Functional Design Specification

Table of contents

User Interface Design

Charlotte City………………………………………………………………………………………………3

User Interface Technical Requirements………………………………………………………………...4

User Interface Human Interaction Requirements……………………………………………………..6

User interface design Prototypes………………………………………………………………………..7

Usability Test Questionnaire…………………………………………………………………………….8

Usability Test Instruction Guide………………………………………………………………………..9

Usability Test Results…………………………………………………………………………………....10

Final User Interface Design…………………………………………………………………………….11

References………………………………………………………………………………………………….12

User Interface Design

Charlotte

Charlotte is a beautiful city located in North Carolina, United States. It happens to be the most populated city in the United States, which is an indication that many people love the city very much. People commonly refer to the city as the Queen City or the Hornet’s Nest. Charlotte has various amazing places and things that someone can tour. For instance, it a freedom park, which is a beautiful park with various fun activities for everyone, ranging from kids, the young and the old. NASCAR Hall of Fame is another attractive cite in Charlotte, which displays various historic cars used for races and also daily preparations for car races

There is also the Carolina Aviation Museum, which has thrilling historic developments and achievements in air travel. Moreover, the Paramount's Carowinds, which is an amusement park, with a lot of activities that families could take for fun. Charlotte also has a discovery place, which allows people to experience another level with scientific discoveries. Other tourist attractions include the Hedrick Motorsports Museum, Billy Graham Library, Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte Museum of History, Historic Rosedale Plantation and Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. A person will be able to access the various sites with the help of the user interface.

The user interface will support a couple of categories including natural language, command line Interface, Menu driven, Graphical UI and Form base, which enable the user to interact with a computer. Every computer requires specific user interfaces to operate, so someone deciphers computer operations through the various commands it is designed to obey (Foster, 2014).

User Interface Technical Requirements

The kiosk unit will contain some technical requirements that include both hardware and software characteristics. For a reliable Kiosk unit, it has to have hardware requirements like having a system memory of at least 4GB, minimum hard drive space of 10GB and fitted with a CPU architecture with a minimum of 2 cores and 3 GHz clock rate. This will ensure that the gadget works with a fast speed, and can hold enough information as required by a user (Foster, 2014).

The keyboard should fairly large keys so that any person can comfortably use them, especially the people with “fat finger”. People with fat fingers find it difficult to operate closely spaced small keys because it leaves then simultaneously touching a couple of keys, which might make them avoid using the user interface. Therefore, the keys should be large and with fair spacing between them. Also, a keyboard should be designed especially depending on its use. For instance, if a keyboard is for keying in money amounts, then it should be simply designed to have numbers and decimal points alone (Foster, 2014).

On the other hand, if a user interface is to be applied to make user requests, then it should have all letter arranged in the basic keyboard arrangement of the alphabets, for user efficiency. The screen measurements for a kiosk unit very differently depending on its purpose. For this study, a screen measuring 32 inches would be appropriate for the many customers wishing to tour the city, as they make enquires and get served other issues concerning their visits to the various attraction sites.

Also, the touchscreen part of the user interface should be kept free from cluttering and clean. A cluttering screen prevents a customer from completing a transaction or other purposes with a User Interface. This can be avoided by ensuring that one screen isn’t stacked with all user requirements, but have several screens for various activities. This ensures that one screen doesn’t get overused, and hence reducing the chances of cluttering. Also, the responsive capability of a screen must be timely, and snappy. One a customer touches an option on the screen, it should immediately move them to the next intended item on the system. A delay would mean that the systems are slow and unresponsive. The lag would annoy some customer, and also take much of their time as they wait for the systems to respond (Foster, 2014).

The system should also include a voice control, which is designed to pick up voices, interpret them, and respond to them as per customer requests. They recognize anyone’s voice in any language, which makes it appropriate for any person visiting Charlotte city. It is specially designed to interact with voice. It improves customer service as some people with challenges keying in information in the user interface can speak to it instead, and get served appropriately (Foster, 2014).

