What do you mean by directing manipulation and indirect manipulation

Q.What do you mean by directing manipulation and indirect manipulation? (5 M) (DEC 16 /MAY 16 /DEC 17)

Ans:-

Direct manipulation:-

• Definition:- Direct manipulation (DM) is an interaction style in which users act on displayed objects of interest using physical, incremental, reversible actions whose effects are immediately visible on the screen.
•  Example:
• dragging a document to the trash
• changing the size of a triangle by interacting with a visual representation of a triangle
• inserting characters in a document by pointing to where they should go (with a mouse/cursor/insertion point) and then typing
• “dialing” a phone number by pushing numbers on a keypad
• playing a song using controls like a physical tape deck or CD/DVD player

Moving a file on MacOS using direct manipulation involves dragging that file from the source folder and moving it into the destination folder.

• Characteristics:
• The task objects are manipulated by physical actions, such as clicking or dragging, rather than by entering complex syntax.
• There is a visible and continuous representation of the task objects and their actions. Consequently, there is little syntax to remember.
• Rapid learning
• Their effects on task objects are immediately visible.
• Reversibility of (almost) all actions 
• Users can explore without severe consequences 
• Syntactic correctness 
• every operation is legal
• Disadvantages:
• DM is slow
• Repetitive tasks are not well supported.
• Some gestures can be more error-prone than typing
• Accessibility may suffer

Indirect manipulation:-

• Indirect manipulation substitutes words and text, such as pull-down or pop-up menus, for symbols, and substitutes typing for pointing.
• Most windows system are a combination of both direct and indirect manipulation 
• Example:
• A menu ma be accessed by pointing at a menu icon and then selecting it( direct manipulation)
• The menu itself, however, is a textual list of operations (Indirect manipulation)
• When an operation is selected from the list, by pointing or typing the system executes it as a command

• Disadvantages:
• The operation may be difficult to conceptualize
• Graphics capability limited
• Amount of space available for placing manipulation controls in the window border may be limited.
• Difficult to remember all the necessary operations

List pros and cons of any one modern device in design of a tutor for kids.

Q. List pros and cons of any one modern device in design of a tutor for kids. (DEC 18 / MAY 19) 5M

• Normally to design an interface for kids, the interface need to be more attractive and decorative.
• We can not use simple components, we need to are attractive components and devices so that kids feel more attracted towards the interface.
• Lets say suppose, we want to have interface to teach simple mathematical operations to kids.
• In this interface, kids need to enter different input numbers to perform basic mathematical operation.
• Ideally, to enter numbers, we can use keyboard, rather than entering number, it is always better to select input numbers.

• For selecting different icons or components the best device will be "Touch Screen"

Advantages (pros) of touch screen :

• Touch screen possess a direct relationship between hand and pointer moment in terms of direction, distance and speed.
• The movement is s next, not distinct because the control (finger or styles) is on the same plane as the pointer.
• Another significant advantage of a touch screen is that it does not require any additional desks space.
• It also stands up well in high use environments.

Disadvantages (cons) of touchscreen :

• Finger may obscure part of a screen.
• Finger may be too large for accuracy with small objects.
• It requires moving hand far from the keyboard to use.
• A disadvantage of touchscreen is that they are fatiguing to use an extended period of time.
• Fingers may soil the screen, and a stylus may damage id.

What are the four interfaces that give name WIMP

Q. What are the four interfaces that give name WIMP? (DEC 18) 5M

WIMP is an acronym for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers. Alternatively it is an Acronym for Windows, Icons Mice down menus. Examples of user interfaces that are based on the WIMP interaction style include : Microsoft windows for PC's MAC OS for apple Macintosh various X windows based systems for UNIX, etc.

WIMP emerged in 1980's and describe the GUI of personal computers. It include windows and Macintosh interfaces, as well as other less common operating system such as Linux and NEXT.

Modern GUI'S many of which have a touch screen interface are sometimes referred to as "Pest - WIMP" interfaces. Examples : include IOS and Android, which are popular smartphone and tablet OS's. These interface include icons, but often lack of windows and menus. Since no mouse is required for a touch screen interface, there is no pointer.

Types of WIMP interfaces windows :

1. Single Document Interface (SDI) - Note
2. Multiple Document Interface (MDI) - Visual, basic, adobe Photoshop
3. Tabbed Document Interface (TDI) - Firefox
4. Pointers.

What are the factors that are considered to choose colours

Q. What are the factors that are considered to choose colours? (MAY 17) 5M

Wavelengths of light themselves are not colored. Actual color results from the stimulation of the proper reception in the eye by a received light wave. A color can only be described in terms of a person’s report of his or her perceptions.

