Thoughts on Human Computer Interaction

“The usability of products has traditionally been tested in controlled laboratory settings. This approach emphasizes how usable a product is. It has been most commonly used to evaluate desktop applications, such as websites, word processors, and search tools. Doing usability testing in a laboratory, or a temporarily assigned controlled environment, enables evaluators to control what users do and to control environmental and social influences that might impact users’ performance. The goal is to test whether the product being developed is usable by the intended user population to achieve the tasks for which it was designed” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). Thoughts  As my team and I conducted our initial usability test for accessing the audit worksheet for the BS in Information Technology on Middle Georgia State University’s website, we discovered that our users had a difficult time finding it in a timely manner. This led to the users becoming frustrated with the website and a...

“Evaluation is integral to the design process. Evaluators collect information about users’ or potential users’ experiences when interacting with a prototype, a computer system, a component of a computer system, an application, or a design artifact such as a screen sketch. They do this to improve its design. Evaluation focuses on both the usability of the system…and on the users’ experience when interacting with the system” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). Reflections Interaction design as a whole is truly focused on the end user experience. Every aspect comes back around to whether or not the user can utilize the product effectively and with ease. Evaluation expounds upon product usability observation and helps engineers and designers determine what aspects of the product needs improvement and what they got right with the initial design. Thoughts As we have been working on developing our new health information system evaluation has been key in helping decide which applications ...

“A prototype is one manifestation of a design that allows stakeholders to interact with it an explore its suitability; it is limited in that a prototype will usually emphasize one set of product characteristics and de-emphasize others. When you hear the term prototype, you may imagine something like a scale model of a building or a bridge, or maybe a piece of software that crashes every few minutes. But a prototype can also be a paper-based outline of a screen or set of screens, an electronic picture, a video simulation of a task, or a three-dimensional paper and cardboard mockup of a whole workstation” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). Reflections A new product can be the most innovative one of its kind, but if the user finds it to be frustrating to use, they will not use it. Allowing potential users to experience the use of product as it is developed allows engineers and designers to develop products that will be both innovative and user friendly. Prototypes are used to help acc...

An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is an ethics committee within an organization receiving federal funding for conducting research and reviewing proposals for research. The IRB reviews proposals to ensure the project follows ethical principles and federal regulations before it is submitted to a funding agency. The IRB can approve, disapprove, or request modifications be made to projects (American Psychological Association). ​Members in the IRB are selected based on requirements of federal regulations. These members are often employed by the organization and have expertise in the areas of research being reviewed. Members can also be members of the surrounding community who may be physicians, lawyers, bioethicists, and scientists, to name a few backgrounds (UAB Research). Having highly educated members who are experts in their varying fields ensures that the review process is of the highest quality and appropriate scrutiny. When preparing to conduct research on humans or invertebrat...

Coauthors  Randy Hares Quentin Hurlburt Michael Koohang Brian Le James Mckay Introduction This assignment discusses how a website using virtual reality and emotional interfaces could help hearing impaired children learn chemistry in a safe and stimulating environment. Hearing Impaired Learning Hearing impaired children often face greater difficulty when it comes to learning in a traditional classroom setting. During a study that highlighted some of the challenges faced by children affected by hearing impairment, one teacher noted that “spoken language is the most common barrier that influences the participation and interaction between deaf and hard of hearing students and hearing students” (Alasim, 2018). Students with hearing difficulties have an optimal learning experience when the teacher never turns their back while addressing the class. This ensures that any students with hearing difficulties are given the opportunity to read the teacher’s lips, if needed....

I recently watched “iRobot Roomba 980: A Week with Review” on YouTube. This vlog documented life with a robotic sweeper for a week. This model comes with an app that allows the user to set up a cleaning schedule or start the Roomba whenever you want. This is probably my favorite thing about new tech toys. There’s little handling of the robot needed to get it to do its job. The first thing I noticed while watching this is that the bin that it traps debris in has to be emptied frequently, but that decreased over time since the robot kept the floors clean and there were fewer debris to pick up. Another thing I noticed is that it was quite loud, as loud as my upright vacuum cleaner. It takes a lot longer for it to clean the floors than doing it manually would so this would be very distracting to me if I were trying to get work done or take a nap. All in all, I think this is a neat little tool to help reduce house work for someone who is rather busy (Williams, 2016). In order for it to be ...

