(section 090)
April 13th: More on the Inner
Workings of HAL:
Modes, Defaults, and Reference Values

Announcements

• Listening to their Story: A Victimization Panel Discussion
  4/20/2010 @ 5:30 pm
  3rd Floor Student Union, rooms A&D
• Study Abroad in Nicaragua (Office of Education Abroad)
  May 17-May 28, 2010
  There is NO COST to students who are selected to participate.
  Informational Meeting w/Fabretto Children's Foundation
  Thursday, April 15
  3:30 – 4:45 pm
  CHHS 207 (College of Health and Human Services)

Plan for this evening

• Englishes: U.S., Canadian, British, Asian, Australian
• Reading Quiz #5--HAL Ch. 8, 9, & 10 (released at 6:35pm)
• HAL Ch. 8, 9, & 10 Discussion
• User Test for User Doc #3
• Turn in User Doc #2
• Persona Research--Think about the types of audiences you may serve and technological literacy
• Pay attention to the syllabus and due dates

The Wonderful World of Machines

This is our last discussion on HAL. As I said earlier this semester, HAL and The Inmates aren't technical communication textbooks. This course was traditionally a usability course, but I'm moving it towards an anti-usability course (slowly). I want you to leave the course with questions to ask about finding out who your users might be. We've pointed out the artificial nature of this course's boundaries--we don't cover all of technical communication theory--but our focus has consistently been on trying to think as a user. Logon to Moodle and respond to the following prompt:

What benefits, generalizations, and pitfalls (notice the "and") do you foresee when making assumptions about users or trying to think as they do?

These last 3 chapters (that we're covering) in Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 discuss the hazards of not providing users with an overall understanding (or correct abstraction) of the interface. You'll have to make a judgment call about how much and how little information to give users regarding the structure of an interface. Certainly, giving too little information can be problematic for users, but providing too much information about an interface can be confusing for users. How so?

Let's also think about the following issues (today I'm going to make you fill in the definitions and page numbers):

• Initialization (p. 124): (initial mode or reference values) configuration on start up.
• Mode (pp. 122-125): the displays of an interface--video, audio, flight map, etc.
• Reference Values (pp. 124-125): the selections a user can make within a mode--levels, choices, channels, etc.
• History Settings (p. 125): the previously selected reference values on from the previous setting.
• Default Settings (pp. 125-126): the action that occurs (the machine reverts to) when a user fails to interact with an interface.
  • Notice the difference in the definition of "default" that Degani gives and our understanding of "default settings" for software such as Microsoft Office.
  • In Word 2003, for instance, the default font size and typeface was Times New Roman 12pt.

Chapter 8 topics:

• Alarms no one can hear
• No back ups--can you expect users will have back up plans.
• GIGO-Garbage in Garbage Out
  • False interpretations of the facts
• Design flaws in machine-machine interaction

Chapter 9 topics:

• Expectation to use Walk-in interfaces
• History settings and multiple users
• Browser history
• Security vs Convenience
• Users should be aware of the structure of devices...but how aware?
• The future will "grant" us more user interfaces
  • Where might you find them?
  • Where are some that you think mark our culture?

Chapter 10 topics:

• Population stereotypes of the Internet
• Browsers
• Forms
• 'http://' vs. 'https://'
• Bankrate.com
• Is it unethical to go against user expectations?
• eCommerce and the web

User Test for User Document #3

Now is the time for your final user test. Make sure you reviewed the guidelines on the assignments page. I would like all of you to have three users tests for your documents because I'm giving you more time. Make sure you give the user the post-test questions. Don't have those...get moving on that! Also, turn in the results of your post-test questions (filled out with user names on them) next week when you turn in your User Doc #3. If you don't have 3 copies, have them do electronic versions (word doc), and print them out for next week.

Before We Go...

We're just about done with the semester. Next week we have HAL presentations from the 5181 students (who also are turning in their Bibliographic Essays), and all of you will have your User Doc #3 turned in.

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