HCI foundations - Human

By, Dheeba. J/SCOPE

HCI – Definition
 Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned
with the design, evaluation and implementation of
interactive computing systems for human use and with
the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

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What is HCI?
 Human – We mean an individual user, a group of users working together,
or a sequence of users in an organization, each dealing with some part
of the task or process.
 user is whoever is trying to get the job done using the technology.
 Computer - Any technology ranging from the general desktop
computer to a large-scale computer system, a process control system
or an embedded system.
 The system may include non-computerized parts, including other people.
 interaction – Any communication between a user and computer, be it
direct or indirect.
 Direct interaction involves a dialog with feedback and control throughout
performance of the task.
 Indirect interaction may involve batch processing or intelligent sensors
controlling the environment.

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HCI – Multi-disciplinary subject
 psychology and cognitive science to give her knowledge of the
user’s perceptual,
 cognitive and problem-solving skills;
 ergonomics for the user’s physical capabilities;
 sociology to help her understand the wider context of the
interaction;
 computer science and engineering to be able to build the
necessary technology;
 business to be able to market it;
 Graphic design to produce an effective interface presentation;
 technical writing to produce the manuals, and so it goes on.

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 For a product to be successful,
 useful – accomplish what is required: play music, cook dinner,
format a document;
 usable – do it easily and naturally, without danger of error,
etc.;
 used – make people want to use it, be attractive, engaging, fun,
etc.
 Other design focus
 Think ‘user’
 Try it out
 Involve the users
 Iterate
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Human
 Humans are limited in their capacity to process
information. This has important implications for design.
 Information is received and responses given via a number
of input and output channels:
 visual channel
 auditory channel
 haptic channel
 movement.

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Input-Output Channels
 A person’s interaction with the outside world occurs
through information being received and sent: input and
output
 Input in the human occurs mainly through the senses and
output through the motor control of the effectors.
 There are five major senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste
and smell.
 Of these, the first three are the most important to HCI.
 Taste and smell do not currently play a significant role in HCI

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Vision
 Human vision is a highly complex activity with a range of
physical and perceptual limitations.
 Two stages: the physical reception of the stimulus from
the outside world, and the processing and interpretation
of that stimulus.
 interpretative capabilities of visual processing allow
images to be constructed from incomplete information.
 While there are certain things that cannot be seen by the
human, the interpretative capabilities of visual processing
allow images to be constructed from incomplete
information, recognize coherent scenes, disambiguate
relative distances and differentiate color

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 Human eye
 The eye is a mechanism for receiving light and transforming it into
electrical energy.
 The receptors in the eye transform it into electrical signals which
are passed to the brain.
 Retina has two photoreceptors:
 Rods
 see under a low level of illumination
 unable to resolve fine detail
 cones
 They are less sensitive to light than the rods and can
therefore tolerate more light.
 Where the optic nerve leaves the eye are no receptors (blind
spot) Usually, we are not aware of the blind spot – no “hole” in
our perception

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Visual perception
 Visual processing involves the transformation and
interpretation of a complete image, from the light that is
thrown onto the retina.
 Perceiving size and depth
 if we know that an object is a particular size, we will perceive it as
that size no matter how far it is from us.
 Our expectations affect the way an image is perceived.
 For example, if we know that an object has a particular size, we will
perceive it as that size no matter how far it is from us (law of size
constancy).
 Perceiving brightness and color
 Color and brightness of objects are perceived as constant, in spite
of changes in luminance of the environment.
 This ability to interpret our expectations can be used to resolve
ambiguity
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The capabilities and limitations of visual
processing
 What do you perceive?

The context in which the object appears clearly

disambiguate the interpretation of the object, as
either a B or a 13.

An ambiguous shape

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 Optical illusion
 The Muller–Lyer illusion – which line is longer?

Most people when presented with this will say that the top line is longer than
the bottom.
In fact, the two lines are the same length.
This may be due to a false application of the law of size constancy: the top line
appears like a concave edge, the bottom like a convex edge.

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 The Ponzo illusion – are these the same size?
 Here the top line appears longer, owing
to the distance effect,
 although both lines are the same
length.
 These illusions demonstrate that our
perception of size is not completely
reliable.