Software requirements include an updated operating system, which might be windows 7/ 8/ 8.1/ 10/ 2016. Also, it should be set with 64 bits, and a 4.5 or higher windows installer. Moreover, the Kiosk user unit should contain an OPSWAT Meta-Defender Core which is useful in scanning files to prevent corruption of information from viruses. The software devices will complement the functions of the hardware part of the user interface, ensuring that customers find them more appealing than the other ways of speaking directly to an agent, which might take more time (Wiegers & Beatty, 2013).

The smartphone should have a display size of about 5 inches, with a visual keyboard that can be customized depending on the user. It should also have a stylus that can be used to touch the keys, especially if they appear small for some users. Also, the camera should be clear enough, with more than 16 megapixels for both front and back cams (Wiegers & Beatty, 2013).

User Interface Human Interaction Requirements

Human beings interact with the Kiosk user interface in various ways. Use interface is designed to have all available information technology and associated it with human beings. It’s more like communicating with something that does whatever is requested upon command. The user will be typed, search and get responses from the kiosk unit, especially on tourist services in Charlotte. The user interface has been created to communicate with people just like human beings would interact with each other, which makes it more appropriate (Preece, Rogers & Sharp, 2015).

The users will use their fingers to make contact with the touchscreen, which is the way they will be able to press and give commands to the interface. For the smartphone users, people could use a stylus to pint at the tiny keyboard, especially those with “fat Fingers”, which would serve more appropriately. For people special cases like the blind, they can apply speech recognition for whatever services they require through the Kiosk unit. Since the unit is linked to information around the tourist attractions around the city of Charlotte, people could learn basic requirements of visiting the various places through the user interface. A person will type some commands which give immediate feedback accordingly (Preece, Rogers & Sharp, 2015).

User interface design Prototypes

User interface prototyping entails involving users in the process of mocking-up a User interface, for a program. UI Prototyping is essential for understanding stakeholders and the problem space that faces them explores the solution space of a program and offers grounds under which someone can analyze the usability of a program. It is also the way through which people can learn its weaknesses and also how to improve the UI systems (Dayton, Mcfarland & Kramer, 2018).

UI prototyping can be done through various way including paper prototyping, rapid, high fidelity and low fidelity prototyping. These tools help identify a various aspect of a user interface. For instance, they identify if a particular the compatibility of the tool with various devices, the cost it will attract, the things it can do and the period it takes to apply a particular feature. The tools also depend on their speed. Users consider the speed of a UI very much, and hence they can be a big part in identifying lows in a system that could be slowing it down. Moreover, a prototype has to have the ability to get shared, which is a key factor is a design (Dayton, Mcfarland & Kramer, 2018).

UI prototyping happens through first determining the needs of people, creating a relevant prototype as per people’s requirements, assessing the prototype and then assess whether all needs are covered, and keep improving on whatever section that seems uncovered. The process goes on and on until a UI prototype develops and gets closer to what users require.

Usability Test Questionnaire

Usability test questionnaire is a number of questions used to evaluate the experience people have had with a particular user interface (Blakiston, 2014). The responses people give about a UI helps the system developer understand customer attitudes and feelings towards the UI, effectiveness of the UI and its strengths and weaknesses. The questionnaires can get administered through web-based questionnaires, where people answer user interface related questions through the internet (García-Peñalvo, García-Holgado, Vázquez-Ingelmo & Seoane-Pardo, 2018, July).

Most of the questionnaires offer closed questions but can be answered through various degrees between yes and not, or good and bad. Some answers to the questions give a range between 1 and 7, or 1 and 5, showing the degree of bad and good, with 1 representing bad, and 5 or 7 standing for good. Thus, it is easy to see the degree of someone’s answer depending on their response to the various questions. Other open-ended questions can also be applied to gain a deeper response (García-Peñalvo, García-Holgado, Vázquez-Ingelmo & Seoane-Pardo, 2018, July).

