11. 10 : HUMAN / COMPUTER INTERFACE
SPECIFICATION STATEMENTS (AQA 5521)
Understand the need to facilitate an effective dialogue between humans and machines
Explain the need to design systems which are appropriate to users at all levels and in different environments e.g. the impact of clarity of structure and layout
Describe how the user-interface can be designed for effective communication with the user
Describe the advantages of common user interfaces between different generic application packages
Describe the advantages and limitations of a natural language interface
There's a moment in Star Trek IV (I think) - the one with the whales, where Scotty the Chief Engineer has to make some sort of component in the present day USA, and has to instruct a computer as to what to do. So he picks up the computer mouse and talks into it: "Computer......computer ?"
How do humans and computers interact ?
Interface needs to have several characteristics:
EASY TO USE
EFFICIENT: don't want to be 10 minutes getting cash from an ATM
A video recorder needs to have a reasonable HCI so that you can programme it to record the correct programme. How has the HCI of video recorders improved in recent years from the time when you had to get down on your hands and knees and punch endless combinations of buttons so that you could record 'Superstars' (the original one....) and your remote control was actually connected with a wire which you kept tripping over and wasn't quite long enough to reach the settee.
Also was put onto this by a student: it's the REALLY GOOD version of WINDOWS. Amusing...Created by James Cliffe apparently and hosted by Dean Liou - perhaps leave it up on a computer as a joke...
If your students want to see a COMMAND LINE INTERFACE, type CMD.EXE into RUN dialogue box and see what Mister P had to put up with when he first started using computers.
MICROSOFT are working towards the release of VISTA: their newest operating system. There are various sites where you can see a preview of this.
Another possibility is to go for an OPEN SOURCE solution.
LINUX is a relatively recent operating system. There are a number of different 'environments' or 'desktops' which you can choose from. An ICT student of mine kindly provided the screenshots below of 3 of these:
GNOME
KDE
iceWM