Chapter 3

Computer in HCI
 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
 Interactivity
• Interaction (with or without computer) is a process of
information transfer.

• The diversity of devices reflects the fact that there are many
different types of data that may be entered into and obtained
from a system, as there are many different users.

• In the early days, batch processing was common: a large mass of

information was dumped into and processed by the computer.

• Nowadays, computers respond within milliseconds and computer

systems are integrated in many different devices.
 Input Devices – Text entry devices

• Keyboard

• The vast majority of keyboards have a standardized

layout, known by the first six letters on the top row:

• QWERTY. The non-alphanumeric keys are not

standardized.

• This layout is not optimal for typing, but dates from

the time of mechanical limitations of the typewriter.

 Cont..

• Today, the keys can also be arranged in alphabetic

order (the alphabetic keyboard), but this does not
improve typing performance.
 Chord keyboards

• On chord keyboards, only a few keys are used.

• Letters are produces pressing multiple keys at once.
• They are smaller than conventional keyboards and
have a short learning time.
 Phone pad and T9 entry

• The numeric keys on a cellphone can be pressed

more than once to enter letters.
• Most phones have 2 keypad modes: a numeric and
an alphabetic mode.
• Most phones have additional modes for entering
(initial) capitals.
 Cont..

• On modern phones you can also find the T9

algorithm.
• This uses a large dictionary to disambiguate words
by typing the relevant letters keys once.
 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

• Helps user who are visual disabled.

 Numeric keypads

• For entering numbers quickly:

– calculator, PC keyboard

• Widely used for telephones

• Has two different layouts
1 2 3 7 8 9
4 5 6 4 5 6
7 8 9 1 2 3
0 # 0 . =
*
telephone calculator
Input Devices : positioning, pointing and drawing

• The mouse

• The mouse is an indirect input device, because a

transformation is required to map from the horizontal nature
of the desktop to the vertical alignment of the screen.
• Invented in 1964 by Engelbart, his mouse used 2 wheels
that slid across the desktop and transmitted x; y-coordinates
to the computer.
• There have been experiments with foot-controlled mice.
 Touchpad

• Touchpads are touch-sensitive tablets, operated by

sliding the finger over it and are mostly used in
notebook computers.
• Performance can be increased using accelerators.
 Trackball and thumbwheel

• A trackball is an upside-down mouse: instead of

moving the device itself, the ball is rolled to move
the cursor.
• Thumb-wheels (in 2 dimensions) offer less
usability because they can only manipulate the
horizontal and vertical movement of the cursor.
 Cont..

• 1-dimensional thumbwheels are often included on

the normal mice the enhance the scrolling.
 Joystick and keyboard nipple
• There are two types of joysticks: absolute sticks, in which
the position of the cursor corresponds to the position of the
joystick in its base. and
• isometric sticks, in which the pressure on the stick (in a
certain direction) controls the velocity of the cursor in that
direction.
• Keyboard nipples are tiny joysticks that are sometimes
used on notebook computers.
 Other input device

• Touch-sensitive screens (touchscreens)

• Stylus and light pen
• Digitizing tablet
• Eye gaze
• Cursor keys and discrete positioning
 Output Devices - Display devices

• Bitmap displays, resolution and color

• A bitmap-base means that the display is made of a
fixed number of dots or pixels in a rectangular grid.
• The color or intensity at each pixel is held by the
computer's video card.
• The more bits per pixel, the more colors/intensities
are possible.
 Technologies
• In a CRT-monitor a stream of electrons is emitted from an
electron gun, which is than focused and directed by
magnetic .
• In LCD.s a thin layer of liquid crystals is sandwiched
between two glass plates.
• External light passes through the top plate and is polarized.

• This passes through the crystal and is reflected back to the

user's eye by the bottom plate.
 Digital paper

• Thin flexible material that can be written to

electronically, but keeps it's contents when
removed from the power supply.
 Devices for virtual reality and 3D interaction

• Positioning in 3D :

• Changing from 2D to VR does not mean going to 3 degrees

of freedom, but (sometimes) to 6, because except for
moving in 3 dimensions, you can also roll, turn, twist etc.

