EECS 478 - Spring 2000 Midterm
Question 1:
In one of the early
homeworks you investigated the interior of an elevator to look at
its user interface. These interfaces are still based on physical
devices but with the cost of flat panel displays dropping it is
possible that in the coming years we will see touch screen LCD
panels replacing the existing designs. Assuming you have such
technology available, redesign the interior elevator interface to
take advantage of this new technology. Note which principles you
are using and how they affect your redesign and be specific.
Question
2:
Below
is the user interface for IBM’s compact disc playing software –
when you start up the software this is what you see, and these
are all the controls. Critique this user interface based on what
we have talked about in class. Be specific. Then propose your
own interface which is appropriate for this application
EECS 478 - Spring 2000 Final Exam
For the third project you created a
kiosk for a particular building on campus, and the people would
go to the kiosk to get information. Another approach to solving
that problem is to let people access that information from a
hand-held device. In this final exam you will design a user
interface for each of two possible devices. Note that this
introduces restrictions and gives additional benefits to the
user.
Given a
particular building, the user should be able to search by room
number, or by the name of that room (or its occupant), or find
common things (restrooms, vending machines, and telephones) and
get directions from where they currently are to where that place
is. Basically you are adapting the functionality from Project 3
to a different user interface.
Q1: 200
points: Assume this device is a small
hand-held computer with a small keyboard (with letters, numbers,
arrow keys, punctuation, etc) for input, and a 4 level greyscale
screen with 640 by 240 pixels for output. The data for all the
buildings on campus is stored inside this device. In addition to
creating the design, for each major type of screen layout,
please describe that layout in terms of the Java swing routines
used to create it (i.e. which layout, how big, what parameters).
Q2: 100
points: Assume this device is a portable
phone with the standard phone keypad (0-9, #, *) and no
graphical display at all. The data for all of the buildings on
campus is stored on a central computer that you can call up by
dialing its phone number. The computer talks to you using a
voice synthesizer. You use your phone keypad for input. In this
case the design has no physical graphical layout, but there is a
design to the conversation you have with the computer and the
information/responses that it provides. You may find some kind
of flow-chart like structure useful to describe this interface.
Think
about the designs. You have already thought about the general
problem through project 3 and the critiques. Do some sketching,
and organize your ideas before you try and create the final
versions. What you should turn in should only be your final
version of each design with appropriate instructions on how it
should be used. This must be organized and neat. The grading
criterion is the same as those of project 3: how useful is your
interface to the user. You may find it beneficial to give
examples of how the user interface would work, and you can use
your building from project 3 as that example.