenhagen University College of Engineering, 2000., Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction (3rd edition)