Web & IT Usability

Some members of our Business Psychology team have a special interest in Human Computer Interaction and work hand-in-hand with the eBusiness Division on integrated and stand alone projects investigating the usability of websites and online software.    

A basic goal of HCI is to improve the interactions between users and computers by making software more usable and receptive to the user's needs. Specifically, HCI is concerned with:

• Methodologies and processes for designing interfaces (i.e., given a task and a class of users, design the best possible interface within given constraints, optimizing for a desired property such as learning ability or efficiency of use)
• Methods for implementing interfaces (e.g. software toolkits and libraries; efficient algorithms)
• Techniques for evaluating and comparing interfaces
• Developing new interfaces and interaction techniques
• Developing descriptive and predictive models and theories of interaction