Human Computer Interaction

Lecture 2

The Human
 The Human
• Think of human as an information processing
system, which contains input/output, stores
information and processes information
• We will therefore consider three components
of this system: input-output, memory and
processing
 The Human
• Information i/o …
– visual, auditory, haptic, movement
• Information stored in memory
– sensory, short-term, long-term
• Information processed and applied
– reasoning, problem solving, skill, error
• Emotion influences human capabilities
• Each person is different
 Vision
Two stages in vision

• physical reception of stimulus

• processing and interpretation of stimulus

 The Eye - physical reception
• mechanism for receiving light and
transforming it into electrical energy
• light is reflected from objects
• images are focused upside-down on retina
• retina contains rods for low light vision. Rods
are responsible for vision in darkness.
Approximately 120 million rods.
 The Eye - physical reception
• Retina also contains cones for colour vision.
They are responsible for vision in light.
• Cones are concentrated on fovea and rods are
concentrated on retina
• Blind spot contains neither rods nor cones.
• Ganglion cells (brain!) detect pattern and
movement
 Design Focus
• A user concentrating on the middle of the
screen cannot be expected to read help text
on the bottom line.
• So if an error message is to be shown to user,
what to do???
 Design Focus
• A user concentrating on the middle of the
screen cannot be expected to read help text
on the bottom line.
• So if an error message is to be shown to user,
what to do???
• Better use flashing error message
• What about clever moving icons.
 Interpreting the signal (cont)
• Brightness
– subjective reaction to levels of light
– affected by luminance of object, which is the
amount of light emitted by an object
– Contrast is luminance of object and luminance of
its background
– visual acuity increases with luminance as does
flicker.
– High display luminance systems are seen to flicker
even above 50 Hz.
 Interpreting the signal (cont)
• Colour
– made up of hue, intensity, saturation
• Hue is determined by the spectral wavelength of the light
– Approximately 150 different hues can be discriminated by the average person
• Intensity is the brightness of color
• Saturation is the amount of whiteness in color
– Cones are sensitive to colour wavelengths. Three
types of cones (red, green and blue)
– blue acuity is lowest, because only 3-4% of the fovea
is occupied by cones which are sensitive to blue light
– 8% males and 1% females colour blind
 Interpreting the signal (cont)
• Our expectations affect the way an image is
perceived.

• Context is used to resolve ambiguity

• However, Optical illusions sometimes occur

due to above factors
 Optical Illusions

the Muller Lyer illusion

the Ponzo illusion
 Reading
• Several stages:
– visual pattern perceived
– decoded using internal representation of language
– interpreted using knowledge of syntax and semantics

• Reading involves saccades(jerky movements) and

fixations
• Perception occurs during fixations
• Word shape is important to recognition
• Negative contrast (dark character on a light
screen) improves reading from computer screen
 Design Focus

• Standard font sizes of 9 to 12 are equally legible,

given proportional spacing between lines.
• Similarly line lengths of between 2.3 and 5.2
inches (58 and 132 mm) are equally legible.
• Nevertheless, reading from a computer screen is
slower than from a book. However, this fact can
be controlled by careful design of textual
interfaces.
 Hearing
• Sound can convey a remarkable amount of information
• Provides information about environment:
distances, directions, objects etc.
• Physical apparatus:
– 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
– pitch – sound frequency
– loudness – amplitude
– timbre – type or quality
 Hearing (cont)

• Humans can hear frequencies from 20Hz to 15kHz

– less accurate distinguishing high frequencies than low.

• Auditory system filters sounds

– can attend to sounds over background noise.
– for example, the cocktail party phenomenon.

• Sound could be used extensively in interface design to

convey information about the system state
 Touch
• Provides important feedback about environment.
• May be key sense for someone who is visually impaired.
• Stimulus received via receptors in the skin:
– thermoreceptors – heat and cold
– nociceptors – pain
– mechanoreceptors – pressure

• Some areas more sensitive than others e.g. Fingers and hair
 Movement
• Fitts' Law describes the time taken to hit a screen target:

Mt = a + b log2(D/S + 1)
where: a and b are empirically(gained by means of
observations) determined constants
Mt is movement time
D is Distance
S is Size of target

 targets as large as possible distances as small as possible

 Memory

There are three types of memory function:

Sensory memories

Short-term memory or working memory

Long-term memory
 Sensory Memory

• Buffers for stimuli received through senses

– iconic memory: visual stimuli
– echoic memory: aural stimuli
– haptic memory: touch stimuli

• Examples: Move your finger fastly before you,

“sparkler” trail Continuously overwritten
• Information is passed to STM by attention
 Short-term memory (STM)
• What is the result of 35 * 6???

• Scratch-pad for temporary recall

– rapid access

– rapid decay

– limited capacity - 7± 2 Principle

 Examples

21234827849320245456

21234 482784 932024 5456

03323583302
0332-35-83-302

ATM Card example