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Discussion1 post responses.
Please respond to the following:
“Creating an Interface” Please respond to the following:
· Imagine you are managing a design project that will create an interface for automobile mechanics. The interface would be used by the mechanics to look up various fixes and parts for any number of makes or models of automobiles that may come through their garage. Decide what usability measures would be most motivating when designing this interface and describe the unique challenges you would have to plan for when designing an interface for an automotive repair shop. Use supporting evidence to support your response.
· Physical, cognitive, perceptual, personality, and cultural differences introduce challenges when designing universally usable products. Choose one area from the list above and describe why it is the biggest challenge to overcome when creating universally usable designs. Support your response.
MW’s post states the following:Top of Form
Managing a design project that will create an interface for automobile mechanics today will certainly be demanding. The mechanic in the old days had a manual that detected the scenario of the issue and reference a location or page that defined the issue, provided instructions and schematics or diagrams that indicates how to correct the issue. The manual even provided a charge time allowed to correct the issue. The shop then billed the hours assigned to the issue. If you ever worked at an auto part store such as Pepboys or auto zone or even visited the establishment as a customer you will find a user interface for the parts manager/clerk to look up the part being inquired about. The interface would not only provide the part number and location of the part but often provides the customer an abstract on how to diagnose, install or replace the item. There was a time where it was that simple for those that preferred to DIY (Do IT yourself). Today the business demands for data as customer demands increase with the acceptance of the enhancements to modern vehicles and there adaptation of applications, and the communications to SMART Homes, Anominius Cars, Smart Appliances, Smart phones, tablets, buletooth communications, Web sites URL applications, the new RICH WEB applications, Blockchain, serves the development principles and Practices of Artificial Intelligence, to develop of the underlying activity are the driving trends in software development. Software Industry Trends to watch for are Job Polarization, Consumer Micro-Income Streams, Data Policies, Marketplaces, B2B Sharing Economy, Fintech Revolution, Blockchain, Smartphone Evolution, It reminds me of something from the science fiction movies and TV shows such as Star Trek, Quantum Leap, Stargate, Ironman and the like. I have discovered that there are several movements of the National Strategic Computing initiative (NCIS) to further these technologies. It is not only in the private interest but government interest to take technology to the next level for all and more of the benefit of mankind. The perceive notion is to save humanity from its-self goes beyond the profit notion. The intent is noble as we discovered with WYAMO and other autonomous vehicles. You are right in it would be interesting to follow the evolution and marketing of these new technologies as they come into play. It is well noted that the recent advances in the applied technology have addressed several safety issues. The adoption the AI self-learning model allows the vehicle to communicate with other vehicles and detect the driving environment preventing possible collisions. The vehicle has the ability to accelerate, brake and sense the world around it with sound recognition. The added partnership with GOOGLE, and leading technology companies allows the ability to further enhance the related Human interfaces to further improved and reduce number of HUMAN operator errors on the highway. In addition the benefits of the technology reduce the environmental impact with alternative fuel inceptions. The cost element has become relevant to the current manufacturing of traditional vehicles.
