Chapter Two

Human in HCI
Human in HCI
 Cognitive psychology
 how humans perceive the world around them,
 how they store and process information and solve problems, and
 how they physically manipulate objects
 basic overview of the capabilities and limitations that affect our ability to use
computer systems
 When we try to understand something, particularly new,
we use a combination of
What our senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) are telling
 Past experience
 Our expectations
Factors to be considered for interaction.

 Information input/output
 Information stored in memory
 sensory, short-term, long-term
 Information processed and applied
 Emotion influences human capabilities
 Each person is different

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 Humans are limited in their capacity to process information.
 Human factors, or limitations, include
 Limited concentration
 Changes in mood
 The need for motivation
 Biases
 Fears
 Make errors
 Misjudgment
 Prefer speech
Information input and output
 Interaction with the outside world occurs through information being
received and sent: input and output.
 the human input is the data output by the computer and vice versa.
 Input in humans occurs mainly through the senses and output through
the motor controls of the effectors.
 Vision, hearing and touch are the most important senses in HCI.
 The fingers, voice, eyes, head and body position are the primary effectors.

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Vision
 The two stages in vision are:

1. Physical reception of stimulus

2. Processing and interpretation of stimulus

 both influence what can and cannot be perceived visually by a human being,

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The Eye - physical reception
 Is the mechanism for receiving light and transforming it into
electrical energy
 The process:
 Light reflects from objects
 Images are focused upside-down on retina
 Retina contains rods for low light vision and cones for colour vision
 receptors in the eye transform it into electrical signals which are
passed to the brain
 Ganglion cells (in brain) detect pattern and movement

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The Eye Cont.
Interpreting the signal

 Size and depth

 Visual angle indicates how much of view object occupies. That is, the eye
perceive size and distance. E.g. If two smaller and larger objects have the same
distance from the eye the larger have the higher visual angle
 The visual angle measurement is given in either degrees or minutes of arc,
 Visual acuity is the ability of a person to perceive fine detail
 law of size constancy
 perception of depth
 size and height of the object in our field of view
 familiarity

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Interpreting Cont.
 Brightness
 Subjective reaction to levels of light
 Affected by luminance (level of light emitted by an object) of object
 Measured by just noticeable difference
 Visual acuity increases with luminance

 Colour
 Made up of hue, intensity, saturation
 Cones sensitive to colour wavelengths
 8% males and 1% females colour blind
Interpreting Cont.
 A theory about vision is constructivism:
 Our brains do not create pixel-by-pixel images
 Our minds create, or construct, models that summarize what comes from our senses
 These models are what we perceive
 When we see something, we do not remember all the details, only those that have
meaning for us
 Design implication:
 Do not expect people “see” all the details of an interface because people filter out
irrelevant information and save only the important ones
Constructivism Cont.
 Constructivist theory states that context plays a major role in what we see
in an image
 Are these letters the same?
Constructivism Cont.
 With context, the answer will be different

 Design implication:
 Context can help in resolving ambiguity
Reading
 Several stages:
 Visual pattern of the word is perceived
 Decoded using internal representation of language
 The word is processed as part of the sentence or phrase using knowledge of
syntax and semantics.
 During the first two stages, the eye makes saccades (jerky
movements), followed by fixations.
 The eye moves both forwards and backwards over the text called,
regression.
 Increased when the text is more complex.
 Word shape is important to recognition

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Hearing
 Provides information about environment: factors to be considered
are: distances, directions, objects etc affect hearing.
 Physical apparatus of are:
 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 (vibrations) characteristics:
 Pitch: sound frequency
 Loudness: amplitude
 Timbre: type of the sound
 Humans can hear frequencies from 20Hz to 15kHz
 Less accurate in distinguishing high frequencies than low frequencies.

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Touch
 Also called haptic perception, stimuli received through skin.
 Provides important feedback about environment.
 May be key sense for someone who is visually impaired.
 Stimulus received via receptors in the skin:
 Thermoreceptors: for heat and cold perception
 Nociceptors: for pain perception
 Mechanoreceptors: for pressure perception: (some instant, some continuous)
 If continuous pressure is applied, they stop to respond.

 Some areas more sensitive /acuite than others e.g. fingers.

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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.

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 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.

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Sensory memory
 Buffers for stimuli received through senses, continuously overwritten
 Iconic memory: visual stimuli
 Echoic memory: aural stimuli
 Haptic memory: tactile stimuli
 Information is passed from the sensory memory to the short term
memory by:
 Attention
 Filtering stimuli at that moment of interest

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Short-term memory (STM)
 Store information which is only required fleetingly.
 STM is scratch - pad for temporary recall
 STM is accessed and decayed rapidly
 Rapid access ~ 70ms
 Rapid decay ~ 200ms
 STM is limited in capacity
 STM can store 5-9 chunks of information
 Chunks can be items or groups (like 2 digit number in telephone numbers)
 STM recall is damaged by other information interference.