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Read it quickly

 Proof reading illusion

 What does it say? Most people reading this rapidly will
read it correctly, although closer inspection shows that
the word ‘the’ is repeated in the second and third line.

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 Reading
 First, the visual pattern of the word on the page is perceived.
 It is then decoded with reference to an internal representation
of language.
 The final stages of language processing include syntactic and
semantic analysis and operate on phrases or sentences.
 During reading, the eye makes jerky movements called saccades
followed by fixations.
 The eye moves backwards over the text as well as forwards, in
what are known as regressions.
 If the text is complex there will be more regressions.

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Key takeaways
 Optical illusions highlight the differences between the way
things are and the way we perceive them – and in
interface design we need to be aware that we will not
always perceive things exactly as they are.
 The way that objects are composed together will affect
the way we perceive them, and we do not perceive
geometric shapes exactly as they are drawn.
 For example, we tend to magnify horizontal lines and
reduce vertical. So a square needs to be slightly increased
in height to appear square and lines will appear thicker if
horizontal rather than vertical

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Hearing
 The auditory system can convey a lot of information about
our environment.
 Human ear
 The ear receives these vibrations and transmits them, through
various stages, to the auditory nerves.
 The ear comprises three sections, commonly known as the outer
ear, middle ear and inner ear.
 We can also identify a sound’s location, since the two ears receive
slightly different sounds.
 The human ear can hear frequencies from about 20 Hz to 15
kHz.
 The auditory system performs some filtering of the sounds
received, allowing us to ignore background noise and concentrate
on important information.
 We are selective in our hearing, as illustrated by the cocktail party
effect, where we can pick out our name spoken across a crowded
noisy room.
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 Functions of ear parts

Outer ear (pinna) collects and directs sound waves into the ear canal

ear canal/auditory transmits sound waves to the eardrum

canal
eardrum vibrates and transmits sound waves to the ossicles

middle ear intensify the vibrations of sound waves

(ossicles)
inner ear (cochlea) transforms sound vibrations into impulses

auditory nerve send messages to the brain which interprets the message as
sound.

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Design Focus - Sound
 Sound could be used more extensively in interface design,
to convey information about the system state.
 Attention – to attract the user’s attention to a critical
situation or to the end of a process.
 Continuous - background sounds can be used to convey
status information. For example, monitoring the progress of a
process.
 Confirmation – a sound associated with an action to confirm
that the action has been carried out. For example, associating a
sound with deleting a file.
 Navigation – using changing sound to indicate where the user
is in a system. For example, what about sound to support
navigation in hypertext?

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Touch
 touch or haptic perception
 Touch is an important means of feedback.
 E.g., Feeling buttons depress is an important part of the task of
pressing the button.
 Touch is fundamental when we interact with a mobile device.
 Also, we should be aware that, although for the average person,
haptic perception is a secondary source of information, for those
whose other senses are impaired, it may be vitally important
 interfaces such as braille may be the primary source of information in
the interaction.
 Touch plays a particular role in virtual reality.
 The users can see the computer-generated objects which they need
to manipulate but they have no physical sensation of touching them.
 kinesthesis: awareness of the position of the body and limbs.

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Movement
 A simple action such as hitting a button in response to a
question involves a number of processing stages.
 The stimulus (of the question) is received through the sensory
receptors and transmitted to the brain.
 The question is processed and a valid response generated.
 The brain then tells the appropriate muscles to respond.
 Each of these stages takes time, which can be roughly
divided into reaction time and movement time.
 Movement time is dependent largely on the physical
characteristics of the subjects: their age and fitness, for example.
Reaction time varies according to the sensory channel through
which the stimulus is received.
 A person can react to auditory signal in approximately 150 ms, to
a visual signal in 200 ms and to pain in 700 ms

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 A combined signal will result in the quickest response.
 Factors such as skill or practice can reduce reaction time, and
fatigue can increase it.
 Increasing reaction time decreases accuracy in the unskilled
operator but not in the skilled operator
 second measure of motor skill is accuracy
 whether speed of reaction results in reduced accuracy?
 Speed and accuracy of movement are important
considerations in the design of interactive systems
Movement time = a + b log2(distance/size + 1)
where a and b are empirically determined constants.

