Understanding Human, Computer,

and Interaction
Lecture 4

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The Human, Computer, Interaction
• In order to design something for someone, we need
to understand the:
1. the Humans
– perceive the world around them.
– store and process information and solve problems.
– physically manipulate objects.
2. the Computer
– Technology they going to use
3. the Interaction
– How people going to interact to technology

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The Human
1. Information Input/Output Channels
– visual, auditory, haptic, movement

2. Information stored in memory

– sensory, short-term, long-term

3. Emotion influences human capabilities

4. Users share common capabilities/limitation but are

individuals with differences
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Input-Output Channels
• Five major senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and
smell.
Sight, hearing, and touch are the most important in HCI
• Receive information from computer
Sight
Hearing
Touch
• Send information to computer
Touch (e.g. mouse),
Sight (e.g. eyegaze system (using eyes movement))
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Input-Output Channels (continue)
1. Vision
o Colour
o Reading
o Optical Illusions

2. Hearing
o Sound

3. Touch
o Movement

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Vision
1. Colour
Colour blind: is the decreased ability to perceive
differences between some of the colors that others can
distinguish.
8% males and 1% females colour blind
 Red–Green
 Blue– Yellow
• There are two major types of color blindness:
Total color blindness (is less common)
Partial color blindness

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Partial color blindness

Red–Green color blind

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Partial color blindness (continue)
– Blue - Yellow color blind

http://www.colblindor.com/2006/05/08/tritanopia-blue-yellow-color-blindness/

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Total color blindness

http://www.colour-blindness.com/variations/total/

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GUI & color blindness
• Graphical User Interfaces should be
understandable even without colors.

• http://www.theitechblog.com/1311/vischeck-test-website-against-color-blind-vision/
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2. Reading
• People are able to read at 200 wpm on paper,
and 180 wpm on a monitor
• Reading from computer screen is slower than from a
book.
– Longer line length
– Fewer words to a page
– Familiarity of the medium of the page
• The average adult reads text at 250 to 300 words per
minute.

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Reading- lowercase/ UPPERCASE
• Also, you should know that WORDS WRITTEN IN
BLOCK CAPITALS take longer to read than those in
lower case.
• lowercase
– easy to read
• UPPERCASE
– Better for individual letters and non-words
e.g. flight numbers: BA793 vs. ba793

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Reading
• Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde
Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng
is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit
pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is
buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

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3. Optical Illusions

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3. Optical Illusions

More
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Hearing
• Provides information about environment:
distances, directions, objects etc.

• Humans can hear frequencies from 20Hz to 15kHz

– Human ear can distinguishing frequency changes at low frequency, but
is less accurate at high frequencies.

• Auditory system filters sounds

– allowing people to ignore background noise and concentrate on
important information. for example, in party

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Hearing
• People tend to underestimate the amount of
information that they receive through their ears.

• People are selective to their hearing.

– For example, if someone says your name

• People not able to differentiate sound, If sound are

too loud or frequencies too similar
More
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Hearing/Sound
• Sound used as:
– warning or notification
– Sound especially used while eyes are busy

• Types of sound:
• Speech or non-speech
– For example, Non-speech like music
• Speech sound can be used convey information

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Hearing/Sound
• Non-speech sound can be used for:
1. Attention
• For example, end of a process
2. Confirmation
• For example deleting a file
3. Status information
• For example, monitoring the progress of a process
4. Navigation
• For example, sound to support navigation in hypertext

More
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Touch
• Provides important feedback about environment.

• May be key sense for someone who is visually impaired.

• Stimulus received via receptors in the skin:

– heat and cold
– Pain and pressure

• Touch will become more important in the near future.

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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

user but not in the skilled user.

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Information stored in memory

There are three types of memory function:

Environment input

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Sensory memory
• Buffers for stimuli received through senses
– Iconic memory: visual stimuli
– Echoic memory: aural stimuli
– Haptic memory: tactile stimuli

• Sensory memory continuously overwritten by new

information

• Information is passed to short-memory by attention

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Short-term memory (STM)

– Rapid access ~ 70ms

– Forgetting occur ~ 200ms

– For example, Early ATMs machines
– limited capacity: the number of objects and chunks of new
information an average human can hold in short memory is (e.g. Unix
command):
• Miller (1956): 7 ± 2 chunks
• Cowan (2002): 4 ± 2 chunks

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Short-term memory (STM)

– capacity limits can be overcome by

1. Grouping of information into larger meaningful units

2. Individual differences, e.g., chess masters vs. novices

3. Also seen in everyday tasks that must be held in STM

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Examples
212348278493202

0121 414 2626

HEC ATR ANU PTH ETR EET

‘The cat ran up the tree’

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Long-term memory (LTM)
• Stored all our knowledge

• Slow access ~ 1/10 second

• Forgetting occur more slowly

• Huge or unlimited capacity

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LTM - Storage of information
• How does information get into LTM?
– Rehearsal: information moves from STM to LTM

• total time hypothesis

– Learning amount = Learning time

• Learning time is most effective if it is distributed over time

– optimized by spreading learning over time

• structure, meaning and familiarity

– information easier to remember
• For example, password should be meaningful to you

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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

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Emotion (cont.)

• emotion 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”
(Donald Norman)

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Individual differences
• long term
– Gender, physical and intellectual abilities
• short term
– effect of stress
• Changing through time
– age

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