UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

FACULTY OF SCIENCE
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
HCT416: ASSIGNMENT 5

GROUP MEMBERS:
1. R187479D MASUNDA RANGARIRAI
2. R187447V MARLON TUGWETE
3. R187481M FARAI BUZUZI
4. R188802Y LESLIE ZINGONI
Question 1
a. >> Information overload: it can be caused by too many Calls to Action, a user becomes
indecisive about what to do first or what is more relevant than the other. Ultimately, a
user can then decide to simply find a better alternative. Too many navigation options
can also have the same negative effect.
>> Unclear demonstration of State: imagine when a user finishes a document and clicks
save then does not see any kind of feedback as a response to the action. The user would
now have to manually check if the document has been saved instead of just getting an
interactive response to the action.
>> abc: abc.

b. >> Information overload: With too many calls to action the user can end up ignoring all
the calls to action. In a case where the calls to action are for example sponsored adverts
or adverts for certain paid services and the user has decided to ignore them all, then not
only is there no money coming in but the sponsored adverts become a liability since it is
just money being spent and there are no results.
>> Unclear demonstration of State: users will give negative reviews on the products and
will not recommend them to other potential users. Once there is no one using a product
then there is no income from the product.

Question 2
a. Good affordance means once a user sees a product, they should be able to establish
how to use it or at least be able to determine its purpose.

b. Effective constraints are limitations put in place to promote usability of certain products.
They are constraints that serve a good purpose in their area of application, they can be
looked at as guidelines. An example is road traffic rules and regulations.

c. In simple terms, good affordance and effective constraints work together to achieve
optimum usage of products. Once a user establishes how a product works, they need to
know how to use it best without abusing the product.

Question 3
a. A

b. B
Question 4
a. There is hardware that already comes as part of a computer and already assists deaf
users, like the keyboard and monitor. A deaf user is capable of using any computer at
any given moment. There would be need to introduce some software that now
enhances their experience. Speech synthesis software can assist deaf users to view
content such as videos, the audio will be converted to text so subtitles will be provided
for the deaf user. More hardware and software would be a motion detecting camera
which tracks the sign language from the user and the software that goes with the
motion detecting camera would convert the signs to machine understandable language.

b. >> Speech synthesis software to convert text to audio and audible speech to text or
machine understandable language.
>> A microphone to take user input in the form of speech or voice commands.
>> abc