Eg: red wavelength 700 mill microns, orange 600 mill microns.

The different types of colors:

1. RGB

Many color monitors use the three primary color of light in various combinations to create many colors on the screen. By adjusting the amounts of red, green, blue light presented in a pixel, millions of color can be generated. Hence, color palette editors exist with labels R, G & B

2. HSV

Some palette editors use a convention based on the Munsell method of color notation called HSV for hue, saturation, & value (or HSL for hue, saturation & lightness).

3. Dithering

The eye is never steady. If pixels of different color are placed next to each other, this tremor combines the two colors into a third color. This is referred to as dithering,& sometimes texture mapping. In system containing large palettes of color, the color not in its palette is also called dithering.

Possible uses of colors

Color may be used as a formatting aid in structuring a screen or it may be used as a visual code to categorize & identify information or data. It may also be used to portray objects naturally & make a screen more appealing to look at.

1. Color as a Formatting Aid

• Use color to assist in formatting a screen for relating or typing elements into groupings.
• Use color for breaking apart separate groupings of information.
• It is used to associate information that is widely separated on the screen.
• It is also used in highlighting or calling attention to important information by setting it off from the other information.

2. Color as a Visual code

• Colors are used as visual code to identify screen components.
• It is used to identify the logical structure of ideas, processes or sequences.
• It is also used to identify the sources of information & the status of information.

Possible problems with color

Possible problems may be caused by the perception system itself or the physiological characteristics of the human eye.

1. High attention-getting capacity

Color has an extremely high attention getting capacity.This quality causes the screen viewer to associate, or tie together, screen elements of the same color, whether or not such an association should be made. A person might search for relationship & difference that do not exist, or that are not valid.

2. Interference with use of other screens

Indiscriminate or poor use of color on some screen will diminish the effectiveness of color on other screen. The rationale for color will be difficult to understand & its attention getting capacity severely restricted.

3. Varying sensitivity of the eye to different color

All colors are not equal in the eye of the viewer.The eye is more sensitive to those in the middle of the visual spectrum, which appear brighter than those at the extreme. Some combination of screen colors can strain the eye’s accommodation mechanism. The perceived appearance of a color is also affected by the size of the area of color, the ambient illumination level & other color in the viewing area.

4. Color-viewing deficiencies

About 8% of males & 0.4% of females have some form of color perception deficiency called color blindness. A red viewing deficiency is called protanopia, a green deficiency is called deuteranopia & blue deficiency is called tritanopia.

5. Cross-disciplinary & cross-cultural difference

Colors have different meanings in different situation to different people. A color used in an unexpected way can cause confusion. The same color can have different connotation depending upon its viewer.

The color blue has the following

1. For financial manager- corporate qualities reliability.
2. For American movie audience – tenderness.

Guidelines for choosing colors of web page

Color must have a meaning full purpose. Color without a purpose is gratuitous & visually distracting.

1. For palette: Use the browser 216-color palette.

2. For presentation:

• Minimize the number of presented colors.
• Always consider color in context.
• Use similar or the same color schemes throughout.
• For foregrounds, use black or strong colors for text & headings.
• For backgrounds, use weaker contrasting colors such as off-white or light gray.
• Larger images should use flat web safe colors & it should also use fewer colors than small images.

3. For links:

• Use default colors for links such as blue for unselected or unvisited links & purple for selected or visited links.
• Do not display non-link text in link colors.

4. For testing:  The possibility always exist that identical colors may appear differently on different monitors & platforms, so it is better to test a color on a variety of displays before using it.

What are the three categories of the users

Q. What are the three categories of the users? How they can be provided with facilities to ensure feasibility in operation. (MAY 17) 5M

There are three types of users:

1] Beginner user.

2] Intermediate user.

3] Expert user.

1] Beginner user.

• Every user is beginner user at earlier phase of their life.
• To make beginner user to intermediate designers, we must ensure that the things they see and use UI to remain in their mental models
• The main usability of beginning users is their main focus area is on, menus & messages.
• They tend to use above options hierarchical system architectures, reading all the labels and understanding of location where specific options and features are placed.
• For dialogues and notifications user may refer them slower, trying to understand them thoroughly.
• The beginning users may require lot of help from system to understand process.
• Questions of beginning users?
• Which program should I use?
• What will this program do?
• From where should I start?
• What is the way to do it?
• Am I doing right things?

2] Intermediate users.

