User-Experience of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Mobile Phones Dr
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108 Int'l Conf. Internet Computing and Internet of Things | ICOMP'16 | User-Experience of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Mobile Phones Dr. Minerva M. Bunagan1, and Prof. Nabil El Kadhi2 1Asst. Professor, College of Business, UoB, Buraimi, Oman 2Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, UoB, Buraimi, Oman help in dealing with daily activities that require easy and Abstract – Users consider some characteristics in selecting a reliable information [5]. mobile device. These characteristics include interface design, efficiency, reliability, presence of utilities, responsiveness, The presence of various types and brands of mobile portability, performance and advanced features. On the other phones in the market provides sufficient options to the users. hand, mobile developers apply HCI principles in designing The features available in each mobile phone depend on the mobile devices and consider the user-experience as well. operating system, from which it is based. There are mobile Mobile users reflected their experience of the 7 HCI devices that are based on IOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry principles in their commentaries and it appeared that the most and Symbian, which is now gradually disappearing under the relevant principles are consistency, synthesizability and ownership of Microsoft [6]. substitutivity. To specifically determine the effect of a specific Most users however choose mobile phones in design principle on a certain product, the study recommends consideration of the camera, memory capacity, music, video, exploring the prioritization of the HCI principles as gaming, downloading, and surfing capabilities. Moreover, implemented by the mobile phone developers. This will pave they take into account the size, weight, functionality, and ease way for the differentiation of design principles applicable to of use. All of these speak of the experience of the user along hardware or software. mobile interaction. Keywords: Mobile Computing, Mobile Characteristics, Mobile interaction is an aspect of Human Computer Mobile Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Design Interaction (HCI), which deals with the manner to which Principles, User-Experience, mobile users interface with computers. It focuses on the 1. Introduction understanding of mobile users’ requirements and needs [7]. Statistics shows that mobile subscribers are widespread As HCI involves the study on how the users/ human and all over the world. The International Telecommunication the computer/ machine interface with each other, it takes into Union estimated that there are 6 billion mobile subscriptions, account the relevant aspects of the two (2) elements. For which make up 87% of the world population [1]. The increase instance, it looks into the techniques in computer graphics, the on mobile subscriptions from 2010 to 2011 is 0.6 billion and operating system, the programming language and the from 2009 to 2010 is 0.7 billion. It was also estimated that by development environment of the machine; and the graphic the end of 2012, there will be 6.5 billion mobile subscribers design and industrial design principles, human factor such as and 6.9 billion by the end of 2013 [2]. Moreover, in the early user satisfaction and communication theory, among others of 2014 report on mobile users, it was expected that mobile users the user [8]. in 2014 will grow to 4.55 billion worldwide and by the end of The application and involvement of HCI in the design of 2015 there will be 8 billion mobile subscribers [3]. In mobile devices should not be ignored to ensure that mobile addition, it is estimated that the total number of mobile devices are appropriately designed. It should also be noted broadband connections will include for almost 70% of the that HCI provides relevant findings along user experience, global base by 2020, as compared to 2014, which is around which help a lot in for the improvement of systems and 40% [4]. These data indicate that there is much growth in the devices [9]. use of mobile phones all over the world. This could be attributed to the fact that individuals depend so much on 2. Research Problem mobile phones today and mobile phones have already become Studies reveal that HCI is a discipline without a fusing a necessity in the daily lives of the individuals as well. design interface, and there is no coherence and consistency in In the early stage of mobile technology, mobile phones measuring HCI interface performance. However, a study on were just used for calls and messages. Today, the HCI Principles was conducted to standardize the variety of advancement in mobile technology is hard to cope with. principles which have been proposed by several authors. The Mobile phones have a lot of features now, which include text result of the study showed the eight (8) HCI Principles [10], and image messaging, simple calls and video calls, Internet namely: 1) recoverability; 2) familiarity; 3) consistency; access, GPS-based navigations, music, gaming, social 4) substitutivity; 5) task migratability; 6) synthesisability; networking and various applications which provide users great 7) predictability; and 8) perceptual ergonomics. These ISBN: 1-60132-439-1, CSREA Press © Int'l Conf. Internet Computing and Internet of Things | ICOMP'16 | 109 principles can be applied to the design of interfaces in mobile 4. Discussion devices. 