These lessons are designed to meet the requirements of Achievement Standard AS91886 – Demonstrate Understanding of Human-Computer Interaction. For this reason, on completion of these lessons the students should be able to describe the role of a chosen user interface for a specified task, identify examples from a given human-computer interface that illustrate usability heuristics, evaluate a given human-computer interface in terms of usability heuristics and suggest improvements to a given human-computer interface by comparing and contrasting related interfaces (NZQA 91886, 2019).
The lessons here use a relational database, MS Access, as a tool for demonstrating the concepts of HCI, but does not teach any database concepts or how to build tables, forms etc. The lessons, however, are designed to be taught in tandem with AS91879 - Develop a digital outcome to manage data, and to contribute to many of its assessment criteria, i.e. applying appropriate data integrity and testing procedures, presenting the data effectively for the purpose and to meet end-user requirements and addressing the relevant implications: accessibility, usability, functionality, aesthetics and end-user considerations (NZQA 91879, 2018).
The HCI concepts taught here can also be applied to AS91880 – Develop a digital media outcome. The concepts can contribute to the assessment criteria: using appropriate tools, techniques and design elements for the purpose and end users, applying appropriate data integrity and testing procedures in the development of the outcome and addressing the relevant criteria applying design elements effectively, improving the quality and functionality of the outcome and addressing the relevant implications: accessibility, usability, functionality and aesthetics and end-user considerations (NZQA 91880, 2019).
This module could be delivered by teaching the HCI concepts in isolation and without reference to any actual implementation. This approach, however, is very likely to meet resistance from students who generally regard computer science topics as dry and boring and prefer being physically engaged with hands-on topics like programming, web development and image processing applications (Sarkar & Craig, 2005) (Sentance & Csizmadia, 2017).
For this reason, it is preferable to teach the topic alongside another topic which provides direct visualisation of the concepts being taught (Stanley, 2007).
As stated above, AS91880 – Develop a digital media outcome is another module that could also be taught in tandem with AS91886 since its concepts could also be directly applied to the development of a web site.
“The usability of an interface is the key characteristic for evaluating an interface” (NZQA 91886, 2019)
Based on the above quotation these lessons use Nielsen’s Usability 101 article as a framework. (Nielsen J. , Usability 101: Introduction to Usability, 2012)
In this article he defines five criteria by which we can measure usability:
Is it easy to learn?
Is it efficient? Once users have learnt to use the interface, how long will it take them to become efficient?
If users return after a time lapse, how long will it take them to relearn?
Errors. How many? How severe? How easy is it to recover from them?
How pleasant is it to use?
Unfortunately, due to administrative restrictions as well as the fact that our completed UI will not be used commercially, we will not be able to measure our work against criterion 3. Equally we may be only able to give a cursory glance at criterion 2. However, we hope to fully measure the usability of our UI against criteria 1, 4 and 5.
Our first lesson following the creation of the conceptual model will deal with criteria 4 – errors. As specified in that criterion we will look at how to reduce them and how to recover from them.
As well as using Nielsen’s Usability 101 article as our framework we shall also be using his heuristics as guidelines as we progress towards building a useable interface.