• Intermediate users is always looking desired features and way to easily access them.
• Intermediate level users will have some different requirements.
• The basic skill to operate them is already known.
• As they are familiar with basics they will now find out new techniques to operate system very effectively.
• Majority numbers of users are intermediates.
• We will optimize user experiences for intermediate as majority of users are inter-mediators.

3] Expert users.

• The number of expert users is always smaller than other type of users as they become expert by longer experience and excellence skill set.
• This group of users becomes very important group of users as the become expert.
• These group of users is very small but this effectiveness is very high.
• Experts may know additional functionalities and abilities of systems to perform all tasks.
• As it is expected that interface must help these users to more productive.

Interface should be definitely optimized for intermediates and help beginners to understand and helps beginners to understand application but also be more productive for experts.

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital or Graphical systems

Q. What are various advantages of Digital and Graphics System? (DEC 17) 5M

Q. What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital or Graphical systems? Explain in brief. (DEC 16) 10M

Digital System

Advantage

1. Have made possible many scientific, industrial, and commercial advances that would have been unattainable otherwise.
2. Less expensive
3. More reliable
4. Easy to manipulate
5. Flexibility and Compatibility
6. Information storage can be easier in digital computer systems than in analog ones. New features can often be added to a digital system more easily too.

Disadvantage

1. Use more energy than analog circuits to accomplish the same tasks, thus producing more heat as well.
2. Digital circuits are often fragile, in that if a single piece of digital data is lost or misinterpreted the meaning of large blocks of related data can completely change.
3. Digital computer manipulates discrete elements of information by means of a binary code.
4. Quantization error during analog signal sampling.

Graphical System

Advantage

1. Symbol recognized faster than text: Researchers have found that symbols can be recognized faster and more accurately than text and that the graphical attributes of icons such as shape and color are very useful for quickly classifying object, elements or text by some common property. These icons allow speedy recognition of the type of message being presented.
2. Faster learning: It has been found that a graphical, pictorial representation aids learning and symbols can also be easily learned.
3. Faster use and problem solving: Visual or spatial representation of information has been found to be easier to retain and manipulate and leads to faster and more successful problem solving. Symbols have also been found to be effective in conveying simple instruction.
4. Easier remembering: Because of greater simplicity, it is easier for casual user to retain operational concepts.
5. More natural: Graphical representations of objects are thought to be more natural and closer to innate human capabilities. It has also been suggested that human mind has a powerful image memory.
6. Foster more concrete thinking: Displayed objects are directly in the high-level task domain or directly usable in their presented form. There is no need mentally to decompose tasks into multiple commands with complex syntactic form. The need for abstract thinking is therefore minimized.
7. Fewer errors: More concrete thinking affords fewer opportunities for errors. Error messages are less frequently needed.
8. Increased feeling of control: The user initiates actions and feels in control. This increases user confidence and hastens system mastery.
9. Less anxiety concerning use: Hesitant or new users feel less anxiety when using the system.
10. More attractive: Direct-manipulation system is more entertaining, cleverer and more appealing.
11. May consume less space: Icons may take up less space than the equivalent in words.
12. Replaces national languages: Language-based systems are seldom universally applicable. Icon possesses much more universally than text and much more easily comprehended worldwide.
13. Easily augmented with text displays: Where graphical design limitations exist, direct- manipulation system can easily be augmented with text displays.
14. Low typing requirements: Pointing and selection controls such as the mouse or trackball eliminate the need for typing skills.
15. Smooth transition from command language system: Moving form a command language to a direct-manipulation system has been found to be easy.

Disadvantage

1. Greater design complexity: Controls and basics alternatives must be chosen from a pile of choices numbering in excess of 50. The design potential may not necessarily result in better design, unless the choices are thoughtfully selected and consistently and simply applied. With graphics, the skill of the designer is increasingly challenged.
2. Learning still necessary: The meaning of many words and icons may not be known. A severe learning and remembering requirement is imposed on many users, and it takes a while to get up to speed. System providers estimate that becoming accustomed to a graphical interface should require about eight hours of training. Other experts say the learning time is closer to 20 or 30 hours.
3. Lack of experimentally-derived design guidelines: The graphical interface is still burdened today by a lack of widely available experimentally-derived design guidelines. Too many variables that must be controlled make meaningful cause and effect relationships very difficult to uncover.
4. Inconsistencies in technology and terminology: The inconsistencies occur because of copyright and legal implication, product differentiation consideration, and our expanding knowledge about the interface.
5. Working domain is the present: While direct-manipulation system provides context, they also require the user to work in the present.

