chapter 2

the computer
The Computer
a computer system is made up of various elements

each of these elements affects the interaction

– input devices – text entry and pointing
– output devices – screen (small&large), digital paper
– virtual reality – special interaction and display devices
– physical interaction – e.g. sound, haptic, bio-sensing
– paper – as output (print) and input (scan)
– memory – RAM & permanent media, capacity & access
– processing – speed of processing, networks
Interacting with computers

to understand human–computer interaction

… need to understand computers!

what goes in and out

devices, paper,
sensors, etc.

what can it do?

memory, processing,
networks
 A ‘typical’ computer system
? • screen, or monitor, on which there are windows
• keyboard
window 1
• mouse/trackpad
window 2
• variations
– desktop
– laptop
– PDA
12-37pm

the devices dictate the styles of interaction that the system

supports
If we use different devices, then the interface will support a
different style of interaction
How many …

• computers in your house?

– hands up, …
… none, 1, 2 , 3, more!!

• computers in your pockets?

are you thinking …

… PC, laptop, PDA ??
How many computers …

in your house? in your pockets?

– PC – PDA
– TV, VCR, DVD, HiFi, – phone, camera
cable/satellite TV – smart card, card with
– microwave, cooker, magnetic strip?
washing machine – electronic car key
– central heating – USB memory
– security system
try your pockets and
can you think of more? bags
Interactivity?

Long ago in a galaxy far away … batch processing

– punched card stacks or large data files prepared
– long wait ….
– line printer output
… and if it is not right …

Now most computing is interactive

– rapid feedback
– the user in control (most of the time)
– doing rather than thinking …

Is faster always better?

Richer interaction

sensors
and devices
everywhere
 text entry devices

keyboards (QWERTY et al.)

chord keyboards, phone pads
handwriting, speech
Keyboards

• Most common text input device

• Allows rapid entry of text by experienced
users

• Keypress closes connection, causing a

character code to be sent
• Usually connected by cable, but can be
wireless
layout – QWERTY

• Standardised layout
but …
– non-alphanumeric keys are placed differently
– accented symbols needed for different scripts
– minor differences between UK and USA keyboards

• QWERTY arrangement not optimal for typing

– layout to prevent typewriters jamming!
• Alternative designs allow faster typing but large social
base of QWERTY typists produces reluctance to change.
QWERTY (ctd)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G H J K L
Z X C V B N M , .
SPACE
alternative keyboard layouts

Alphabetic
– keys arranged in alphabetic order
– not faster for trained typists
– not faster for beginners either!

Dvorak
– common letters under dominant fingers
– biased towards right hand
– common combinations of letters alternate between hands
– 10-15% improvement in speed and reduction in fatigue
– But - large social base of QWERTY typists produce market
pressures not to change
special keyboards

• designs to reduce fatigue for RSI

• for one handed use
e.g. the Maltron left-handed keyboard
Chord keyboards
only a few keys - four or 5
letters typed as combination of keypresses
compact size
– ideal for portable applications
short learning time
– keypresses reflect letter shape
fast
– once you have trained

BUT - social resistance, plus fatigue after extended use

NEW – niche market for some wearables
phone pad and T9 entry
• use numeric keys with
multiple presses
2 –abc 6mno-
3 -def 7 -
pqrs
4 -ghi 8tuv-
5 -jkl 9 -
wxyz
hello = 4433555[pause]555666
surprisingly fast!
• T9 predictive entry
– type as if single key for each letter
– use dictionary to ‘guess’ the right word
– hello = 43556 …
– but 26 -> menu ‘am’ or ‘an’
Handwriting recognition

• Text can be input into the computer, using a

pen and a digesting tablet
– natural interaction

• Technical problems:
– capturing all useful information - stroke path,
pressure, etc. in a natural manner
– segmenting joined up writing into individual letters
– interpreting individual letters
– coping with different styles of handwriting

• Used in PDAs, and tablet computers …

… leave the keyboard on the desk!
Speech recognition

• Improving rapidly

• Most successful when:

– single user – initial training and learns peculiarities
– limited vocabulary systems

