Birzeit University

Computer Science Department

Seminar in Computer Science

)Comp 411 (

Human Computer Interaction

Supervisor :Dr.Bassem Sayrafi

. Instructor : Dr. Ali Jaber

: Prepared By

Zohour Radwan & Sajida Othman

1020897 1020772

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Index:
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. . (2)
Human-Computer Interaction ……………………………………………………….. (6)
What is Human – Computer Interaction (HCI)?..................................................(7)
History of HCI ……………………………………………………………….(8)
HCI and Software Engineering………………………………………………..(9)
HCI and Usability……………………………………………………………………….(10

Definition…………………………………………….………………………. (11)

The importance of usability in software products…………..……………….. (11)

Usability goals……………………………………………………………….. (12)

Heuristics and usability principles…………………….……………………… (14)

Usability and design principles………………………..………………………. (15)

Understanding Users…………………………………………………………………… (18)

What is cognition? …………………………………………………………… (19)

Applying knowledge from the physical world to the digital world…………… (21)

Understanding Users-Qualitative research…………………………..………… (22)

What is Qualitative Research?.................................................................... (23)

Types of qualitative research: Ethnographic Interviews…… ………… (23)

The process of the qualitative research based on Ethnographic Interviews…(24)

Preparing for ethnographic interviews……………………………… .(24)
Conducting ethnographic interviews…………...……………………..(25)
Interviewing Team and Timing……………………………………… (26)
Ethnographic Interviews Basic Methods…………………………….(26)
After the interviews………………………………………………….(28)
Constructing persona model…………………………………………(29)
Constructing Personas……………………………………………….(29)

Paper prototyping………………………………………………………….(31)

Case Study …………………………………………………………… (34)

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………...( )

References …………………………………………………………………( )

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 Introduction:
In our daily life we use a large number of products and machines like: Coffee
maker, mobiles, printers and computers .But if we think for a moment about the actual
number of useable, enjoyable and effortless ones, we will find that most of them are
highly functioning but unfortunately poorly designed .This of course makes them ugly
and useless .As a result, The HCI field came to study how can we design these
products to be interactive and user-friendly. When computer was invented 30 to 40
years ago. Its size was large, Its use was limited and its cost was so expensive. At that
time, computer specialists concentrate on computers functionality rather than their
interface design. Nowadays, computers are almost the base of our daily lives and
activities. Computers are every where .In our houses, at school, at work and even in
streets. People from different ages, backgrounds, environments and educational
levels are interacting with computers. And it’s a known fact that computers and
humans are completely different in their nature. For the above reasons computer
specialists found that they must start working with the interface improvement since it
is the communication tool between computers and their users.

Creating an interface is much like building a house if you don’t get the foundation right,
no amount of decorating can fix the resulting structure. This sentence shows clearly
how important is the interface design process. The interfaces are the apart of software
product which users interact with, so interfaces must be so close to user’s interests,
ambitions ,needs and culture.

Of course we interact daily with many interfaces some of them are good and the others
are poor to learn more , here are some of good and poor design features :

The design is considered to be a good design if it is :

• Effective

• Easy to use and learn

• Safe to use

• Easy to remember

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While the design is considered as a poor design if:

• It is confusing

• It is ineffective, require user to carry out a number of steps of basic tasks.

• It is difficult to use and learn

• It is not obvious so user don’t know what to do and how?

• It doesn’t answer user's questions and doesn’t offer their needs.

To be able designing good and usable interfaces, designers must keep in mind the
following things:

• They must understand how the users are. What they want the product to

do and how.

• They must study the environment where the product is going to use and the
common cultural concepts that are popular in these places.

• They has to keep in mind what people are good and bad at

• They must talk to the product's user, study all the related variable that many
affect their life

• They must use component’s that are so close to people background, behavior
and knowledge for example windows operating system uses the recycle bin
to keep the unwanted items and files. In the word-processing system the
used icons are related to people’s knowledge like the use of glue for the
paste operation.

Unfortunately, there is a sad truth that the digital technology industry doesn’t have a
good understanding of the users. And most interfaces are designed by the same one who
writes the code and this is the biggest common mistake. Programmers always think how
to find the easiest way in writing the code rather than think if users' needs and
behaviors. They are required to choose between ease of coding and ease of use and in
most cases they choose the ease of coding with the creation of less usable interface.

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They think that having specialists in interface design is useless, inefficient and waste
money. They think also that designing interfaces can be easily

done by programmers. For people how think in this way here are some statistics done
by large companies that are interested in the field of HCI .The statistics shows the
importance of the designing usable interfaces.

• "Research by User Interface Engineering, Inc., shows that people cannot find
the information they seek on a Web site about 60 percent of the time. [1], [6]
• "Studies by Forrester Research estimate that approximately 50 percent of
potential sales are lost because users can't find information and that 40 percent
of users do not return to a site when their first visit is a negative experience."
• "A study by Zona Research found that 62 percent of Web shoppers give up
looking for the item they want to buy online."
• "According to Elizabeth Millard, "The best sites we've found are usable only
42 percent of the time." "
• "63 percent of all software projects overrun their budgetary estimates, with the
top four reasons all related to unforeseen usability problems".
• "80 percent of maintenance is due to unmet or unforeseen user requirements,
and only 20 percent is due to bugs or reliability problems".[1], [6]

From the previous results we can say that usable systems not only increase
productivity , but also it increase users satisfaction , increase sales and revenues ,
reduce development time and costs , reduce maintenance costs , decrease training
and support costs .

