UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2018/2019
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE
IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY/ BACHELOR OF BUSINESS IN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BIT2308 HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
FULLTIME/PARTTIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
AUGUST 2019 TIME: 2 HOURS
Instructions
o Answer question ONE and any other TWO.
o Question One carry 30 marks, others 20 marks each.
QUESTION ONE. (COMPULSORY)
(a) Discuss three main goals of HCI. (3 Marks)
(b) Explain the following principles in HCI (6 Marks)
i. Affordance
ii. Usability
iii. Visibility
(c) Compare the constructivist and ecological theories of perception and give examples
of how each has influenced interface design. (4 Marks)
(d) Describe, with the aid of a diagram, the Extended Human Information Processing
model. (5 Marks)
(e) Explain between knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head. (2 Marks)
(f) (i) Differentiate “recognition rather than recall” as used in HCI (2 marks)
(ii) Discuss areas in system design where ‘recognition’ is encouraged (2 Marks)
(iii) Discuss areas in system design where ‘recall’ is encouraged (2 Marks)
(g) Discuss any two metaphors used in the study of HCI and clearly show their
importance in system design. (4 Marks)
QUESTION TWO
(a) What is the meaning of User-centered design? (2 Marks)
(b) Discuss audio and visual devices that are used in input and output devices.
(3 Marks)
(c) What is HOMERUN in reference to a usable website? (3 Marks)
(d) Describe two techniques for evaluation, highlighting their key points and the
differences between them (12 Marks)
QUESTION THREE
(a) Discuss any four interaction styles that are applicable in computing giving its
advantages and disadvantages. (12 Marks)
(b) Discuss KCA University website using Cognitive Task Analysis, GOMS
(8 Marks)
QUESTION FOUR
(a) An electricity power plant was redesigned so that the old system consisting of
a single large display screen which could be seen by all of a team of three
operators was replaced by individual workstation screens for operators. This
worked well until there was a problem which resulted in dangerous gases being
released. The team of operators had great difficulty in finding the source of
the problem and deciding what to do.
Because they no longer have access to all the information, they have to spend
time explicitly co-ordinating their understanding of the situation by talking to
each other. Under the old system, the knowledge would be shared – one
operator would know what was happening with another’s area of the plant
without explicit communication. Although the team’s individual
responsibilities would still have been clearly divided, the knowledge of the
system would be shared.
(i) What is distributed cognition? (2 Marks)
(ii) How could the new system of individual workstations be modified to make better use
of distributed cognition?
(11 Marks)
(b) Explain any four facilities included in an interactive system that allows users to
recover from their mistakes (4 Marks)
(c) How does evaluation fit into a user-centered design lifecycle? (3 Marks)
QUESTION FIVE
(a) Why is web page design different to designing for printed media? (6 Marks)
(b) What are design guidelines? (2 Marks)
(c) Jacob Nielsen produced ten golden rules as design guidelines for systems. Discuss
any four. (4 Marks)
(d) What is meant by accessibility? (2 Marks)
(e) Define Gestalt theory and demonstrate how this theory assists in system interfaces
development. (6 Marks)
