MAU Mekaneselam Campus

CHAPTER TWO
Human in HCI

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Human in HCI
• Cognitive psychology
• How humans perceive the world around them?
• How they store and process information and solve problems?
• How they physically manipulate objects?

• Basic overview of the capabilities and limitations that affect our

ability to use computer systems

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• When we try to understand something, particularly new, we
use a combination of what our senses are telling.
• Sight
• Hearing
• Touch
• Smell
• Taste

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Factors to be considered for interaction
• Information input/output
• Memory
• sensory, short-term, long-term
• Reasoning, problem solving, skill and error
• Emotion
• Individual difference

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• Humans are limited in their capacity to process information.
• Human factors or limitations include:
• Limited concentration
• The need for motivation
• Biases
• Fears
• Make errors
• Misjudgment
• Prefer speech
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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 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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Hearing
• Provides information about environment: factors to be considered
are: distances, directions, objects etc affect hearing.
• Physical apparatus of are(Eare)
• 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

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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.
• Some areas more sensitive than others e.g. fingers.
• The third and last of the senses that we will consider is touch or haptic perception.

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
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 Memory
There are three types of memory function:

Sensory memories

Short-term memory or working memory

Long-term memory

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Cont.…

Selection of stimuli governed by level of

arousal.

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Sensory memory
• Information for stimuli received through senses continuously.
• Iconic memory: visual stimuli with vision

• Echoic memory: aural stimuli with hearing

• Haptic memory: tactile stimuli with touching

• 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 rapidly

• 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
• Semantic memory structure:
• Provides access to information.
• Represents relationships between bits of information.
• Supports inference.

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 LTM
• There are 3 main activities related to LTM:
• Storage of information
• Forgetting
• Information retrieval

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 Cont …
Storage
• The rehearsal of a piece of information from the STM stored in LTM.
• If the total learning time is increased, information is remembered better.
Forgetting
• There are 2 main theories of forgetting: decay and interference.
• Decay: suggests that information held in LTM may eventually be forgotten.

• Interference: Information lost through interference.

• Retroactive interference: if we acquire new information, it causes the loss of old
information.
• Proactive inhibition: it is also possible that the older information interferes with
the newly acquired information.

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 Cont …
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:

1. Reasoning: Deductive, Inductive, Abductive, Analogy

2. Problem solving

3. Skill acquisition

4. Errors and mental models

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 1. Reasoning
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;

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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 2.Problem solving
Problem solving is the process of finding a solution to an unfamiliar task, using (adapting)
knowledge.
Different types of theories:
Gestalt theory
• Based on insight and restructuring of problem
Analogy in problem solving
• Analogical mapping: Uses knowledge of similar problem from similar domain
• Analogical mapping is difficult if domains are semantically different
Problem space theory
• Problem solving involves problem spaces by generating using logical operators
• Largely applied to problem solving in well-defined areas
E.g. puzzles rather than knowledge intensive areas

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3.Skill acquisition
Skilled activity characterized by chunking: Lot of information is chunked to
optimize STM

• Experts often have a better encoding of knowledge

• These skills are acquired through 3 levels:

• The learner uses general-purpose rules which interpret facts about a problem.

• The learner develops rules specific to the task, using procedures.

• The rules are tuned to speed up performance, using generalization.

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4.Errors and mental models
Types of error
• Slips
• Right intention, but failed to do it right
• Causes: poor physical skill, attention etc.
• 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
• Emotion is a psychological response to a stimuli.
• Emotion clearly involves both cognitive and physical responses to stimuli.
• 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; however, 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?
• Three causes for individual difference:
1. Long term: Sex, physical and intellectual abilities
2. Short term: Effect of stress
3.Changing:Age

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 END!

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