Usability Engineering PDF Download

Author: Mary Beth Rosson
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 1558607129
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Usability engineering is about designing products that are easy to use. This text provides an introduction to human computer interaction principles, and how to apply them in ways that make software and hardware more effective and easier to use.

Author: Clarisse Sieckenius De Souza
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262042208
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
A theory of HCI that uses concepts from semiotics and computer science to focus on the communication between designers and users during interaction. In The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction, Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza proposes an account of HCI that draws on concepts from semiotics and computer science to investigate the relationship between user and designer. Semiotics is the study of signs, and the essence of semiotic engineering is the communication between designers and users at interaction time; designers must somehow be present in the interface to tell users how to use the signs that make up a system or program. This approach, which builds on--but goes further than--the currently dominant user-centered approach, allows designers to communicate their overall vision and therefore helps users understand designs--rather than simply which icon to click. According to de Souza's account, both designers and users are interlocutors in an overall communication process that takes place through an interface of words, graphics, and behavior. Designers must tell users what they mean by the artifact they have created, and users must understand and respond to what they are being told. By coupling semiotic theory and engineering, de Souza's approach to HCI design encompasses the principles, the materials, the processes, and the possibilities for producing meaningful interactive computer system discourse and achieves a broader perspective than cognitive, ethnographic, or ergonomic approaches. De Souza begins with a theoretical overview and detailed exposition of the semiotic engineering account of HCI. She then shows how this approach can be applied specifically to HCI evaluation and design of online help systems, customization and end-user programming, and multiuser applications. Finally, she reflects on the potential and opportunities for research in semiotic engineering.

Author: Murray R. Little
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3540453482
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The papers collected here are those selected for presentation at the Eighth IFIP Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction (EHCI 2001) held in Toronto, Canada in May 2001. The conference is organized by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.7 (13.4) for Interface User Engineering, Rick Kazman being the conference chair, Nicholas Graham and Philippe Palanque being the chairs of the program committee. The conference was co-located with ICSE 2001 and co-sponsored by ACM. The aim of the IFIP working group is to investigate the nature, concepts, and construction of user interfaces for software systems. The group's scope is: • to develop user interfaces based on knowledge of system and user behavior; • to develop frameworks for reasoning about interactive systems; and • to develop engineering models for user interfaces. Every three years, the working group holds a working conference. The Seventh one was held September 14-18 1998 in Heraklion, Greece. This year, we innovated by organizing a regular conference held over three days.

Author: Ahmed Seffah
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402041136
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Human-CenteredSoftwareEngineering: BridgingHCI,UsabilityandSoftwareEngineering From its beginning in the 1980’s, the ?eld of human-computer interaction (HCI) has beende?nedasamultidisciplinaryarena. BythisImeanthattherehas beenanexplicit recognition that distinct skills and perspectives are required to make the whole effort of designing usable computer systems work well. Thus people with backgrounds in Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) joined with people with ba- grounds in various behavioral science disciplines (e. g. , cognitive and social psych- ogy, anthropology)inaneffortwhereallperspectiveswereseenasessentialtocreating usable systems. But while the ?eld of HCI brings individuals with many background disciplines together to discuss a common goal - the development of useful, usable, satisfying systems - the form of the collaboration remains unclear. Are we striving to coordinate the varied activities in system development, or are we seeking a richer collaborative framework? In coordination, Usability and SE skills can remain quite distinct and while the activities of each group might be critical to the success of a project, we need only insure that critical results are provided at appropriate points in the development cycle. Communication by one group to the other during an activity might be seen as only minimally necessary. In collaboration, there is a sense that each group can learn something about its own methods and processes through a close pa- nership with the other. Communication during the process of gathering information from target users of a system by usability professionals would not be seen as so- thing that gets in the way of the essential work of software engineering professionals.

Author: M.G. Helander
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1483295133
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 1202

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Book Description
This Handbook is concerned with principles of human factors engineering for design of the human-computer interface. It has both academic and practical purposes; it summarizes the research and provides recommendations for how the information can be used by designers of computer systems. The articles are written primarily for the professional from another discipline who is seeking an understanding of human-computer interaction, and secondarily as a reference book for the professional in the area, and should particularly serve the following: computer scientists, human factors engineers, designers and design engineers, cognitive scientists and experimental psychologists, systems engineers, managers and executives working with systems development. The work consists of 52 chapters by 73 authors and is organized into seven sections. In the first section, the cognitive and information-processing aspects of HCI are summarized. The following group of papers deals with design principles for software and hardware. The third section is devoted to differences in performance between different users, and computer-aided training and principles for design of effective manuals. The next part presents important applications: text editors and systems for information retrieval, as well as issues in computer-aided engineering, drawing and design, and robotics. The fifth section introduces methods for designing the user interface. The following section examines those issues in the AI field that are currently of greatest interest to designers and human factors specialists, including such problems as natural language interface and methods for knowledge acquisition. The last section includes social aspects in computer usage, the impact on work organizations and work at home.

