Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Basics: A Beginner’s Guide

Human Computer Interaction is a multidisciplinary field focused on designing products or interfaces that are easy to use, responsive, and provide a good user experience. In this article, we’ll cover the fundamental concepts of HCI, including its principles, and design processes.

What exactly is Human Computer Interaction (HCI)?

As the name clearly shows, It is the study of how humans interact with technologies computers, etc. It is a field that combines psychology, computer science, design, and engineering to create user-centred designs that are both enjoyable and responsive or functional.

Principles of Human-Computer Interaction:

Principles are necessary to work with anything. We have to follow every principle to make our product exceptional. Here are some important HCI principles,

User-centered design: It specifies that we have to meet what a user needs. User-centered designs that are tailored in such a way that they meet every aspect of user needs and goals. The only focus is on user needs and goals. If the user is happy and satisfied with the product, so are we!
Visibility: It deals with making the interface intuitive and easy to understand. We have to make the design visually appealing. If the design is visually attractive, people would love to interact and it would create a human-computer interaction.
Affordance: Designing for affordance involves creating interfaces that communicate how to interact with them, reducing cognitive load and improving user experience. For Example:

A door handle that indicates whether to push or pull.
A touch-screen button with a clear label and a prominent border.
A website with clear and consistent navigation and typography.

Consistency: The design patterns and elements should be uniform throughout the design. Remember that, Consistency is the key! If we are consistent with the design, we create a good human-computer interaction. This makes it interesting and the users won’t get bored!
Error prevention and recovery: Designing interfaces that prevent errors from occurring and provide clear recovery options when mistakes do occur. It is human nature that we leave problematic things. So, we have to make sure that the product or design is good enough to not cause any errors. We also have to have backups if the design causes any errors.

The Design Process:

The Human-Computer Interaction process is somehow similar to the User Experience design process. The design process in HCI typically has several steps. That is;

User research: Understand users, goals, and context. As the name clearly shows, researching user’s needs, preferences, interests, or behaviors. It is mostly the research work that we have to do the best so that we can get an idea of what the user exactly wants! When we get the idea, we can design better to meet the user’s needs. We keep in mind what users expect from us and design accordingly.
Requirement gathering: Engage with stakeholders and users throughout the requirements gathering process. Combine multiple methods, such as interviews, surveys, and observations, to gather a comprehensive understanding of requirements. Document and track requirements, ensuring that they are clear, concise, and actionable.
Testing: User feedback and iteration. We should conduct user testing. In which we test our product before launching it. If the tests are all cleared, we can launch our product. Otherwise, we need to work on it more before releasing it. We do this several times to make it interesting for users to create a good human-computer interaction.
Refining: Finalizing design details. Once the design has passed all the user testing and feedback, We finalize the design and launch the product.

Design Techniques:

There are several design tools and techniques that are commonly used in HCI, including:

User personas: Creating fictional user personas to guide the design process. A user persona is a fictional character that represents a group of users with similar characteristics, needs, and behaviors. Personas help you understand your users’ motivations, goals, and pain points. Personas reduce the likelihood of making assumptions about your users, which can lead to design flaws. This is the best step to improve human-computer interaction, simply by knowing what a user exactly needs.
User journeys: Mapping out the user’s journey through the interface. It is a visual representation of the user’s experience across multiple touchpoints and interactions with a product, service, or system. By mapping the user journey, you can identify areas for improvement and opportunities to delight the user.
Wireframing: Creating low-fidelity sketches of the interface. Low-fidelity sketches. In wireframing, we create basic visuals. We decide the layout, design patterns that we’re going to use, typography, or everything just to have an idea of what we are going to make. We usually share the wireframes first with the customers, before we deliver the actual design. We can have an idea about how our product is going to look by just looking at the wireframes only.
Prototyping: Creating interactive prototypes of the interface. Interactive, high-fidelity designs. It is the most important topic. Prototyping deals with the interactions of almost everything that is on our product, website, or service. It deals with how things flow. In the initial stages, we use these to develop interactive mockups for testing purposes. But, prototyping is more than that!
Usability testing: Conducting usability testing with real users to evaluate the interface. We test our product before launching it. If the tests are all cleared, we can launch our product. Otherwise, we need to work on it more before releasing it. We do this several times to make it interesting for users to create a good human-computer interaction.

DON’T forget the three things I told you earlier,