Chapter 3- Computer In HCI

 Introduction
 Computer I/O Devices

 Text entry devices

 Positioning, pointing and drawing
 Display Devices
 Virtual reality and 3D interaction
 Paper: printing and scanning
 Memory
 Processing and Networks
 Introduction
 To understand human–computer interaction we need to
understand computers!
 The user interface:-refers to the part of a computer and
its software that people can see, hear, touch, talk to
 The user interface has essentially two components: input
and output
A computer system comprises various elements, each of
which affects the user of the system.
input devices, output devices , memory, Processing devices, …
 Introduction…
 How many computers in your house?
PC, Mobiles, cable/satellite TV, DVD Player,
Video Camera, Fridge, HiFi/amplifiers,
microwave, cooker, washing machine, central
heating, security system
 How many computers in your pockets?

PDA, phone, camera, smart card, card with

magnetic strip, electronic car key, USB
memory, …
 Input Devices
 Are parts of computer that allows user to feed
inputs to computer
 Several input devices are there:
 The alphanumeric keyboard
 Handwriting recognition
 Speech recognition
 The mouse
 Touchpad
 Digitizing tablet
 Input devices

 1. Keyboards
 Most common text input device
 Usually connected by cable, but can be wireless
 Layouts of keyboards
QWERTY,
Alphabetic,
Dvorak
chord keyboards,
phone pads,
 Text entry devices: Keyboards…
 QWERTY
 Standardised layout
Text entry devices: Keyboards…
 Alphabetic
 keys arranged in alphabetic order
 not faster for trained typists
 not faster for beginners either!
 Text entry devices: Keyboards…
 Dvorak
 common letters under dominant fingers, home row uses all five
vowels and the five most common consonants:
 10-15% improvement in speed and reduction in fatigue
 a typist can type about 400 of the English most common words
without ever leaving the home row. (100 with QWERTY)
 Text entry devices: Keyboards…

 Chord keyboards
 only a few keys, letters typed as combination of key presses
 Compact size – ideal for portable applications
 Fast - once you have trained
 Text entry devices: Keyboards…
 Phone pad
 use numeric keys with multiple presses
2–abc 6-mno
3-def 7-pqrs
4-ghi 8-tuv
5-jkl 9-wxyz

hello = 4433555[pause]555666
 Text entry devices: Keyboards…
 Numeric keypads
 for entering numbers quickly:
 calculator,
 telephones
 ATM Machine

7 8 9 1 2 3

4 5 6 4 5 6

1 2 3 7 8 9

0 . = 0 #
*
calculator ATM
telephone
Text entry devices:
 2. Handwriting Recognition
 Text can be input into the computer, using a pen and a
digesting tablet and the computer taking this form of
input and converting it to text
 natural interaction by human hand
 Usually, used in
 PDAs, and
 tablet computers

 3. Speech recognition
 One talk to computer, the speech recognition system convert
the sound into text
 speech-based system, phonetic typewriter.
 Input devices: Positioning, pointing and
drawing
 4. The Mouse
 Handheldpointing device
 Very common & easy to use
 5. Touchpad
 small touch sensitive tablets
 ‘stroke’ to move mouse pointer
 used mainly in laptop computers

 6. Touch-sensitive screen
 Detect the presence of finger or stylus on the screen.
 works by interrupting matrix of light beams, capacitance changes
or ultrasonic reflections
 direct pointing device
 Output Devices

 Are parts of computer that conveys

the results of its computations and
requirements to the user.
 Bitmap displays – resolution and color
 Cathode ray tube
 Liquid crystal display (LCD)
 Digital paper
 Output Display Devices

 1. Bitmap displays
 Screen display is made of vast numbers of colored
dots or pixels in a rectangular grid.
 Resolution
number of pixels on screen (width x height)
e.g. HDTV 1024 x 768, PDA 240x400
density of pixels (in pixels or dots per inch - dpi)
 Aspect ratio
ratio between width and height
 4:3 for most screens, 16:9 for wide-screen TV
 Display Devices: Technologies

