CSE4107-Human Computer Interaction
Lecture 8: Cognitive Aspects of Design
Dr. Md. Sazzad Hossain, PhD (Japan)
Professor
Department of CSE
Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University
Email:
[email protected] 1
Why do we need to understand users?
• Interacting with technology is cognitive
• Need to take into account cognitive processes involved and
cognitive limitations of users
• Provides knowledge about what users can and cannot be
expected to do
• Identifies and explains the nature and causes of problems
users encounter
• Supply theories, modelling tools, guidance and methods that
can lead to the design of better interactive products
Cognitive processes
•Attention
•Perception
•Memory
•Learning
•Reading, speaking and listening
•Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and
decision-making
Attention
•Selecting things to concentrate on at a point in time from the
mass of stimuli around us
•Allows us to focus on information that is relevant to what
we are doing
•Involves audio and/or visual senses
•Focussed and divided attention enables us to be selective in
terms of the mass of competing stimuli but limits our ability
to keep track of all events
•Information at the interface should be structured to capture
users’ attention,
• e.g. use perceptual boundaries (windows), colour, video, sound and flashing
lights
Activity: Find the price of a double room at the Holiday
Inn in Columbia
Activity: Find the price for a double room at the Quality
Inn in Pennsylvania
Activity
• Tullis (1987) found that the two screens produced quite
different results
• 1st screen - took an average of 5.5 seconds to search
• 2nd screen - took 3.2 seconds to search
• Why, since both displays have the same density of
information (31%)?
• Spacing
• In the 1st screen the information is bunched up together, making it hard
to search
• In the 2nd screen the characters are grouped into vertical categories of
information making it easier
Design implications for attention
•Make information salient when it needs attending to
•Use techniques that make things stand out like color,
ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing and animation
•Avoid cluttering the interface with too much information
•Search engines and form fill-ins that have simple and
clean interfaces are easier to use
Perception
•How information is acquired from the world and
transformed into experiences
•Obvious implication is to design representations that
are readily perceivable, e.g.
• Text should be legible
• Icons should be easy to distinguish and read
Is color contrast good? Find Italian
Are borders and white space better? Find
french
Activity
•Weller (2004) found people took less time to
locate items for information that was grouped
• using a border (2nd screen) compared with using color contrast
(1st screen)
•Do you agree?
Which is easiest to read and why?
What is the time? What is the time?
What is the time? What is the time?
What is the time?
Design implications
• Icons should enable users to readily distinguish their meaning
• Bordering and spacing are effective visual ways of grouping
information
• Sounds should be audible and distinguishable
• Speech output should enable users to distinguish between the
set of spoken words
• Text should be legible and distinguishable from the background
• Tactile feedback should allow users to recognize and distinguish
different meanings
Memory
•Involves first encoding and then retrieving knowledge.
•We don’t remember everything - involves filtering and
processing what is attended to
•We recognize things much better than being able to
recall things
•we remember less about objects we have photographed
than when we observe them with the naked eye
(Henkel, 2014)
Context is important
•Context affects the extent to which information can be
subsequently retrieved
• Sometimes it can be difficult for people to recall information
that was encoded in a different context:
•“You are on a train and someone comes up to you and
says hello. You don’t recognize him for a few moments
but then realize it is one of your neighbours. You are only
used to seeing your neighbour in the hallway of your
apartment block and seeing him out of context makes him
difficult to recognize initially”
Recognition versus recall
•Command-based interfaces require users to recall from
memory a name from a possible set of 100s
•GUIs provide MP3 players visually-based options that users
need only browse through until they recognize one
•Web browsers, etc., provide lists of visited URLs, song titles
etc., that support recognition memory
The problem with the classic ‘7±2’
•George Miller’s (1956) theory of how much
information people can remember
•People’s immediate memory capacity is very
limited
•Many designers think this is useful finding for
interaction design
•Exercise
Cat, house, paper, laugh, people, red, yes, number, shadow, broom, rain,
plant, lamp, chocolate, radio, one, coin, jet
What some designers get up to…
•Present only 7 options on a menu
•Display only 7 icons on a tool bar
•Have no more than 7 bullets in a list
•Place only 7 items on a pull down menu
•Place only 7 tabs on the top of a website page
• But this is wrong? Why?
Why?
