chapter 1

the human
The human eye
Online shopping 
• There’s a three foot tall man who lives on
the thirteenth floor. On a regular sunny
day he takes the elevator only up to the
seventh floor and walks up the stairs for
the rest . He takes the elevator down for
all floors. On rainy days, he takes the
elevator up and down all the floors. Why
does he take the stairs up after the
seventh floor on a regular sunny day?
the human

• Information i/o …
– visual, auditory, haptic, movement
• Information stored in memory
– sensory, short-term, long-term
• Information processed and applied
– reasoning, problem solving, skill, error
• Emotion influences human capabilities
• Each person is different
Vision

Two stages in vision

• physical reception of stimulus

• processing and interpretation of

stimulus
• Optical illusions highlight the
differences between the way things are
and the way we perceive them – and in
interface design we need to be aware
that we will not always perceive things
exactly as they are.
• The way that objects are composed
together will affect the way we perceive
them,
The Eye - physical reception

• mechanism for receiving light and

transforming it into electrical energy
• light reflects from objects
• images are focused upside-down on
retina
• retina contains rods for low light vision
and cones for colour vision
• ganglion cells (brain!) detect pattern
and movement
• There are two types of ganglion cells:
• X-cells, which are concentrated in the
fovea and are responsible for the early
detection of pattern; and Y-cells which
are more widely distributed in the
retina and are responsible for the early
detection of movement.
• The distribution of these cells means
that, while we may not be able to
detect changes in pattern in peripheral
vision, we can perceive movement.
Interpreting the signal
• Size and depth
– visual angle indicates how much of view
object occupies
(relates to size and distance from eye)

– visual acuity is ability to perceive detail

(limited). For example, a person with normal vision can
detect a single line if it has a visual angle of 0.5 seconds
of arc.

– familiar objects perceived as constant size

(in spite of changes in visual angle when far away, called
law of size constancy)

– cues like overlapping, the size and height of the object

in our field of view and familiarity provides a cue to its
distance.
– familiarity: if we expect an object to be of a certain size
then we can judge its distance accordingly
Interpreting the signal (cont)

• Brightness
– subjective reaction to levels of light
– affected by luminance of object
– measured by just noticeable difference
– visual acuity increases with luminance as does
flicker

• Colour
– made up of hue, intensity, saturation
– cones sensitive to colour wavelengths
– blue acuity is lowest
– 8% males and 1% females colour blind
Interpreting the signal (cont)

• The visual system compensates for:

– Movement (Image on retina does not
move, but we know person is moving)
– changes in luminance.
Context is used to resolve
ambiguity
Optical illusions sometimes
occur due to over compensation

the Ponzo illusion the Muller Lyer illusion

Reading
• Several stages:
– visual pattern perceived
– decoded using internal representation of language
– interpreted using knowledge of syntax, semantics,
pragmatics
• Reading involves saccades and fixations
• Perception occurs during fixations
• Word shpae is ipmortnat to rcegnoition. Tihs
maens taht rmevonig the wrod sphae clues
(for example, by capitalizing words) is
detrimental to reading speed and accuracy.

• Negative contrast improves reading from

computer screen
• Book easier than screen?
Hearing

• Provides information about environment:

distances, directions, objects etc.
• Physical apparatus:
– outer ear – protects inner and amplifies sound
– middle ear – transmits sound waves as
vibrations to inner ear
– inner ear – chemical transmitters are released
and cause impulses in auditory nerve
• Sound
– pitch – sound frequency
– loudness – amplitude
– timbre – type or quality
Some common uses of sound
Hearing (cont)

• Humans can hear frequencies from 20Hz to

15kHz
– less accurate distinguishing high frequencies than
low.

• Auditory system filters sounds

– can attend to sounds over background noise.
– for example, the cocktail party phenomenon.

• https://www.yahoo.com/health/try-it-can-you-hear-
these-sounds-only-young-112627654778.html
• http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can-you-hear-
this-hearing-test/
Touch

• Provides important feedback about environment.