Why to study HCI ?

We choose to study about Human - computer Interaction field in our

graduation project for two reasons .The first one is that we find the HCI field so
important, interesting and useful. It touches our every day lives and behaviors.
The second reason is the fact that people studying computer science has no
enough idea about this field and how important and serious is it to design usable
interfaces that pleasure users. In our project we give a general over view of the
most important points, designers have to keep in mind while designing interfaces.

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 We motivate our work with a case study. It was about Ritaj . This is the
communication system between students and teachers in Birzeit University.

Chapter 1

Human Compute Interaction

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Section 1.1

What is Human – Computer Interaction )HCI(?

Human – Computer Interaction is the study of how people interact with computers
.Its main goal is to design computers software that are easy to use and learn. As its
name implies, HCI consists of three parts: the user, the computer itself, and the ways
they work together.

• User :

In the study of HCI the word "user" never means a single user with a desktop
computer. It means a single user, series of users in an organization or even a group of
users working together.

• The Computer :

By computer, we mean all available types of computers starting from desktop

computers, and ending with large scale computer systems.

• The Interaction:

As we mentioned during the introduction, there is a great obvious difference

between humans and machines. Now days computer play an important role in our
daily life so we need a strong mean of communication that is able to limit the gap
between humans and computers nature. HCI attempts to ensure that they both interact
successfully using a well designed interfaces. [2] , [3] , [4]

Another important point about HCI is that in its large definition, HCI is an
interdisciplinary area. It is emerging as a specialty concern within several
disciplines, each with different emphasis:

• Computer science: Application design and engineering oh human

interface.

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 • Psychology: The application of theories of cognitive process and the

empirical analysis of users behavior.

• Sociology and anthropology: interaction between technology, work and

organization.

• Industrial design: interactive products.

Here we have to say that from the computer science perspective; other disciplines
serve as supporting disciplines. Exactly as the same way physics supports civil
engineering. [2] , [3] , [4]

Section 1.2

History of HCI.
In the early days, designing hard ware systems used by engineers was more
important than designing the computer interfaces. The interfaces at that time were
straightforward. In the late 70's and early 80's, the idea of designing more attractive
interfaces was started. At that time one of the biggest challenges was to develop
computers that are able to support tasks involving human cognition like: writing
documents, drawing plans, managing accounts and doing sums). So to design suitable
interfaces computer scientists and psychologists become involved in designing user
interfaces. Computer scientists and software engineers develop high level programming
languages, software design methods, and command base languages, while psychologists
were responsible for providing information about human capabilities.

In the mid 80's the computer technologies were developed and new areas appeared.
Education and training were the two areas that received the attention at that time. The
main out comes of this period were interactive learning environment, educational soft
wares and training simulators.

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 In 90's, networking, mobile computing and infrared sensing increased the computers
role in people's lives. All aspects of people's life at work, home, at school and almost
every where began to considered as desirable areas to be designed. In the mid of 90's the
companies realize how important is to increase its efforts in designing interfaces , so it
extended the design teams to include professional trained graphical designers , industrial
designers , anthropologists and psychologists .

In our recent days , the emergence of radio – frequency tags , large interactive
screens and information appliances cause the need of employing hardware, software and
electronics engineers how are able to configure , assemble and program the new devices
. [2]

Section 1.3

HCI and Software Engineering.

From the definition of HCI we realize that HCI concentrates on finding ways for
supporting people. In contrast with the software engineering, that focuses primarily on
the production of software solutions for a given application. A common similar example
in our life is the differences between architects and civil engineers when facing the
problem of building a house. Architects interacts people and identify their needs (number
of rooms, are the cooking and eating places are close or not,…) . On the other hand, civil
engineers focus on different aspects like (cost, durability, structural aspects and
construction methods). Back to HCI, we can say that interaction design is related to
software engineering in the same way as architecture is related to civil engineer. [2]

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 Chapter 2

HCI and Usability

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 HCI and Usability:
As we mentioned before, HCI aims to design interfaces that are usable for the users.
So it is important now to clarify the concept of usability and define the perspectives
considered to create usable interfaces.

Section 2.1

Definition:
Usability is one of the most important things in the field of HCI. It works as bridge
between human and computer .A user interface is considered as: the part of hard ware and
/or software system that allow a person to communicate with it. It also refers to methods
used for improving ease –of – use during the design process.

In order to say that a particular software product is usable it must accomplish the
needed task in the best possible way.

The usability fundamentals are the same during the last 15-25 years. What had
improved is the use of computers and websites .The availability of computers in low
costs, the availability of the website and their widespread use in people's daily life are the
reasons for extending the use of the usability principles.

