Human-Computer Interaction Assignment Sample

• Type Assignment
• Downloads546
• Pages10
• Words2441

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

PART I: Literature Review

Human-Computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the interaction between humans and computers, focusing on creating user-friendly interface designs and improving overall user experiences. A significant theme within this area is the development of educational technologies, particularly those aimed at increasing financial literacy among teenagers. This topic addresses a critical societal need by equipping young people with essential financial knowledge and practical skills. Digital technology offers valuable opportunities for engagement and interaction, with mobile apps playing a key role in delivering such learning experiences. The objective is to integrate these tools effectively within a financial literacy framework to maximize their educational impact. This paper will explore the current state of research on making educational technologies more effective for promoting financial literacy among teenagers, with insights relevant to fields such as Assignment Help UK, where digital solutions are increasingly used to enhance learning quality and accessibility.

Human-Computer Interaction Assignment Sample

Liked This Sample? Hire Me Now

James Carter 6 Years | MSc

Background Research

Role of Technology in Financial Literacy Education

Technology integration into education has made it possible to develop innovative ways of improving educational content and activity. Concerning financial literacy, digital tools provide an opportunity to improve access and feasibility for adolescents (Sanchez et al., 2020). Financial literacy can offer the youth an engaging means of knowing financial decisions, technically guide them to have control over their finances and help them avoid debts (Garg & Singh, 2018). Less engagement of translators from learning using traditional methods of teaching financial concepts to the much-required mechanisms at this age, hence creating a gap in understanding and its application.

Gamification as a Tool for Engagement

One of the key ideas in this area is the use of gamification in educational technologies. Gamification is the use of game-like elements, like points, badges, and leaderboards, in non-game contexts to motivate and engage. The gamification of education systems provokes higher engagement behaviour and motivation, according to the (Ouariachi, Li, & Elving, 2020). Learning in a fun and interactive way, gamified educational tools will engage an adolescent in a better level of perception and assimilation of complex financial concepts. Only that gamification works effectively through proper design; otherwise, it just creates frustrations that eventually lead to disengagement.

Simulations for Practical Financial Experience

Practical experience is also a very important construct provided by this theory through simulation. Users relate to near-real situations in which they can test their financial knowledge safely in a controlled environment. According to Zeigler et al., (2018), simulations can reduce the gap between theoretical knowledge and its practical application. This is specifically relevant to financial education: simulation represents the concrete experience through which many, and perhaps most, adolescents have a major opportunity to learn. However, developmental design in such a way that the simulations are accurate yet still can be interacted with by the audience is a challenge.

Personalised Learning in Financial Education

Recent HCI research has also been carried out regarding the role of personalised learning in educational technologies. Personalization is tailoring the user experience concerning the requirements and choices of the individual user (Hussain et al., 2018). It can be done through technologies that enable adaptive learning, automatically adjusting difficulty and content based on a student's progress. According to Xie et al., (2019), personalization can significantly enhance learning outcomes by offering relevant support and feedback. In the domain of financial literacy, it can accommodate the differences among adolescents, who may possess a range of financial knowledge and exhibit different learning preferences. On the other hand, the construction of effective personalised learning systems requires sophisticated algorithms and deep knowledge of the audience.

Challenges in Designing Educational Technologies for Adolescents

Despite the potential benefits, there lies a challenge of integrating these technologies into educational tools on financial literacy. First of all, it should be age-appropriate and accessible to adolescents. The language of finance is complex, and ensuring that it is understandable and engaging for a young audience in particular requires careful design and testing (Amagir et al., 2018). Moreover, these tools can only prove to be effective if they are usable; if an application or platform is cumbersome to use, people will get fed up and drop it. For this matter, user-centred design in the making of education technologies relevant to financial literacy is paramount Martinez, (2023) states, "Involving users in the design process through iterative testing and feedback can create more intuitive, user-friendly interfaces" .

