ES321 EXERCISE 1

Exercise 1

Observe skilled and novice operators in a familiar domain: for example, touch and 'hunt-and-peck' typists, expert and novice game players, or expert and novice users of a computer application. What differences can you discern between their behaviors?

                Technology brings about the need to learn and acquire new things. And as technology grow and develop, the more human requires to get hold of these new and innovative things. Human behavior is said to be complex but nonetheless, random. The growth of technology largely affects the human behavior; and thus human behavior also affects the growth of technology. However, the way that human deals and interacts with technology also depends on the training and the environment he receives and encounters. 

At some point, not all people accept and understand quickly the changes in technology. Being skilled and a beginner in using modern technology really matters on how it is regularly used and practice. There is definitely a difference between the two in applying technology. Let’s take for example some scenarios stated below:

·         Touch and ‘hunt-and-peck’ typist

These individuals are obviously doing the act of typing, however they differ on how fast or how they can type accurately and conditionally. Touch typists are often called professional typists. They keep their eyes on the source copy at all times uses their ten fingers and avoid looking at the keyboard when typing. They often do their typing works fast and accurate and lessens the time of work. However, hunt-and-peck typists also known as search and peck typist are the contrast of touch typists. They look at the keyboard and tap the keys with only a few fingers (sometimes only two fingers).  They are clearly much slower than expert typists. Usually, they are unable to focus on their works since they always look on the keyboard while typing. This affects the quality of their work. Though there can be accuracy in their outputs, it increases the time of work and thus sometimes slows the time of completion of an output.

·         Expert and novice game players

Differentiating Expert players against Novice players, as expected, these Expert players do have wide knowledge about a specific game. Since novice players are beginners, they are often more on explorations and generating questions. Looking back at their performance, Expert players do have several advantages especially in experience unlike the novice players. Now, taking some tactical games, Expert players can generate certain tactics towards the game and since Novice players are still learners they usually discover these tactics through and when they experienced it.

                Practice makes perfect, that what they say. In order for these novices to become experts, they should strive hard to commit the power over the technology. Experience still plays a vital role, for it encompasses learning and the creation of facts and ideas.

ES321 EXERCISE 4

Exercise 4

Can you think of any instances in which the 'noun-verb' guideline for operations, as suggested in the Apple human interface guidelines for the Desktop Interface, would be violated? Suggest other abstract guidelines or principles besides consistency which support your example. (Hint: Think about moving files around on the Desktop.)

The noun-verb guideline suggests that we can view all operations that the user will perform as being composed of an action (the verb) acting with one argument (the noun). In the case of moving a file (or copying, for that matter), the action (move or copy) requires more than one argument. The way the move operation is performed requires the user first to select the icon for the file to be moved and then to indicate the move operation implicitly by dragging the selected icon to the destination folder. The nouns in this dialogue are the file to be moved and the destination folder. The verb is the move operation. The natural way to express this is in the order noun-verb-noun. Strictly speaking, in order to stick with the noun-verb guideline, we would have to indicate both the target file and the destination folder before indicating the move operation. That would be consistent, relative to input expression, with most other commands on the desktop. However, some principles of direct manipulation and familiarity to the user are more important. Moving files by dragging them on the desktop is very similar to the way we can pick up any object in the physical world and move it to its new location. And the dragging operation is incremental and easily recoverable; moving to one place can be undone within the same operation since the dragging can continue until the file is released.

The file-moving example is a slightly contrived one, because some could argue that there is no violation of the noun-verb guideline (hence, moving is still consistent with respect to input expression) because the verb is 'move to destination folder'. Perhaps a better example is a command to search a file system for files matching some specification. Here, the action is to do the qualified search and the argument or noun is the set of folders or volumes of the system that you want searched. Typically, this kind of operation is defined by some dialog box that allows the user to indicate in any order the specifics of the operation (the search parameters) and the folders or volumes to search. Once this unordered dialog is complete, the user then indicates that it is OK for the system to perform the operation. This kind of form-filling dialog subscribes to neither the noun-verb or verb-noun guideline; the order is more flexible for the user than consistent.

Reference:
http://www.hcibook.com/hcibook/downloads/pdf/exercises.pdf

ES321 EXERCISE 3

Exercise 3

What influence does the social environment in which you work have on your interaction with the computer? What effect does the organization (commercial or academic) to which you belong have on the interaction?

Talking about the social environment I am with, the presence and usage of the technology specially computers is widely in common. The influence of computer gaming is one of the major reasons of the Human-Computer interaction, and also, these interactions are present due to the profession i had chosen.
Through the extensive usage of this technology, organizations whether commercial nor academic had grown popular. Academic organizations had been requiring the knowledge about computers, which includes the usage of these devices to meet certain school requirements. These organizations had contributed a lot on the interaction, some of its effects are addiction, knowledge and the growth of technology.

ES321 EXERCISE 2

 Exercise 2

Pick a couple of computer input devices that you are aware of (joystick, light pen, touchscreen, trackball, eyegaze, dataglove, etc.) and note down how each has different attributes that support certain forms of interaction. You ought to know a little about all of these devices - if you do not, research them.

The following devices are input devices that supports Human-Computer Interaction:

In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. With the decline of punch cards and paper tape, interaction via teletype-style keyboards became the main input device for computers. Supports interaction by having the users to input their commands by pressing its buttons or keys.

A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's CRT TV set or monitor. It allows the user to point to displayed objects, or draw on the screen, in a similar way to a touch screen but with greater positional accuracy. Interactions occurs when users points the pen to the screen.

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. It enables one to interact directly with what is displayed. Similar to a light pen, touchscreen carries interaction by allowing the user to manipulate a device through touching it by hands or fingers.

A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes.

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer.

As you can see, this devices are commonly used to manipulate the Computer, which results to what they called as "Interaction".