Lesson 1

HUMAN FACTOR

Learning Objectives:
After reading this MODULE, you must be able to:

1. Describe the relationship between the cognitive principles and their application to interfaces and
products.
2. Explain the conceptual terms for analyzing human interaction with products such as affordance,
conceptual model, and feedback.
3. Analyze different user populations with regard to their abilities and characteristics for using both
software and hardware products.
4. Explain the importance of user abilities and characteristics in the usability of products.

INTRODUCTION
Human Computer Interaction is about designing computer systems so the user can carry out their
activities productively and safely. It is not how easy something is to use it is about how usable it is. It is a
discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computer systems for
human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

THE GOALS OF HCI

The goals of HCI are to produce usable and safe systems, as well as functional systems. In order to produce
computer systems with good usability, developers must attempt to:

 understand the factors that determine how people use technology

 develop tools and techniques to enable building suitable systems
 achieve efficient, effective, and safe interaction
 put people first

Underlying the whole theme of HCI is the belief that people using a computer system should come first. Their
needs, capabilities and preferences for conducting various tasks should direct developers in the way that
they design systems. People should not have to change the way that they use a system in order to fit in with
it. Instead, the system should be designed to match their requirements.

Human Factors concerned with the fit between the user, equipment and their environments. It takes account
of the user's capabilities and limitations in seeking to ensure that tasks, functions, information and the
environment suit each user. Human factors specialists or ergonomists consider the job (activity) being done
and the demands on the user; the equipment used (its size, shape, and how appropriate it is for the task),
and the information used (how it is presented, accessed, and changed).

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 and recognition
• Memory
• Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and decision-making
1. 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.
• Focused 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), color, and reverse video, sound and flashing lights.

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.
• Avoid using too much because the software allows it.

An example of over-use of graphics

2. 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

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
3. MEMORY
 Involves first encoding and then retrieving knowledge
 We don’t remember everything - involves filtering and processing what is attended to
 Context is important in affecting our memory (i.e. where, when)
 We recognize things much better than being able to recall things

Processing in memory
• Encoding is first stage of memory
 – determines which information is attended to in the environment and how it is
interpreted
• The more attention paid to something…
• The more it is processed in terms of thinking about it and comparing it with other knowledge…
• The more likely it is to be remembered
– e.g. when learning about HCI, it is much better to reflect upon it, carry out exercises,
have discussions with others about it, and write notes than just passively read a book,
listen to a lecture or watch a video about it
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 neighbors. You are only used to seeing
your neighbor in the hallway of your apartment block and seeing he out of context makes him
difficult to recognize initially”

Personal information management

 Personal information 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
- naming most common means of encoding them
- but can be difficult to remember, especially when have 1000s and 1000s
- How might such a process be facilitated taking into account people’s memory abilities?
 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
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

4. PROBLEM-SOLVING, PLANNING, REASONING AND DECISION-MAKING

 All involves reflective cognition
- e.g. thinking about what to do, what the options are, and the consequences
 Often involves conscious processes, discussion with others (or oneself), and the use of artifacts
- e.g. maps, books, pen and paper
 May involve working through different scenarios and deciding which is best option

Design implications
• Provide additional information/functions for users who wish to understand more about how to carry
out an activity more effectively.
• Use simple computational aids to support rapid decision-making and planning for users on the
move.

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.
• Craik (1943) described mental models as:
– internal constructions of some aspect of the external world enabling predictions to
be made
• Involves unconscious and conscious processes
– images and analogies are activated
• Deep versus shallow models
– e.g. how to drive a car and how it works

Gestalt psychology
• Perception = recognition of objects from basic visual elements
• The whole gestalt is greater than the sum of its parts
• When elements are placed in groups that define an object we tend to see the group and not the
object
• Discover the principles used by the visual system to group elements

Gestalt principles
• Principles to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into a meaningful whole
– Figure/Ground
– Proximity
– Similarity
– Symmetry
– Continuity
– Closure

FIGURE-GROUND
• We perceive our environment by differentiating between objects and their backgrounds
• We have a natural tendency to perceive gestalt, whole entities
• We strive to find the simplest solutions to incomplete visual information –

What do you see here?