 The time taken to hit a target is a function of the

size of the target and the distance that has to be
moved
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Human Memory
 Memory is the second part of the model of the human as
an information-processing system.
 Much of our everyday activity relies on memory, which
contains our knowledge of actions or procedures.
 It allows us to repeat actions, to use language, and to use new
information received via our senses.
 It also gives us our sense of identity, by preserving information
from our past experiences.
 three types of memory or memory function:
 sensory buffers, short-term memory or working memory, and long-
term memory

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Structure of a human memory
 From senses to memory

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Sensory memory
 sensory memories act as buffers for stimuli received through the
senses.
 A sensory memory exists for each sensory channel:
 iconic memory for visual stimuli
 For example, firework displays where moving sparklers leave a persistent image
 echoic memory for aural stimuli
 For example, ascertain the direction from which a sound originates
 haptic memory for touch
 These memories are constantly overwritten by new information coming
in on these channels.
 Information is passed from sensory memory into short-term memory
by attention, thereby filtering the stimuli to only those which are of
interest at a given time.
 Attention is the concentration of the mind on one out of a number of
competing stimuli. It filters the stimuli to only those which are of interest at a
given time.
 We are able to focus our attention selectively, choosing to attend to one
thing rather than another, due to the limited capacity of our senses/memory.

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Short-term memory (STM)
 Short-term memory or working memory acts as a
‘scratch-pad’ for temporary recall of information.
 Short-term memory can be accessed rapidly, in the order
of 70 ms.
 But information can only be held there temporarily, in the
order of 200 ms.

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 Limited capacity
 The ‘magic number’ 7 ± 2 items (Miller’s law, 1956)
 Information that is not retained is lost
 Retained means committed to long term memory
 Also known as learning
 Look at the following number sequence:
265397620853
 Now try the following sequence:
44 113 245 8920
Therefore chunking information can increase the short-term
memory capacity

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Design principles - STM
 Keep list of Options short
 Give users tools for reducing options
 Don’t expect users to remember stuff

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Long Term memory
 Long-term memory is intended for the long-term storage of
everything that we ‘know’, hence factual information,
experiential knowledge and procedural rules of behavior.
 Information from STM is stored in LTM by rehearsal (storage
of information). Other processes related to LTM are forgetting
and information retrieval.
 It differs from short-term memory in a number of ways:
 It has a huge, if not unlimited, capacity.
 It has a relatively slow access time ~ 1/10 second.
 It has slow decay, if any. Long-term recall after minutes is the
same as that after hours or days.

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 There are two types of long-term memories: procedural
memory and declarative memory (consisting of episodic
memory and semantic memory).
 Procedural memory stores information on how to
perform certain procedures, such as walking, talking and
riding a bike.
 It is responsible for knowing how to do things, also known as
motor skills.
 Procedural memory is accessed without the need for
conscious control or attention.

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 Episodic memory represents our memory of events and
experiences in a serial form, which is used to reconstruct the
actual events that took place at a given point in our life.
 Episodic memory is accessed with the need of conscious recall.
 Semantic memory is a structured record of facts, concepts and
skills that we have acquired.
 The information in semantic memory is derived from that in our
episodic memory, in order to learn new facts from our experiences.
 Semantic memory is accessed with the need of conscious recall.
 Semantic memory can be structured as a semantic network, which
represents the associations and relationships between single items in
memory.
 A semantic network allows access to information, representation of
relationships between pieces of information, and inference
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Associative Memory

Source : edx

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 Items are associated to each other in classes, and may
inherit attributes from parent classes. This model is
known as a semantic network

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 Semantic networks represent the associations and
relationships between single items in memory.
 However, they do not allow us to model the
representation of more complex objects or events, which
are perhaps composed of a number of items or activities.
 Structured representations such as frames and scripts
organize information into data structures.
 Slots in these structures allow attribute values to be
added.
 Frame slots may contain default, fixed or variable information

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 A frame-based representation of knowledge

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 A script represents this default or stereotypical
information, allowing us to interpret partial descriptions
or cues fully.
 Entry conditions Conditions that must be satisfied for the
script to be activated.
 Result Conditions that will be true after the script is
terminated.
 Props Objects involved in the events described in the script.
 Roles Actions performed by particular participants.
 Scenes The sequences of events that occur.
 Tracks A variation on the general pattern representing an
alternative scenario.