• May be key sense for someone who is visually impaired.
• Stimulus received via receptors in the skin:
– thermoreceptors – heat and cold
– nociceptors – pain
– mechanoreceptors – pressure
(some instant, some continuous)

• Some areas more sensitive than others e.g. fingers

than head.
• Kinethesis - awareness of body position
– affects comfort and performance.
• Important that you get haptic response
from keyboard or mouse which
indicates that a button has been
pressed.
• Braille
• Two-point threshold test to measure
the acuity. E.g. Measure on the forearm
is around 10 times that of the finger or
thumb.
Movement

• Time taken to respond to stimulus:

reaction time + movement time
• Movement time dependent on age, fitness etc.
• Reaction time - dependent on stimulus type:
– visual ~ 200ms
– auditory ~ 150 ms
– pain ~ 700ms

• Increasing reaction time decreases accuracy in

the unskilled operator but not in the skilled
operator. E.g. skilled typist vs novice.
• Studies of keyboard operators have shown that, although the
faster operators were up to twice as fast as the others, the
slower ones made 10 times the errors.
Movement (cont)

• Fitts' Law describes the time taken to hit a

screen target:
Mt = a + b log2(D/S + 1)
where: a and b are empirically determined constants
Mt is movement time
D is Distance
S is Size of target

 targets as large as possible

distances as small as possible
Memory
There are three types of memory function:

Sensory memories

Short-term memory or working memory

Long-term memory

Selection of stimuli governed by level of arousal.

Alternatively

• http://www.jmu.edu/_images/lsi/memo
ry.png
sensory memory
• It is the ability to retain impressions of
sensory information after the original
stimuli have ended.
• Buffers for stimuli received through
senses
– iconic memory: visual stimuli
– echoic memory: aural stimuli
– haptic memory: tactile stimuli
• Examples
– “sparkler” trail
– stereo sound, sounds from multiple
directions.
• Continuously overwritten
Short-term memory (STM)
• Calculate the multiplication 35 × 6 in
your head.
– need to store the intermediate stages for
use later.
– In order to comprehend a sentence you
need to hold in your mind the beginning of
the sentence as you read the rest.
• Scratch-pad for temporary recall

– rapid access ~ 70ms

– rapid decay ~ 200ms

– limited capacity - 7± 2 chunks

Examples

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0121 414 2626

HEC ATR ANU PTH ETR EET

Recency effect

• Recall of the last words presented is

better than recall of those in the middle
• Read a list or words.
• Read another list of words.
• Check recency effect. What happens?
• In experiments where subjects were
able to recall words freely, evidence
shows that recall of the last words
presented is better than recall of those
in the middle
• Interference does not necessarily impair recall in short-
term memory.
– remember six-digit numbers, answer questions on sentences,
such as ‘A precedes B: AB is true or false?’.
• Surprisingly, this did not result in interference,
suggesting that in fact short-term memory is not a
unitary system but is made up of a number of
components, including a visual channel and an
articulatory channel.
• 7± 2 rule can be used when developing
inputs where users have to remember
something like parameters or steps.
• ATM card return.
• List of objects in a list box.
• How can such situations be handled?
Long-term memory (LTM)

• Repository for all our knowledge

– slow access ~ 1/10 second
– slow decay, if any
– huge or unlimited capacity

• Two types
– episodic – serial memory of events
– semantic – structured memory of facts,concepts, skills

semantic LTM derived from episodic LTM

Long-term memory (cont.)

• Semantic memory structure

– provides access to information
– represents relationships between bits of information
– supports inference

• Model: semantic network

– inheritance – child nodes inherit properties of parent
nodes
– relationships between bits of information explicit
– supports inference through inheritance
LTM - semantic network
• Q1. ‘Does a hound track?’
• Q2. ‘Can a collie breathe?’
http://www.simplypsychology.org
/a-level-memory.html
• A number of other memory structures
have been proposed to explain how we
represent and store different types of
knowledge. Each of these represents a
different aspect of knowledge and, as
such, the models can be viewed as
complementary rather than mutually
exclusive.
• Semantic networks represent the
associations and relationships between
single items in memory.
• However, they do not allow us to model
the representation of more complex
objects or events, which are perhaps
composed of a number of items or
activities.
– Semantic
– Frames and Scripts
– representation of procedural knowledge
Models of LTM - Frames

• Information organized in data structures

• Slots in structure instantiated with values for instance
of data
• Type–subtype relationships

DOG COLLIE

Fixed Fixed
legs: 4 breed of: DOG
type: sheepdog
Default
diet: carniverous Default
sound: bark size: 65 cm
Variable Variable
size: colour
colour
• John took his dog to the surgery. After
seeing the vet, he left.
Scripts
 Models of LTM - Scripts
Model of stereotypical information required to interpret situation

