HCI Assignment 1: Problems with Systems and UCI.EDU
June 26th, 2008 by Mike MayerPart A: Problems with HCI encountered
Seismic Button
What is this thing? It looks like all the rest of the buttons in a Donald Bren Hall elevator but it says SEISMIC.
One time when the elevator was filled with people I announced that I was going to press the SEISMIC button. Someone said “NO! Don’t!” They were quite anxious about it. So I pressed it. It’s not a button at all. I would have to say that it’s probably a light that indicates when seismic activity has been sensed by whatever sensors the elevator has available to it.
The problem with this thing is that it looks like a button. Why did they make it the same shape, size, and just general look as every other button in the elevator? Perhaps it was to build the elevator for a couple dollars cheaper. Hardly worth it if you ask me.
The users of the elevator are presented with the SEISMIC “button” and are given no indication for what its purpose is. Its white- and that would seem to implicate that it’s going to portray some information to the elevator users- one point for the designers there. It’s the same shape as all the other buttons in just about every elevator I’ve ever seen and it even looks like a button with its flange around the edges.
My recommendation for future elevator designers is to never, under any circumstances, make lights that resemble buttons in any way. If a light such as the SEISMIC light is needed then it should, perhaps, just be a function of a segmented LCD panel like most elevators have to indicate the floor currently on.
McDonalds Chinese Billboard
Certainly not a result of computer interaction in the simplest sense- the Chinese McDonalds billboard was seen on the 405 in Los Angeles. Since I wasn’t anywhere near the Asian parts of Los Angeles I thought that it was interesting.
It’s clear that its advertisement for an Egg McMuffin- that much is clear. I, however, have no idea what the point is. Perhaps its saying “Egg McMuffin now with lots more communism” or maybe it says “Egg McMuffin- now with more sodium.” I really couldn’t say.
Users of this billboard, rather the drivers on the freeway, will be largely in the same position as me. Since we don’t understand what this advertisement is for we certainly aren’t being influenced by the message about the Egg McMuffin that we are supposed to be getting. It’s just a simple language barrier problem.
My solution is simple and transcends natural language. Instead of using a specific language- why not use glyphs that indicate what is being expressed. It would be effective for most advertising campaigns; especially those with as large of a canvas as a billboard. It could be the same picture almost:
Now obviously that says “Egg McMuffin: Happy for less money”
I’m not an artist and those glyphs are terrible for this since they could definitely be misinterpreted further: “Money is greater than happiness: Egg McMuffin.” Still, I think my idea is valid given more appropriate glyphs and much greater graphic talent.
Part B: A Problem on uci.edu
UCI’s website is expertly made and it was quite a challenge to find a part of the site that wasn’t made with skill. I eventually found one that may even be a security problem. I’m sure that the guys who made the site aren’t that silly.
Alright what we have here is the campus directory, located at
http://phwww.cwis.uci.edu/cgi-bin/phonebook.
It’s certainly not the worst page ever designed or anything like that. However, it is visually inconsistent with the rest of the entire uci.edu domain. Sure there’s Peter and some blue but none of the other pages use that blue or have that image of Peter in the upper left corner. The page surely functions correctly- as you can see I was able to find my record with ease. The information is mostly accurate and what I’d probably be looking for if I was looking for my record.
The users of this page are most likely to be other students, faculty from other universities, or someone who wanted to know how to contact someone from UCI. I believe that since the page is so much different from how the other UCI pages look someone could think that the site was a fraud or some kind of fake page.
The problems are relatively small. It appears that the directory was made in a very lazy manner. It’s quite obvious that the database’s fields are given in plain text (nickname, email_address, picture_url, home_page_url, major, email, rewrite, type, last_first_name, alias). If the form on this page was made poorly and we had this information we could hack their database and arbitrarily change people’s majors or anything else we wanted (at least in the database the directory uses… hopefully not the same as any important ones). I have no idea what the “rewrite: alias” thing is for and I certainly don’t know what that
#######@es.nacs.uci.edu
email address is- those could be eliminated. Additionally as I said before the page just doesn’t look like any other UCI page.
Solutions for the problems are simple. Have some kind of lookup table at least for the column names for the database. It’s a terrible practice to just dump the column names and the data in the row retrieved. Change the style of the page to be more like the other UCI pages as to not confuse the users. Eliminate any possible confusion with the data that’s retrieved by not including irrelevant data. Confirm that the forms are smart enough to disallow any kind of SQL injection attack and I think the problems are solved. That should absolve this page of any of its usability problems.
This assignment will also be posted at:
http://www.blog.mikehmayer.com/?p=341
Anything on this site is mine ( except for the things that aren’t ). To use it for anything you will need my permission. I’ll probably give it to you. But if you use this for anything I cannot be held responsible.