Author: Manuel Imaz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
How recent research in cognitive science offers new ways to understand the interaction of people and computers and develops a new literacy for well-informed, sensitive software design. The evolution of the concept of mind in cognitive science over the past 25 years creates new ways to think about the interaction of people and computers. New ideas about embodiment, metaphor as a fundamental cognitive process, and conceptual integration--a blending of older concepts that gives rise to new, emergent properties--have become increasingly important in software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). If once computing was based on algorithms, mathematical theories, and formal notations, now the use of stories, metaphors, and blends can contribute to well-informed, sensitive software design. In Designing with Blends, Manuel Imaz and David Benyon show how these new metaphors and concepts of mind allow us to discover new aspects of HCI-SE. After 60 years, digital technology has come of age, but software design has not kept pace with technological sophistication; people struggle to understand and use their computers, cameras, phones, and other devices. Imaz and Benyon argue that the dominance of digital media in our lives demands changes in HCI-SE based on advances in cognitive science. The idea of embodied cognition, they contend, can change the way we approach design by emphasizing the figurative nature of interaction. Imaz and Benyon offer both theoretical grounding and practical examples that illustrate the advantages of applying cognitive concepts to software design. A new view of cognition, they argue, will develop a cognitive literacy in software and interaction design that helps designers understand the opportunities of digital technology and provides people with a more satisfying interactive experience.

Author: Volkmar Pipek
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 364200427X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Work practices and organizational processes vary widely and evolve constantly. The technological infrastructure has to follow, allowing or even supporting these changes. Traditional approaches to software engineering reach their limits whenever the full spectrum of user requirements cannot be anticipated or the frequency of changes makes software reengineering cycles too clumsy to address all the needs of a specific field of application. Moreover, the increasing importance of ‘infrastructural’ aspects, particularly the mutual dependencies between technologies, usages, and domain competencies, calls for a differentiation of roles beyond the classical user–designer dichotomy. End user development (EUD) addresses these issues by offering lightweight, use-time support which allows users to configure, adapt, and evolve their software by themselves. EUD is understood as a set of methods, techniques, and tools that allow users of software systems who are acting as non-professional software developers to 1 create, modify, or extend a software artifact. While programming activities by non-professional actors are an essential focus, EUD also investigates related activities such as collective understanding and sense-making of use problems and solutions, the interaction among end users with regard to the introduction and diffusion of new configurations, or delegation patterns that may also partly involve professional designers.

Author: Ahmed Seffah
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1848009070
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Activity theory is a way of describing and characterizing the structure of human - tivity of all kinds. First introduced by Russian psychologists Rubinshtein, Leontiev, and Vigotsky in the early part of the last century, activity theory has more recently gained increasing attention among interaction designers and others in the hum- computer interaction and usability communities (see, for example, Gay and H- brooke, 2004). Interest was given a signi?cant boost when Donald Norman suggested activity-theory and activity-centered design as antidotes to some of the putative ills of “human-centered design” (Norman, 2005). Norman, who has been credited with coining the phrase “user-centered design,” suggested that too much attention focused on human users may be harmful, that to design better tools designers need to focus not so much on users as on the activities in which users are engaged and the tasks they seek to perform within those activities. Although many researchers and practitioners claim to have used or been in?uenced by activity theory in their work (see, for example, Nardi, 1996), it is often dif?cult to trace precisely where or how the results have actually been shaped by activity theory. Inmanycases, evendetailedcasestudiesreportresultsthatseemonlydistantlyrelated, if at all, to the use of activity theory. Contributing to the lack of precise and traceable impact is that activity theory, - spite its name, is not truly a formal and proper theory.

Author: Julie A. Jacko
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3540731059
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 1243

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Book Description
Here is the first of a four-volume set that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2007, held in Beijing, China, jointly with eight other thematically similar conferences. It covers interaction design: theoretical issues, methods, techniques and practice; usability and evaluation methods and tools; understanding users and contexts of use; and models and patterns in HCI.

Author: Stuart K. Card
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 135140945X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Defines the psychology of human-computer interaction, showing how to span the gap between science & application. Studies the behavior of users in interacting with computer systems.