Usability, Design and Web

USABILITY LECTURE NOTES

Material from a 2016 course on HCI. I’ll never teach the course again so everyone is welcome to the material.

• The coping saw : an exercise in object usability
• The tea pot : an exercise in object usability
• Usefulness = utility = usability

• Introduction to HCI
• Humans Interacting
• The design of everyday things
• The basics of design
• Usability
• The web
• Visual design
• Mobile UI design
• Beyond the GUI
• Case studies in use
• UI in Sci-fi

WEB DESIGN

• Don’t mention the “search”
• Examples of well designed e-commerce sites
• Exploring website usability (i)
• Exploring website usability (ii)
• Is HTML a *real* programming language?
• Is HTML easy to learn?
• The devolution of usability
• The irony of e-commerce
• What are the most common website usability mistakes?
• What makes a good online grocery experience in Ontario?
• When designing a website, test *all* the browsers

USABILITY

• A nice error message?
• A port, a port, my kingdom for a port!
• Apple and design
• Errors never cease to amaze…
• Exploring website usability (i)
• Exploring website usability (ii)
• Fortran Re-engineering: Debt repayment schedule (v)
• Fortran Re-engineering: Debt repayment schedule (vi)
• Human-machine interaction and the usability conundrum
• Humans and the usability of avocado’s
• McDonalds gets their touchscreen right
• Mediocrity in programming
• Predicting the future… in the 1950s
• Programming languages are the interface to the machine
• Simpler Japanese toilet user interfaces…
• Survival usability
• The computers of Star Wars
• The devolution of usability
• The house of the future… in 1956
• The new Loblaws self-checkouts – usability
• The problem with white text on a black background
• The usability failures in our everyday lives
• The usability of Fortran
• The usability of old blenders
• The usability of washing machine labels
• The user interfaces of Star Trek – LCARS
• The user interfaces of Star Trek – vocal
• The worst type of usability?
• The worst usability = washing machines
• Usability – When “updating” software goes so wrong.
• Usability and online reviews
• Usability confusion: Streetcar buttons
• What are the most common website usability mistakes?
• Why Apple is king of the tech companies
• Why is software (usability) so horrible?
• Why physical usability really matters
• Why the Montreal Metro (subway) has good usability
• Why user interfaces in space should be simple
• Windows – 200 years in the future? I hope not!
• Xmas bug

COGNITIVE LOAD

• C language: The good, the badly, and the ugly
• Cognitive load and arrays
• Cognitive load and knowledge transfer
• Cognitive load in programming languages – loops
• Cognitive load in programming languages – the basics
• Loading language syntax into the brain is expensive
• Overloading of the mind
• Pascal – a language for novice programmers
• The cognitive load of C: arrays
• The cognitive load of C: functions
• The cognitive load of programming languages on the novice programmer

ARCHIVE

• The problem with (CS) grad school
• A trace of a recursive function
• AI will likely replace mediocre programmers
• A recursion example : step-by-step
• Recursion – implementing sum
• What is recursion?
• How computer graphics have changed…
• The reluctant academic
• A historical background to the word “recursion”
• Technology has just become a big blah
• Dobosort – An improved Bubblesort
• The best Sci-fi series?
• Technology, and poor parenting is making people soft
• Computer versus natural language
• Sorry, image processing is NOT a sub-field of AI
• The Eight Queens Puzzle (iii) – recursion
• The Eight Queens Puzzle (ii) – brute force
• The Eight Queens Puzzle (i) – background
• Students and the art of spoon-feeding
• Marvin on advice (in general) …
• Sheil on computer science
• Programming inefficiencies and redundant computations
• Wirth on inventing languages
• Generating a cylinder to represent HSB colour space
• How to deep dive for information
• Problem solving and the human condition
• Recursion – The Sieve of Eratosthenes
• Generating a colour wheel in Processing
• Why Processing is so good for visual things
• The Sieve of Eratosthenes (iii) – Cobol
• The Sieve of Eratosthenes (ii) – Fortran
• The Sieve of Eratosthenes (i) – Introduction
• Coding Cobol: Variable length arrays
• Coding Cobol: Arithmetic and picture clauses
• Coding Cobol: Adding “time to accrue” calculation
• Checking ISBN numbers in Cobol (ii)
• Checking ISBN numbers in Cobol (i)
• Does academia matter anymore?
• Coding Cobol: Simple compound interest
• Recursion – Compound Interest (in Ada)
• Do you remember the Macintosh 128K?
• A month in Ada
• Why don’t we use more Ada?
• Outputting special characters in Ada
• A more interesting linked list in Ada
• A basic linked list of words in Ada (ii)
• Skip_line through the tulips…
• A basic linked list of words in Ada (i)
• The rise of the mediocre programmer
• What it feels like sometimes to read other peoples code…
• Image processing in Ada (v) – the main program
• Image processing in Ada (iv) – more functionality
• The world of useless things
• Image processing in Ada (iii) – the package imageprocess
• Image processing in Ada (ii) – the package imagepgm
• Image processing in Ada (i) – the theory
• A recursive function for reading lines (from a file)
• The usability failures in our everyday lives
• How cold will my coffee be in X minutes?
• Some Fortran string tips
• More 2D strings in Fortran
• Calculating wind chill in Fortran
• One of the problems in the world is a lack of understanding about math
• Computing power is too often wasted
• Recursion: Permutations by interchange
• As AI gets smarter, humans get more stupid
• Translating an Algol-60 program to Fortran
• What is reverse engineering?
• The problem with π (iv) – Fortran to Ada
• Coding Fortran: A dynamic array of ragged strings
• Recursion : An algorithm for anagrams
• The problem with π (iii) – Pascal to Fortran
• Fortran – then versus now
• Why Fortran is a scientific powerhouse
• Another year, another piece of boring technology (or perhaps not?)
• Kenya Hara on technology
• Tips for potential CS grad students
• It’s the end of social media as we know it, and I feel fine
• Python, where art thou?
• Punch-card humour
• I dislike OS upgrades because they break things
• Where is my flying car?
• Are there too many PhDs?
• Using awk: Adding line numbers to a program
• The shell: Calculating the size of directories
• What makes a successful CS grad student?
• Using awk: Counting words?
• Why some Python libraries aren’t all they’re cracked up to be
• University degrees ≠ intelligence
• The shell: Finding files using a specific name
• What is a modern programming language?
• Nonsensical recursion algorithms: Stutter
• The shell: Finding files using a specific date
• It’s not dead, Jim
• Why I hate this ad
• The problem with white text on a black background
• Languages Pre-Fortran
• Choosing a university? – Forget the guides and lists
• The worst type of usability?
• Half empty or half full?