It is worth to say here that users can often reject a well engineered software product
with great functionality if they are unable to understand, learn and easily use it.[2],[7]

Section 2.2

The importance of usability in software products.

Usability is an important condition for the production survival especial with the
appearance of a huge number of competing sites and software products.

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The user leaves the sight if:

• The website is difficult to use. [2] , [5]

• The home page fails to clearly state what users can do on the site. [2] , [5]

• If the user get lost on the website. [2] , [5]

• If the available information is hard to read or doesn't answer users key

Questions .[2] , [5]

Section 2.3

Usability goals:
After studying the definition of usability and it is importance in the survival of any
software product and the success of any interface .To say that the design is usable, it must
be:

• Efficient to use (efficiency)

• Safe to use (safety )

• Have a good utility (utility )

• Easy to learn (learnability).

• Easy to remember ( memorability ) .

• Effective to use (effectiveness).

How can we implement these principles?

Efficient to use )efficiency(.

This concept is related to the way a system supports users to carry out their tasks
.So once they have learned the design, how fast can they perform their tasks? An example
for implementing efficiency is offer the needed task in only one click or button press.
[2],[8]

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 Safe to use )safety(.

Safety is related to how many errors do users make, how serves are those errors and
how easily can they recover from the errors? To say that the design is safe it must protect
the users from dangerous conditions and undesirable situations by reducing the risk of
wrong keys/buttons that might be activated by mistake .An example : It is not safe to
place the delete – file command next to the save command on the menu . It must provide
the users with various means of error recovery. The design also must be provided with
"undo" feature to give the user a chance to think and redo any step. A clear example in
the email is the message appears when deleting any item. This message asks the user if he
/ she are sure about the deleting order. [2],[8]

Have a good utility )utility(.

Utility refers to the design functionality .In other words: Does the design do what
users need? [2],[8]

Easy to learn )learnability(.

Learnability concept is related to how easy is it to learn using the system and
accomplish the basic tasks the first time they encounter the design .It is a fact that people
are impatient so they don’t like to spend to much time learning how to use the system . So
they want to do what they want without spending too much time and effort. [2],[8]

Easy to remember ) memorability ( .

Memorability is related to how easy the users can remember how to use the system.
Especially if users don't visit it for a long time. Users shouldn't re-learn how to use the
system at every visit. For example the use of icons, command names and menu options
emphasis remembering the sequence of tasks. [2],[8]

Effective to use )effectiveness(.

It is a general goal and it refers to how good a system is at doing what it is expected to
do. [2],[8]

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Section 2.4

Heuristics and usability principles.

When the design principles are used in practice specialists refers to them as
Heuristics .This term is used in the case of thinking about solutions for a given problem.
The following are the ten main usability principles developed by Nielsen (2001).

• Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through
appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

• Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts
familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world
conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

• User control and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked
"emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an
extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

• Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions
mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

• Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a
problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone
conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option
before they commit to the action .[2][8]
• Recognition rather than recall

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 Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options
visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of
the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or
easily retrievable whenever appropriate. . [2][8]

• Flexibility and efficiency of use

Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction
for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and
experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions .[2][8]

• Aesthetic and minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed.
Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units
of information and diminishes their relative visibility .[2][8]
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely
indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution .[2][8]
• Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it
may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information
should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be
carried out, and not be too large .[2][8]

Section 2.5

Usability and design principles.

Deign principles help designers realizing the different aspects of the product they want
to work with .In other words they lead designers to know what to do and what to avoid
during the interface design. These principles resulted from theory – based knowledge,
common sense and experience. In general they remind designers that they should ensure
the availability of specific things in the design rather than telling them how to design an
actual interface (structure of the web design of a particular icon).

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There is a large number of design principles, but the most important ones are the
principles that tell the users what will happen when carrying out with the task. Here will
give an overview of the most important and popular ones.

• Visibility: The users like to interact with visible functions to what to do next
because if these functions are out of sight the user will find it more difficult to
know what and how to do next. [2], [3], [9], [10], [11]

• Feed back: This concept is related to visibility .It is about sending back
information and allowing the person to continue with the activity. [2], [3], [9], [10],
[11]

• Constraints: It refers to determine ways of restricting the kind of user's

interaction that can take place at a given moment. An example in graphical user
interfaces is to deactivate certain menu options by shading them. Generally
constraints reduce the possibility of committing mistakes by the users. Norman
(1999) classifies constraints into three categories:

• Physical: "It refers to the way physical objects restrict the

movement of things". As an example is the floppy disk. It has a
fixed size and shape that is suitable for the floppy disk deriver. This
physical structure makes the shape and size fixed. This types of
constraints match hardware and don’t match software products.

• Logical: "It relies on people's understanding of the way the world work
.They rely on people common since". So by clarifying actions and their
effects, people are able to logically decide what actions are required.
An example , when making the menu options disable in case it is not
prop arête for the task , the user ask about the reasons of its current
state and what are the other alternative options .