The user interfaces today are more or less required to be designed with the human behavior at its core. The design has to incorporate the human nature into the core functions in its look and feel. The design also must be able to adapt to the human determination to access shortcuts beyond the guided infrastructure of the application. The text must be basic yet distinct enough for all levels of expertise. The design must accommodate the physical motion of the user, the user preferences to access the functionality of the application. The biggest challenge in the design of the interface would be in creating a method that will go beyond the AI and predictability of the solution and proceed to the adaptability of the end-user experiences and expertise of the related model of the manufactures. The design challenges due to the mass about of data would be the performance with in the architecture framework to access and retrieve the data in a timely manner. The solution today is trending to the cloud services PAAS, SAAS, and IAAS. The services can accommodate the large organizations in the aspect of price and license services; however the MOM and POP shop can be limited in some cases. The issue of access and user compatibility or learning curve to the application is the real issue. It is not like the old days for the average mechanic either be corporate, or self-employed or even the garage mechanic where once the knowledge was gained the expertise came with experience. Example, I had a new model of a Ford Ranger, The first year they put a box that controlled the coolant levels, electrical system and communicated with a mother board. The issue seemed to be obvious a bad battery. The vehicle would start in the morning to commute to work; however, the vehicle would fail to start at the end of the shift when it was time to go back home. The dealer replaced the battery several times to no avail. The battery was discovered not to be the issue so the dealer suggested to leave the car overnight. The overnight lead to six weeks of the dealer evaluating the issue. Finally, the dealer sent for a SME. The expert failed to resolve the issue. The dealer and d the expert followed the design user-interface for the predicted solution but failed time after time. It was not until a shop intern giggled a wire to the box that the real issue was discovered. They replace the box and the issue was resolved. The design failed not due to user expertise but with the lack of direction from the provided data. The design failed to insure that the basic data was imputed correctly. One more example of how the user interface must be accepted by the user. If the interface does not perform or times out after input or inquiry, or if the input field demanded are not aligned with the user sight and rotation of reading or if the fields require the physical hand motion to experience dexterity the user will be inclined to reject and not used the application. The User interface must become the preferred method of access any data required in an accommodating and pleasing manner. My experience comes from a mail centralizing user interface that combined several entities to reduce cost of the related mailings. The user once used to a certain method of entering data and a certain method of querying the data to get the desired result. The first vision of the application the screen was busy and had the menus giving to many options and the navigation became difficult. The user intervened and soon discovered flaws in the application causing the user interface to “HANG”. The lesson learned were to accommodate the user with the minimum of change and invasive action. The issues were resolved; thus, the application became the preferred by the user community and remained in production till the end of the lifecycle.
REFERENCES:
Shneiderman, B. (2018). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction.
https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/waymo-safety-report-2017
https://letstalkselfdriving.com/
https://waymo.com/
NM’s post states the following:Top of Form
The User Interface design focuses on anticipating what users might need or want to do and ensures that the interface has features that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. Designing an interface everything stems from knowing the user, understanding their goals, skills, preferences, and behaviors.
The first step would be to gather information and assess the user needs and wants so that the UI can be designed according to those needs. Once this information is gathered, there are certain considerations that should be made that includes keeping the interface simple, creating consistency and use common UI elements, page layout, strategically use attractive color and texture, use typography to create hierarchy and clarity, make sure the UI elements communicate status and next steps, and create defaults. Using an adaptive design, which supports a wide range of technologies and diverse users it will accommodate the diversity of the mechanic user base.
Defining the usability metrics is also essential in the comparative process. The usability can be measured to a comparative to users’ performance on a given set of test tasks. According to the ISO 9241-11 standard usability is defined as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use”. Usability cannot be measured or agree on the interpretations of usability in some measurable way, then it becomes impossible to know if any of the user activities make the product more usable.
There are several measurements that can be used in any usability evaluation. The SUM usability measurement would be the best measurement to use when designing the interface for the mechanic shop. The SUM measurement includes four common usability metrics. These metrics include task completion rates, task time, satisfaction and error counts. Summative evaluation is used to give use a before and after impact evaluation of the design changes. Summarization of the variances can be used for analyzing and reporting usability metrics.
This usability measure is a standardized, single usability metric made up of multiple measures that all measure usability. This measurement was developed to represent the majority of variation in four common usability metrics used in summative usability tests to include task completion rates, SUM has two additional advantages which are it provides one continuous variable that can be used in regression analysis, hypothesis testing and in the same ways existing metrics are used to report usability. Secondly, it is a single metric based on logical specification limits provides an idea of how usable a task or product is without having to reference historical data.
Physical, cognitive, perceptual, personality, and cultural differences introduce challenges when designing universally usable products. Choose one area from the list above and describe why it is the biggest challenge to overcome when creating universally usable designs. Support your response.
Computer systems vary in their structure, functionality, purpose, size and the way in which they represent their internal workings. Humans differ in background, sex, education, personality, cognitive skills and preferences. The challenge when designing universally usable products is to meet the requirements of consistency and continuity across these platforms to ensure the inter-usability of the system. Consideration of characteristics of the individual and the characteristics of the task to understand how these interact.
