Human Computer Interaction (COMP352/552)
Food For Thought 2
Exercise 1
Perform a GOMS analysis on the following tasks:
- using your preferite word processor, change the layout of
a document (e.g. margins, fonts etc) (
hint: define the task well, so that you can limit your analysis to a
small set of all the features of the word processor).
- buying a train ticket from an automatic machine
- making a cup of coffee
(oh, and... just in passing: what do you think of my use of fonts in
the previous list?)
Exercise 2
Evaluate the interface of the University of Liverpool on-line
library catalogue with respect to the 8 golden rules.
In particular, evaluate the text-only version (telnet
library.csc.liv.ac.uk and login
with username "library") as opposed to the WWW one at
http://Library.liv.ac.uk/.
Hint: Some options to experiment:
- the way to quit from each screen
- how to perform this task:
- look for the books by Shneiderman
- pick up our course book (Designing the User Interface)
- ask to examine the books which are close to it on the shelf
- from there, go back to browsing the other books by Shneiderman
Exercise 3
Define a consistent command grammar for the following tasks:
- go-to beginning of the document
- go-to end of the document
- go-to beginning of the paragraph
- go-to end of the paragraph
- go-to beginning of the line
- go-to end of the line
- delete from current cursor position to beginning of the document
- delete from current cursor position to end of the document
- delete from current cursor position to beginning of the paragraph
- delete from current cursor position to end of the paragraph
- delete from current cursor position to beginning of the line
- delete from current cursor position to end of the line
Exercise 4
Perform a little usability test on yourself.
Pick up two of the following flying companies' web sites (choose two that
you haven't visited before!):
and compare their usability (that is, define and fill in a usability
specification table).