A Report on Human-Computer Interaction in the PayPal Application

This report provides a detailed analysis of the PayPal application from a human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective. It examines various aspects of the application, including its visual and graphical design, ease of use, and overall functionality. The report delves into environmental factors affecting user experience, cognitive load considerations, and human factors influencing user behavior. Furthermore, it assesses the application's accessibility features and adherence to accessibility guidelines. The report offers recommendations for improvements, focusing on changes to enhance user experience, improve accessibility, and optimize methodologies. The analysis covers the application's user environment and concludes with an overall assessment of the application's strengths and weaknesses within the realm of HCI. The report references several sources to support its claims and findings.

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
Overview of Application.................................................................................................2
Visual or Graphical Design.............................................................................................2
Ease of use.......................................................................................................................3
Functionality....................................................................................................................3
Environmental Factors.....................................................................................................3
Cognitive Load................................................................................................................3
Human factors..................................................................................................................4
Accessibility....................................................................................................................4
Recommendation.................................................................................................................5
Changes............................................................................................................................5
Accessibility....................................................................................................................5
Methodologies.................................................................................................................5
User Environment............................................................................................................5
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6
Reference.............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
PayPal is an application which designed in such a way that user from various zones of the
world can easily receive and make payments (Ongtang et al., 2012). In this report various factors
related to PayPal like visual or graphical design, method or ease of using, functionality, factors
related to its environment, cognitive load, human factors and its accessibility has been discussed
in details in the coming pages of the report. A list of recommendation in terms to changes,
accessibility, methodology and its working environment has been provided in the coming pages
of the report.
Discussion
Overview of Application
PayPal is an American application which has an online payment system which support
transfer money on online platform. PayPal is empowered by Braintree which makes it easy to
accept payments at various stores (Ongtang et al., 2012). This application can be considered to
be safest way or method to get paid or to pay through online method. It allows the user to pay
money in various way in which they prefer like through credit cards, bank accounts without
providing details of their financial details to anyone.
Visual or Graphical Design
Login with PayPal is considered to be safe, secure which allows the user to user or
customer to login to into the concerned PayPal account. It is designed in such a way that it is
convenient for different customer, provides simple integration for its users. It provides a simple
experience for its user. User of PayPal always have an information of system with idea of proper

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understanding about the high visibility of the operation of system and provides a value of status
which is generally displayed on the screen of the application within a proper value of time.
Ease of use
PayPal is designed in such that it can provide two services like person to person payment,
providing text while buying goods. The sign process of PayPal is painless one, if a user has
already an account then he or she can easily use it (Trautman, 2015). PayPal present success is
just because of eBay and its promoted it as a valuable method for exchanging money during
online transaction. eBay purchased PayPal for more than 1.4 billion dollars making it the
ultimate method for billing. On the contrary PayPal is not the mandatory way or method for
payment during purchase at eBay while this is considered to be most popular method of
payments just because of its ease of use.
Functionality
Applications are designed in such a way that it can easily offer the user to achieve their
goals and satisfy their needs or expectation. PayPal is designed in such a way that it can easily
give its visibility to its user (Preibusch, 2015). The information regarding the operating system
must be easily displayed. PayPal provides an appropriate match between the system and present
world. PayPal offers colors, menu, flow of user which is mainly designed to tackle situation and
list of its action. With increase in the number of user the demand for quicker methods for
completing task also increases and PayPal is designed to satisfy the needs of the users. There are
generally eight golden rules of website functionality which are visibility of the current status of
the system, providing perfect match between present world and real world, control of user and
feedback regarding it, Consistency and standardization of user of PayPal, prevention of any kind
of error, providing recognition rather than recall, providing flexibility and efficiency of use,

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proper help and documentation. PayPal is designed in such a way that it can easily provide
various languages for real world application. PayPal is designed in such a way that it can provide
the potential errors at a minimum level.
Environmental Factors
PayPal is developed in a way that user can easily interact with each other irrespective of
user location that whether he is library, workplace and home. It provides captcha and sends an
OTP to the user phone at the time of Login. PayPal is designed in such a way that it can provide
demand for less interaction and will ultimately provide navigation at a much faster rate. This can
be easily obtained by making use of abbreviations, keys for proper functioning. PayPal is
designed in such a way that it can easily provide necessary language and concept for user of real
world. PayPal provides information in a logical order and satisfy the expectation of user which
are generally derived from the experience of real world which will ultimately reduce the strain
present in the system and which makes PayPal for easier to use.
Cognitive Load
Cognitive Load theory or CLT can be stated as the quantity of memory capacity which is
needed for processing for a quality of information (Nosrati et al., 2013). With the increase in the
amount of information the cognitive load on the application also increases. The functionality of
this application that is PayPal increases with increase in the amount of information. PayPal is
developed by developers to avoid eye strains. It user interface is so good that it does not cause
strain to user’s eyes.
Human factors
PayPal is designed in such a way that it can easily provide straightforward screen for
navigation which will ultimately provide a large number of features for its users (Hampson,