• Problems with
– external noise interfering
– imprecision of pronunciation
– large vocabularies
– different speakers
Numeric keypads

• for entering numbers quickly:

– calculator, PC keyboard
• for telephones
1 2 3 7 8 9
not the same!! 4 5 6 4 5 6
7 8 9 1 2 3
ATM like phone
0 # 0 . =
*
telephone calculator
positioning, pointing and drawing

mouse, touchpad
trackballs, joysticks etc.
touch screens, tablets
eyegaze, cursors
the Mouse

• Handheld pointing device

– very common
– easy to use

• Two characteristics
– planar movement
– buttons
(usually from 1 to 3 buttons on top, used for
making a selection, indicating an option, or to
initiate drawing etc.)
the mouse (ctd)
Mouse located on desktop
– requires physical space
– no arm fatigue

Relative movement only is detectable.

Movement of mouse moves screen cursor
Screen cursor oriented in (x, y) plane,
mouse movement in (x, z) plane …
… an indirect manipulation device.
– device itself doesn’t obscure screen, is accurate and fast.
– hand-eye coordination problems for novice users
How does it work?
Two methods for detecting motion

• Mechanical
– Ball on underside of mouse turns as mouse is moved
– Rotates orthogonal potentiometers
– Can be used on almost any flat surface

• Optical
– light emitting diode on underside of mouse
– may use special grid-like pad or just on desk
– less susceptible to dust and dirt
– detects fluctuating alterations in reflected light intensity to
calculate relative motion in (x, z) plane
Even by foot …

• some experiments with the footmouse

– controlling mouse movement with feet …
– not very common :-)

• but foot controls are common elsewhere:

– car pedals
– sewing machine speed control
– organ and piano pedals
Touchpad

• small touch sensitive tablets

• ‘stroke’ to move mouse pointer
• used mainly in laptop computers

• good ‘acceleration’ settings important

– fast stroke
• lots of pixels per inch moved
• initial movement to the target
– slow stroke
• less pixels per inch
• for accurate positioning
Trackball and thumbwheels

Trackball
– ball is rotated inside static housing
• like an upsdie down mouse!
– relative motion moves cursor
– indirect device, fairly accurate
– separate buttons for picking
– very fast for gaming
– used in some portable and notebook computers.

Thumbwheels …
– for accurate CAD – two dials for X-Y cursor position
– for fast scrolling – single dial on mouse
Joystick and keyboard nipple

Joystick
– indirect
pressure of stick = velocity of movement
– buttons for selection
on top or on front like a trigger
– often used for computer games
aircraft controls and 3D navigation

Keyboard nipple
– for laptop computers
– miniature joystick in the middle of the keyboard
Touch-sensitive screen
• Detect the presence of finger or stylus on the screen.
– works by interrupting matrix of light beams, capacitance changes
or ultrasonic reflections
– direct pointing device

• Advantages:
– fast, and requires no specialised pointer
– good for menu selection
– suitable for use in hostile environment: clean and safe from
damage.

• Disadvantages:
– finger can mark screen
– imprecise (finger is a fairly blunt instrument!)
• difficult to select small regions or perform accurate drawing
– lifting arm can be tiring
Stylus and light pen

Stylus
– small pen-like pointer to draw directly on screen
– may use touch sensitive surface or magnetic detection
– used in PDA, tablets PCs and drawing tables

Light Pen
– now rarely used
– uses light from screen to detect location

BOTH …
– very direct and obvious to use
– but can obscure screen
Digitizing tablet

• Mouse like-device with cross hairs

• used on special surface

- rather like stylus

• very accurate
- used for digitizing maps
Eyegaze

• control interface by eye gaze direction

– e.g. look at a menu item to select it
• uses laser beam reflected off retina
– … a very low power laser!
• mainly used for evaluation (ch x)
• potential for hands-free control
• high accuracy requires headset
• cheaper and lower accuracy devices available
sit under the screen like a small webcam
Cursor keys

• Four keys (up, down, left, right) on keyboard.

• Very, very cheap, but slow.
• Useful for not much more than basic motion for text-
editing tasks.
• No standardised layout, but inverted “T”, most common
Discrete positioning controls

• in phones, TV controls etc.

