HCI Foundations
This concept focuses on creating interactive products that support how people communicate and interact effectively, practically, and enjoyably.
Interaction Design
Automatically unlocking your familiar phone requires little conscious thought, while figuring out unfamiliar software requires deliberate thinking. Name the two types of cognition.
Experiential/fast cognition and reflective/slow cognition
Put these four stages in order: Deliver, Discover, Develop, Define.
Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver
“Users will want voice control” is one of these. “Adding voice control will reduce task-completion time” is the other. Identify which is a claim and which is an assumption.
Assumption; claim
Selecting “Print,” clicking “Submit,” or telling a smart speaker “Turn off the lights” primarily exemplifies which interaction type?
Instructing
Effectiveness, efficiency, safety, utility, learnability, memorability, and satisfaction fall into one category of goals, while feelings such as enjoyment, desirability, and emotional response fall into another. Name BOTH categories.
Usability goals and User Experience (UX) goals
A user has to choose among 75 nearly identical subscription plans, with no useful way to compare them. Which cognitive process is being most directly challenged?
Problem-solving / decision-making
A design team has completed user research and now reframes the original problem based on what it learned. Which of the 4Ds is this?
Define
Deciding what users should be able to do and how the system is conceptually organized belongs to this type of design; choosing colors, sounds, icons, and menus belongs to this other type.
Conceptual design; concrete design
A customer interacts with an AI assistant by asking questions and receiving follow-up questions during a dialogue.
Conversing
A user successfully completes checkout, but it takes 17 unnecessary steps. Which usability goal is most directly weakened?
Efficiency
An interface displays users' saved addresses instead of requiring them to remember and type the address from memory. Which design implication of the cognitive aspect of memory does this use?
Recognition rather than recall
User involvement helps keep expectations realistic and can make stakeholders feel that they contributed to and support the product. Name these two benefits.
Expectation management and ownership
This is a high-level description of how a system is organized and operates, including concepts, relationships among concepts, metaphors/analogies, and mappings to the intended experience.
Conceptual model
Dragging a digital file into a folder and immediately seeing it move is an example of which interaction type?
Manipulating
A form prevents users from selecting “Submit” until all required fields have been completed. Which design principle is being used?
Constraints
A user knows they want to mute notifications but cannot find the setting. Later, they press “Save” but cannot tell whether the system saved the change. Name the TWO gulfs and specify which applies to which.
Gulf of Execution; Gulf of Evaluation
Name the three principles of a people-centered approach.
Early focus on users and tasks; empirical measurement; iterative design
The desktop, folder, trash can, and shopping cart borrow familiar real-world ideas to help people understand digital systems. What are these called, and what is their purpose?
Interface metaphors; they use familiar concepts to help users understand an unfamiliar system or interaction
Walking through a VR museum is one type of interaction. A smartwatch that sends an alert and asks you whether to stand is another. Name BOTH.
Exploring; Responding
A product is designed from the beginning to support a broad range of people. A separate screen reader helps someone access digital content. Name the two approaches represented.
Inclusive design and assistive technology
Mental models, information processing, and the Gulfs of Execution/Evaluation belong to one family of cognitive frameworks. Distributed cognition and external cognition are distinct. Name the two families.
Internal frameworks and external frameworks
Name the four core interaction-design activities. Which one evaluates usability and user experience but does not replace technical quality assurance or testing?
Discovering requirements; designing alternatives; prototyping; evaluation. Evaluation is the last part.
Match the concepts: a broad worldview; an imagined future; a problem to overcome; an explanation of why something occurs; and a structure for organizing analysis/design.
Paradigm; vision; challenge; theory; framework
Name the three major characteristics associated with direct manipulation/direct interaction.
Continuous representation; rapid/reversible incremental actions with immediate feedback; physical actions/button pressing rather than complex command syntax