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2012). Designer or developer of this PayPal application must have proper idea or understanding
regarding the environment of business in which this application will run (Kocabaş & Soyata,
2014). PayPal is designed in such that it can easily satisfy the needs of user and this is achieved
by maintaining a proper balance screen which is packed and screens which require very large
amount of data.
Accessibility
PayPal is developed in such a way that it can easily it obeys the guidelines for
accessibility. It developed in a way that it does not disobey or hamper the guidelines of
accessibility for different web based application (Preibusch et al., 2016). Developers working in
various organization of the world are more focusing to build application which can easily
provide various stages of testing (Bryans, 2014). During it development stage various application
like accessibility checker is used for analyzing the accessibility of this particular application.
PayPal does not follow the accessibility guideline of section 508 of world wide web consortium
(W3C). The ultimate goal is to develop some open standards which mainly ensures long term of
growth of various application. W3C operates under the code of Ethic and profession of conduct.
Recommendation
Changes
PayPal should be designed in such a that it can easily provide instruction or guide to its
user in various language not limiting itself to English only. Developer should try to use and
implement various language to that the user does not have any issue. PayPal should be redesign
in such a way that it can tackle a lot of users in minimum time. Designer and developers of
PayPal should focus on reducing cognitive load by properly maintaining the information of task
with various users which help in exploring the interface. The attention of human is limited and

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user are capable of maintaining five times in a day. So due to this kind of limitation short time
designer of memory should ensure the fact that designers should provide easy recognition and
recalling of information. User from different region of the world does not want any kind
problems and issue which is beyond their level.
Accessibility
Designers of PayPal should try to implement various operation with the idea that it can
easily provide high visibility on various status which is generally displaced. Developers at
PayPal should redesign it such a way that it can tackle increased user which mainly provides less
interaction and navigation at a much faster rate. This can be easily obtained by making use of
abbreviations, keys for porter and other facilities. User of PayPal should be able to customize
itself so that they need is satisfied and frequent action can be done which is generally achieved in
a better way
Methodologies
PayPal should be designed in such installed in various devices of user who are from
different cultural background. Developer should try to implement all the languages so that the
user does not have any issue regarding reading of manuals while installing PayPal into their
device. Developers should have an analysis regarding the requirements of various user and after
that a strategy should be used to obtain those stated needs.
User Environment
PayPal should provide instruction in form of text instead of voice or audio clip so that the
user does not have any issue or problem in receiving it. If important information is conveyed
through text, the user does not have issue regarding this environment. Developers should focus

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on the idea that user of PayPal should have an idea regarding terminology and error message can
be easily understood in a plain method and nothing gets lost in any kind of translation.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be easily stated that the above report is about PayPal
application. This particular application is designed in such a that it can send and receive
payments from different regions of the world. Different factors related to PayPal application like
visual, graphical design, process of using it, functionality, CLT, human factors many other the
factors have been described in details. In the above pages of the report a list of recommendation
in terms to changes, accessibility, methodology and its working environment has been suggested.

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Reference
Bryans, D. (2014). Bitcoin and money laundering: mining for an effective solution. Ind. LJ, 89,
441.
Hampson, N. C. (2012). Hacktivism: A new breed of protest in a networked world. BC Int'l &
Comp. L. Rev., 35, 511.
Kocabaş, Ö., & Soyata, T. (2014). Medical data analytics in the cloud using homomorphic
encryption. Handbook of Research on Cloud Infrastructures for Big Data Analytics, 471.
Nosrati, M., Karimi, R., Makekian, K., & Hariri, M. (2013). PayPal as the most loved payment
system among merchants and buyers in online transactions. World Applied
Programming, 3(9), 396-400.
Ongtang, M., McLaughlin, S., Enck, W., & McDaniel, P. (2012). Semantically rich application‐
centric security in Android. Security and Communication Networks, 5(6), 658-673.
Preibusch, S., Peetz, T., Acar, G., & Berendt, B. (2015, January). Purchase details leaked to
PayPal. In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (pp.
217-226). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Preibusch, S., Peetz, T., Acar, G., & Berendt, B. (2016). Shopping for privacy: Purchase details
leaked to PayPal. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 15, 52-64.
Trautman, L. J. (2015). E-Commerce, Cyber, and Electronic Payment System Risks: Lessons
from PayPal. UC Davis Bus. LJ, 16, 261.

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