• Humans can use a 3D-environment with a 2D-device

(mouse).

• The human mind is therefore capable of handling multiple

degrees of indirection.
 3D displays
• 3D can be displayed on normal screens using shadows, depth etc.
• It is also possible to generate the natural stereoscopic images for
both eye positions and have them delivered to eyes using a VR-
helmed.
• Finally, users can enter a VR cave, where the VR world is
projected around them.
• If the VR-system performances too slow, and there is a delay
between movement and image, disorientation and sickness may
occur.
 Physical controls, sensors and special devices

• Special displays :
• Except for CRT and LCD, there are numerous other
display devices, e.g. LED.s, gangs, dials and head-
up displays.
 Touch, feel and smell
• Force feedback gives different amounts of resistance to an
input device depending on the state of the virtual
operation.
• Haptic devices are various forms of force, resistance and
texture influencing our physical senses.
 Environment and bio-sensing

• There are many sensors in our environment

monitoring our behavior.
• Their measurements range from temperature and
movement to the user's emotional state.
 Paper: printing
• The most common printers nowadays are dot-based.

• In order of increasing resolution, familiar types are dot-

matrix printers, ink-jet printers and laser printers.
• Some printers print ASCII-characters and bitmaps by
itself.
• Many more complex documents are translated into suitable
bitmaps by the computer.
• More sophisticated printers can accept a page description
language, e.g. PostScript.
 Scanners and optical character recognition
• Scanners produce a bitmap image from a hard original and can, using
optical character recognition, transfer a page of text directly into a
txt-file.

• There are 2 kinds of scanners: flat-bed (as in a copier machine) and

hand-held (as in a fax machine, however the scanner has to be
manually pulled over the paper).

• Scanners shine a beam of light at the page and record the intensity
and color of the reflection.

• The resolution of the scanner can differ highly between different

types.
 Memory- RAM and short-term memory (STM)

• Most current active information is held in the

random access memory (RAM).
• RAM is volatile: contents are lost when the power
is turned off.
• However, there are more expensive or low-power
consuming memory techniques that can hold their
contents when the power is off.
 Disks and long-term memory (LTM)

• There are 2 main techniques used in disks:

magnetic disks (floppy, hard disk, tape) and optical
disks. (CD-ROM/DVD).
• In comparison to RAM, the computers LTM is
rather slow.
 Understanding speed and capacity

• The capacity of RAM is limited and therefore

multitask-systems tend to swap background-
running programs from RAM to the hard disk.
• When the program is fully activated it has to be
swapped back, which can cause delays (von
Neumann bottleneck).
 Compression

• Compression techniques can be used to reduce the

amount of storage required for text, bitmaps and
video.
• In text, logical contractions in the sentence can be
replaced by a short code.
• In video, differences between frames can be
recorded instead of the whole frames.
 Methods of access
• Standard database access by special key fields with an
associated index.
• The user has to know the key before the system can find
the information.
• Indices on databases are limited due to the storage costs,
privacy and security.
• The user's mistakes in searching can be compensated by
using forgiving systems, for example by matching a key to
a database index which corresponds closely.
 Processing and networks
• Effects of finite processor speed

• The processing speed of an interactive system can effect the user

by being too slow (which can be avoided by using buffers) or too
fast.
• The faults can be functional, in which the program does the wrong
action.
• Slow responses from the system can also cause the so called
cursor tracking and icon wars.
• If the system is too fast, the user will not have enough time to
interpret the system's output.
 Limitations on interactive performance

• Several factors that can limit the speed of an

interactive system. They can be:
– Computation bound: Make sure the user has an
indication of the system's progress.
– Storage channel bound: Select the best fitting kind of
memory and access technique.
– Graphics bound: The actual time of graphic operations
can differ much from the estimates.
– Network capacity
 Network computing

• Networked systems have an effect on interactivity,

because the large distances may cause a noticeable
delay in response from the system.
• The actions of other users may also influence your
own interaction with the connected computers.