A Telephone Answering Machine and Computer Human Interaction - Report Example

Student Name: Student ID: Course: Instructor: Due Date: Introduction Generally, the practitioners and researchers advocate building of user friendly or centered systems to enable the users to reach their goals. It is advisable to take account of human limitations, and generally the systems ought to be intuitive, efficient and pleasurable to use. For any human computer interaction design the designer should follow the following key activities which includes; identifying needs and establishing requirements of the user, coming up with alternative designs that can meet those needs, constructing an interactive version of the design so that it could be relayed and be assessed and examining what is being made in the entire process (Jacko & Stephanidis, 2003). Usability is termed as ensuring that interactive products are easy to learn, effective to use, and enjoyable from user’s perspective. This involves maximizing the interactions people have with interactive products to ensure that they carry out their work at school, and in their everyday life efficiently. Specifically, usability is classified into the following aims: effective to use, efficiency to use, safety for use, utility, learnability and memorability. For efficiency the system must support users in carrying out their tasks without any delay. Safety would involve protection to the users from any dangerous conditions and undesirable situations. This relates to ergonomic aspects and refers to the external conditions where people work. In this analysis computer human interaction we shall consider a telephone answering machine. We shall take an example of a telephone answering machine called ‘marble’ answering machine. In this machine the incoming messages are represented using physical marbles (Bullinger & Ziegler, 1999). The total number of marbles that move into the pinball-like chute or a passage designates the number of messages received. To play the recorded message, it is required to drop one of the marbles into a slot in the machine (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983). Dropping the same sample into another slot on the phone dials the caller who left the message. Fig. 1 sketches showing the marble answering machine Briefly the marble answering machine was designed at Royal college of Art in London by a student called Durrel Bishop. One of his main gaols was to design a messaging system that clearly represented the most basic functionality in terms of every day behavior of objects. To enable him achieve is goal he capitalized on human beings knowledge on how people works. To be specific,he put into action ubiquitous of everyday action of picking up a physical object and putting it down in another place. This a good example of an interactive product designed with users in mind. The designers focus was to provide the users with an enjoyable experience, but which makes the activity of receiving of messages effective. Human computer interaction (HCL) is deals with evaluation, design and application of interactive computing systems for people use and study of all main phenomena surrounding HCL (Dix, 2004). In our example of telephone answering machine the following the interaction model was put forward to show HCL theory. This model has for main components which include 1. The system 2. The User 3. The input 4. The output The following ten principles were used to analyze human computer interaction of the telephone answering machine (Bullinger & Ziegler, 1999). 1. Simple and natural dialogue The marble answering machine is simple in design and delivers the message without altering its content (Jacko & Stephanidis, 2003). The marble answering machine replays the message as it were transmitted. This involves maintaining the actual voice and tone of the sender. 2. Speak the Users’ language The messages in the marble answering machine are expressed in a way that is familiar and clear to the user. 3. Minimize the Users’ memory load It is clear that the user of the marble answering machine does not have to remember information from one part of a dialogue to another. This is because there is help available easily from the retrievable points in the system (Lazar, Feng, & Hochheiser, 2010). 4. Consistency In the marble machine, if the message is replayed several times, the words situations and actions always mean the same thing no matter where they occur in the system (Sears & Jacko, 2009). This shows that there is consistency and continuity in relaying message, thus making the system reliable and effective. 5. Feedback In the marble answering machine the users are informed about what is going on in the system in a timely and relevant way. This allows one to get the information respond in a timely and hence respond appropriately. 6. Clearly Marked Exits The machine is designed in such a way that it avoids errors from occurring. One cannot easily choose and use wrong functions. 7. Shortcuts The process of operating the marble answering machine is short and straight forward because it is a one action process. The process is simple and easy to understand. 8. Good error messages The error messages in the marble answering machines are expressed in a plain language that is easy to understand by all the users and are specific for identifying problems and solutions (Jacko & Stephanidis, 2003). 9. Prevent Errors The marble answering machine is designed carefully to prevent any errors from occurring. These errors would compromise the quality and reliability of its services. 10. Help and documentation The marble machine can be used easily without documentation. However, when such need occurs, its documentations are easily found. These are usually focused on user tasks and contains information that list specific steps to the solutions (Bullinger & Ziegler, 1999). The marble answering machine has explicitly showed how computer human interaction happen because it uses familiar physical objects that designates visually at a glance on how messages are left in the answering machine. Secondly, it is aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to use (Jacko & Stephanidis, 2003). Thirdly, the marble answering machine requires one-step actions to perform its main task. Fourthly, its design is simple and elegant. Finally, this machine has less functionality and allows anyone to listen to any of the messages. In addition to the point discussed above, the designer of the marble answering machine has clearly captured how you optimize the users action with any given system, environment or products. The designer of this machine was more principled which choices to make by mainly basing them on an understanding of the user. This was achieved by taking into account what people are good at and bad at, taking into consideration what could be useful to people with the way they currently do their things, thinking of what could provide quality user experiences and finally, by using a tried and tested user based technique during design process of the marble answering machine. However, with all the above elegant and usable design of a marble answering machine, it is important to keep in mind that it cannot be practical in a hotel setting. The main reason is that it is not robust enough to be used in the public places because the marbles can easily get lost or taken as souvenirs. It also poses another challenge of the need to identify the user before allowing messages to be played which is essential in public places. It does not give room for identification purposes. Therefore, when considering any usability of a design, it is necessary to take into account the place it will be used and also who the users would be. In the case of a marble answering machine, is best suited in a home setting where children are checked from the temptation of playing with the marbles. There many advantages associated with ‘marble’ answering machine to the user. Firstly, it gives an opportunity to those people who are currently avoiding using telephone information services for fear of losing “face” because they find the non-human character of a computer information service sufficiently safe to allow them to call it (Lazar, Feng, & Hochheiser, 2010). Secondly, it advantages those people who feel nervous when communicating. Thirdly , it help people save time because you do not have to keep calling back repeatedly because you are able to leave your message in the answering machine. Finally the user can transmit a message without altering its content. Weakness The following are the weakness of marble answering machine design. It does not have options for the passwords so the messages can be accessed by any person. The marbles can easily get lost. It can be affected by electrical faults. Conclusions In conclusion, the marble answering machine presents a good example of a human-computer interaction. The marble answering machine has an acceptable, applicable and appropriate designs interaction that promotes safety, reliability, effectiveness and efficiency to the user in the course of interactions. References Bullinger, H.-J., & Ziegler, J. (1999). Human-computer interaction: Ergonomics and user inetrfaces. New Jersey: Lawrence Erbaum Associate, Inc. Card, S. K., Moran, T. P., & Newell, A. (1983). The psychology of human-computer interaction. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Dix, A. (2004). Human-computer interaction. New York: Pearson/Prentice-Hall. Jacko, J. A., & Stephanidis, C. (2003). Human-computer interaction: theory amd practice. New Jersey: Lawrence Eribaum Associates Inc. . Lazar, J., Feng, J. H., & Hochheiser, H. (2010). Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction . Glasgow: Bell and Bain. Sears, A., & Jacko, J. A. (2009). Human-Computer interaction: Fundamentals. Chicago: CRC Press. Read More