CS 101

Human-Computer Interaction

Announcements

  • Paper due tonight at 11:59PM. Come ask us questions!
  • Week 10 Tuesday is a final review.
  • Office hour switch-up: I'm covering office hours for Tyler, 1:30-3:00, in Gates 167.
  • On Thursday of week 10, Tyler will hold office hours 12:30-3:30PM in Gates B02.
  • Please fill out course evaluations.
  • Final exam on Friday, June 8, 8:30-11:30AM in 420-41 (normal lecture room)

Commonly Missed Questions

  • A link is done via HTML, not JavaScript
  • One example of test for knowledge: security questions

Plan for Today

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Design in Computer Science
  • Technology Mindfulness
  • Last Thoughts

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

  • Idea: how can we make computers accessible for everyone?
  • Design for a target audience
  • Make computers usable and intuitive (work in progress)
  • Build upon abstractions
  • UI (user interface) and UX (user experience)

Importance of HCI

  • Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster "Valve is Open" warning light
  • Remote Control Buttons
  • Windows 8

Steps for Good Design

  • Simplicity
  • Clarity
  • User-Testing and Feedback
  • Design for an Audience

Dark Patterns

  • Good UI should make it easy to do what the company wants you to do
  • Dark Pattern: a UI trick that makes users act in a certain way
  • LinkedIn Contacts
  • Delete your Amazon account by having to contact a human
  • Automatically opted into emails
  • Forced Continuity: free trials end by automatically charging your credit card
  • Hard to unsubscribe from email lists
  • Confusing language, strategic button highlighting

Darkside of Technology

  • People spend a lot of time on electronic devices (Source: Hackernoon)
    • Over 4 hours a day on mobile devices (phones and tablets)
    • Millenials check their phones 150+ times per day on average
  • Social media apps are designed to "suck you in"
    • Likes, etc., fulfill need for validation (sort of like a slot machine)
    • Message alerts pressure you to respond right away (and response-in-progress keeps you in the app)
    • "Rewards" for being on apps more frequently (Snapchat)
    • Notifications
    • Endless scrolling (versus discrete pages)
  • Problem: companies make money from ad views; more time on app => more ad views

Midpoint Recap

  • Good design is critical to avoiding human error and creating an easy to use product
  • Companies can weaponize design to manipulate users

Course Themes

  • Technology defines our society
  • Understanding technology keeps you safer and more informed
  • Lots of different parts of computer science

Our Quarter

  • How computers work
  • Data
  • Programming
  • AI
  • Theory
  • The Internet
  • Security and Privacy
  • Human-Computer Interaction

Learning Goals

  • Improve technical literacy, understanding computer terminology.
  • Understand how computer code is written.
  • Describe how computers and the internet works behind the scenes.
  • Understand the technologies most discussed in the news and how technology affects society.

Thank you

It's a hard course, and you all have done very well. Good luck on the final!