Script has elements that can be instantiated with values for context

Script for a visit to the vet

Entry conditions: dog ill Roles: vet examines

vet open diagnoses
owner has money treats
owner brings dog in
Result: dog better
pays
owner poorer
takes dog out
vet richer
Scenes: arriving at reception
Props: examination table
waiting in room
medicine
examination
instruments
paying
Tracks: dog needs medicine
dog needs operation

A script represents this default or stereotypical

information, allowing us to interpret partial descriptions
or cues fully.
Models of LTM - Production rules

Representation of procedural knowledge.

Condition/action rules
if condition is matched
then use rule to determine action.

IF dog is wagging tail

THEN pat dog

IF dog is growling
THEN run away
LTM - Storage of information
• rehearsal
– information moves from STM to LTM

• total time hypothesis

– amount retained proportional to rehearsal time

• distribution of practice effect

– optimized by spreading learning over time

• structure, meaning and familiarity

– Familiar information easier to remember
• subjects to learn a story about an unfamiliar culture and
then retell it.
• subjects would retell the story replacing unfamiliar words
and concepts with words which were meaningful to them.
LTM - Forgetting
decay
– information is lost gradually but very slowly
– Jost’s law, states that if two memory traces are
equally strong at a given time the older one will be
more durable.

interference
– retroactive interference: new information replaces
old
– proactive inhibition: old may interfere with new

so may not forget at all

memory is selective …
… affected by emotion – can subconsciously `choose' to
forget
LTM - retrieval

recall
– information reproduced from memory can be
assisted by cues, e.g. categories, imagery

recognition
– information gives knowledge that it has been seen
before
– less complex than recall - information is cue
• The engines roared above the noise of the crowd. Even in
the blistering heat people rose to their feet and waved
their hands in excitement. The flag fell and they were off.
Within seconds the car had pulled away from the pack
and was careering round the bend at a desperate pace.
Its wheels momentarily left the ground as it cornered.
Coming down the straight the sun glinted on its
shimmering paint. The driver gripped the wheel with
fierce concentration. Sweat lay in fine drops on his brow.
 Thinking

Reasoning
deduction, induction, abduction
Problem solving
Deductive Reasoning
• Deduction:
– derive logically necessary conclusion from given
premises.
e.g. If it is Monday then he will go to work
It is Monday
Therefore he will go to work.
Deduction (cont.)

• Logical conclusion, but not necessarily true:

e.g. If it is raining then the ground is dry
It is raining
Therefore the ground is dry

Correct?
Inductive Reasoning

• Induction:
– generalize from cases seen to cases unseen
e.g. all elephants we have seen have trunks
therefore all elephants have trunks.

• Unreliable:
– can only prove false not true

… but useful!
• Humans not good at using negative evidence
e.g. Wason's cards.
 Wason's cards

7 E 4 K
If a card has a vowel on one side it has an even number on the other

Is this true?

How many cards do you need to turn over to find out?

…. and which cards?

Abductive reasoning

• reasoning from event to cause

e.g. Sam runs when he is late.
If I see Sam run, assume late.

• Unreliable:
– can lead to false explanations
Problem solving
• Process of finding solution to unfamiliar task
using knowledge.
• Several theories.
• Gestalt (Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (German:
Gestalt [ɡəˈʃtalt] "shape, form"))
– "The whole is other than the sum of the parts" (often
incorrectly translated as) "The whole is greater than the
sum of its parts."
– Answer to claim of behaviourists, that problem solving is
a matter of reproducing known responses or trial and
error. (Could not explain novel solutions)
– Gestalt psychologists said that problem solving both
productive and reproductive, i.e. both reuse of knowledge
and insight
– productive draws on insight and restructuring of problem
– attractive but not enough evidence to explain `insight'
etc.
– move away from behaviourism and led towards
information processing theories
Gestalt (cont…)
• Apes, observed to join sticks together
in order to reach food outside their
cages
• Maier’s pendulum problem.
– two pieces of string hanging from the
ceiling.
– pliers, poles and extensions
• An example of productive restructuring.
• The experiment also illustrates fixation
as most subjects were using similar
straight-forward methods
 Problem solving (cont.)
Problem space theory (Newell and Simon, General
Problem Solver from AI)
– problem space comprises problem states
– problem solving involves generating states using legal
operators
– heuristics may be employed to select operators
e.g. means-ends analysis (initial state is compared with the
goal state and an operator chosen to reduce the difference
between the two)
– operates within human information processing system
e.g. STM (Short Term Memory) limits etc.
– largely applied to problem solving in well-defined areas
e.g. puzzles rather than knowledge intensive areas
Problem solving (cont.)
• Analogy
– analogical mapping:
• novel problems in new domain?
• use knowledge of similar problem from similar domain
• Similarities between the known domain and the new one are
noted and operators from the known domain are transferred
to the new one.
– analogical mapping difficult if domains are semantically
different
– Tumor example
Skill acquisition

