autumn 2007

CS147: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction Design

frequently asked questions

1. Guidelines on using Wizard of Oz in the final project

The reason we implement things is to learn about how to better design the interaction, not to do busy work. By making your project more realistic, you will uncover design issues that may not be apparent with Wizard of Oz alone. Your final project will be evaluated on the design of the interactions, and you are certain to produce a better interaction if it is more realistic.

Good heuristics to decide what to implement:

1. If you can implement it, do it
2. You should be focusing on the interaction design. If implementing it will take an inordinate amount of time, you should Wizard of Oz it in the most realistic way
3. If it would be impossible for anyone to implement it, your design is wrong

To make this more concrete, consider the following two examples:

You are building a navigation application for pedestrians. This application will leverage GPS information to support wayfinding. In this instance it would be highly recommended that you implement GPS functionality for real, since it is central to the application.

You are building a social photo sharing application. Amongst a host of other features, you’d like this application to geotag photos if a GPS location is available. In this case, it may be appropriate to Wizard of Oz the GPS functionality, since it is not central to the application.

While implementing GPS functionality would take the same amount of effort in both cases, there is a much larger potential payoff for implementing it in the first case because it impacts a much larger portion of the interaction design.

2. HW 5 - Paper Prototype - What is a "Critical Incident Report"

There was a mistake on the handout for HW 5 -- a critical incident report is not required as part of the submission. This was left over from an earlier version of the assignment created when the reading list was different. If you look at the current version of the assignment online, you will notice that this requirement was removed.

3. I'm having trouble linking ActionScript files to Movie Clips in Flash Lite

In the project properties, make sure you have "ActionScript 2.0" (as opposed to 1.0) selected. Also, make sure you've created an Flash Lite 2.0 project. Then, right click on the movie clip in the object browser, choose "Linkage...", and fill in the relevant values.

4. How do I run Flash Lite 2.x on my N9*?

Bjoern's experience:

• N93 comes with FlashLite1.1 in its ROM, but you CAN install FlashLite 2.1. Both versions will coexist on the phone.

• N95 comes with FlashLite2.0 in its ROM, you CANNOT install FlashLite 2.1, but you CAN install FlashLite 3.0 preview (not publicly available yet). Both versions will coexist on the phone.

To run your SWF files with FlashLite 2.1 on an N93, you'll have to copy them into the folder E:\Other\ on the phone, either by using the Nokia PC Suite and a USB connection cable, or through Bluetooth OBEX file transfer. Then go to Phone Menu -> My Own -> start the right Flash Player (it'll have a FlashLite 2.1 splash screen) -> then open the file manually.

5. Controlling Softkeys, accessesing vibrating alert, etc.

Several groups have asked about how to get access to the softkeys on the N**'s. Take a look at the "SetSoftKeys" fscommand2 function (either in online examples or in the Flash documentation). This works in either normal or full screen mode. Dean's examples from the Flash tutorial also use this function, so you can look for how it is used there. fscommand2 has a bunch of other capabilities, like allowing you to make the phone vibrate, getting battery level, quitting the app, etc. Take a look at the full list of commands here.