Abstract
The field of Human-Computer Interaction provides a number of useful tools and methods for obtaining information on end-users and their usage context to inform the design of computer systems, yet relatively little is known on how to go about designing for a completely novel application where there is no user base, no existing practice of use available at the start. The success of the currently available HCI methodology that focuses on understanding users’ needs and establishing requirements is well-deserved in making computing applications usable in terms of fitting them to end-users’ usage contexts. However, too much emphasis on identifying user needs tends to stifle other more exploratory design activities where new types of applications are invented in order to discover or create new activities currently not practiced. In this paper, we argue that a great starting point of novel application design is not the problem space (trying to rigorously define the user requirements) but the solution space (trying to leverage emerging computational technologies and growing design knowledge for various interaction platforms), and we build a foundation for a pragmatic design methodology supported by the authors’ extensive experience in designing novel applications inspired by emerging media technologies.
Highlights
The contribution of Human-Computer Interaction in developing usable computer applications is well-recognised in both academia and industry
A project developing a large library management system starts with the task of understanding user needs, interviewing librarians and observing their usage of the existing system to be replaced; companies refer to their “usability labs” claiming that the customer user experience is their number one priority; academic publications routinely include a section on “user evaluation” reporting that their test users found the developed system efficient and enjoyable to use
Many useful tools, methods, and procedures have been developed, adopted and are practiced today that help obtain this type of data, to serve the rationale and justification for the subsequent design process
Summary
By “novel applications” we mean those applications where there is no existing user base, and no existing practice of use today. Other representative novel applications we developed include a mobile news update service that automatically indexes daily broadcast TV news and provides its users with a personalised highlights of TV news stories on their mobile devices (Gurrin et al (2004)); an interactive TV where a TV viewer can use a conventional remote control to interact with other remote viewers, search and browse the contents of TV shows with advanced video analysis tools while watching the current channel (Lee et al (2008b)); a collaborative search tabletop where two users sitting around a table can together search for video clips with their finger touch (Smeaton et al (2006)); an object search application where a user draws a contour of an object in a picture and the system retrieves other objects similar to it using our object matching algorithm (Sav et al (2006)); an online museum explorer where the photos of exhibited artifacts at the museum taken by the visitor are uploaded and automatically grouped by individual artifacts using our edge-matching technique (Blighe et al (2008)), and many more The significance of these novel applications is that they were born out of technological possibilities combined with strong interaction platform-specific knowledge (explained in Section 4.3), and not of rigorous requirements engineering or end-user engagement at the start. Their base usability is ensured as each of them was designed to support and exploit its interaction platform characteristics, and with this the opportunities are visibly demonstrated to brainstorm and discuss more specific, realistic usage situations to fit people’s work and leisure
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