 2. Cathode ray tube

 The cathode ray tube is the television-like computer screen
 Stream of electrons emitted from electron gun, focused
and directed by magnetic fields,
 used in TVs and computer monitors
electron beam

electron gun

focussing and
deflection

phosphor-
coated screen
 Display Devices: Technologies…
 3. Liquid crystal displays (LCD)
 Smaller, lighter, and flat plastic screens.
 Utilize liquid crystal technology and consume far less
power than traditional CRTs.
 Thin layer of liquid crystal is sandwiched between two
glass plates
 Top plate transparent and polarised, bottom plate
reflecting
 Light passes through top plate and crystal, and reflects
back to eye.
 Found on PDAs, portables and notebooks, digital watches,
mobile phones, HiFi controls
 Display Devices
 4.Digital paper
 These are thin flexible materials that can be written to
electronically
 Keep their contents even when removed from any
electrical supply.
for large banners that can be reprogrammed or
slowly animated
As the technology matures, the aim is to have
programmable sheets of paper that you attach to
your computer to get a ‘soft’ printout that can later
be changed
 Display Devices

 Large displays
usedfor meetings, lectures, etc.
Technology:

Plasma – usually wide screen

Video walls – lots of small screens together

Projected – RGB lights or LCD projector
 Virtual reality and 3D interaction
 Virtual Reality (VR):- is the use of computer technologies to create
simulated environment.
 Virtual reality systems present a 3D virtual world
 Many PC games are themselves virtual.
 The 3D mouse: has 6 degrees of freedom/movement:
 x, y, z
 up/down angle (pitch),
 its left/right orientation (yaw) and
 the amount twists about its own axis (roll)
Virtual reality and 3D interaction
 Data glove
 fibre optics used to detect finger position and bending
 VR helmets
 detect head motion and possibly eye gaze (controlled looking)
 (i)they display the 3D world to each eye and
 (ii) they allow the user’s head position to be tracked.
 Virtual reality and 3D interaction
 Whole body tracking
 accelerometers strapped (attached) to limbs
 Track different kinds of whole body movement
 white spots (colored mark) are stuck at various
points of the user’s body and the position of these
tracked using two or more cameras
 3D displays:- 3D impression is produced by using
effects such as shadows, occlusion
 Sound output

 sounds offer an important level of feedback in

interactive systems
 Telephone keypads often sound different tones when
the keys are pressed successfully
 Alarms, warning sounds, etc

 Avast antivirus talks that threats have detected

 Auditory signals such as beeps, bongs, clanks,

whistles and whirrs are all used to varying effect
 Environment and bio-sensing

 Sensors in our environment:

 controlling automatic doors, energy saving lights,
Measuring temperature, movement, location
(GPS, global positioning, in mobile devices),
pressure sensors
 Sensors used to capture physiological signs
such as body temperature, blink rate,
typing rate
 Paper: printing and scanning
 Printing
 computer systems have made it easier to produce paper
documents
 Printers take electronic documents and put them on paper
 It is so easy to run off many copies of a letter (or book),
 All printing technologies build the image on the paper as
a series of dots
 dot-matrix printers, ink-jet and bubble-jet printers, laser
printer
 Scanning
 scanners reverse printing process by converting paper
printed doc to the bitmap image
 Optical character recognition can convert the page right
back into text
 Computer Memory
 As human memory, computers have different memory
 By analogy with the human memory, computer memory are
grouped into short-term and long-term memories (STM and LTM)
 Short-term Memory – RAM=primary Memory
 Random access memory (RAM)- volatile
 Read Only Memory (ROM)- non-volatile

 registers
-store intermediate result of CPU
 Long-term Memory – Secondary Memory
 Magnetic disks: magnetic media E.g. floppy disks, hard disks
 Optical disks - use lasers to read and sometimes write E.g. CD, DVD
 Solid State Memory - uses integrated circuit assemblies. E.g. A USB flash

 Speed and capacity of memory largely differs

 Processing and Networks
 Designers tend to assume fast processors, and make
interfaces more and more complicated
 The size of processor and memory affects the processing
speed of computer
 Effects of finite processor speed

 speed of processing can seriously affect the user

interface
 two sorts of faults due to processing speed: those
when it is too slow, and those when it is too fast!
Thank You!