•Inappropriate application of the theory
•People can scan lists of bullets, tabs, menu
items for the one they want
•They don’t have to recall them from memory
having only briefly heard or seen them
•Sometimes a small number of items is good
•But depends on task and available screen
estate
Digital content management
•Is a growing problem for many users
• vast numbers of documents, images, music files, video clips, emails,
attachments, bookmarks, etc.,
• where and how to save them all, then remembering what they were
called and where to find them again
•Memory involves 2 processes
•recall-directed and recognition-based scanning
•File management systems should be designed to
optimize both kinds of memory processes
• e.g. Search box and history list
•Help users encode files in richer ways
• Provide them with ways of saving files using colour, flagging, image,
flexible text, time stamping, etc.
Memory aids
•SenseCam developed by Microsoft Research Labs (now
Autographer)
•a wearable device that intermittently takes photos without
any user intervention while worn
•digital images taken are stored and revisited using special
software
•Has been found to improve people’s memory, suffering from
Alzheimers
Design implications
•Don’t overload users’ memories with
complicated procedures for carrying out tasks
•Design interfaces that promote recognition
rather than recall
•Provide users with various ways of encoding
information to help them remember
•e.g. categories, color, flagging, time stamping
Reading, speaking, and listening
•The ease with which people can read, listen, or
speak differs
•Many prefer listening to reading
•Reading can be quicker than speaking or listening
•Listening requires less cognitive effort than reading or
speaking
•Dyslexics have difficulties understanding and
recognizing written words
Applications
•Speech-recognition systems allow users to interact with
them by asking questions
• e.g. Google Voice, Siri, Alexa
•Speech-output systems use artificially generated
speech
• e.g. written-text-to-speech systems for the blind
•Natural-language systems enable users to type in
questions and give text-based responses
• e.g. Ask search engine
Learning
•How to learn to use a computer-based application
•Using a computer-based application or YouTube
video to understand a given topic
•People find it hard to learn by following instructions
in a manual
•prefer to learn by doing
Design implications
•Speech-based menus and instructions should be short
•Accentuate the intonation of artificially generated speech
voices
•they are harder to understand than human voices
•Provide opportunities for making text large on a screen
Cognitive prosthetic devices
•We rely more and more on the internet and smartphones
to look things up
•Expecting to have internet access reduces the need and
extent to which we remember
•Also enhances our memory for knowing where to find it
online (Sparrow et al,2011)
•What are implications for designing technologies to
support how people will learn, and what they learn?
Dilemma
•The app mentality developing in the psyche of the
younger generation is making it worse for them to make
their own decisions because they are becoming risk
averse (Gardner and Davis, 2013)
•Relying on a multitude of apps means that they are
becoming increasingly more anxious about making
decisions by themselves
•Do you agree? Can you think of an example?
Mental models
•Users develop an understanding of a system through
learning about and using it
•Knowledge is sometimes described as a mental model:
• How to use the system (what to do next)
• What to do with unfamiliar systems or unexpected situations (how
the system works)
•People make inferences using mental models of how to
carry out tasks
Everyday reasoning and mental
models
You arrive home on a cold winter’s night to a cold house. How
do you get the house to warm up as quickly as possible? Set
the thermostat to be at its highest or to the desired
temperature?
Heating up a room or oven that is
thermostat-controlled
•Many people have erroneous mental models (Kempton,
1996)
•Why?
• General valve theory, where ‘more is more’ principle is
generalised to different settings (e.g. gas pedal, gas cooker,
tap, radio volume)
• 12
• Thermostats based on model of on-off switch model
Heating up a room or oven that is
thermostat-controlled
•Same is often true for understanding how
interactive devices and computers work:
•poor, often incomplete, easily confusable, based on
inappropriate analogies and superstition (Norman,
1983)
•e.g. elevators and pedestrian crossings - lot of people
hit the button at least twice
•Why? Think it will make the lights change faster or
ensure the elevator arrives!
Gulfs of execution and evaluation
•The ‘gulfs’ explicate the gaps that exist
between the user and the interface
•The gulf of execution
•the distance from the user to the physical system
•The gulf of evaluation
•the distance from the physical system to the user
Bridging the gulfs
•Bridging the gulfs can reduce cognitive effort
required to perform tasks
