Understanding HCI for User Experience Design
Saurabh Tiwary | 28th September 2018
The concept of Human-Computer Interaction plays a significant role in designing digital experiences. For UX designers, it is important to study the different types of human behavior for designing smart digital products.
To do so, one has to understand the psychology of different types of users, their abilities, perceptions etc. and how do they interact with the digital systems. So, let us look through some of the key elements that need to be considered while in HCI.
Diversity in Human Being
– Physical diversity viz. Hand Size, Disabilities, Strengths, Coordination etc.
– The effect of aging
– Cognitive Abilities
– Cultural Environment
– Population by Age Group
Visual Perception
Different people have different taste of colors. They have own trust factors in terms of color representation. So, it’s important to know how people in the different geographical region perceive color visualization.
The principle of Least Effort
The principle consists of 4 components:
- Attention
- Interaction
- Reading
- Thinking
Suppose, there are several ways to achieve a goal, people would choose the one demanding least course of action.
Users are Task-Focused
Users tend to visit your site to achieve particular goals but not to admire the design.
Goal mapping
There exists four different goal mapping question:
- Goal- How users determine that their goal is achievable.
- Action- How do they know what to do
- Perception- How do they get a feedback that they are doing it right.
- Evaluation- How they know that done it correctly
Optimizing the Usability
The goal of studying HCI is to enhance the usability of the application. To do so, one has to make the interaction user-friendly and acceptable to the users. The prime goal is to minimize the barrier between the cognitive model of what they need to do and the computer-based interaction is able to address their needs.