State-of-the-Art Technologies and Future Directions

State-of-the-art technologies in this area base themselves evermore on artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive more personality and interactivity. AI-driven adaptive learning systems can analyse user behaviour and make personal recommendations, whereas machine learning algorithms can increase the accuracy of financial simulations (Bernardo et al., 2018). However, with AI in educational technologies, such usage will increase ethical concerns concerning data privacy and the potential algorithmic bias. According to Binns, 2018, AI systems should be transparent, fair, and accountable, with such characteristics being more compelling in educational use.

Conclusion

The development of educational technologies for financial literacy becomes a classic example of the opportunities and challenges identified in the field of HCI. The application of gamification, simulation, and personalization will make learning more interactive and potent for an adolescent to develop cardinal financial skills. However, the success of these technologies depends on the way they are designed and put into practice. This calls for ensuring not only the appropriateness and user-friendliness of the content and its accessibility for people of all age groups but also the way the usability-associated difficulties and effectiveness issues are overcome through continuing research and development. In the future, further explorations using innovative approaches and technologies will continue to be relevant for further improvement of the learning experience toward bettering the outcomes in financial literacy.

PART II: Critical Reflection on UCD Work

Ethical and Responsible Technology Design

Ethically responsible technology design in tackling issues involving sustainability and inclusivity was taken into account throughout the development of the financial literacy app for adolescent artefacts. A priority from the outset of the design process was to ensure that a tool is educative, fair, accessible, and potentially able to promote long-term outcomes that are positive for its users (Abel & Satterfield, 2020).

Inclusivity

Inclusivity was important, as different types of adolescents may use the app. User Personas, such as Sam and Jordan, reflected these differences in the various age brackets, interests, and financial literacy levels, to ensure that the application would serve a wide audience (Steen, 2020). This guaranteed that the applicability of the app to users, irrespective of their background or any prior exposure to financial concepts, would be relevant and useful.

Sustainability

The sustainability of the app's design does not only encompass preserving the environment but also the sustainable development of the financial habits of every single user. Notably, it has parental control tools and specialised learning paths that create a wholesome learning environment for responsible financial conduct over time (Marques Junior & Rodrigues, 2022). The app hopes to create an engaging, sustainable way for users to learn such skills via gamification and real-life simulations of finance that they can take into adulthood.

Ethical considerations

Ethical considerations were truly at the heart of the design, notably in taking care that the app does not exploit or manipulate its young users. For example, gamification elements had to be balanced in a way that makes learning more engaging without creating addictive behaviours (Leslie et al., 2019). Avoidance of complex financial concepts that is, complicated investment schemes was decided to not confuse the user and focus on foundational knowledge more appropriate for the target age group.

Personal Reflection

The development of financial literacy, artefacts like User Personas and Scenario Storyboards to Interface Sketches and User Flow Diagrams, has left an enormous impression on my view regarding the role of technology in education, given that the target audience is a younger group. The development process of an application creates an awareness that keeps going on and on, about the person at the receiving end, their needs, and problems. The User Personas will help in defining the features of the app. These personas guided design decisions that would guarantee relevance and engagement for the target audience of adolescents. An essential part of the development was to sketch the user interactions through the storyboards of the financial literacy app. These storyboards, which were about scenarios such as saving for a gaming console and budgeting for college, were useful in defining the user's needs and behaviours to build interesting and relevant content.

The most enlightening lesson learned from this project primarily concerns the applicability of user-centred design (UCD) for augmenting the efficiency and learner appeal of educational technology. The use of the MoSCoW requirements increased the focus on the features that were highly important for adolescents such as interactive modules and financial simulations alongside parental engagement and the need for a simple interface design. The interface sketches of the financial literacy app for the target group of teenagers aged 11-17 are neat and uncluttered. This is so since the Home Screen provides one-stop access to lessons, simulations, and progress-checking services. In this context, while many of them are integrated into Lesson and Simulation Screens as fundamental features, they all are simple to use and engage the learner.

The flow diagram for the financial literacy app outlines user navigation: from the time the app is launched, the users get to the Home Screen, choose a lesson or a simulation, interact with content, and parts of lessons, do challenges, and check their progress. Such a concept provides a clear interaction path, ideal for improving user engagement and learning. This interaction high-fidelity prototype developed in Figma is representative of the functionality of the financial literacy app. It also has a Home Page with readily visible lessons, simulations, and record display. The interaction with Lesson and Simulation Screens is designed through a play-like approach on our prototype which results in a comprehensible interface. Personally, the most beneficial part was the development of the Evaluation Plan for the High-Fidelity Prototype. The evaluation criteria have been set along with the key metrics and the target audience.The task list provide the overall navigation guide for the application that a child of age 11-17 can navigate easily.

