Why don’t we ask users to
learn?
A Learning Sciences
Perspective on HCI, and viceversa
The Goals of HCI

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“Create usable software-enabled products
and user-interfaces.
Enhance the usability of existing products.
Identify problems and tasks (such as in the
workplace) that can be addressed with
software products.”
“Have the computer do what it’s good at;
and leave the person to do what she’s good
at.”
Google definitions of usability

“Usability is a generic term that refers to
design features that enable something to be
user-friendly.“


Ick!
“Usability is defined as the extent to which a
product can be used by specified users to
achieve specified goals with effectiveness,
efficiency and satisfaction in a specified
context of use.”
The Main Argument and
The Main Challenge
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People are willing to learn things that help
them “achieve specified goals with
effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a
specified context of use.”
That can include the computer!
The Challenge:

How do you limit what’s being learned to things
are only in the specified context of use, even
when that’s on a computer?
People are Learning Beings

“People are always learning. The trick
of [educational interventions] is to get
them to learn what you wanted them to
learn.”


That’s an Education perspective.
An HCI perspective can reverse that

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How do we teach people what they want
to learn?
What will improve their ability to do what
they want to do?
HCI is sometimes Anti-Learning
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Learning is a
conscious process.
You can’t learn
about something
that you don’t think
about.
What’s worth
thinking about
when using a
computer?
The Computer is Worth Thinking
About

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Thinking about computers has helped lots of
fields.
A computer is a device that executes any
well-defined process.
That’s useful to many.


The process modeling and simulation has
created a whole new branch of Science.
In fact, we really don’t know yet the full
extent of the power of that statement.
What’s worth learning about the
computer?

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Very few users’ “context of use” includes
“ls,” interrupt vectors, crontab, linked lists, or
public static void main
Key Question:


What about the computer is within users’
“context of use,” that is worth their learning?
How do we design interaction in such a way that
users appreciate the computer and find helps
them in their contexts?
Caveat!


WARNING!
This perspective is anti-ubiquitous
computing & anti-invisible computing.

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This is about making the computer
highly visible!
But what’s visible can be made contextdependent.
CS1315 is designed from an HCI
perspective

A 300+ students/term intro to programming


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Overall, CS1315 has been 51% female
Required in Architecture, Management, Ivan Allen
College of Liberal Arts, and Biology
Focus: Learning programming and CS
concepts within the context of media
manipulation and creation

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Converting images to grayscale and negatives,
splicing and reversing sounds, writing programs to
generate HTML, creating movies out of Webaccessed content.
Computing for communications, not calculation
Evidence that it works
“I just wish I had more time
to play around with that
and make neat effects.
But JES [course
development
environment] will be on
my computer forever,
so… that’s the nice thing
about this class is that
you could go as deep into
the homework as you
wanted. So, I’d turn it in
and then me and my
roommate would do more
after to see what we could
do with it.”
Enrollment
Success
Rate
Georgia Tech’s CS 1
2000 - 2002
930
71.2%
Spring 2003
120
90.0%
Fall 2003
303
86.5%
Spring 2004
395
86.9%
Summer 2004
120
73.3%
Fall 2004
366
80.3%
(average)
Media Computation
Evidence That It’s
Generalizable
Enrollment
 Places adopting
MediaComp:
 University of IllinoisChicago
 University of
California, Santa
Barbara
 Gainesville College
 DePauw University
Success
Rate
Gainesville’s CSCI 1100
2000 - 2003
28
70.2%
Summer 2003
9
77.8%
Fall 2003
39
84.6%
Spring 2004
22
77.3%
Summer 2004
11
90.9%
(average)
Media Computation
“Context of use” is not
necessarily task/major-centric
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Homework was not perceived as particularly
relevant

39.2% - Georgia Tech

31.2% - Gainesville
But majority of students at both institutions perceived
skills would be useful later in life

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59.9% - Georgia Tech
56.2% - Gainesville
Georgia Tech students saw greater relevance of
course material for career

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45.5% - Georgia Tech
37.5% - Gainesville
Following-up Survey:
Does it have a lasting impact?

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In Spring 2004, conducted an email
survey with students from Spring 2003
(n=120) and Fall 2003 (n=303)
students.
59 responses (small!)

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11 (19%) had written a Python program on
their own since the class had ended.
27% had edited media that they hadn’t
previously.
“Did the class change how you
interact with computers?”
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20% said no.
80% said yes, but it was also more about
changing how they thought about computers.

“Definitely makes me think of what is going on behind
the scenes of such programs like Photoshop and
Illustrator.”

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This is learning in the context of use.
“I feel more comfortable around computers and
like I could learn and understand other computer
programming languages more easily.”
Informing the user,
not making them computer scientists

“Other than making me a little more aware
about what I can make the computer do, it
hasn't changed the way I particular
interact with technology. Yet I am
uninterested in this field. However, I now
have a MUCH better understanding of the
people who are interested in this field,
how they view things, and how to interact
with them more easily. For this, I
appreciate the CS class greatly.”
Conclusion:
A new set of challenges

Even command and programming
languages can be useful in users’ “context
of use.”

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Making the computer “invisible” may be stealing
from the user a very powerful metaphor and
“thing to think with”—within the user’s context of
use!
How do we design these very computer-ish
things from an HCI perspective?
How do change the goal of HCI to include
thinking about the computer, but in a context
of use?