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How can I evaluate a computerized device or a software application in the HCI field to the relation with these theories such as: "Senses (Visual, Auditory, Haptic) and cognition (short term and long term memory)" and based on the context where the device is used? Any help or advice is appreciated.

MackM
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Mr blue
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  • @Mr blue: it's possible that this question makes sense to those with an HCI background, but my gut tells me it doesn't. Can you elaborate on your question? – Michael Petrotta Apr 10 '10 at 22:46
  • I wish I could, but even I have the same feelings as you do! This is a research based report but unfortunately the lecturer doesn't provide any detailed explanation or help!!! I am kind of confused what is it he wants from us to do. HCI also is not my background but I am doing it because it wasn’t any other paper available I could take for this semester. – Mr blue Apr 10 '10 at 22:56
  • Have you talked with your instructor, or a teaching assistant? That would be the standard next step. – Michael Petrotta Apr 10 '10 at 23:22
  • I have spoken to the lecturer but he is not doing any help just repeating the same thing over and over again and also we dont have a teaching assistant. Anyway thanks. – Mr blue Apr 10 '10 at 23:39
  • The English in the question is not good which doesn't help to understand the meaning. But I am sure you can scholar.google a lot of information on these subjects. (Haptic is touch, if anyone did not know) – NomeN Apr 11 '10 at 11:36

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My guess would be that the senses part would be covered by:

  • how pleasing is the device/software.
  • how real is the application.

and following from that:

  • immersion

Virtual reality is a big thing in the HCI world. Fire fighters, pilots, the army etc etc use virtual worlds to do more and more of their training, it would be important for them to actually feel like they are there so they react more naturally.

What I can think of for short term and long term cognition:

  • menu sizes.
  • categorization.
  • how many clicks does it take to do X.

These all help a user to remember how to achieve task X and where it was located in the software. (I guess that's all long term...)

I hope this inspires you a bit. Go to http://scholar.google.com/ and find some papers on the subjects, at the very least these papers will explain how they evaluate what they are testing, if you can't find a paper that discusses the evaluation techniques themselves.

Hint: If you are studying at a university the university usually has already paid for full access to the papers. Access scholar.google from a computer at university or use a vpn to connect through your university. Direct links to the papers are located on the right of the search result. As a bonus you can configure scholar to add a link with the bibTeX information!

The first result I got was a chapter of a book on user interfaces, which is about testing the user interface. Happy hunting!

NomeN
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There are a set of heuristics that, at least from my knowledge, have collectively become an industry standard method for evaluating interfaces. They were developed by Jakob Nielsen and can be found here:

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

Usually when someone says they are performing a "Heuristic Evaluation" or an "Expert Evaluation" that means they are basing it off of these 10 criteria. It's possible your professor is looking for something along these lines. I had a very similar experience in two courses I took recently, I had to write papers evaluating several interfaces on Nielsen's Heuristics.

A couple other useful links:

http://www.westendweb.com/usability/02heuristics.htm

http://www.morebusiness.com/getting_started/website/d913059671.brc

http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/he-checklist.html

Hope this helps, good luck!

Mark Hazlewood
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