How reading is important in UI Design?

Q. How reading is important in UI Design? Write your comments related to the quote "Poor Design may affect Reading"(DEC17) 5M

Reading is important in UI design:

Reading is an artificial skill that is learned by systematic training like play musical instruments or balancing a bicycle etc. Learning to read involves training the brain to recognize visual pattern, a gamut from low to high level runs to recognize patterns that our brains learn.

Poor design can affect reading.

1. Uncommon or familiar vocabulary.

Words that are not commonly in use should be avoided.

All computer geeke may be familiar with all these terms, but for people from other domains such as real estate agent furniture dealer such words become very difficult to decode and then understand the message, as a designer, it is your responsibility to make all users comfortable.

2. Difficult script and typefaces.

You may be tempted to use the various fonts available and make the interface interesting.

3. Tiny fonts.

The positive and enticing offers are in bold large fonts while the actual risk are in extremely small fonts. The intention behind tiny fonts should be only to ensure that your user skip this information easily.

4. Text on noisy background.

Having text written on a textured back reduces readability.

5. Information buried in repetition.

Reading the same information repeat may be in different tenses will make reader assume that these is nothing more in it.

6. Centered text or right aligned text.

Most of us are trained to read from to right.

In a centered or right alighted text, line begin at a different place.

Reading will not be an automatic anymore.

Explain importance of communication with user for a system? What do you mean by clear text messages? Explain with suitable examples.

Q. Explain importance of communication with user for a system? What do you mean by clear text messages? Explain with suitable examples. ( MAY 16) 10M

i. Messages are communication provided on the screen to the screen viewer.

ii. Screen messages fall into two broad categories: system and instructional.

iii. System messages are generated by the system to keep the user informed of the system’s state and activities.

iv. They are customarily presented within message boxes.

v. They reflect the system state, as it exists at that moment in time.

vi. Instructional messages, sometimes referred to as prompting messages, are messages that tell the user how to work with or complete, the screen displayed.

vii. They may be provided in message boxes and also within the screen itself.

viii. And the easiest and most efficient way to create user-friendly interfaces is to add self-explanatory icons.

ix. These small images that take a couple dozens of pixels will most of the times have more meaning than a full paragraph of text.

x. It's more comfortable and efficient to insert an icon than it is to write some text explaining a certain function.

xi. Icons are very important to the user-interface.

xii. People want to use an application's features to the maximum, and don't like to it when they can't find how to complete a specific task.

xiii. This is why developers should always create shortcuts to the main tasks that can be accomplished using their application.

Clear text message

i. Wording of the interface and its screens is the basic form of communication with the user.

ii. Clear and meaningfully crafted words, message and text lead to greatly enhanced system usability and minimize user confusion that leads to errors and possibly even system rejection.

iii. Words

• Do not use technical words, made up words or terms.
• Do not use abbreviation or acronyms. Always use the fully spelled out form the first time it is encountered in the interface.
• Consider the usage of contradiction or short form(won’t vs will not, un- ,-ness),Complete words is preferred.
• Positive terms(avoid the prefix “ir”, “in-“ “dis-“ and “un-“
• Simple action words.
• Words should be consistency throughout the system.

iv. Sentence and Message

• Should be brief, simple, directly and immediately usable
• Affirmative statement is easier to understand than negative statement.
• Active voice is usually easier to understand than passive voice.
• Use the same grammatical structure for elements of sentence.
• Imply that the system is awaiting the user’s direction, not that the system is directing the user.
• Negative tones or action or threats are not very friendly
• Encouraging message would be better than insulting message.
• Should remain factual and informative and should not attempt humor or punishment.

What do you mean by response time

Q.What do you mean by response time? Explain.  (MAY 16 / MAY 18)  5M

[A] Response time: Response times with a GUI systems fairly stable. It not nearly instantaneous web response times can be quite variable and often aggravatingly slow. Line transmission speeds, system loads and page content can have a dramatic importance long response times can upset and frustrate user.

Methodologies adopted by feedback and guidance.

1] Providing proper feedback.

·         Response time

·         Dealing with time delays

·         Blinking for attention

·         Use of sound

2] Guidance and assistance.

·         Preventing errors

·         Problem management

·         Providing guidance and assistance

·         Problem with documentation

·         How users interact with documentation

·         Instruction or prompting

·         Help facility

·         Help facility guidelines

·         Contextual help

·         Help command buttons

·         Status bar message

·         Tool tip

·         Task oriented help

·         Reference help

·         Wizards

·         Hints or tips.