Looking back on my part of the project, the one that I think was by far the most challenging but also rewarding was making this project inclusive. Designing for such a diverse group of users necessitates a thoughtful, coherent design that touches the content and interface in ways that speak to all the different levels of knowledge about finance that adolescents might have. I learned that inclusivity is not exclusively an accessibility/inclusivity issue but one of relevance and engagement: getting each of the users involved in the project so all of them see value, no matter where they start. One of the unexpected insights came regarding the role of ethics in gamification. While it initially seemed to be a rather straightforward idea—putting points, badges, and levels together—doing so turned out to require a lot of careful forethought to avoid negative outcomes such as addiction or the encouragement of bad financial habits at every turn. This realisation has pulled me back a little, making me more sceptical about the potential impacts of gamification in future projects.

Conclusion

This project has helped me to get a wider view of UCD and Apply it in education technology. I have discovered that designing should not be a one-shot process and the role of user feedback and ethical issues in designing practical and responsible tools. In the future, such ideas will guide me always by enforcing respect for the aspects of users while designing them. Besides, it has broadened my understanding of the use of technology in education and my design capabilities.

Reference

Journals

• Abel, T. and Satterfield, D., 2020. HCI and user experience design education: principles for ethical and responsible practices in inclusive research and application. In UXD and UCD Approaches for Accessible Education (pp. 80-95). IGI Global.
• Amagir, A., Groot, W., Maassen van den Brink, H. and Wilschut, A., 2018. A review of financial-literacy education programs for children and adolescents. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 17(1), pp.56-80.
• Bernardo, F., Grierson, M. and Fiebrink, R., 2018. User-centred design actions for lightweight evaluation of an interactive machine learning toolkit. Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, 10(2), pp.25-38.
• Garg, N. and Singh, S., 2018. Financial literacy among youth. International journaL of sociaL economics, 45(1), pp.173-186.
• Hussain, J., Ul Hassan, A., Muhammad Bilal, H.S., Ali, R., Afzal, M., Hussain, S., Bang, J., Banos, O. and Lee, S., 2018. Model-based adaptive user interface based on context and user experience evaluation. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 12, pp.1-16.
• Leslie, M., Eales, J., Fast, J., Mortenson, W.B., Atoyebi, O. and Khayatzadeh-Mahani, A., 2019. Towards sustainable family care: using goals to reframe the user-centred design of technologies to support carers. International Journal of Care and Caring, 3(3), pp.445-451.
• Marques Junior, S.E. and Rodrigues, R.P.C., 2022, October. Interface design of a mobile application oriented to packaging sustainability. In International Conference on Design and Digital Communication (pp. 177-190). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
• Martinez, L., 2023. Analyzing human-centered design approaches for involving end-users throughout the design process to create user-centric interactive system. Human-Computer Interaction Perspectives, 3(1), pp.14-28.
• Ouariachi, T., Li, C.Y. and Elving, W.J., 2020. Gamification approaches for education and engagement on pro-environmental behaviors: Searching for best practices. Sustainability, 12(11), p.4565.
• Sanchez, E., van Oostendorp, H., Fijnheer, J.D. and Lavoué, E., 2020. Gamification. In Encyclopedia of Education and Information Technologies (pp. 816-827). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
• Steen, M., 2020. Human-Centred Design and its Inherent Ethical Qualities. In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering (pp. 328-341). Routledge.
• Xie, H., Chu, H.C., Hwang, G.J. and Wang, C.C., 2019. Trends and development in technology-enhanced adaptive/personalized learning: A systematic review of journal publications from 2007 to 2017. Computers & Education, 140, p.103599.
• Zeigler, B.P., Muzy, A. and Kofman, E., 2018. Theory of modeling and simulation: discrete event & iterative system computational foundations. Academic press.