– skilled activity characterized by chunking

• lot of information is chunked to optimize STM
• Chess expert players did not consider large numbers of
moves in choosing their move, nor did they look ahead more
than six moves (often far fewer). It appears that chess
masters remember board configurations and good moves
associated with them. (Chunk = board configuration)
– Skilled better at grouping. Conceptual similarities
(Functional vs Non-Functional Reqs.?) (Birds are
descendants of Dinosaurs?) rather than superficial
(countries starting with ‘P’) grouping of problems
– information is structured more effectively
• Experts better at encoding of
knowledge:
• information structures are fine tuned at
a deep level to enable efficient and
accurate retrieval.
• But how does this happen? How is skill
such as this acquired? (Next slide)
Skill Acquisition: Anderson’s
ACT* model
• 1. The learner uses general-purpose rules
which interpret facts about a problem.
• This is slow and demanding on memory
access.
• Proceduralization (replaces variables with
specific values)
• 2. The learner develops rules specific to the
task.
• Generalization (from that specific case to
general properties of similar case)
• 3. The rules are tuned to speed up
performance.
• Commonalities between rules are condensed
to produce a more general-purpose rules.
• The first stage uses knowledge extensively. The second stage relies
upon known procedures. The third stage represents skilled behavior.
Errors and mental models
Types of error
• slips
– right intention, but failed to do it right
– causes: poor physical skill,inattention etc.
– change to aspect of skilled behaviour can cause slip

• mistakes
– wrong intention
– cause: incorrect understanding
humans create mental models to explain behaviour.
if wrong (different from actual system) errors can occur
• in the S35E Draken reconnaissance
aircraft the red buttons for releasing
the fuel ‘drop’ tanks and for the canopy
release differed only in very small
writing. In an emergency (burning fuel
tanks) the pilot accidentally released
the canopy and so ended up flying
home cabriolet style.
Emotion
• Various theories of how emotion works
– James-Lange: emotion is our interpretation of a
physiological response to a stimuli
– Cannon: emotion is a psychological response to a
stimuli
– Schacter-Singer: emotion is the result of our
evaluation of our physiological responses, in the
light of the whole situation we are in
• Emotion clearly involves both cognitive and
physical responses to stimuli
Emotion (cont.)
• The biological response to physical stimuli is
called affect
• Affect influences how we respond to situations
– positive  creative problem solving
– negative  narrow thinking
“Negative affect can make it harder to do
even easy tasks; positive affect can make
it easier to do difficult tasks”
(Donald Norman)
Emotion (cont.)

• Implications for interface design

– stress will increase the difficulty of problem
solving
– relaxed users will be more forgiving of
shortcomings in design
– aesthetically pleasing and rewarding
interfaces will increase positive affect

https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~introcs/Fa14/notes/04.3_HCI/BadDesign.ht
ml?CurrentSlide=7
• https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~introcs/Fa14/notes/04.3_HCI/BadDesign.html?Cur
rentSlide=7
Individual differences

• long term
– gender, physical and intellectual abilities
• short term
– effect of stress or fatigue
• changing
– age

Ask yourself:
will design decision exclude section of user
population?
Psychology and the Design of
Interactive System
• Some direct applications
– e.g. blue acuity is poor
 blue should not be used for important detail
– E.g. Color blindness gif

• However, correct application generally requires

understanding of context in psychology, and an
understanding of particular experimental conditions
• https://medium.com/swlh/13-mind-
blowing-statistics-on-user-experience-
48c1e1ede755

• http://simonwallner.at/ext/fitts/