4.1 Challenges in Mobile Design Mobile devices of different kinds and with varied features and interfaces are widely used everywhere. Researches show The HCI challenge in the mobile device design lies that there are many challenges faced by those involved in on its hardware and software design [11]. The limited input designing mobile devices, which include limited input and and output facilities, and designing for mobility are the output facilities, designing for mobility, hierarchical menus, hardware challenge, and the hierarchical menus, navigating navigating and browsing, and images and icons [11]. and browsing, and images and icons are the software challenge. Since mobile devices are used in various disciplines, such as education, medicine and sociology, major emphasis should The three input facilities for mobile devices are be placed on how the user interacts with the device. This keyboard, stylus and the scroll wheel. Among these facilities, would only be possible if there is a set of appropriate design the challenge is on the design of the keyboard as the space for principles that can be applied in mobile devices. it is limited [11]. However, the keyboard allows the user to have more accurate entry than the stylus [12, 13]. An Moreover, Mobile phone developers come out with new experiment was performed to compare text-based entry using product releases in response to the growing need of the users mini-qwerty, hand-writing recognition, quick writing, and a along functionality, usability, ease of use, among others. chorded keyboard; and it was found out that the mini-qwerty These user requirements are based on the user’s experience. is the fastest way in entering text and the two-chorded Users seek for better ways to improve mobile performance keyboard is the best of the methods in terms of accuracy [12]. based on their need and personal interaction with the device. Though user experience design is considered in the design of With the problem on the space taken by the keyboard, mobile phones, HCI principles should not be taken aside. due to the small size of the mobile device, new designs of mobile devices have been out in the market, where the touch As there is no standard set of HCI principles for mobile screen keyboard replaced the physical keyboard. A very good device design, there is a need to come out with specific design example for this is the iPhone and the Android Phones. An principles or criteria that would be able to meet what the experiment on the comparison of a physical keyboard and a mobile device is intended for. This study explored how HCI touch screen keyboard was conducted, where the Palm Treo principles can be applied to mobile devices by looking into was used for the physical keyboard and the Samsung i718 was the characteristics users preferred to have from mobile devices used for the touch screen keyboard. It was found out in the and mapping these against the HCI design principles. It also study that the use of physical keyboards proved to be faster rests on the concept that the design of mobile phones is and more accurate in entering text as compared to the touch influenced by the 2 factors – user experience design and HCI screen keyboard. However, the addition of tactile feedback in Principles. the touch screen keyboard gave a comparable result with the 3. Methodology physical keyboard. The authors then recommended that tactile feedback be added as feature of the mobile device [13]. The study employed the descriptive research design, A study on tactile feedback was also conducted and it was where data were gathered in 2 ways - meta-analysis and reinforced that tactile feedback helps a lot in improving the surveys. The meta-analysis was conducted to review user performance with the mobile. In the study, the users were systematically various findings on HCI principles and come able to find greater satisfaction in interacting with the touch out with the concrete principles in HCI. As there were screen [14]. conflicting issues on HCI principles, it is appropriate to extract the conflicting views of various authors and be able to Various studies have shown that users still prefer to use deduce specific principles that serve as basis to continue with keyboards for entering text, as it proved to be accurate and the study. Findings were grouped according to the general faster [11, 13]. The challenge then on the limited space for the principles of HCI, which include: recoverability; familiarity; keyboard led to the design of touch screen keyboard and the consistency; substitutivity; task migratability; synthesisability; said type of keyboard is almost the same as the physical predictability; and perceptual ergonomics.