Leverage the understanding of Human-Computer Interaction in creating a better user experience

Introduction

So many people get into the world of development without really paying attention to Human-Computer Interactions (HCI) which is a crucial topic in understanding how people interact with computers and other digital technologies. If you’ve ever wondered why some software usage is so seamless and exciting, that you almost don’t want to leave, while others are frustrating to use. It all comes down to the understanding of Human-Computer interactions. In this article, we will explore the basics of HCI and understand how its knowledge can help us create a better user experience. This article is suitable for both developers and aspiring developers.

What is Human-Computer Interactions (HCI)

HCI as you already know stands for Human-Computer Interaction and as the name implies, it is a field that deals with how humans interact with computers. As a field of study, HCI comprises computer science, behavioral science (psychology), design, and several other fields. All of these fields are carefully examined and put together to see that Human-Computer interactions are seamless and provide the best possible result.

Humans interact with computers in different ways and one of the most common ways is through a graphic-user interface (GUI), for people to be able to interact with computers there must be an interface, take your computer screen for example, this interface can simply be seen as the middle-man or mediator between you (user) and the computer. This is why understanding user needs and designing a user-friendly interface is the major focus of HCI because it improves the overall user experience. Being able to understand user needs and designing a user-friendly interface, HCI ultimately combines design elements, psychology, and computer science to create usable and effective computer systems. With this paragraph alone, you can already see how everything is intertwined. Without understanding the concepts involved with HCI it is challenging to build usable systems and this is visible in some of the software or applications that we use.

With HCI there are design principles that can be followed to build a user-friendly interface and that will be discussed in a subsequent section of this article but before that let's look at interaction design and usability to get a better grasp of HCI.

Interaction design

Interaction design is a key component of HCI; it is a process of creating top-notch experiences for users when they interact with digital technologies. Top-notch in this regard, is creating engaging and intuitive systems. Interaction design focuses mainly on the behavior of the system or product created, it answers the question of how should a system work, and how is it working. When a system is working as intended and satisfying the needs of its users then it can be considered to be a successful interaction design.

Usability

When discussing HCI, usability is another major concept to understand. Often the term usability has been simply defined as “easy to use” but there’s more to it, apart from a system being easy to use, for there to be good human-to-computer interactions, the system also has to be effective, and efficient, as well as engaging. Usability focuses on making a product or service user-friendly, which means the product or service should be easy to learn, use, and understand.

Usability also places focus on the user, by having a user-centered design where the user’s goals and requirements are all met. Overall usability is all about designing a product or service from the users’ perspective; this will ensure a usable product or service that leaves a positive user experience.

Principles of HCI design

As earlier stated, to make human-computer interactions seamless and produce the best possible results, some HCI design principles should be taken into consideration. These principles are concepts that when properly understood and utilized can improve user experience to a large extent.

Below are some of the principles of HCI design:

• User-centered design: A user-centered design is a design approach where the design of the product or service is focused on the user. It is an iterative process where the user’s behavior, goals, and preferences are analyzed; the result of the analysis is then used as the building blocks of designing the product or service.

• Learnability and complexity: The learnability of a product or service should be between easy to moderate as complex and overly complicated processes will only dissuade users from using your product or service. Learnability when paired with user-centered design can have a good impact in boosting user experience. As a developer, you need to picture the complexity of your product from the user’s point of view.

• Consistency and standards: In design, consistency is one of the principles that will ensure that users can easily relate to your product or service. Consistency is all about maintaining uniformity and standards. A good illustration of this is the Microsoft products such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint even though they have entirely different functions there is consistency with the user interface.

• Feedback and response: Creating a system or product that gives little to no feedback or response is a good way to leave users with a bad experience; on the other hand providing timely and accurate feedback and responses to users will guarantee a good user experience. Even if your product is failing, letting users know the reason why and assuring them it’s being looked into and taken care of will also improve users' experience.

• Error prevention and handling: Errors are common occurrences when interacting with digital technologies, anticipating fatal errors that could potentially cause damage to the system and putting measures in place to prevent these errors from happening will not only give your users a better experience, it will also save your system from destructive actions. Errors that cannot be prevented can be handled by providing users with a clear message stating the problem and potential steps to take to solve the problem.

• Visibility and simplicity: Visibility emphasizes making important information legible and easily accessible by users. It is important to keep the most commonly used options or elements where they can easily be found. For example, users would expect that a menu button be placed in the top left or top right corner of an interface, changing this convention can leave your users spending quality time searching for the button which can in turn affect the user’s experience. So it is ideal to keep the design visible and simple by reducing clutter and eliminating unnecessary or irrelevant information or elements.

• Flexibility and efficiency: People usually have diverse preferences; flexibility is all about making your system flexible enough to be able to accommodate all users with their different needs. Putting features in place where your users can customize the interface and get a personalized experience will also boost user experience and give you a wider reach. An example worth noting is the light and dark mode feature that’s on many platforms. The feature is only being used as a matter of preference by various users.

  Just like there are users with various preferences, there are also users with various skills and abilities; Efficiency is all about providing features that enable users to accomplish tasks quickly with minimal effort. An illustration of this is having shortcuts or commands that allow experienced users to work faster.

The above concepts are the fundamental principles of HCI design, coupled with the right usage of design elements such as colors, lines, texts, icons, images, buttons, etc. You can create visually appealing systems and also ensure that your system is usable and accessible to the intended audience and in turn improve user experience.

Conclusion

Human-to-computer interactions is a pretty broad topic that deserves extensive study; we’ve only covered a broad overview of what HCI is and the fundamental principles that can help you create a better user experience. The importance of learning about HCI stretches further than just creating a better user experience, another crucial aspect is that you get to understand certain human psychology that can help improve the interaction between humans and technologies in general, also learning about HCI can increase productivity because you will now know how to make designs that are easy to understand, use, and at the same time efficient, the benefits are enormous. A good recommendation to learn more on this topic is the book written by Don Norman titled “The Design of Everyday Things” It is an interesting book that explores the principles of a good design and the psychology behind user-friendly design.