Designing a User Interface for Digital Dissection

Dunja Hövik, Gunnar Berg and Christoffer Schander

1Department of Zoology,
Göteborg University
Medicinaregatan 18
Göteborg, Sweden

ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the problems that where faced when designing the user interface of an educational software for biology students. The purpose of the software is to perform a digital dissection.

KEYWORDS:

Interface design, digital dissection.

INTRODUCTION
A large increase of students and a lack of resources forced the persons responsible for the basic course in Biology at the department of Zoology, Göteborg University,to try a new educational tool. The making of an educational software simulating the task of dissecting the common laboratory rat commenced (Schander et al., 1996). The software is developed close to the target group. The target group has no or little previous computer experience.

THE FIRST DESIGN
The development team consisted of a senior lecturer and a PhD student with an interest in computers. The programming and the interface design was done by the PhD student. The software has a hierarchical and controlled structure. Performing a single task meant changing between a number of screens. You can navigate either up or down in the hierarchical structure. It doesn't offers menus or other shortcuts. The interface has a colourful design with large buttons.

The software was not implemented in full. Only half of the planned content for the laboratory rat was implemented. The programming technique builds on moving from different frames using hardly any code at all. It became more and more difficult to keep an overview of the different frames and it became very time-consuming to navigate between the frames when developing the software.

THE SECOND DESIGN
A software designer is added to the team. A restructure of the design begins because of the growing complexity of the frames. The interface is redesigned with the students real life situation when performing a dissection, the students laboratory,as a metaphor (Allwood, 1991). The design uses a more flexible structure with menus to enable navigation from any module of the software to any other moduleof the software. A toolbar gives immediate access to video, sound, microscopical images, animations and navigation to previous, first and next module. The user can both point at a structure for identification and point at the name of a structure to get its location. The user remains in one single frame for each separate task.

The design uses a minimalist approach concerning colour and decorations. The structure of the software and the programming technique makes it possible for the

software to grow in content without causing problems for the programmer/developer. The drawback is that you need to be a more skilled programmer than for the previous design.

SUMMARY
The problem concerning the complexity of working with the software in the first design was solved by the second design. Instead the level of the skill needed by the programmer increased. The bright colours of the first design was changed to a basic greyscale interface. The only item with colour on the screen is the laboratory animal being dissected thus making it easier for the student to focus visually on the anatomy. Menus gives the user the possibility to navigate more freely between the different modules if the user so chooses. To help the user to concentrate on the performed task the user remains in one single frame for each separate task.

Figure 1:

Screen snapshot from the first design

Figure 2:

Screen snapshot from the second design

REFERENCES
Allwood, C M. (1991) Människa -dator interaktion, ett psykologiskt perspektiv.
Studentlitteratur, Lund, Sweden.
Schander, C. Berg, G. (1996) Computer based alternatives to animal use in higher
education. Försöksdjurens roll i den moderna biologin, Scan-LAS 26th
symposium p77. <