Reseach methods

My work for the thesis is to the study the usability of the user interface for the further analytical procedures into the field of human computer interaction. HCI is itself large and interdisciplinary area. It is emerging with several disciplines: computer science, psychology, sociology and anthropology, and industrial design[1].

The work involves multiple approaches to adhering to the methods used in the HCI. One method which I will be using has been adopted from the research methods of psychology is the Controlled Experiments. It features valuable resources of research methods to evaluate interfaces [2], styles of interaction [3], and to understand cognition in context of interaction with the systems [4]. The reason for using this method is their capability to answer the questions like: does making changes to the value of variable X have significant effect on the value of variable Y? For example, X might be an interface or interaction feature and Y might be time to complete task, number of errors or users' satisfaction from working with the interface. Since cost of designing and running a rigorous experiments is typically high and take some time, the digital platform designed for the counseling of HIV/AIDS in the context is used as a testing tools for the purpose. Another method is the use of questionnaires and interviews, which helps in need of time-to-time evaluation of systems with users in varying context [5]. Questionnaires are paper-based or sometimes or delivered online with a set of questions which all participants are asked to complete. Large number of participants are delivered here which means the large amount of data to be coded and analyzed. Completing both methods will give out the opportunity to deal with the numbers and hopefully reaching some solid, secure results like in other sciences. My work need to make sure that numerical data is not just natural variation between people but variation due to real difference between interface and effects on people. Thus finally the Statistical methods is used for this purpose. It will help me to make sense of the data and thus draw sound conclusions about the nature of the interaction between children and computers.

According to classification in computing disciplines given by Glass et al. 2004 [6], my work belongs more to the subfield of Information Science and Software Engineering, with different research approaches necessary for the research utilizing a wide variety of methods. It is found that the work is following the Empirical Traditions of the given figure in the lecture notes[7] attaining the modeling and analysing the human phenomenon focusing on the childrens.

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References:

[1]: ACM SIGCHI : Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction (http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html)

[2]: McGriffin, M. and Balakrishnan, R. 2005. 'Fitts' law and expanding targets: Experimental studies and design of user interfaces.' ACM Trans. on Computer-Human Interaction 12(4): 388-422

[3]: Moyle, M and Cockburn, A. 2005. 'A flick in the right direction: a case study of gestural input.' Behaviour and Information Technology 24(4): 275-88

[4]: Li, S. Y. W., Cox. A. L., Blandford, A., Cairns, P. and Abeles, A. 2006. 'Further investigation into post-completion error: The effects of interruption position and duration.' In Proc. Of 28^th Annual meeting of the Cognition Science Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

[5]: Pace, S. 2004. 'A grounded theory of the flow experiences of web users.' International Journal of Human Computer Studies 60: 327-63.

[6]: Glass, R. L., Ramesh, V., and Vessey, I. (2004). An analysis of research in computing disciplines. Communications of the ACM, 47(6):89–94.

[7]: Tedre M., Thinking About Computing (Lecture Notes, 2009. ), unpublished,