CIENCIA COGNITIVA Human Memory

HUMAN INPUT/OUTPUT CHANNELS

Input of information from the environment through the
senses:
❖ sight

❖ hearing

❖ touch

❖ taste

❖ smell

Output through the motor processor of the effectors

(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)

HUMAN INPUT/OUTPUT CHANNELS

(Foley, 1990)
 HUMAN MEMORY

▪ Much of our daily activities rely on memory

▪ Several components interact with each other,

with information being processed and passed
between them

(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)

HUMAN MEMORY: MAIN COMPONENTS
▪ Sensory memory
• Iconic
• Echoic
• Haptic

▪ Short-term memory

▪ Long-term memory
• Semantic memory
• Episodic memory
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 HUMAN MEMORY: A MODEL

Sensory memory: Storage Long-term

Attention Short-term
Iconic memory:
or
Echoic semantic
working memory
Haptic Retrieval episodic

Perception
(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)
 SHORT-TERM MEMORY

▪ Also known as “working memory”

▪ Acts as a temporary space for information
▪ Can be accessed very fast
▪ Has limited capacity
▪ Decays rapidly

(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)

 DESIGN IMPLICATIONS

ATM Old Design:

▪ Introduce card
▪ Type PIN
▪ Select option
▪ Take cash
▪ Take card

(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)

 DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
ATM Old Design: ATM New Design:
▪ Introduce card ➢ Introduce card
▪ Type PIN ➢ Type PIN
▪ Select option ➢ Select option
▪ Take cash ➢ Take card
➢ Take cash
▪ Take card

(Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 1998)

 ‘72’
▪ George Miller’s theory of how much information people
can remember

▪ People’s sensory memory capacity is very limited

▪ Many designers have been led to believe that this is useful

finding for interaction design

(Sharp, Rogers & Preece, 2007)

 ‘72’: DESIGN TEMPTATIONS
▪ 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

(Sharp, Rogers & Preece, 2007)

 DESIGN GUIDELINES
▪ Avoid overloading users’ memories with complicated procedures for
carrying out tasks

▪ Design interfaces that promote recognition rather than recall

▪ Provide users with a variety of ways of encoding digital information

to help them remember where they have stored them:
 Categories
 Color

(Sharp, Rogers & Preece, 2007)

 DESIGN GUIDELINES
Provide external representations at the interface level to reduce the
user’s memory load and facilitate computational offloading

Information visualization
tools have been designed
to allow people to make
sense and rapid decisions
about masses of data

(Sharp, Rogers & Preece, 2007)