Quiz #1 notes - ISU570 Human Computer Interaction

Professor Futrelle, CCIS, Northeastern University - Fall 2008

Version of September 29, 2008

Problems that arose in some of your answers to question 1:

• Affordance is a property of something that makes its use apparent to a user, it suggests or shows a user how it functions, typically by its appearance (though it could do this by its behavior - a subtle point).
• Affordance is not simply how something works, how it functions. This was a point of confusion in some of the answers.
• Even an excellent function is useless if the way it works is not apparent to a user.

Problems that arose in some of your answers to question 2A:

• Visibility is just that: Can you see it?
• If an item is on a menu, you will not see it until you open the menu. That's a visibility problem. If the menu name is informative, then the menu name should be visible.
• If a control has two functions it may be difficult to show a user both. Keyboards sometimes have two characters on them, e.g., "#" above the "3" key, but both are visible.
• A mouse may have a special function for three rapid clicks - this may not be discovered by a user, used to only one or two click functions.
  

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