Chris Miller

Thursday saw my last and final exam of my 4th year exam diet, HCI4. The rubric was for answering 3 questions out of 4, one on Phil’s part of the site and the other three from Matthew’s part of the exam.

So I decided to do all of Matthew’s questions as the question Phil wrote contained too much that I didn’t know. Details of the questions are given below:

Question 1

• A – Functionality of DigitalDesk focusing on user context [3]
• B – Affordances, descriptions of basic affordances illustrating via the DigitalDesk example [9]
• C – Ubicomp, description of and examples of “focusing on the task, not the tool” [5]
• D – Weiser’s ubicomp approach is “unachievable or incomplete”, argue for this claim [8]

Question 2

• A – Name 3 wide area positioning systems, outlining coverage, accuracy, cost and availability [6]
• B – RF positioning for ubicomp, factors that affect quality, transmission and detection in terms of objective and subjective satisfaction [6]
• C – Outline two design methods for using RF tags with spacial and temporal variation taken into account[7]
• D – Critique the notion of separate physical and digital worlds, explain why ubicomp can be treated as part of language [6]

Question 3

• A – Outline Wegner’s proof that human interaction with a computer cannot be reduced to an algorithmic representation [3]
• B – Describe basic functionality and interaction design of Coordinator workflow system [4]
• C – Draw upon this and ’situated action’ critique to discuss limitations of the Coordinator’s central representations [6]
• D – Describe the Placeless Documents systems, and the SE tool built with it [8]
• E – How does Placeless’ design fit with philosophical and sociological theories? [4]

Question 4

• A – Describe the GOMS model of task performance [5]
• B – Fitt’s Law, relationship between it and GOMS-based predictions of task completion times [6]
• C – Text entry on mobile devices, findings of performance studies and relationships to GOMS performance measures [7]
• D – Plasticity, reference models and how they are linked to task modeling and empirical studies [7]

I was sitting through the whole exam, missing out the questions which I couldn’t do, but still feeling like it was all going fine because I knew that come 11.15 I would be finished. It feels good. From there it was off to the pub for a night out.
- Chris