Cognitive skills describe the methods by which humans process information. Cognitive abilities are relatively stable human characteristics which change very slowly over time (months or years) (Carroll, 1983). Accessibility for users with cognitive disabilities can be a greater challenge than for those with other types of disabilities. Cognitive individual differences in cognitive preferences and abilities affect performance on computer tasks. While the use of computer technologies has been proven to be effective in teaching students with cognitive disabilities, the diversity of ability and experience of users with cognitive disabilities can create problems.
There is no set rubric for designing for users with cognitive disabilities. Designing accessible and usable interfaces for users with cognitive disabilities can present many challenges such as individuals with learning disabilities frequently have trouble processing language and numbers, interpreting audio input, and with three-dimensional orientation. Furthermore, in order to understand material, users must be able to identify information and integrate it into meaningful portions. Multiple windows, complex or cluttered displays can create distractions and processing problems and sequential operations can be likewise distracting to those with memory deficit problems. Furthermore, the use of right and left click buttons on a mouse can create difficulties for users with memory, perception or reflex problems.
Response
I agree personality differences is a hurdle to overcome when creating a universally usable design In fact, in addition to personality individual characteristics such as culture, age, and experience all impact a user’s performance or preference for a visual design. Designing a personalized interface for every user is clearly impractical. However, given the increasing number of known individual differences that impact interaction, the user interface should be based on user input. Adaptive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is one way of addressing this issue die to the fact that the design automatically tailors functionality to better fit an individual user’s tasks, perceptions, usage patterns, and abilities.
References
Nielsen, J. (2001). Usability Metrics. Retrieved from: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-metrics/
Sauro, J. (2005). SUM: Single Usability Metric. Retrieved from: http://www.measuringu.com/SUM/index.htm
Usability.gov. (2016). User Interface Design Basics. Retrieved from: https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-interface-design.html
Discussion 2 post responses.
Please respond to the following:
“Goal Setting” Please respond to the following:
· Early computers were only usable by experts with strong technical knowledge. Examine how interactive systems have changed throughout the years to accommodate average users and describe two advantages and two disadvantages associated with these changes.
· From the e-Activity, examine the two articles you selected on universal usability and discuss one topic of interest that was addressed.
MW’s post states the following:Top of Form
The computer evolution has certainly come a long way since before 1960. While I disagree with early computers only being usable by experts with strong technical knowledge. I do agree those user interfaces such as the CICS screens needed the technical expertise to design. I have been around this industry since the days of the old mainframe screens, punch-card, and real to real tables, dot-matrices commercial printers and removable disk storage. I first hand experiences with seeing the integration to the data-processing arena of the PC88 and floppy disk drives. I have the real world going from close mainframe systems to open ended data driven applications. The mainframe actually physically to the space from one end to the other end of the room. The 8 track tapes were stored in almost like a warehouse before the robot silos. Do you remember the free distribution of the operating system DOS, the difference between Windows, UNIX flavors, and the MAC? I grew-up in the industry from a mainframe operator to an old COBOL programmer. The internet was free and related to the academic research world. Then came the emerge of the Wildcat bulletin boards with the introduction of open systems or the mainframe sources where open to direct connection form unsecure mediums like PRO COM plus. The prominent languages were any flavor of basic (GW-BASIC) then came application builded in C, C##, PowerBuilder. MS Excel was in its beta stage. The user interfaces grew and adapted to the changing battle between Mainframe and client server the somewhere along the way the two merged and we have data lakes, big data, cloud services from PAAS, SAAS, IAAS. Today we can access an interface from are phones, laptops, and a great mix of home devices from the so call app world. The change in platforms came from advances in technology from storage to the evolution of chip instruction. The example today is the current open source project for the 50 QBIT processor by IBM as named the IBMQ. One can gain more knowledge of this project on the GITHUP and the IBMQ.com. The development is to become live in the year 2020 and is predicted to lead another software evolution as the architecture and infrastructure instruction speed increase by 2 X 50. The progress in the processor will enable the software development to be responsive 10 times fold thus the need for the Extreme XP, UP, and scum adaptive nature of object oriented approaches with the AGILE methodology will give way to a transition to another round of enhancement to AJAX, JAVA< C, C++ to be layered under the software language application. The end result is the stack layer of applications controlled by a complex user interface that is user friendly or build to interact seamlessly with human behavior. Four of best known of the leading integrators are GOOGLE, IBM, Xerox and Microsoft in the user interface applications rather at the enterprise level or stand-alone. One needs to look at the time line of integration by these companies. One example that I am best acquainted with is the evolution of Xerox with the transition to a data services company called Conduent LLC. Conduent has several research and development campus around the world working of several interfaces such the one in North Carolina working with the Blockchain technology to merge with financial transactions.
