Asking Users

CS408 Lecture 41 examines direct inquiry techniques in Human-Computer Interaction, focusing on how evaluators elicit subjective attitudes, preferences, task models, and satisfaction ratings through structured interviews, questionnaires, and expert walkthroughs. Complementing behavioral observation, asking users reveals what individuals think, believe, and aspire to accomplish within interactive digital systems. The lecture adopts Kahn and Cannell's classic 1957 definition of an interview as a conversation with a purpose, classifying interviews into four distinct paradigms based on procedural control: unstructured or open-ended interviews that encourage exploratory dialogue and unexpected insights; structured interviews that administer standardized, predetermined questions to ensure comparability; semi-structured interviews that combine pre-planned prompt scripts with flexible probing questions; and group interviews or focus groups that leverage interpersonal discussion dynamics among multiple participants. The curriculum outlines interview best practices, warning designers to maintain neutral body language, avoid leading questions, use props and prototypes to ground discussions, and record sessions accurately. Shifting to quantitative surveying, the lecture delivers rigorous guidelines for designing questionnaires, highlighting question clarity, unambiguous wording, and logical sequencing. Students examine psychometric rating instruments, distinguishing Likert scales (which measure user agreement along standardized five-point or seven-point continua from strongly agree to strongly disagree) from semantic differential scales (which gauge subjective sentiment using polar opposite adjective pairs such as clear-confusing or efficient-cumbersome). Finally, the lecture explores expert evaluation techniques, contrasting cognitive walkthroughs (which step through sequenced user tasks to determine whether users will recognize available actions, notice controls, associate actions with intended goals, and interpret system feedback correctly) with pluralistic walkthroughs (where users, developers, and usability specialists evaluate interface screens collaboratively). Understanding these inspection methods enables designers to detect critical cognitive friction before product launch. Prominently tested in Virtual University final term examinations and solved papers by Moaaz, these inquiry methods empower students to triangulate qualitative user opinions with empirical usability data.