Human Computer Interaction (COMP352/552)

Food For Thought 1

Exercise 1

Comment briefly about the following three colour scheme choices:
  1. Scheme 1
  2. Scheme 2
  3. Scheme 3
Notice: if you do not see different colours, that might be because your browser has been instructed to use your own colours, overriding those of the document. Check out your Preference settings. If still in trouble, e-mail me.

Exercise 2

Pick up two web sites that you know providing the same service (e.g. two internet bookshops, such as Amazon and BOL) and try to figure out whether they make use of a user model. If so, try and understand the characteristics of the model with respect to the 6 user modelling issues described in Lecture 3.

Exercise 3

You have been asked to create a user model to associate with a web search engine (e.g. Google), with the aim to speed up users' search by presenting them only web pages which might be of interest.

  1. What sort of information would you ask the user?
  2. What sort of information might be inferred (and how) without asking?