REFERENCES:
Goldberg, A., Association for Computing Machinery., & ACM Conference on the History of Personal Workstations. (1988). A History of personal workstations. New York, N.Y: ACM Press.
Kamran, R., Muhammad, I., Muhammad, N., & Muhammad, I. (2017). A Study On Traditional And Evolutionary Software Development Models. International Journal Of Scientific & Technology Research, Vol 06, Iss 07, Pp 214-218 (2017), (07), 214.
https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/uist/history.html
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-experience-index-score/b2e253d2-e87c-4196-8688-ac17e266b85a
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/controlling-individual-atom-qubits/
https://www.ibm.com/quantum-computing/
JN’s post states the following:Top of Form
Greetings Class,
When the post states early computers, is it going back to systems like the engima machine,; if not that far back than reviewing how most systems 30+ years ago were all command line terminals. I remember using one of my Dad’s “computer’s” which was really just a “smart type writer”, I was able to have a running display of everything typed, and once verified all good hit print. Most early systems, from all intense purposes only did a couple of things and were therefore somewhat simple to navigate. I believe systems today are for more advanced and often require much more technical knowledge then simply plugging in the power and going to town. Most take highly trained specialist and often many different types of specialists. For instance think of a pump at a gas station, there are multiple systems within in working together to not only tabulate the gas pumped, but also the charge, run the credit/debit, communicate across the Internet with the payment card provider and then complete everything, all that happens in seconds (well minutes if filling the tank). Not a single person developed that entire system, it took different groups/teams and companies to slowly make the pumping experience faster and easier than having to pay someone $20 and watch them fill the tank with a mechanical type counter pumping the gas.
Interactive systems have changed over the years and two advantages are they have begun to easily accommodate for those that are unable to see; for instance teletype//teletext, having the ability to see is a huge challenge to face and not entirely a large market. Thanks to advances in technology is relatively cheap, as opposed to having a braille computer system. A second advantage is universal usability, a goal that attempts to develop a system for the 95%. Something simple and complete enough to work for most people, because of this concept users will be more likely to utilize the system. (Leblanc, J., 2016) Two disadvantages of newer systems is that many times they are way too complicated to use all of the given features and at times some may feel lost. A second disadvantage is in fact a mix of the advantage attempting to make the 95% percent happy and utilize the system. People are very different and trying to accommodate all of them can be a very difficult process. When my organization develops or looks to develop a new system, rather than try and make everyone happy, we gather requirements that must be met and meet those. Sometimes it’s not the prettiest, but it will get the job done.
One of the topics I found was that usability is about satisfying experiences. (Horton, S., 2014) I must say i truly agree, I’ve been on several different types of interfaces for system information logging and correlation; for instance, Splunk. Our organization chose to go with the system that was in fact simpler, easier to use, and very satisfying when compared to the competitors. The organization chose this even though it was nearly twice the cost; because, of the fact the employees and leadership would want to use it. Most of these systems are often purchased and never used again, but when a company makes the right call to invest in the system that will be used. It makes for a truer ROI, rather than an anchor in the server room.
-John
References:
Horton, S. (2014, April 11). Toward Universal Usability: An interview with Ben Shneiderman. Retrieved from https://rosenfeldmedia.com/a-web-for-everyone/toward-universal-usability-an-interview-with-ben-shneiderman/
LeBlanc, J. (2016, February 8). Eight Golden Rules: Rule 2 – Cater to Universal Usability. Retrieved from https://www.ics.com/blog/eight-golden-rules-rule-2-cater-universal-usability