– cursor pads or mini-joysticks
– discrete left-right, up-down
– mainly for menu selection
 display devices

bitmap screens (CRT & LCD)

large & situated displays
digital paper
bitmap displays

• screen is vast number of coloured dots

resolution and colour depth
• Resolution … used (inconsistently) for
– number of pixels on screen (width x height)
• e.g. SVGA 1024 x 768, PDA perhaps 240x400
– density of pixels (in pixels or dots per inch - dpi)
• typically between 72 and 96 dpi
• Aspect ratio
– ration between width and height
– 4:3 for most screens, 16:9 for wide-screen TV
• Colour depth:
– how many different colours for each pixel?
– black/white or greys only
– 256 from a pallete
– 8 bits each for red/green/blue = millions of colours
anti-aliasing
Jaggies
– diagonal lines that have discontinuities in due to horizontal
raster scan process.

Anti-aliasing
– softens edges by using shades of line colour
– also used for text
Cathode ray tube

• Stream of electrons emitted from electron gun, focused

and directed by magnetic fields, hit phosphor-coated
screen which glows
• used in TVs and computer monitors

electron beam

electron gun

focussing and
deflection

phosphor-
coated screen
Health hints …

• do not sit too close to the screen

• do not use very small fonts
• do not look at the screen for long periods
without a break
• do not place the screen directly in front of a
bright window
• work in well-lit surroundings

 Take extra care if pregnant.

but also posture, ergonomics, stress
Liquid crystal displays
• Smaller, lighter, and … no radiation problems.

• Found on PDAs, portables and notebooks,

… and increasingly on desktop and even for home TV

• also used in dedicted displays:

digital watches, mobile phones, HiFi controls

• How it works …
– Top plate transparent and polarised, bottom plate reflecting.
– Light passes through top plate and crystal, and reflects back to
eye.
– Voltage applied to crystal changes polarisation and hence colour
– N.B. light reflected not emitted => less eye strain
special displays

Random Scan (Directed-beam refresh, vector display)

– draw the lines to be displayed directly
– no jaggies
– lines need to be constantly redrawn
– rarely used except in special instruments

Direct view storage tube (DVST)

– Similar to random scan but persistent => no flicker
– Can be incrementally updated but not selectively erased
– Used in analogue storage oscilloscopes
large displays

• used for meetings, lectures, etc.

• technology
plasma – usually wide screen
video walls – lots of small screens together
projected – RGB lights or LCD projector
– hand/body obscures screen
– may be solved by 2 projectors + clever software
back-projected
– frosted glass + projector behind
situated displays

• displays in ‘public’ places

– large or small
– very public or for small group
• display only
– for information relevant to location
• or interactive
– use stylus, touch sensitive screem
• in all cases … the location matters
– meaning of information or interaction is related to
the location
 Hermes a situated display

• small displays beside office doors

• handwritten notes left using stylus
small displays
•beside
office owner reads notes using web interface
office doors

handwritten office owner

notes left reads notes
using stylus using web interface
Digital paper
appearance

• what?
– thin flexible sheets
– updated electronically cross
section
– but retain display

• how?
– small spheres turned
– or channels with coloured liquid
and contrasting spheres
– rapidly developing area
VR headsets

• small TV screen for each eye

• slightly different angles
• 3D effect
VR motion sickness

• time delay
– move head … lag … display moves
– conflict: head movement vs. eyes
• depth perception
– headset gives different stereo distance
– but all focused in same plane
– conflict: eye angle vs. focus
• conflicting cues => sickness
– helps motivate improvements in technology
simulators and VR caves

• scenes projected on walls

• realistic environment
• hydraulic rams!
• real controls
• other people
physical controls, sensors etc.

special displays and gauges

sound, touch, feel, smell
physical controls
environmental and bio-sensing
dedicated displays

• analogue representations:
– dials, gauges, lights, etc.

• digital displays:
– small LCD screens, LED lights, etc.

