HCI Project: Defining and Motivating Scope for User Interface Analysis

This project focuses on defining and motivating the scope of a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) project. The assignment requires students to develop an argument emphasizing the timeliness, importance, and general interest of their chosen topic, supported by evidence from various sources, including the internet and HCI literature. The project emphasizes the importance of clearly defining the scope, distinguishing the chosen topic from related areas, and highlighting the features crucial to the case, considering factors such as user knowledge levels and task complexity. The assignment also involves analyzing potential usability issues, identifying relevant qualities of interaction, and structuring the introduction and background section, including outlining current trends, identifying the topic, and describing expected usability issues. The project includes a practical application, such as usability testing of a website like Nutmeg.com and designing a mobile app, aiming to improve user experience and business outcomes. The project emphasizes a shift in perspective from a software engineer to a user interaction designer, focusing on the user's viewpoint and interaction.

Defining and Motivating a Scope
Develop an argument that claims it is timely, important and of general interest to evaluate your
chosen topic. Gather evidence from e.g. the Internet, and the ux literature e.g. hcibib.org and
acm.org/dl to support your argument.
Ask workshop helpers to suggest keywords for your searches, or to suggest kinds of literature that
might be relevant.
Your argument is a construction – you need to work out how claims link together, and how other
people’s work is relevant.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What makes my topic important?
The strongest argument is to use facts and figures about real world, business trends to claim all of
the following:
 Industrial Beneficiary: a specific real company needs to improve ease of use to make their
business more profitably, create more value for their customers.
 General interest: your problem is related to many other problems. For example,
information seeking is a common task, which occurs during many different contexts, from
shopping, to scholarly research/discover, and general fact-finding. Your work will be
relevant to many other contexts, though not directly applicable, of course. Word, excel,
Visual Studio, KU library, M&S website all have filtering controls.
 Scale: your problem is large in scale, in terms of usage/number of users worldwide e.g.
Google search engine results page.
 Innovation: your topic is still developing, so its actual interest, importance and beneficiaries
are likely to be more than they are now e.g. any application for iPad
Good definitions of scope
 Clearly distinguish your topic, from other possible topics it could have been confused with.
For example, you are concerned with:
o users are novice programmers only, not experts;
o searching for multimedia information resources, not just journal articles.
 Highlight the features of your topic that are particularly important in your case. For
example level of user knowledge (novice vs expert) is often important for advanced,
technical applications, such as database management tools. In contrast, for self-service
photo booths, technical knowledge of photography is not so important – in the photo-booth
case, the expectations of the photobooth process is probably most important.

 Summarises and locates this project, without going into great detail (which pre-empts the
analysis stage)
Q: What kind of ‘usability’ issue would you expect to encounter with <insert
your topic>?
Topic Kind of Issue
Novice users attempting complex tasks Interface is unclear , ‘cluttered’, and unhelpful
Desk top applications for experienced workers Efficiency of layout, appropriate component
selection; learnability/explorability;
memorability
Mobile applications Convenient access to most important
functionality; fit with social practices
(acceptability)
Web sites for general public Does not appeal to, or meet expectations of,
some market segments; not as good as a
competitor site;
Multimodal, multimedia applications Flexibility (support for various patterns of use)
Groupware Implications for co-ordination and patterns of
communication within the group
When you inspect the interface yourself, and interview users about the problems that they have
encountered, do the issues identified cluster together? can they be grouped together in any way?
What qualities of interaction and effectiveness criteria are particularly relevant to your problem? ...
Learnability? Efficiency? Engagement? What is important to your users? What kind of users are you
concerned with? What kind of tasks do they perform?
Q: How should I structure the Introduction & Background section?
There is no single ‘universally best’ answer – it reflects your topic and they are all different in
important ways.
Section Example
Current Trends/Situation. Outline real world
business and technology developments concerning
market share, popularity, availability, sophistication.
Emerging markets, dominant trading positions, waves
of innovation.)
“Following many mis-selling scams, the general
public are increasingly buying stocks and bonds
directly over the Internet rather than through
intermediaries, such as Personal Financial
Advisers. ….. “
<Add References business growth rates, identify
companies>
Identify your topic - the types of users, tasks, contexts
of use, software and hardware, and
Nutmeg.com lets users plan their life, such as
setting a date at which to retire, and then

suggests portfolios of investments. If the user
likes the proposal, he or she can register and
start saving. Anybody can buy a Nutmeg product
through the website, but most retail investors
are over 40 yrs old. Investments are typically
thought about and discussed within the family,
though often one user leads the others.
Outline the kinds of usability issues you expect to
encounter
How will the Ux benefit users and the business?
Why would other Ux practitioners be interested in
your project?
“…..:
i. Confusion, and poor decisions: software
empowers people, but they have no
education in investments. They do not
understand the information displayed
and foolishly take big risks, when the
intended to be cautious
ii. ‘Fat finger’ events / slips: it is easy to
type ‘£9000’ when you meant to type
‘£90.00’
iii. ‘Dis-engagement’: the task is so difficult,
many users will give up before
completing it”
<Give examples from pages on Nutmeg>
If the Ux was better, more of current audience
would stay on site, and successfully attain their
life goals. Currently, Nutmeg has 5,000 users –
this figure could rise to 10,000 . If there was a
mobile app, users would be less likely to
abandon tasks half-way through. Many other
websites are competing with Nutmeg …..
<Add references to business strategies>
Similar Ux issues have been encountered
elsewhere. For example, many software
development tools have user interfaces that
provide powerful functionality to users, many of
whom do not have much relevant
education.<Add references to descriptions of
similar issues elsewhere. >
Overall Aims (to respond to the needs in the
context you have identified, what activities are you
going to do in this coursework)
“To address these issues, I am going to usability
test Nutmeg.com, and then design a mobile app
that focusses on sharing and discussing
proposals with others.”
Literature Review (previous related work) “These resources will help me in specific ways
….”
<Add more references, and say how they will
help you>
Good ‘trends’ paragraphs
 Use facts and figures to support the argument. Internet search, using keywords such
as, “predicted growth in ...“, “number of users of ..... in 2015” “convergence of ....”,
“miniaturisation of ....” “popularity of ...”

 Clearly relate business and technological changes to implications for the user interface and
ease of use. For example, more widespread use of digital photography, means not just more
users of image editing software (such as photoshop or gimp etc), but more ‘enthusiast’ users
with no education or training in photography or post-production.
How do I get the Introduction and Background absolutely straight? It feels untidy.
1. Write 2 sides as best you can. Then summarise the 2 sides in 10 lines. Work on the 10 lines.
Then go back to the 2 sides – has the 2 sides carried out everything the 10 lines said it
would?
2. Write 2 sides, then leave it alone for a few days. Then re-read is with fresh eyes. List the
problems you now see, and then fix them all.
Common mistakes defining scope
 Forgetting to define one of the following:
o The main types of user.
o The main tasks they are performing.
o The main contexts of use.
o The main technologies that are used.
o The effectiveness criteria.
 Focussing upon the implementation of functionality, rather than usability, learnability,
satisfaction and the fit with social practices. This coursework should involve a change in
perspective from a software engineer (who focuses upon how the software is behaving
‘under the hood’) to a user interaction designer (who focuses upon how the interaction is
conducted from the user’s point of view.
 Failing to expand upon the obvious, add valuable new information. For example, “I am going
to evaluate ease of use ....” - that is in the coursework handout. Every HCI coursework is
about ease of use to some extent, or it is off-topic.
 Identifying particular issues in terms of your instance only, not general issues, which are
exemplified by your instance