• Cultural constraints: "rely on learned conventions, like the use of

smiley face to represent happy emotions and the use o red for warning.
[2], [3], [9], [10], [11]

• Mapping: This principle refers to the relationship between controls and their
effects in the real world. And obvious example is the up and down arrows used
to represent the directions. [2], [3], [9], [10], [11]

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 • Consistency: Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when
things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what will
happen. Instead, they know what will happen base on earlier experience. An
example tat shows inconsistent interface: if there is a email messages system
that highlight messages when click using the right mouse button, while the other
operation in the email system is done using a let click.
It is important to say that consistency makes the interfaces easier to learn and use
since users have to learn only single mode of operation and ten implement the same
mode into the other operations.
Applying the principle of consistency is easy in the case of simple interfaces. But it
is more difficult in the implement of the complicated systems that have large
number of options like the word processing – application. To deal with complex
interfaces effectively, designers should create categories of commands that gather
similar operations together. In the case of the word processing –application , the
commands are classified into different categories , each category contains set of
related commands like format menu which contains for example the item that is
related to format texts , paragraph and background .
There are two important problems the designer might face when applying the
consistency principle .The first problem happen in the case of using categories when
items become invisible because some of them are hidden so users must learn where
the invisible items are.
The second problem occurs when the category items seem to be
inconsistence to users. [2], [3], [9], [10], [11]
• Affordance: "It is a term used to refer to an attribute of an object that allows people to
know how to use it ". Graphical elements like buttons, icons and scrollbars are good
examples since icons should be designed to afford clicking, scrollbars to afford moving
up and down and buttons to afford pushing. [2],[3],[9],[10],[11]
Norman (1999) classifies affordance into two types:
• Real affordance: it is related to physical objects and not to graphical
interfaces .Real affordance are obvious and don’t have to be learned.
• Perspective affordance: "Users – interface that are screen based, are
virtual and can't be considered as real affordance".

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So designers commit a big mistake I the try to design real affordance in
the interface design (except when designing physical devices).
[2],[3],[9],[10],[11]

Chapter 3
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 Understanding Users

In the study of HCI, understanding user's behaviors and his needs are so
important in the product successes. Designers must know what humans are good and

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 bad at. In this chapter we are going to define the concept of cognition. Define some of
the main cognitive aspects of interaction design.

Section 3.1

What is cognition?
"Cognition is what goes on in our heads when carry out our everyday activities. It
involves cognitive processes like thinking, remembering, learning, daydreaming, decision
making, seeing, reading, writing and talking."[12] We also can describe cognition in term
of specific kinds of processes. These processes are:

• Attention:" it is the process of selecting things to concentrate on at a point in time

from the range of possibilities available." [12] It leads people concentrate on
information that is relevant to what he do.

This process can be easy and can be difficult according to

1. How clear user's goals are. When the user knows exactly what he wants, he
matches his goals directly with the available information.

2. The way information is displayed. Since displaying information in disorder

way make it difficult for the user to find what is he/she looking for.

To implement attention in the design process designs should:

• Making information clear and presented well. [12]

• Wisely use techniques like animated graphics, colors, underlining and

ordering of items. [12]

• Avoid supplying the interface with large amount of data and

information. [12]

• Simple interfaces like google are much easier to use. [12]

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 • Perception: "it is a complex process that refer to how information is obtained
from the environment, via the different sense organs (fingers, eyes, ears) and
transformed into experience of objects, events, sounds and tastes" (Roth,
1986)[2]. Vision is the most common sense used by humans so it is important
to make the interface component readily. Designing the icons is considered to
be a good example. Designers must be careful when choosing the picture
used in the icons, because choosing complex pictures will limit the icon
efficiency. [12]

Designers can implement perception in their design by:

• Designing icons that users can distinguish them easily. [12]

• Text must be clear and written using colors that differ from the
background's color (example : black text on while background but not
yellow text on a white background) [12].

• Memory :" this concept recall various kinds of knowledge that allow users to act
appropriately." [12]

Memory allows people to remember someone's name and recognize his face.
Without memory we will not be able to carry out our lives.

The design implementations for memory

• The interface should be designed to don't over load user's memory

with complicated procedure to carry out the task.

• The interfaces must support recognition rather than recall. This can be
implemented using menus, icons and consistently placed objects. [12]

• Problem solving, planning, reasoning and decision making, these cognitive

processes contains thinking about what to do, what are the available alternatives
and what is the bet sequence to carryout with the given task.

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 The design implementation or these processes can be achieved by providing the
design with additional hidden information that can be easily accessed by users who are
interested in carrying an activity more effectively. [12].

Section 3.2

Applying knowledge from the physical world to the digital

world.

After the designer understand the different cognitive processes that users do when
interacting with system. Designer must study how people cope with the needs of every
day life. "A well known approach to applying knowledge about everyday psychology to
interact design is to emulate, in the digital world, the strategies and methods people
commonly use in physical world". [12]

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 Chapter 4

Understanding Users

"Qualitative research".