• head-up displays
– found in aircraft cockpits
– show most important controls
… depending on context
Sounds

• beeps, bongs, clonks, whistles and

whirrs

• used for error indications

• confirmation of actions e.g. keyclick

also see chapter 10

Touch, feel, smell

• touch and feeling important

– in games … vibration, force feedback
– in simulation … feel of surgical instruments
– called haptic devices

• texture, smell, taste

– current technology very limited
 physical controls

• specialist controls needed …

– industrial controls, consumer products, etc.

easy-clean
smooth buttons

multi-function
control
large buttons
clear dials

tiny buttons
Environment and bio-sensing

• sensors all around us

– car courtesy light – small switch on door
– ultrasound detectors – security, washbasins
– RFID security tags in shops
– temperature, weight, location

• … and even our own bodies …

– iris scanners, body temperature, heart rate,
galvanic skin response, blink rate
paper: printing and scanning

print technology
fonts, page description, WYSIWYG
scanning, OCR
Printing

• image made from small dots

– allows any character set or graphic to be
printed,
• critical features:
– resolution
• size and spacing of the dots
• measured in dots per inch (dpi)
– speed
• usually measured in pages per minute
– cost!!
Types of dot-based printers
• dot-matrix printers
– use inked ribbon (like a typewriter
– line of pins that can strike the ribbon, dotting the paper.
– typical resolution 80-120 dpi
• ink-jet and bubble-jet printers
– tiny blobs of ink sent from print head to paper
– typically 300 dpi or better .
• laser printer
– like photocopier: dots of electrostatic charge deposited on
drum, which picks up toner (black powder form of ink)
rolled onto paper which is then fixed with heat
– typically 600 dpi or better.
Printing in the workplace

• shop tills
– dot matrix
– same print head used for several paper rolls
– may also print cheques

• thermal printers
– special heat-sensitive paper
– paper heated by pins makes a dot
– poor quality, but simple & low maintenance
– used in some fax machines
Fonts
• Font – the particular style of text
Courier font
Helvetica font
Palatino font
Times Roman font
§´  (special symbol)

• Size of a font measured in points (1 pt about 1/72”)

(vaguely) related to its height
This is ten point Helvetica
This is twelve point
This is fourteen point
This is eighteen point
and this is twenty-four point
Fonts (ctd)

Pitch
– fixed-pitch – every character has the same width
e.g. Courier
– variable-pitched – some characters wider
e.g. Times Roman – compare the ‘i’ and the “m”
Serif or Sans-serif
– sans-serif – square-ended strokes
e.g. Helvetica
– serif – with splayed ends (such as)
e.g. Times Roman or Palatino
Readability of text

• lowercase
– easy to read shape of words
• UPPERCASE
– better for individual letters and non-words
e.g. flight numbers: BA793 vs. ba793

• serif fonts
– helps your eye on long lines of printed text
– but sans serif often better on screen
Scanners

• Take paper and convert it into a bitmap

• Two sorts of scanner

– flat-bed: paper placed on a glass plate, whole page
converted into bitmap
– hand-held: scanner passed over paper, digitising strip
typically 3-4” wide

• Shines light at paper and note intensity of reflection

– colour or greyscale

• Typical resolutions from 600–2400 dpi

Scanners (ctd)

Used in
– desktop publishing for incorporating
photographs and other images

– document storage and retrieval systems,

doing away with paper storage
+ special scanners for slides and
photographic negatives
Optical character recognition

• OCR converts bitmap back into text

• different fonts
– create problems for simple “template
matching” algorithms
– more complex systems segment text,
decompose it into lines and arcs, and
decipher characters that way
• page format
– columns, pictures, headers and footers
Paper-based interaction
• paper usually regarded as output only
• can be input too – OCR, scanning, etc.
• Xerox PaperWorks
– glyphs – small patterns of /\\//\\\
• used to identify forms etc.
• used with scanner and fax to control applications

• more recently
– papers micro printed - like wattermarks
• identify which sheet and where you are
– special ‘pen’ can read locations
• know where they are writing
 memory

short term and long term

speed, capacity, compression
formats, access
Short-term Memory - RAM

• Random access memory (RAM)