I can’t see very well without my glasses or contacts. My vision is so bad that people know that if I take my glasses off during a movie I am planning on going to sleep because they know I can’t see the TV without them. The odds of me being in class without my glasses or contacts is very slim, since I need them to drive. However, there have been instances where I have been out and had to take out my contacts because I scratched my eye and didn’t have my glasses to put on, so I had to rely on someone else to drive for me. Times like that can be both embarrassing and frustrating because I must rely on others to help me do something as simple as reading a menu. When coming up with a solution to a problem it is important to form a framework for observation to assist in the development of the solution. This framework can be fairly simple, asking who, where, and what to determine how a product is being used (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). In this case students in a classroom looking at t...

“Observation is a useful data gathering technique at any stage during product development” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). There are two types of observation in data gathering, observation in the field and observation in a controlled environment. Reflections Observation in the field is the best way to determine how a product will be used in day to day tasks. Knowing current state workflow and how to implement it or an improved version of it with new product use is very important. Right now the hospital I am working for is converting to Cerner’s Community Works electronic health record and health information system. I am a pharmacy analyst so I was involved in all events related to pharmacy workflow and integration with other departments last week. Cerner consultants came one site and went over our current state workflows to be able to decide which features would be suite our facility. During these events they observed a day in the life at the Crisp Regional Hospital Pharmacy to ...

When I was in grade school I distinctly remember several techniques taught geared toward promoting safety. Among them was the Stop, Drop, and Roll one. This technique was “designed to demonstrate how individuals should respond at the onset of clothing ignition” (National Fire Protection Association, 2006). We would routinely go over the technique and practice it. The teacher would have us act as though we were in a fire and our clothes had caught fire in it. We would immediately stop, drop to the floor, and roll back and forth as though we were putting out the fire. Repeating the actions as an adult were a bit haphazard. I am a lot bigger than I was when I first learned the technique so dropping to the floor was somewhat awkward. I also wondered today what if the fire were too close to be rolling back and forth. I don’t remember being taught to be conscious of where the fire was in relation to where we were stopping. An interactive mat and vest would be very helpful in teaching chi...

“Mobile devices have become pervasive, with people increasingly using them in all aspects of their everyday and working lives” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012, p. 188). Reflections I use my phone for both work and pleasure. At work I stay connected with my coworkers while we are on the go, texting and responding to emails that would have had to wait if not for mobile phones. At home I stay up to date on what my friends are doing through social networking. For quick meetings with close coworkers I will use my phone to take notes on my OneNote app, but for longer meetings with larger groups of people I will carry my laptop with me and use my app on it. I often find myself needing to share test scenarios in our health information system with coworkers. It is easier to have it up and ready on my laptop when I arrive to their department than it is to find a computer to take over and loading everything up when I get there. Thoughts Ease of mobility is an important feature to consider ...

Today it is easy to get carried away and be wasteful with everyday essentials in plentiful and inexpensive supply. We don’t think twice about grabbing two sheets of paper towel, even if one would be enough to clean up our spill. There are five more rolls tucked away in a kitchen cabinet so surely using more than needed won’t hurt anything, or will it? In addition to basics being readily available, we are keenly aware that excessive waste is not good for our environment. Trash ends up in landfills piled higher than our houses where it can decades to decompose or in the oceans where sea creatures often mistake pieces of it for food. In addition to pollution being a big concern, water conservation is as well. We often deplete water tables faster than they can be replenished. One of the places we tend to pay a lot of attention to in public but not so much in our homes is the bathroom. Most public bathrooms have motion-detecting faucets that only cut on and stay on if our hands are in the...

Emotional interaction is the aspect concerned with how users feel and react while using technologies. It spans from product reveal to product disposal and asks why we become attached to certain products (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012, p. 128) Reflections I experience the full range of emotions when it comes to technology and using it. New product reveals invoke excitement about new features and sometimes new purchases cause some disappointment because they didn’t quite live up to the initial expectations. I get frustrated with old technologies still in use at my job because they can be sluggish. Facebook’s “On This Day” feature makes me sad and miss past experiences, especially when photos of family members I have lost pop up. It can also be embarrassing and make me wonder why I thought it was a good idea to share certain posts. Online shopping can be anxiety-reducing since I hate shopping in stores. All in all, use of technology is not mundane because it touches our emotional si...