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Section 4.1
What is Qualitative Research?
The study of HCI is connected with human behavior and activities .these
activities are so complicated , affected strongly with the surrounding and cant be
measured by quantities .So designers use Qualitative Research rather than
Quantitative Research studying this field .In addition to the features above ,the
Qualitative Research has the following advantages :
• It is faster, less expensive and more flexible than Quantitative research. [12]
• It is the best available technique used to understand the users' behaviors
and activities. [12]
• It helps researchers understand the current product (if appears) and identify
its problems. [12]
• It helps the design team understand the borders (domain) of the designed
product and realize the social aspects in the environment where the design
is made. [12]
• It provides credibility and authority to the design team , because all the
design decisions can be traced to research results [12]

Section 4.2

Types of qualitative research: Ethnographic Interviews.

Social science and usability text are full of techniques used in qualitative
research. In our project we gather data using the Ethnographic Interviews technique:
Interviewing and observing users (Wood 1996)[12] ."Ethnography is the term
borrowed from Anthropology and it means the systematic and immersive study of
human cultures. It depends on the one – to – one interviews and work/lifestyle
observation"[12]. In other words, this technique is a combination of direct interviews
and immersive observations.

In Anthropology, ethnographic researchers spend years studying and recording human

cultures and behavior. Ethnographic Interviews take the soul of this type of research

24
but apply it on a micro level. Since it focused on understanding people's interactions
with individual products rather that understanding people's behavior of an enter
culture. It also ensures that products don't just perform needed functions but are also
pleasurable and easy to use. One of the difficulties faced by the designers is how to
harness the data gathered by this technique in a form that can be useful in the design.
[12],[2]

Section 4.3

The process of the qualitative research based on Ethnographic

Interviews.

• Preparing for ethnographic interviews.

• Conducting ethnographic interviews.
• Constructing Persona Model.

Section 4.3.1
Preparing for ethnographic interviews:

1. The persona Hypothesis:

To start working with the ethnographic interview technique, designers needs to create
a hypothesis that represents the first step in determining what sorts of users to
interview. The used hypothesis used is defined as the Persona Hypothesis.

The persona Hypothesis is a powerful, multipurpose design tool. It is the first step
toward identifying and synthesizing different kinds of users for a product in a
particular domain .It is the base for initiating the ethnographic interviews, since it
attempts to address at a high level the following three questions:
1- What different sort of people might use the product?
2- How might their needs and behavior vary?

25
3- What ranges of behaviors and types of environment need to be explored?

In addition, the persona hypothesis aims to identify variables that might distinguish
users according to their needs and behavior. It uses the Demographic variables in its
creation .As a result the designer can use previous researches to identify Demographic
variables like age , locations and gender . [12]

2. Putting a plan to gather.

After the creation of the persona hypothesis the designer needs to create an
interview plan to communicate with the users. The designer should explore each
identified role, behavioral, demographic and environmental variables identified in the
persona hypothesis in four to six interviews (if the domain is complex more than six
interviews should be made). The designer must be clever enough and keep the number
of the interviews under control by having selective sample. The sample must vary and
contain the different variable (more that one variable in each user). [12]

Section 4.3.2
Conducting ethnographic interviews.
After formulating the persona hypothesis, deriving the interview plan from the
hypothesis and selecting the suitable sample, the designer is ready to interview. The
project stake holders should cooperate with the designer getting touch with the users.
If the stakeholders can't help the designer can contact usability research firm that
specialize in finding people or surveys. The difficulty in this type o interviews is to
find interviewee who will permit you to interview them in their homes or places or
work. As a last choice the designer can make the interviews with his friends and
relatives. It is easier that interviewing strangers but at the same time the available
variables are so limited in this case. [12]

26
Section 4.3.3
Interviewing Team and Timing.
The specialists in this field prefer team of tow designers per interview, one to
coordinate the interview and take light notes, and the other to take detailed notes.
About the time, specialists suggest that one hour per user interview should be
sufficient except in the case of interviewing consumers in their houses. The number o
interviews by day must be limited with six interviews, so the designers have time for
deprieting and strategizing between interviews, and the designers do not get fatigued.
[12]

Section 4.3.4
Ethnographic Interviews Basic Methods.

The basic method used while interviewing users are simple and straightforward
.what is really hard is to master the nuances (differences that can be difficulty
realized) .this operation needs a long time and efforts. To make things easier
specialists suggests the following instructions to help designers generate wealth and
useful qualitative data:

1. Interview where the interaction happens.

It is so important to make the interviews in the place where the user is going to use
the product. This gives the interviewer a chance to witness how the product is being
used. And it also gives the interview team the opportunity to access the environment
where the interaction occurs. [12]

2. Avoid a fixed set of questions:

Using a fixed set of questions in the ethnographic interviews is so risk because the
interviewer miss wealth and valuable data. This happen because the interviewers
don’t know enough about the domain to presuppose the need questions. The designer
must learn the importance of the product from its interviewee. Specialists suggested
types of questions that will be useful in the interview. Some o these types are:
a. Goal - oriented questions:

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 - "Opportunity: What activities currently waste you time?" [12]
- "Goals: What makes a good day? A bad day?" [12]
-" Priorities: What is the most important to you?" [12]
- "Information: What helps you make decisions?" [12]

b. System – oriented questions:

