Participant observation

PROCESS AND PRACTICE
You are in a foreign country that´s culture is far more different then yours and you are trying hard to do things according to the "culture´s user guide" but somehow its not working out for you. Why? There are things you can write down that other people can learn  by processing the information but there are also so called unwritten laws or just ways of behaving that you cant´t learn my reading. Those things can only be learned through observation and practice.

The best is the one who has has done it the longest. Second best is who sat next to the first one.

HACKS
Use hacks that people use to complete their tasks. For example someone has put duck tape on a button that is being used for the wrong reasons. You can use those hacks to redesign. So keep your eyes open.

ERRORS
Scott mentions two kinds of errors: slips and mistakes.

A slip: you know exactly how to perform a task but you just slipped by accident. For example you try to open a window but you somehow miss grabbing the handle. You slipped.

A mistake: you have totally other mental model for solving a task and its not the "right" one. Users need extra signs to get them through  stuff.

HCI History

Vannevar Bush & Memex (1945)

Bush was the man who introduced the idea of storing information (books, records and communications) into a system that can be accessed afterwards for further reading. In his vision this kind of system would have been in some way linkable. You could also add your comments and notes to different microfilm frames in the sequence.

Ivan Sutherland & Sketchpad (1963)

Inspired from Memex Ivan Sutherland to build worlds first graphical user interface.

Douglas Engelbart and the first computer mouse (1968)

Invented the first computer mouse.

Alan Kay and Dynabook (1968)

"“The best way to predict the future is to invent it."  

Dynabook was the forefather for laptops and tablets. At first it´s idea was to give children access to digital media

He was part of creating the theory about model human processor. This theory gave the scientists a chance to actually predict and design user interfaces for people.

Those success stories bring out also the core values of the given course.

You design for the people.

Prototyping is essential and tractable, also for future technologies.                              Compare.

Design improves through iterations.

Theories (principles) help to inspire designs.

Table of context

I. INTRODUCTION

 History of HCI, Part 1
 History of HCI, Part 2

II. DISCOVERY

 Participant Observation
 Interviewing
 Other Strategies

III. USER-CENTERED DESIGN

 Design for People
 Design as Simulated Annealing
 Goals and Objective Functions
 Prototyping as Communication

IV. PROTOTYPING

 Functional Fixation and Parallel Prototyping
 Conformity v. Novelty
 Brainstorming
 Wizard of Oz

V. HEURISTIC EVALUATION

 Some Heuristics
 How and Why

VI. DIRECT MANIPULATION

 The Gulf of Execution and The Gulf of Evaluation
 Map Interface Controls
 Command Line versus GUI

VII. REPRESENTATION MATTERS

 Good Representation
 Representational Shifts
 Attention, Stress, and Risk

VIII. VISUAL DESIGN

 Type Matters, Part 1
 Type Matters, Part 2
 Matching Semantics and Visual Layout

IX. INFORMATION DESIGN

 Interlaced Browsing and Navigation
 Design for Glanceability
 Color
 Rating Scales and Graphs

X. EVALUATING DESIGNS

 Evaluation Strategies
 Designing User Studies
 Participants and Tasks
 Chi-Square Test and Probability

XI. CONDUCTING USER STUDY

 Goals, Tasks, and Details
 Capturing Results and Recruiting
 Setting Up, Debriefing, and Summarizing Results
 Introducing Controlled Web Experiments

XII. COLLABORATION ON THE WEB

 Designing Software for Collaboration
 Collocation versus Remote, Part 1
 Collocation versus Remote, Part 2
 Wisdom of the Crowds
 Challenges

The Beginning

Some weeks ago I got an e-mail which reminded me about a course in which I had enrolled myself earlier this year. At first  I didn´t remember anything about that enrollment but after visiting the page I had the "ahhaa" moment. "Coursera" is a cool environment where professors all over the world lecture you in their free online courses. So within 10 minutes  I surfed the page and found an excellent new course for myself :

Human-Computer Interaction

Scott Klemmer

During this year I have been interested in that topic and now I have the opportunity to attend a course which is held by Stanford University professor. Yeah STANFORD :). I got SO excited. At that moment I knew I want to give everything from myself to perform very good. I started to think about preparation for the cousre but I didn´t really know how or where to begin.

A week later I decided to go through all my bookmarks and really build some structure into them. During the cleaning session I found another webpage full of lectures: Introduction to Human Computer Interaction Design and for my biggest surprise again the author is Scott Klammer.

Now I have a plan.

• » First I´m going to watch all the introduction lectures.
• » Second I´m going to write down all important facts I learn there.
• » Third I´m gonna be awesome at the real course which starts at 25.09.2012.