– on silicon chips
– 100 nano-second access time
– usually volatile (lose information if power turned off)
– data transferred at around 100 Mbytes/sec

• Some non-volatile RAM used to store basic

set-up information

• Typical desktop computers:

64 to 256 Mbytes RAM
Long-term Memory - disks

• magnetic disks
– floppy disks store around 1.4 Mbytes
– hard disks typically 40 Gbytes to 100s of Gbytes
access time ~10ms, transfer rate 100kbytes/s

• optical disks
– use lasers to read and sometimes write
– more robust that magnetic media
– CD-ROM
- same technology as home audio, ~ 600 Gbytes
– DVD - for AV applications, or very large files
Blurring boundaries

• PDAs
– often use RAM for their main memory

• Flash-Memory
– used in PDAs, cameras etc.
– silicon based but persistent
– plug-in USB devices for data transfer
speed and capacity

• what do the numbers mean?

• some sizes (all uncompressed) …

– this book, text only ~ 320,000 words, 2Mb
– the Bible ~ 4.5 Mbytes
– scanned page ~ 128 Mbytes
• (11x8 inches, 1200 dpi, 8bit greyscale)
– digital photo ~ 10 Mbytes
• (2–4 mega pixels, 24 bit colour)
– video ~ 10 Mbytes per second
• (512x512, 12 bit colour, 25 frames per sec)
virtual memory

• Problem:
– running lots of programs + each program large
– not enough RAM

• Solution - Virtual memory :

– store some programs temporarily on disk
– makes RAM appear bigger

• But … swopping
– program on disk needs to run again
– copied from disk to RAM
– slows t h i n g s d o w n
Compression

• reduce amount of storage required

• lossless
– recover exact text or image – e.g. GIF, ZIP
– look for commonalities:
• text: AAAAAAAAAABBBBBCCCCCCCC 10A5B8C
• video: compare successive frames and store change
• lossy
– recover something like original – e.g. JPEG, MP3
– exploit perception
• JPEG: lose rapid changes and some colour
• MP3: reduce accuracy of drowned out notes
Storage formats - text

• ASCII - 7-bit binary code for to each letter and

character
• UTF-8 - 8-bit encoding of 16 bit character set
• RTF (rich text format)
- text plus formatting and layout information
• SGML (standardized generalised markup language)
- documents regarded as structured objects
• XML (extended markup language)
- simpler version of SGML for web applications
Storage formats - media

• Images:
– many storage formats :
(PostScript, GIFF, JPEG, TIFF, PICT, etc.)
– plus different compression techniques
(to reduce their storage requirements)

• Audio/Video
– again lots of formats :
(QuickTime, MPEG, WAV, etc.)
– compression even more important
– also ‘streaming’ formats for network delivery
 processing and networks

finite speed (but also Moore’s law)

limits of interaction
networked computing
Finite processing speed
• Designers tend to assume fast processors, and make
interfaces more and more complicated

• But problems occur, because processing cannot keep up

with all the tasks it needs to do
– cursor overshooting because system has buffered
keypresses
– icon wars - user clicks on icon, nothing happens, clicks on
another, then system responds and windows fly
everywhere

• Also problems if system is too fast - e.g. help screens

may scroll through text much too rapidly to be read
the myth of the infinitely
fast machine

• implicit assumption … no delays

an infinitely fast machine
• what is good design for real machines?
• good example … the telephone :
– type keys too fast
– hear tones as numbers sent down the line
– actually an accident of implementation
– emulate in deisgn
Limitations on interactive
performance
Computation bound
– Computation takes ages, causing frustration for the user
Storage channel bound
– Bottleneck in transference of data from disk to memory
Graphics bound
– Common bottleneck: updating displays requires a lot of
effort - sometimes helped by adding a graphics co-
processor optimised to take on the burden
Network capacity
– Many computers networked - shared resources and files,
access to printers etc. - but interactive performance can
be reduced by slow network speed
Networked computing

Networks allow access to …

– large memory and processing
– other people (groupware, email)
– shared resources – esp. the web

Issues
– network delays – slow feedback
– conflicts - many people update data
– unpredictability