-" Function: What are the most common things you do with the product?" [12]
- "Frequency: What parts of the product do you use most?" [12]
- "Preference: What are your favorite aspects of the product? What drives you
crazy? "[12]
- "Failure: How do you work around problems?" [12]
- "Expertise: What shortcuts do you employ? "[12]

c. Attitude – oriented questions:

This type of questions offers better understanding for the user motivations.
-" Aspiration: What do you see yourself doing five years from now? "[12]
-" Avoidance: what would you prefer not to do ? What do you procrastinate on?" [12]
-" Motivation: What do you enjoy most about your job (or lifestyle)? What you
always tackle first?" [12]

3. Focus no Goals first. Tasks second.

In the ethnographic interviews the most important point is understanding the Why of
users ) what motivates the behavior of individuals in different roles ) and the how
they hope the product to be at . Understanding the what of tasks users perform comes
next since the tasks will be restricted to better match the users goals in the final
design. [12]

4. Avoid making the user a designer.

The designer must guide the interviewee towards examining problems but away from
expressing solutions. Most of the time the users consider these solutions good to him
but in fact they are not well considered and sometimes represent solutions that the tool
of personas activity seeks to avoid. [12]

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5. Avoid discussions of technology.
The designer must not treat the users as programmers. [12]

6. Encourage story telling.

Encouraging users to tell stories about their experience with the product (whether an
old version of the product the designer is redesigning, or an analogous product) is
more useful than asking them or design advices. These stories in general contain the
way they use the product, what they think of it, where they go with it. The designer
must encourage the users to talk more about both the typical cases and the exceptional
ones. [12]
7. Ask for a show-and-tell .
After the designer understand the flow and structure of the user's activities, it is often
useful to ask him for a show-and-tell tour of artifacts related to the design problem.
The designer must be careful to not only record the artifacts themselves, but also pay
attention to how the interviewee describe them .The designer must ask too many
clarifying questions as well. [12]

8. Avoid leading questions.

The designer must avoid the use of leading questions . Examples of leading
questions:
- Would feature a help you?
- You like A , don’t you ?
- Do you think you'd use A if it were available? [12]

Section 4.3.5

After the interviews.

After each interview, the design team should study the gathered notes and discuss any
interesting trends observed or any specific points brought up in the most recent
interview. If the design team have enough time they have to go back at old notes to
see whether unanswered questions from other interviews and research have been
properly answered.

29
After the interview process is finished, the design team must make another pass
through all the notes, mark or highlight important patterns in the data. This step is so
important to start working wit the coming step: creating personas and in the later in
the design process . [12]

Section 4.3.6
Constructing persona model.

Personas are users models that represented as specific individual humans. They are
not actual people but are synthesized directly from observing real people, their
activities and behaviors. [12]

Strengths of personas as a design tool:

Personas help the designer in the following sides:

- Determine what a product should do and how is should behave.
- Provide a common communication language between designers and other people
who works with the project in order to simplify the design decision discussion.
- Keep the design centered on users at every step in the process.
- The Personas reduce the need for elaborate diagrammatic models because the
specialists have found that it is easier to understand the details about user's behaviors
through the narrative structure the personas employ.
- Personas measures the design's effectiveness and provide a powerful reality check
tool or designers trying to solve design problems. This of course rapid the occurrence
of the design iteration and decrease the needed time and effort.
- Personas are strong baseline when the times come to test the product with real
users
- Personas contribute to other product – related efforts such as marketing and sales
plans. [12]

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Section 4.3.7

Constructing Personas.
Personas are derived from patterns observed during interviews with and
observations of users. Constructing useful and believable personas is so important and
critical for the design success. It requires creative synthesis and an equal measure of
detailed analysis. Robert Roimann, Kim Goodwin and Lane Hally, developed a
standard process for construction personas. This process has the following steps:

1. Revisit the persona hypothesis.

2. Map interview subjects to behavioral variables.
3. Identify significant behavior patterns.
4. Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals.
5. Check for completeness.

Now, we will discuss each of these steps in detail.

1. Revisit the persona hypothesis

After completing the research and organizing the data, the designers must compare
patterns identified in the data to the assumptions made in the persona hypothesis. The
designers must also list the complete set of variables and Demographic (age, technical
skills) behavioral. [12]

2. Map interview subjects to behavioral variables.

In this step the designer must map each interviewee against each variable range that
applies. The precision of this mapping is not so important comparing with identifying
the placement of interviewees in relationship to each other. [12]

3. Identify significant behavior patterns.

After mapping the interviews subjects, the designer will find clusters of particular
subjects that occur across multiple ranges or variables. The set of subjects which
cluster in six to eight different variables will represent a significant behavior pattern
that will form the basis of a persona (Goodwin, 2002)[12].

31
There must be a logical connection between the clustered behaviors, not just a
spurious correlation. For example, there is clearly a logical connection if data shows
that people who regularly purchase CDs also like to download MP3 files, but there is
probably no logical connection if the data shows that interviewees who frequently
purchase CDs also seem to enjoy stamp collecting.

4.Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals .

