Understand the human (users)

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 Why do we need to understand human
(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

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• Supply theories, modelling tools, guidance and
methods that can lead to the design of better
interactive products
 Cognitive processes
• Attention
• Perception and recognition
• Memory
• Learning

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• 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 motivation 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

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keep track of all events
• Information at the interface should be structured to capture
users’ attention, e.g. use perceptual boundaries (windows),
colour, sound and flashing lights
Activity: Find the price of a double room at the Holiday Inn in
Bradley
Activity: Find the price for a double room at the Quality Inn in
Columbia

Review both screens, on which screen you can get

information easily
 Multitasking and attention
• Is it possible to perform multiple tasks without one
or more of them being detrimentally affected?

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 Design implications for attention
• Make information salient (prominent) 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

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information
• Avoid using too much because the software allows it
An example of over-use of graphics

Our Situation

 State the bad news

 Be clear, don’t try to obscure the
situation

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 Perception
• How information is acquired from the world
and transformed into experiences?

• Obvious implication is to design

representations that are readily perceivable,

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e.g.
– Text should be legible (Readable)
– Icons should be easy to distinguish and read
Example (bad)

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Which is easiest to read and why?

What is the time? What is the time?

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What is the time?
What is the time?

What is the time?

Design implication (Suggestion)
– Icons should enable users to readily distinguish
their meaning
– Bordering and spacing are effective visual ways of
grouping information
– Sounds should be audible (easy to hear) and
distinguishable
– Speech output should enable users to distinguish

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between the set of spoken words
– Text should be legible (clear) and distinguishable
from the background
– Concrete feedback should allow users to recognize
and distinguish different meanings
 Memory
• 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

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 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

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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 visually-based options that users need
only browse through until they recognize one
• Web browsers, MP3 players, etc., provide lists of
visited URLs, song titles etc., that support recognition
memory

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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
• But…

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 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

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– 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

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• But depends on task and available screen
estate
 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

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– but can be difficult to remember, especially when have a
lot in number.
– How might such a process be facilitated taking into
account people’s memory abilities?
Personal information management
• 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

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– 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

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– e.g. categories, color, flagging, time stamping
 Learning
• How to learn to use a computer-based application
• Using a computer-based application to understand a
given topic
• People find it hard to learn by following instructions
in a manual
• prefer to learn by doing

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 Design implications
• Speech-based menus and instructions should be
short
• Emphasize the tone of artificially generated speech
voices
– they are harder to understand than human voices
• Provide opportunities for making text large on a

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screen
 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

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– Difficult understanding and recognizing written
words.
– All this depends on individual, some time one can
prefer reading and other can prefer listening
 Applications
• Speech-recognition systems allow users to interact
with them by using spoken commands
– e.g. Google Voice Search app
• Speech-output systems use artificially generated
speech
• e.g. written-text-to-speech systems for the blind

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• Natural-language systems enable users to type in
questions and give text-based responses
– e.g. Ask search engine
 Design implications
• Design interfaces that encourage exploration
• Design interfaces that constrain and guide learners
• Dynamically linking concepts and representations can
facilitate the learning of complex material

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 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

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• 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

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