Week 1: Sept 12th, 2011

My research begins this week by reviewing important HCI concepts such as the user mental model, human information processing, recognition and perception, and job/task analysis, and how they can improve and support UI design in relation to 7 very influential aspects:

• Availability
• Feedback
• Flexibility
• Safety
• Affordance
• Simplicity
• Familiarity

Usability has emerged as prominent area of HCI and is now seems to be a vital factor in the success of educational software. Nielson notes 6 attributes to usability: learnability, effectiveness, flexibility, understandability, memorability and reliability (1). However, an educational application must not only be easy to use, but must support and contribute to the ease of learning of the material it presents. For this reason, traditional design and evaluation strategies are not sufficient to ensure a successful product. A learner-centered approach to design and evaluation is a modification of the traditional user-centered approach, which allows us to go beyond functional usability and the traditional heuristic evaluation, and examine the effectiveness of the learning process involved.1. Expanding the Concept of Usability, Alex Koohang