For each significant behavior pattern the designer identifies, he/she must synthesize
details from the available data. Describe the potential use environment, current
solutions and frustrations, and relevant relationships with others (Goodwin, 2002a).

The designer must remember that he is creating a design tool, not a character sketch
for a novel. Only concrete data can support the design and business decisions that the
design team will ultimately make. [12]

5. Check for completeness and distinctiveness

At this point, personas should be starting to come to life. The designer should check
the mappings and personas' characteristics and goals to see if there are any important
gaps that need filling. This again may point to the need to perform additional research
to find the missing behaviors from the defined behavioral axes. If the designer fined
redundant personas, he may choose to eliminate one of them. Each persona must vary
from all others in at least one significant behavior.

By making sure that the defined persona set is both distinct and complete, the
designer will be able to maintain a manageable set of personas [12].

32
 Section 4.4

Paper prototyping.

Paper prototyping is techniques that can be used by technical and non-technical

people .They cooperate to design interfaces for web applications. This technique
appears in the mid of 1990's and many famous companies like (Microsoft, digital and
IBM) work with this technique.

Unfortunately large numbers of designers don’t use this technique because they
thought that it is so expensive and time consuming. Actually they are wrong because
paper prototyping is considered to one o the simplest and cheapest techniques that
designer can use. [13]

Benefits of paper prototyping.

• Detecting usability problems in very early stages before writing

any code.
• Only few number of resources used in prototyping.
• It is considered as a powerful means of communication between
designer and users.
• It allows designer to experiment many ideas instead of being
limited with one idea.
• Doesn't require any technical abilities so a multidisciplinary team
can work together.
• It encourages designers to b more creative in their designs.

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 Chapter 5

The Case Study

Ritaj System

34
 Our case study will be about the Ritaj System in Birzeit University .It is the system
used to communicate between the university students, teachers, employees and
managers.
"Ritaj was started at 2001 as result of Al Intefada .At that time it became so difficult
for students, teachers and employees how are not from Birzeit to reach the university .
Therefore, the university cooperates with the computer center and Ritaj was born
".[14]

Now we are in the year 2007, Ritaj is still the mean of communication between
students, teachers and employees in the university. As regular users for Ritaj and after
the deep study of the HCI field. We found that Ritaj doesn't apply the usability
principles in many sides. Some of the clearest defects in its design were dropping
messages interface design and sending-receiving memos interface design.
So we decided to apply our study of the HCI filed and suggest new designs that apply
usability principles however in the same time keeping all the functions provided by
Ritaj

The process of our work.

Our work with Ritaj system focused on two things the course content and the
memos system .We decided to name our work as Ritaj Communication System ,and
limit it to cover the students and teachers pages . We start the work by understanding
how both the contents and memos systems work. Then we apply the method of
ethnographic – interviews as a main source of data. According to this method we
started by preparing persona hypothesis, after that we prepared set of questions that
are related to Ritaj in general and to the communication system in particular .These
questions were prepared as the ethnographic interviews suggested. There where no
fixed questions but generally questions aims to know how students and teachers
interact with Ritaj (course content and memos ) . Then we choose our sample keeping
in mind the different available variables like: age, faculty of study, gender, and degree
of English knowledge, environment (cities or villages) and the degree of internet
knowledge. We made the specified interviews with 30 student and 15 teachers (the
number was related to our personas hypothesis)

35
 After finishing the interviews, we reviewed the collected data, deeply analyzed it and
then constructed the Persons. Our results showed that in the student field there are the
following personas
1. Freshman from all colleges are occasional users to Ritaj and don't
know most of its functions.
2. Art and low faculties students are occasional users
3. Students who studied in private school before the university know
about the functions of Ritaj .
4. Student who know how to use the internet before university know the
functions of Ritaj .
About the teachers we found the following personas:
1. Teacher whose job do not contain supervision to students are
occasional users for Ritaj.
2. Teachers who teach Arabic, cultural studies, geography are occasional
users for Ritaj.
3. Old age teachers are occasional users For Ritaj.
4. Teachers who considered as new employee don’t know Ritaj
functions

After personas were constructed we started the design process. First we will start
describing the students' pages . Our communication system assumes that the home
page will contain a list of the courses that student joins in the semester .When student
choose to enter the course page , he/she will get the following Interface:

36
looking deeply at the page we find that all the data related to the course are in the
same place (assignments , course material / Announcement , dissection , Course
marks and course out line ) . In addition to that student will find the name of his
instructor, his office number and office hours. Also the time of the class and its room.
In other words all things related to the course. The student according to this design
will be able to send messages to his teacher using the teacher's name which is defined
as a link .And according to web design principles all the used links are drawn in blue
(it is the standard color for the unvisited links). In our design we choose two colors
for the background the green and the white. According to psychologists these colors
are friendly to users. About the font we choose an obvious type with the black color to
be suitable for all sorts of people especially who have vision problems. In the left side
of the page we can see a list of the components that the user may need to visit in Ritaj.
We apply this list to simplify users work so they can go to any page they want without
the need to be back to the home page. To make the page more friendly, usable and
obvious we add related pictures to the used components so that students can easily
find what they need depending on the pictures . Another important thing that when
students got any new course assignment , announcement or material in his page , he

37
will be notified by the word new which is written in a red color to draw his attention .
and note that the word new is not fluttering since the moving words are unusable .
Finally we offer the page with the line ( Home Courses comp343-section1) that
tells the user about his location , so he can't lose his way in the site and he can back
to the location he want without the need to use the back instruction.