According to the Oxford dictionary, cognition is “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). There are two general modes of cognition are experiential and reflective. Experiential mode is an active state of acquiring information, whereas reflective mode is a state of retrieving that information. Cognition can be broken down into specific processes such as attention, perception, memory, and reasoning (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012, pp. 66-67). Reflections Cognition allows users to interact with computer systems and learn how to use them effectively. It also allows users to troubleshoot problems. Working in the IT department I take calls from users around the hospital I work at complaining about various problems. I am able to utilize cognition through analysis, reasoning, and problem solving to come up with solutions to the problems. Thoughts Taking cognitive processes into ...

I live about 2.5 hours away from my parents and sisters, so my sisters and I will Facetime each other if we aren’t able to visit for a while. It’s nice to be able to “see” them even though we aren't with each other. As noted in our text, “seeing each other on the screen enables more intimacy and connectedness” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012). I like that I can see little changes in them I might miss if we were just talking on the phone between visits. A lot of times my youngest sister likes to tell me about everything going on around her and it makes it easier for her to show me what all she is talking about. It’s like being there in the middle of everything going on even though I’m not and I really appreciate being able to have that experience thanks to technology. The biggest downside to Facetiming is the lag, which is playback that is moving more slowly than usual (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.), I experience living in a rural area with slower than normal internet speeds avai...

Social interaction is a fundamental aspect of society. Being social is defined by Merriam-Webster as “of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group” (Merriam-Webster, 2018). At one time social interaction was limited to face-to-face conversations, but overtime technology has opened the door to a new world of social interactions. We are no longer limited to the confines of our immediate space when it comes to interacting to others. We can interact with anyone, anywhere, at any given time. One of the most intriguing social phenomena has been the rise of sharing memes as a form of social interaction. A meme is “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media” (Merriam-Webster, 2018). Usually a meme is an image with text on it that a certain demographic finds ratable and/or entertaining. A lot of memes go viral and spread rapidly across social networking...

Interaction types are the ways a person interacts with a product (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012, p. 46). There are four different types of interactions: instructing, conversing, manipulating, and exploring. Instructing is how users carry out tasks in a system by giving it commands to follow (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012, p. 47). Reflections I use instructing interactions almost constantly. As an IT analyst for a pharmacy it is my job to maintain pharmacy specific software and data. Right now, I am working on data collection, transferring it from our current health information system to excel spreadsheets to be uploaded into our new information system. As I use Microsoft Excel I often add rules to highlight certain cells only if I have edited the data in them so other users can see what needs to be updated. Adding such a rule is instructing the program to perform a task based on conditions. Utilizing this allows me to highlight data without having to do it manually. Thoug...

As a child I learned to stay away from the oven all together. Anytime I would go near it, whether it was hot or not, my mother would sternly say, “No, hot!” I always associated the word “hot” with possible harm. I was conditioned to do so as far back as I can remember. It was the same way with our gas heaters. It didn’t matter what time of year it was I was always told they were hot and I would get hurt if I got too close. To this day I am keenly aware of the possibility of get burnt if I get too close to a hot burner on a stove or touch the door on an oven that is on. I always use pot holders or towels to open the oven door or move a pan off of an burner. I am the oldest of six girls at 25 with my baby sister being 4 so I have had the opportunity to help teach my little sisters about the danger of hot stoves. I used the same approach that my mother used with me. Anytime one of them would get too close to the stove, even if it was off, I would tell them to stay away from it because i...

Social phenomena are behavioral processes that are carried out by human beings. This can include interactions carried out between human beings with their current behaviors influencing the interactions, or past behaviors influencing them (Cacciattolo, 2015). These behaviors are created by society instead of being ingrained in humans naturally. For example, possessing the ability to role one’s tongue is an inherited trait, while brushing one’s teeth in a learned trait. Society doesn’t place much emphasis on people being able to roll their tongues, but brushing our teeth is viewed as essential part of daily hygiene. Other inherited traits include talking, hair color, nose shape, eye color, height, and anything determined solely by genetics. Introversion, extraversion, curiosity, and being adventurous are traits that come naturally to humans, as well. I am more adventurous than my boyfriend, so I am more prone to want to try new things he might consider to be dangerous. For example, on r...