SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

Identification Guidelines for the Design of Interfaces
in the context of ECAs and ADHD
Sandra Rodrigues Sarro Boarati
FACEN
Methodist University of Piracicaba
Piracicaba, SP
srsarro@unimep.br
Cecília Sosa Arias Peixoto
FACEN
Methodist University of Piracicaba
Piracicaba, SP
cspeixot @unimep.br
Abstract— The HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) aims to seek
a friendly interaction between man and computer. To
demonstrate it, it was studied in this paper the Cognitive Styles of
Learning and users suffering from attention deficit disorder
aiming at improvements in software development. The user
population is diverse, there is a mixture of multiple profiles of
users who need to somehow get their needs met and so this is why
the system interface should be created in accordance with the
diversity of users. Realizing this gap, this study examined the
learning styles and attention deficits, allowing to generate a series
of recommendations, guidelines, which are best suited to specific
characteristics of the profiles of users. These recommendations
could be applied in the construction of new interfaces that will be
adjusted to different user profiles, and the use of these
recommendations will contribute to greater user satisfaction
respecting the different characteristics between them.
Keywords - Human-Computer interaction; Cognitive Users
Profiles; Guidelines for design interfaces.
I. INTRODUCTION
The HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) is a “discipline
that concerns with the design, evaluation and implementation
of interactive computing systems for human use and the study
of major phenomena surrounding them. The goals of HCI are
to produce usable systems, safe and functional "[1]. The
interaction between man and machine takes place through the
computer interface [2]. In the quest to bring the user interface,
cognitive engineering, which is the process by which one
acquires knowledge, is used in order to improve software
development.
During the design phase of the interface are necessary to
incorporate recommendations in order to build highly usable
interfaces. Plasaint and Shneiderman [3] reported that a
successful interface design should be based on
recommendations from the project, called guidelines. For
Nielsen [4], guidelines are list of principles to be followed in
the development project. Nielsen proposes the use of a phase
specifies guidelines (Guidelines and heuristic evaluation) life
cycle, focusing on interface design, called Usability
Engineering Lifecycle [4], given the importance of the
recommendations during the design of an interface.
Authors such as Nielsen [6], Shneiderman and Plaisant [3]
reported several design guidelines in their work and make
several recommendations on how the interfaces should be for
children, elderly, etc. However most of the recommendations
touch only isolated aspects of the characteristics of users. Then
there is a large gap in this area. There is more than one skill or
characteristic to be understood and it stimulate the
development of this study of the Cognitive Styles of Learning
(CSL) from the perspective of Souto [7] and attention deficit,
allowing to study a series of recommendations, guidelines for
the design of interfaces and to consider more deeply the users
profile or their skills.
To build the user profile is necessary first the diagnosis of
the model user needs, as well as their cognitive, cultural and
physical situations. This information is useful to provide the
best interaction between the various information systems [8].
This research focused on adding guidelines and rules of
selecting to the expert system GuideExpert from Cinto and
Peixoto [5], just an area where researches are fairly recent and
not yet cataloged in a joint manner. The GuideExpert system
has the function to suggest and propose guidelines for
interface design. This paper is organized into five sections:
Section 1 presents the introduction. Section 2 presents the user
and their role in the requirements specification; the interface;
the diversity of users and the identification of learning styles.
Section 3 presents the system GuideExpert, which is a tool
that has the function to suggest and propose guidelines for
interface design in its previous version and new
recommendations suggested to improve the tool. Section 4
presents the analysis and implementation of some
recommendations, guidelines of this work, sites for children
and elderly users. Section 5 presents the conclusions.
II. THE USERS AND THEIR DIVERSITY OF PROFILES
The user population is not a system composed of only one
type of user. In general, there is a mixture of multiple profiles
of users who need to somehow get their needs met [2].
Speaking of users interacting with computers, we refer to
the user’s knowledge that should be taken into account in the
design of a n HCI. Below are some features that must be
observed during the interface design [6], [3]:
• The presence of an internationalized system or used in
more than one country or region. Each country or
region has its own peculiarities. Dialects, cultures,
ethnicities, races, etc. All these elements end up
generating needs that to be satisfied;
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