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The field of Human
Computer Interactions or Usability Engineering is concerned with the science
of investigating how humans interact with computers. To illustrate the basic
idea consider the problem of a 65-year old grandmother who wishes to buy some shoes using the internet. Assume the
grandmother is not familiar with computers or the internet. The web site
designer puts together an awesome website with all sorts of cool multimedia
features which most people would agree would be one of the coolest websites
on the internet. However, the 65-year old grandmother who is not familiar
with computers is overwhelmed and can not figure out which button to click on
in order to place her shoe order. Thus, the company which sells shoes on this
cool website will eventually go out of business since they can not reach
their target audience. A usability engineer would approach this problem by
inviting a half dozen 65-year old grandmothers
into the laboratory in order to investigate how the grandmothers interact
with the computer.
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Using the
information acquired from these experiments, the usability engineer can then
develop a website which is not only cool but also "usable" by 65-year old grandmothers. Click on the
links below to visit Dr. Norman's Web Site and to see some experiments in
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Human Computer
Interactions.
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