Now we go deeply inside the page components and show the interface design for
the assignment item. In this interface we separate the assignments section away from
the course outline and the course material because it has a different nature . Students
can reply at the assignment from this components. The assignment page interface is
designed to view three assignments in each page this of course in avoid scrolling and
offer better view for the user.

38
Assignments can be filtered into three types, available assignments, late assignments and
due soon assignments as shown in the figure below.

39
40
Each assignment is supported with the related information (due date, mark, and the
assignment type). When the user click into the assignment ,a new page will be
opened .In this page student can get the text of the assignment, print it and send its
solution to his teacher.

41
If the assignment is submitted , the system will send a notification for the student as
the coming interface shows .

42
When the assignment is corrected by the teacher the status of the assignment in the
assignment home page will be "graded " and when student click into the status he will
get the following page .

43
This interface shows how the announcement and course material are displayed. This
page is offered by a filtering mechanism that helps users to view announcements only
or course material only or all the contents.

44
Finally we will talk about the discussion Item. When students inter this item , they
will find this page. The student sees all the discussion categories.

45
Choosing one of these category will open the Interface as shown below .This interface
contains all the related messages and their status. The read messages are represented
by an open envelop and the color of the link is changed into purple (according to web
design principles the color of the visited links is purple) and unread messages are
represented as closed envelops .

46
When students choose a message it will be represented as follows

47
Students can share messages with their class mates and teacher. To send messages
student must click the compose message option which was shown before .Then the
coming interface will be displayed. In this interface, students choose the category that
their discussion topic is related to. This message will be sent to all students in their
class and to their teacher. The "Go to " option helps students go to any category the
wish to visit directly.

48
According to teachers pages, we suggest the following interfaces. We will start with
the page that is related to specific course and specifies section . In other words our
system assumes that the teacher home page will contains a list of course tough by the
teacher supported by list of sections so the coming page is designed for a specific
course and a specific section.

In this page, all the components that represent the relation ship between students and
teacher are available.

49
About the assignments the teacher can send and receive all the assignments under the
assignment title .Here is the interface that represents the received assignments. The
interface also offers the a filtering mechanism for both the assignment state and for
the assignment received .

50
The coming interfaces will show how teachers can compose any item (outline ,
material , announcements and assignments ) to their students.

This is the general view for the compose item interface . The following will be the
same interfaces , but with more details .

51
The coming interface shows how to compose an assignment .

52
The coming Interface will show the filtering mechanisms offered in the picture .

53
The previous interface gives teachers the chance to send the message to specific group
of students .

54
The coming interface shows the course boards . In this item the all course material ,
announcements ,assignments that are send by all teachers are represented . Items send
by the teacher have the feature of editing them , while those send by anther course
teachers are read only .

55
An important topic in the teachers and students page is the mail. In our project we
represent the teachers mail interfaces . Here is the interface for the mail home page.

In this interface a general over view or the mail content is displayed . A notification
of the number of inbox , outbox and draft messages , a notification of the number of
new received messages , an option to compose new messages and an option to view
teachers contents .

56
The compose message interface is represented below .

This interface shows a list of mail contents and supports the option of adding new
content .

57
Conclusion :
The Human – Computer Interaction is an important field .Since the use of computers
and their software products is widely spread in our lives. And the competition
between the software producers is strong. To be able keeping their products alive,
designers must understand their users' needs and behavior. Designers must implement
the usability principles in their designs to increase their success opportunities.

58
: References
How can I get people in my organization to conduct usability?, [1]
http://www.usability.gov/basics/howusa.html
Jennifer Preece, Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp. Interaction Design: beyond human-computer [2]
interaction .John Wiley & Sons © 2002
,http://www.usabilityfirst.com/intro/index.txl[3] Introduction to Usability
[4] Nicky Danino, November 14th 2001 , Human-Computer Interaction and Your Site ,
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/computer-interaction-site
[5] Can usability be measured? , http://www.usability.gov/basics/measured.html
[6] How can I show that usability engineering saves money?,
http://www.usability.gov/basics/usasaves.html
[7] Learn About Your Users , http://www.usability.gov/analyze/learn.html
[8] Jakob Nielson , Heuristics for User Interface Design ,
www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html
[9] What is usability? , http://www.usability.gov/basics/whatusa.html
[10] Set Measurable Usability Goals , http://www.usability.gov/analyze/goals.html
[11] Usability 101: Introduction to Usability . Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, August 25, 2003
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html
[12] Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann . About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design .
John Wiley & Sons © 2003 .(540 pages) .
[13] Carolyn Snyder . Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Define and Refine User
Interfaces. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers © 2003 .(408 pages).
[14] Interview with iyad asad , computer developer , Birzeit Unvirsity computer center .

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