SIMILARITY
• Things which share visual characteristics such as shape, size, color, texture, or orientation are seen
as belonging together
• Unity occurs because the triangular shapes at the bottom of the eagle symbol look similar to the
shapes that form the sunburst.
• The figure on the far right becomes a focal point because it is dissimilar to the other shapes.
SIMILARITY 2
• When similarity occurs, an object can be emphasized if it is dissimilar to the others. This is called
anomaly.
• Focal point of attention
PROXIMITY
• When elements are placed close together. They tend to be perceived as a group.

COMMON FATE
• When objects move in the same direction, we tend to see them as a unit.

LAW OF GOOD CONTINUATION

• Contours based on smooth continuity are preferred to abrupt changes of direction
• The tendency to perceive unseen parts of an object as continuing in a predictable
way

CLOSURE
• Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed
• If enough of the shape is indicated, people perceive the whole by filling in the missing information.

UNDERSTANDING USERS’ NEEDS

• Need to take into account what people are good and bad at
• Consider what might help people in the way they currently do things
• Think through what might provide quality user experiences
• Listen to what people want and get them involved
• Use tried and tested user-centered methods

Goals of interaction design

• Develop usable products
– Usability means easy to learn, effective to use and provide an enjoyable experience
• Involve users in the design process
HCI and interaction design

Relationship between ID, HCI and other fields

• Academic disciplines contributing to ID:

– Psychology
– Social Sciences
– Computing Sciences
– Engineering
– Ergonomics
– Informatics
• Interdisciplinary fields in interaction design:
– HCI
– Ubiquitous Computing
– Human Factors
– Cognitive Engineering
– Cognitive Ergonomics
– Computer Supported Co-operative Work
– Information Systems
Design principles
• Generalizable abstractions for thinking about different aspects of design
• The do’s and don’ts of interaction design
• What to provide and what not to provide at the interface
• Derived from a mix of theory-based knowledge, experience and common-sense

Understanding the user designing for humans

• Visibility
• Feedback
• Constraints
• Consistency
• Affordances

1. VISIBILITY
 This is a control panel for an elevator
 How does it work?
 Push a button for the floor you want?
  Nothing happens. Push any other button? Still nothing. What do you need to do?

It is not visible as to what to do!

…you need to insert your room card in the slot by the buttons to get the elevator to work! How would you
make this action more visible?

• make the card reader more obvious

• Provide an auditory message that says what to do (which language?)
• provide a big label next to the card reader that flashes when someone enters
• make relevant parts visible
• make what has to be done obvious

2. FEEDBACK
 Sending information back to the user about what has been done
 Includes sound, highlighting, animation and combinations of these
– e.g. when screen button clicked on provides sound or red highlight feedback

3. CONSTRAINTS
 Restricting the possible actions that can be performed
 Helps prevent user from selecting incorrect options
 Physical objects can be designed to constrain things
– e.g. only one way you can insert a key into a lock
4. CONSISTENCY
 Design interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for similar tasks
For example:
– always use ctrl key plus first initial of the command for an operation – ctrl+C, ctrl+S,
ctrl+O
 Main benefit is consistent interfaces are easier to learn and use

When consistency breaks down

• What happens if there is more than one command starting with the same letter?
– e.g. save, spelling, select, style
• Have to find other initials or combinations of keys, thereby breaking the consistency rule
– e.g. ctrl+S, ctrl+Sp, ctrl+shift+L
• Increases learning burden on user, making them more prone to errors

5. AFFORDANCES: TO GIVE A CLUE

• Refers to an attribute of an object that allows people to know how to use it
– e.g. a mouse button invites pushing, a door handle affords pulling
• Norman (1988) used the term to discuss the design of everyday objects
• Since has been much popularized in interaction design to discuss how to design interface objects
– e.g. scrollbars to afford moving up and down, icons to afford clicking on

What does ‘affordance’ have to offer interaction design?

• Interfaces are virtual and do not have affordances like physical objects
• Norman argues it does not make sense to talk about interfaces in terms of ‘real’ affordances
• Instead interfaces are better conceptualized as ‘perceived’ affordances
– Learned conventions of arbitrary mappings between action and effect at the interface
– Some mappings are better than others

ERGONOMICS
• Ergonomics is about designing for people, wherever they interact with products, systems or
processes.
• Ensure that designs complement the strengths and abilities of people and minimize the effects of
their limitations, rather than forcing them to adapt.
• Qualified ergonomists are the only recognized professionals to have competency in optimizing
performance, safety and comfort.