Usability issues of photo camera in Sony Ericsson K750i
From the moment when I started taking HCI course (2 lectures already), I really feel that I have broadened my understaning of various computer sytems. Coming from Computer Science background (strictly from Web development field), everything around HCI was associated to me with PCs and usability of websites. Now I have seen that apart from that, there exists various original computer systems used in manufactory. There are washing machines that we are using often with their own user interfaces. Not mentioning mobile phones (oh hell, how many pain I have experienced with mine), photo cameras and other often used products.
Well, the thing that also surprised me was the mathematics (actually a lot) in HCI field, especially for predictive models. While the math formulas seems quite scary, actually they can bring a benefit by predicting the user behaviour without making time consuming experiments. That includes famous Fitts’s law (practical illustration there), Hick’s law and Keystroke level model.
Then there are those descriptive models, meant to provide context and vocabulary for thinking about a problem. For instance thinking about what people are doing with each of their hands while using a computer system (is the interaction comfortable both for left and right handies?). Other popular theories include Key-action model (operation of keys on keyboard), Three-State Model of Graphical lnput (relationship between pointing devices and the interaction techniques they offer) and Model for Mapping Degrees of Freedom to Dimensions.
Our task was also to find a bug from our daily life. As I mentioned later, I had some pain with my mobile phone, so this was a perfect moment for letting it out 
When we analysed HCI issues, we divided them in 4 categories by their relation – performance, mental models, affordances (action possibilities an artifact offers to a user) and organisational problems. Like in my case it is possible to state technical problem as a HCI problem. For instance the speed issue is more engineering problem.
ran across your blog via google. i’ve been looking for blogs on design, specifically HCI, so i appreciate your work.
keep it up.
do you have e-mail subscription functionality? i check your feedburner and it looks like you don’t.
e-mail is the best way for me to keep up with your blog.
thanks!
Hi kenny!
Thanks for checking my blog.
I have added an email subscription (a link in the bottom). Didn’t know about that before you told me
Cheers!
i without a doubt love your own writing choice, very attractive,
don’t quit as well as keep penning considering the fact that it simply just truly worth to read it,
looking forward to look over alot more of your content pieces, have a good day
[...] mind trying to improve their cognitive abilities. External cognition topic is important topic in Human Computer Interaction field as a complement to mental model theory in order to explain human [...]