# Presentation: 037378

## User-Centric

**The Human Factor in Design**

- Susanne M. Furman, PhD
- Usability Engineer
- Web Communication and New Media Division
- U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

## What is Human Factors?

-  Science of understanding the properties of human
-   capability
-  The application of this understanding to the design
-    and development of systems
-  The art of ensuring successful application of Human
-    Factors Engineering

*The study of all aspects of the way humans relate to the world around them.*

## History of Human Factors

-  Origin in the Industrial Revolution
-  Full-fledged discipline during WWII
-  Aircraft cockpit design needed to consider human
-    interface for controls and displays

## What Does Human Factors Involve?

-  Cognition – mental processes, memory, recognition
-  Perception – how we perceive color, layout, appeal
-  Motor Skills – how we interact with systems
-  Experimental psychology – applying experimental
-    methodology outside a controlled environment

## Objectives of Human Factors

-  Enhance effectiveness and efficiency of human-
-    machine systems
-  Enhance certain desirable human characteristics
-  Recognize and utilize individual differences
-  Influence human behavior and well-being through the
-    intelligent design of machines, devices, and work
-    environments
-  Utilize empirical data for design and evaluation
-  Utilize the scientific method in the collection of this
-    data

## What is Usability 

-  General term that encompasses ‘ease of use’
-  How easily can people use any product’s controls
-    or displays
-  Study of methods, measurement, and principles of
-    a product’s efficiency, elegance, and usefulness.
-  Putting the user FIRST
-  Provide the best match between the characteristics
-    of people with the operation of the systems and
-    products they use

## Usability Results

-  Greater efficiency
-  Shorter learning time
-  Increased satisfaction
-  Reduce human error and the likelihood of negative
-    outcomes
-            Usability is NOT just user testing!!!

## International Standard

- System satisfies specified requirements

**Specify the context of use**: identify people who will use it, what they use it for and under what conditions.
**Specify requirements**: Identify business requirements or user goals for product to be successful.
**Create design solutions:** Build from rough concept to a completed design.
**Evaluate designs**: evaluation - usability testing with actual users.

## Operator Error in Complex Systems

-  Three Mile Island
-  Bhopal
-  Chernobyl
- Why large-scale systems pose additional demands and new requirements on human operators.

## Three Mile Island

-  Attributed to wrong decisions
-  Operators overwhelmed with info – much of it
-    irrelevant, misleading or incorrect.
-  Poorly designed instrumentation
-  Important gauges were out of view
-  No critical line on gauges
-  No consistent action results for knobs and dials
-  Exceptions – what happens if.....

## But Really This is Not Life or Death

## Impacts Our Daily Lives

-  Surrounded by manufactured items intend to
-    make life easier, more pleasant, and to help us
-    save time.
-  We are victimized by inanimate objects
-  VCR?
-  Lost trying to find information on a web site
-  Tried to put our mug in the cup holder
-  Why do we try so hard and put up with all these
-    frustrations? Or do we???

## Mental Models

**Example:** Walk in a store – cannot tell what services & goods were available.

**Users:**
-  Come to your site with an idea of how things work
-  Have been to many sites
-  Have generic mental model way supposed to work

**What is it?**

## Two Conclusions Follow

-  Users have mental model of way things
-    should work
-  Average user is not a novice

## User’s Mental Model

-  User’s experience: majority of sites have horrible
-    usability
-  Users discover this and they are **GONE**
-  Average user’s expectation of 1st time visit –
-    **DISAPPOINTMENT**
-  If not apparent how site applies to immediate concerns
-    **GONE**

## Users Are Not Novices

-  Users acquainted with way most pages work
-  Users don’t have time to learn something new
-  Homepages need to communicate immediate value
-  Need to enable users to find relevant stuff in seconds
-  If your homepage works similarly then users will
-    understand because they are familiar with design
-    conventions

## Design Conventions Stifle Creativity

-  Boring if all homepages look the same
-  Design is problem-solving with constraints
-  Goal – make something that works in the real world
-  Doesn’t mean they all look alike
-  Magazine example
-  Numbers located in corners
-  Display headlines in type larger than body text
-  Table of contents is at beginning
*             **But Vogue doesn’t look like SI*

## What Your Site Is

-  Face to the world
-  You get one chance to make a first impression
-  If first impression is not good – there is no second
-    chance
-  It is NOT artwork
-  It is an interaction
-  It is a stepping stone to the user’s destination - inside

## Users Have Multiple Goals

-  Find out what you do
-  Researching a specific purpose
-  Interested in some service or support
-  Users may have different goals at different times –
-    segmenting does not work
-  If number of options are overwhelming – **GONE**

## What Your Homepage Must Do

-  Where users are in your site
-  What your company does
-  What users can do at your site

**At First Glance:**

**What’s Important?**

-  Branding
-  High-priority tasks

## So Why?

-  Usability plays a role in public’s perception
-  Affects your brand value
-  Affects public perception
-  Makes it easier for users to accomplish their goals
-  Bad design costs $$billions/year
-  Internet easy to use – can pay off by a factor of 10+
-  Fewer last minute design changes
-  Usable, appealing, and effective designs