Methodological development

Book description: Human-Computer Interaction draws on the fields of computer science, psychology, cognitive science, and organisational and social sciences in order to understand how people use and experience interactive technology. Until now, researchers have been forced to return to the individual subjects to learn about research methods and how to adapt them to the particular challenges of HCI. This is the first book to provide a single resource through which a range of commonly used research methods in HCI are introduced. Chapters are authored by internationally leading HCI researchers who use examples from their own work to illustrate how the methods apply in an HCI context. Each chapter also contains key references to help researchers find out more about each method as it has been used in HCI. Topics covered include experimental design, use of eyetracking, qualitative research methods, cognitive modelling, how to develop new methodologies and writing up your research

Learner-Centred Design and Evaluation of Web-Based E-Learning Environments

Designing E-learning is a combination of pedagogical design, usability and information architecture. E-learning environments should have intuitive interfaces and clear information design, allowing learners to focus on learning. However, there is often a mismatch between what an on-line educator thinks the learner would learn, and what a learner thinks he will, and then has learned from the course. In addition, there is sometimes a mismatch between how an educator wants to teach and what is represented on the interface by the instructional designers. Such mismatches affect the learner's experience and his motivation for E-learning. In this paper, we will first discuss the source and nature of these mismatches. Next, we will discuss whether usability techniques in the HCI literature are appropriate for evaluating E-learning environments for the learner experience. We will then propose a combination of requirements elicitation and usability techniques for learner-centred design and evaluation of Web-based E-learning environments. The proposed methodology is based on our experience of conducting empirical studies for evaluating user-system interactions in E-Commerce contexts

Designing as Construction of Representations: A Dynamic Viewpoint in Cognitive Design Research

This article presents a cognitively oriented viewpoint on design. It focuses on cognitive, dynamic aspects of real design, i.e., the actual cognitive activity implemented by designers during their work on professional design projects. Rather than conceiving de-signing as problem solving - Simon's symbolic information processing (SIP) approach - or as a reflective practice or some other form of situated activity - the situativity (SIT) approach - we consider that, from a cognitive viewpoint, designing is most appropriately characterised as a construction of representations. After a critical discussion of the SIP and SIT approaches to design, we present our view-point. This presentation concerns the evolving nature of representations regarding levels of abstraction and degrees of precision, the function of external representations, and specific qualities of representation in collective design. Designing is described at three levels: the organisation of the activity, its strategies, and its design-representation construction activities (different ways to generate, trans-form, and evaluate representations). Even if we adopt a "generic design" stance, we claim that design can take different forms depending on the nature of the artefact, and we propose some candidates for dimensions that allow a distinction to be made between these forms of design. We discuss the potential specificity of HCI design, and the lack of cognitive design research occupied with the quality of design. We close our discussion of representational structures and activities by an outline of some directions regarding their functional linkages

A qualititative approach to HCI research

Whilst science has a strong reliance on quantitative and experimental methods, there are many complex, socially based phenomena in HCI that cannot be easily quantified or experimentally manipulated or, for that matter, ethically researched with experiments. For example, the role of privacy in HCI is not obviously reduced to numbers and it would not be appropriate to limit a person's privacy in the name of research. In addition, technology is rapidly changing – just think of developments in mobile devices, tangible interfaces and so on – making it harder to abstract technology from the context of use if we are to study it effectively. Developments such as mediated social networking and the dispersal of technologies in ubiquitous computing also loosen the connection between technologies and work tasks that were the traditional cornerstone of HCI. Instead, complex interactions between technologies and ways of life are coming to the fore. Consequently, we frequently find that we do not know what the real HCI issues are before we start our research. This makes it hard, if not actually impossible, to define the variables necessary to do quantitative research, (see Chapter 2). Within HCI, there is also the recognition that the focus on tasks is not enough to design and implement an effective system. There is also a growing need to understand how usability issues are subjectively and collectively experienced and perceived by different user groups (Pace, 2004; Razavim and Iverson, 2006). This means identifying the users' emotional and social drives and perspectives; their motivations, expectations, trust, identity, social norms and so on. It also means relating these concepts to work practices, communities and organisational social structures as well as organisational, economic and political drivers. These issues are increasingly needed in the design, development and implementation of systems to be understood both in isolation and as a part of the whole. HCI researchers are therefore turning to more qualitative methods in order to deliver the research results that HCI needs.With qualitative research, the emphasis is not on measuring and producing numbers but instead on understanding the qualities of a particular technology and how people use it in their lives, how they think about it and how they feel about it. There are many varied approaches to qualitative research within the social sciences depending on what is being studied, how it can be studied and what the goals of the research are.Within HCI, though, grounded theory has been found to provide good insights that address well the issues raised above (Pace, 2004; Adams, Blandford and Lunt, 2005; Razavim and Iverson, 2006). The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of how grounded theory works as a method. Quantitative research methods adopt measuring instruments and experimental manipulations that can be repeated by any researcher (at least in principle) and every effort is made to reduce the influence of the researcher on the researched, which is regarded as a source of bias or error. In contrast, in qualitative research, where the goal is understanding rather than measuring and manipulating, the subjectivity of the researcher is an essential part of the production of an interpretation. The chapter therefore discusses how the influence of the researcher can be ameliorated through the grounded theory methodology whilst also acknowledging the subjective input of the researcher through reflexivity. The chapter also presents a case study of how grounded theory was used in practice to study people's use and understanding of computer passwords and related security

Where Theory meets Practice: A Case for an Activity Theory based Methodology to guide Computer System Design

Computer system developers are increasingly being challenged to develop tools that are not only usable, but more importantly useful in the sense of assisting the user to achieve desired goals. This requirement has highlighted the importance of accounting for the social and cultural issues of the computer tool user when developing a computer system. Activity Theory (AT) has emerged as a suitable framework for analysing social and cultural issues because it provides a language to describe what people do in context. However, many computer system developers have failed to benefit from this insight mainly due to lack of established methods to operationalise ideas from this framework for the purpose of guiding the design process. This paper proposes a methodology developed to direct the application of a version of AT based on Engeström’s (1987) conceptualisation in order to support requirements capture during computer system design