The tests could be done through volunteer users, who give genuine feedback on the user interfaces. These results are essential in analyzing the performance of a user interface. In this case, the people visiting Charlotte, and using the Kiosk Unit would serve best to give a proper feedback about the user interface. The customer survey is one appropriate method of learning how to improve a UI (García-Peñalvo, García-Holgado, Vázquez-Ingelmo & Seoane-Pardo, 2018, July).

Usability Test Instruction Guide

While conducting a usability test, a few instructions need to be put in place so that the users might give genuine feedback without no external influence. For instance, the usability test should not be too long to exhaust the users, which might make them give rushed responses. The test should therefore not run for more than one hour. The questions should be short, precise and with simple language that users can comprehend. However, within the one hour, the test should get presented in short sections, probably in 15 -30 minutes range (Blakiston, 2014).

Besides, one should conduct a dry run on the test, to ensure that the test is working, to avoid last minute jumps to try to make things work. Also, the users must not receive any guidance during the test, to ensure that they respond according to their experiences and the knowledge they have on the system. Moreover, asking open-ended questions that are outside the test can be a good way of analyzing the persona understanding of the system by the user (Johnson, 2013).

Also, it so crucial to let people communicate during a test, so that they may be more open to what they understand. As participants talk, they might offer essential information, some which couldn’t have been gathered through the test questions. Nevertheless, the results must get recorded and ranged in a pass or fail manner (Blakiston, 2014).

Usability Test Results

Usability test results can come in either pass, fail or moderate. The data collected from a test can be put in the tabulated form, showing the various degrees of performance in a test. The results are then analyzed through either qualitative or quantitative methods, depending on the type of data. Quantitative data would give feedback on the time taken to accomplish test tasks, rates of errors and success, and the satisfactory degree of the results depending on the expectations of the test (Blakiston, 2014).

On the other hand, qualitative data entails knowledge around observations made during the test, challenges experienced, recommendations, and responses given to open-ended questions. This section also involves information on the number of people who took the test and the comments they gave about the test. The results give the basis on which UI system developers can base their research on a particular issue affecting the system, and also find corrective measures to work it out. It also helps identify things that they might have missed which the user might bring up, hence improving on the particular user interface (Blakiston, 2014).

Final User Interface Design

The final user Interface design will have all the basic requirements, including input controls, navigation components, containers, and information components. For a design that works well with people wishing to tour around Charlotte city, it should consider its usability, accessibility and user experience. It will have a characteristic that allows the user to research about various sites before they visit them.

It will be mostly focused on finding a connection between the user and the city, trying to offer the best choices of areas to visit by viewing on their basic knowledge on the user. The design will be easy to use by anyone, and it is developed aided by the various customer interviews and tests they give from time to time. Therefore, the kiosk unit is customer based, and hence is appropriate for anyone that uses it. However, the field is still developing regarding the rapid developments in technology and communication (Darejeh & Singh, 2013).

References

Basson, S. H., Kanevsky, D., & Oblinger, D. A. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,165,280. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Blakiston, R. (2014). Usability testing: A practical guide for librarians (Vol. 11). Rowman & Littlefield.

Darejeh, A., & Singh, D. (2013). A review on user interface design principles to increase software usability for users with less computer literacy. Journal of computer science, 9(11), 1443.

Dayton, T., Mcfarland, A., & Kramer, J. (2018). The bridging user needs to object-oriented GUI prototype via task object design. In User interface design (pp. 15-56). CRC Press.

Foster, E. C. (2014). User interface design. In Software Engineering (pp. 187-205). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

García-Peñalvo, F. J., García-Holgado, A., Vázquez-Ingelmo, A., & Seoane-Pardo, A. M. (2018, July). Usability test of WYRED Platform. In International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies (pp. 73-84). Springer, Cham.

Johnson, J. (2013). Designing with the mind in mind: a simple guide to understanding user interface design guidelines. Elsevier.

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. (2015). Interaction design: beyond human-computer interaction. John Wiley & Sons.

Wiegers, K., & Beatty, J. (2013). Software requirements. Pearson Education.