Designing Human-Computer Interaction

Assignment 1 – PACT Analysis

10% of unit grade –  Individual Work

(1000 words max)

Based on the tools, techniques and discussions from lectures and tutorials, you are to identify an artefact in the real world, which might not immediately be thought of as a computer but which may be seen as having some sort of intelligence. You might think about household appliances, car dashboards, ATMs, thermostats but not smartphones, smartwatch, laptops as we will be using this example in the tutorial. There are many other examples. Be quite specific.

Imagine that your report is going to be published in a consumer magazine aimed at people who are interested in the artefacts and might be thinking of buying one. Your report is only based on the user experience (not on issues like pricing or internal engineering).

• What is the artefact? Describe the purpose of the artefact, the purpose of the user interface and how a human interacts with the artefact.

• Describe the typical users – are they all the same, or might there be different types of users? Use clear definitions (referenced where appropriate) to describe and differentiate your user types and explain WHY that differentiation is important. Develop at least two personas to represent your user types.

• Describe the context of the interaction(s) – elaborate in terms of physical environment, social context, organisational context

• Give some specific examples of activities– use your personas to illustrate a cognitive walkthrough of these activities (e.g. why are they doing this, how do they feel about it, what do they expect to happen, what else do they want to know).

• Describe the technology to interact with the artefact for your personas.

• Imagine this artefact in the future – what enhancements can you envisage to improve the interaction with this artefact. Refer to the Accessibility, Usability, and Acceptability principles, and consider how advances in technology may facilitate these improvements.

You can use photographs or diagrams to illustrate your points.

Details of deliverables

For this assignment, you will prepare a report – a Word Document.

Make sure that:

• You use clear headings for each part of your answer 1 to 6.
• Your answers are innovative
• You have researched and used principles of human-centred designing interactive systems and appropriately referenced them.
• Your report is useful for its purpose and its readers.
• Your report is professional, well set out and not way too short or way too long.
• Please include your ID in your report.