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Long-term Memory (LTM)
 Repository for all our knowledge
 Slow access ~ 1/10 second
 Slow decay, if any
 LTM has huge or unlimited capacity
 Two types of LTM
 Episodic: represents our memory of events and experiences in a serial form
 Semantic: structured record of facts, concepts and skills that we have acquired, derived from the
episodic LTM

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LTM

 Semantic memory structure

 Provides access to information
 Represents relationships between bits of information
 Supports inference
 LTM can be modelled using:
 Semantic network
 Frames
 Scripts
 Production rule

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LTM Model: semantic network

 According to the semantic network model, the semantic memory is structured

as a network
 Inheritance – child nodes inherit properties of parent nodes
 Relationships between bits of information is shown explicitly
 Supports inference through inheritance
 The more general the information is, the higher is the level on which it is
stored. This allows us to generalize about specific cases.
 The connections in the network are made using associations.

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LTM - semantic network

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 LTM

 There are 3 main activities related to LTM:

 Storage of information
 Forgetting
 Information retrieval

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 LTM
 Storage
 The rehearsal of a piece of information from the STM stores it in the
LTM.
 If the total learning time is increased, information is remembered better-
total time hypothesis.
 However, the learning time should be well spread-distribution of
practice effect.
 Spreading learning over time
 But repetition alone is not enough, that is:
 Information should be meaningful and familiar, so it can be related to existing
structures and more easily incorporated into memory.

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 LTM
 Forgetting
 There are 2 main theories of forgetting:
 Decay
 Interference.
 Decay
 Suggests that information held in LTM may eventually be forgotten.
 Interference
 Information can also be lost through interference: if we acquire new
information, it causes the loss of old information: retroactive interference.
 It is also possible that the older information interferes with the newly
acquired information: proactive inhibition.
 Forgetting is affected by emotional factors too.

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LTM
recall
 information reproduced from memory can be assisted by clues, e.g. categories,
imagery

recognition
 information gives knowledge that it has been seen before
 less complex than recall - information is clue

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Thinking
• Thinking can require different amounts of knowledge.
• Some thinking activities are very directed and the knowledge required is
constrained. Others require vast amounts of knowledge from different domains.
• Thinking can be divided in:
 Reasoning
 Deduction,
 Induction,
 Problem solving
 Skill acquisition
 Errors and mental models

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Deductive reasoning:
Derive logically necessary conclusion from given premises.
e.g. If it is Friday then she will go to work
It is Friday
Therefore she will go to work.
- Logical conclusion not necessarily true:
e.g. If it is raining then the ground is dry
It is raining
Therefore the ground is dry
Inductive reasoning:
Generalize from cases seen to cases unseen
e.g. All birds we have seen fly
therefore all birds fly.

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Problem solving
Problem solving is the process of finding a solution to an unfamiliar task, using (adapting) the knowledge
we have.
Different types of theories:
Gestalt
 Based on insight and restructuring of problem
Analogy
 Analogical mapping: Uses knowledge of similar problem from similar domain
 Analogical mapping is difficult if domains are semantically different
Skill acquisition
Skilled activity characterized by chunking: Lot of information is chunked to optimize STM
Problem space theory
Analysing means-ends
Largely applied to problem solving in well-defined areas
E.g. puzzles rather than knowledge intensive areas

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Skill acquisition
 Experts often have a better encoding of knowledge: information
structures are fine tuned at a deep level to enable efficient and
accurate retrieval.
 These skills are acquired through 3 levels:
 The learner uses general-purpose rules which interpret facts about a
problem. (slow, memory-demanding)
 The learner develops rules specific to the task, using procedures.
 The rules are tuned to speed up performance, using generalization.

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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
Emotion
 Emotion is a psychological response to a stimuli
 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

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 Emotion

 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”
 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

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Individual differences

 The principles and properties discussed apply to the majority of

people, but humans are not all the same.
 Differences should be taken into account in the designs
 Divide the users in target groups and ask yourself:
will design decision exclude section of user population?
 3 causes for individual difference:
 Long term
– Sex, physical and intellectual abilities
 Short term
– Effect of stress or fatigue
 Changing
– Age
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Individual differences

Psychology and the Design of Interactive

System
 Some have direct applications
 E.g. blue acuity is poor
 blue should not be used for important detail
 However, correct application generally requires
understanding of context in psychology, and an
understanding of particular experimental conditions

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 Summary

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