Chapter 27 Flashcards
PoHCI, week 3 (8 cards)
What is important when naming objects and actions?
That they are kept short but easy to understand
Speak the users language
What is information scent?
How well a word or phrase creates associations of that they subsume (what command they execute or
what menu items they may be expanded into)
Explain the vocabulary problem
If you ask two people to spontaneously name commands, they will agree with less than .2 probability.
Finding a command that will work well for many users is very difficult
Explain articulatory distance
The distance between the physical form of the name or command and the command that the user
wants to express. We want the intended command to be as similar as possible to the user’s intention
How could you make an elicitation study to find proper command names?
Elict from users how they will execute a particular command and study the agreement across users on
those commands to decide on a distinct set of commands that users will produce spontaneously with
the highest likelihood. For example by showing users a command we would like them to execute
(“make a copy of this file”) and ask how they would name that action (“duplication”)
What is the structure of a command line interface (CLI)?
prompt command parameter^1 parameter^2 … parameter^n
Prompt: System-generated indication that the system is awaiting a command from the user
Command: The instruction provided by the user to the system
Parameter list: A set of command-specific additional instructions provided by the user, which will affect
the execution of the command
What could design issues be in a simple interpreter?
Availability: How does the user know which commands are available
Naming: How does the user know the names of the commands the system understands?
Learning: How does the user learn the availability of commands and their parameters?
Recall: How does the system support the user in recalling commands and their parameters?
Syntax: How does a user know which commands expect parameters and the form of these
parameters?
Transparency: How does the system convey to the user the way in which it interprets commands,
making it possible for the user to both understand what is achievable within the command-line
interface and be able to diagnose why a particular command input does not result in an intended
response
What is recognition and recall?
Recognition: Knowledge-in-the-world - Identifying an item of relevance based on some cue for what
they want to do among a set of items
Recall: Knowledge-in-the head - Coming up spontaneously with names for commands or descriptions
of objects
