Answer the questions below. Hand in your answers on one sheet of paper (8.5" x 11") at or before the lecture on September 23 (Monday). (You may, but need not, use both sides of the paper.) Your answers should be at most one page long; longer papers will be truncated to one page before marking.

This is an individual exercise, i.e. the work you hand in must be the results of your own efforts. Your answers need not be long, but they should be well thought out. When answering the questions below, consider the human computer interface design principles you have been compiling while reading the textbooks and reviewing your own lecture notes. Use those design principles as a basis for answering the questions below. The main grading criteria will be the extent and quality of the apparent thought behind your answers and how well you relate them to the principles covered so far in 4D03.

Your task

Many electronic devices and appliances such as hi-fi sets, GPS receivers, modern film and digital cameras (both still and movie), video cassette recorders, washing machines, microwave ovens, controllers for home heating and air conditioning systems, blood pressure measuring instruments, etc., are controlled by small embedded computers. Analyse (from the viewpoint of the human user) the human-computer interface of one specific such appliance with which you are familiar. (Do not select a general purpose computer such as a PC or a notebook computer or a program or software system or a hardware attachment for such a computer.)

1. What device or appliance did you analyze? (Give the manufacturer's name and the model identification.)
2. What, in your view, appear to have been the main design goals?
3. What should have been the design goals?
4. Analyze critically (list) the good and bad aspects of the interface. What is good and what is bad about each?
5. For each good and each bad aspect of the device or appliance why, do you think, did the designer specify the interface as s/he did? What design compromises were made and why?
6. Suggest improvements to the design of the human-computer interface of the device or appliance you analyzed.