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Dheeba. J, SCOPE
 Representation of procedural knowledge - our
knowledge of how to do something
 A common model used in production system
 Condition–action rules are stored in long-term memory
 Information coming into short-term memory can match a
condition in one of these rules and result in the action being
executed
IF dog is wagging tail
THEN pat dog
IF dog is growling
THEN run away

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Memorization - repetition
 Few examples – difficult to remember

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Likelihood of remembering
 Strength of Association
 Recency
 Frequency (memories not exercised will fade away)

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Rehearsal (Storage of Information)
 The repeated exposure to a stimulus or the rehearsal of a
piece of information transfers it into long-term memory.
 Rehearsal can be optimized in a number of ways:
 total time hypothesis: the amount of information learned is directly
proportional to the amount of time spent learning.
 distribution of practice effect: learning time is most effective if it is
distributed over time.
 However, repetition is not enough to learn information well.
 If information is not meaningful it is more difficult to remember.
 This is related to the semantic structuring of long-term memory: if
information is meaningful and familiar, it can be related to existing
structures and more easily incorporated into memory.

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Forgetting
 There are two main theories: decay and interference.
 Decay. The information held in LTM decays gradually but
very slowly. Hence, it may eventually be forgotten.
 Interference
 Retroactive interference: new information acquired
replaces old one.
 When a telephone number is changed, learning the new
number makes it more difficult to remember the old
one (the new association masks the old).
 Proactive inhibition: sometimes the “old memory” trace
breaks through and interferes with new information.
 When you find yourself driving to your old house
rather than your new one.
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Information Retrieval
 Information retrieval can be performed through recall and
recognition.
 In recall, the information is reproduced from memory.
 In recognition, the presentation of the information provides the
knowledge that the information has been seen befor
 Recognition is the less complex cognitive activity since
the information is provided as a cue.

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Thinking: Reasoning and Problem Solving
 Humans, are able to use information to reason and solve
problems, and indeed do these activities when the information
is partial or unavailable.
 we are able to think about things of which we have no
experience, and solve problems which we have never seen
before.
 How is this done?
 Thinking activities requires constrained or vast amount of
knowledge
 Thinking separates humans from other information-processing
systems, both artificial and natural.
 We consider two categories of thinking: reasoning and
problem solving.

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Reasoning
 process by which we use the knowledge we have to draw
conclusions or infer something new about the domain of
interest.
 deductive, inductive and abductive
 Deductive reasoning derives the logically necessary
conclusion from the given premises.
If it is Friday then she will go to work
It is Friday
Therefore she will go to work.

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 Logical conclusion is not necessarily true:
If it is raining then the ground is dry
It is a valid deduction, even though it
It is raining
conflicts with our knowledge of what is
Therefore the ground is dry true in the world.
 Deductive reasoning is therefore often misapplied:
Some people are babies
This is an invalid deduction, since we are
Some babies cry not told that all babies are people.
Some people cry

When truth and validity clash, human deduction is poorest.

People bring their world knowledge into the reasoning process. If
validity rather than truth was preferred, all premises would have
to be made explicit. Dheeba. J, SCOPE
Scenario
 If you were to create a loan application, which made
loaning process simple and convenient for rural users,
what kind of a reasoning approach would you follow?

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Deductive reasoning for loan application
interface
1.You find through census data that 90% of the people in
the village cannot read or write but can communicate
verbally.
What will be your deduction?

Any user can easily engage with a voice-based application,

based on the local language and create one.

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 Inductive reasoning
 generalizing from cases we have seen to infer information
about cases we have not seen
For example, if every elephant we have ever seen have fangs, we
infer that all elephants have fangs.
 Of course, this inference is unreliable and cannot be proved to
be true; it can only be proved to be false.
 We can disprove the inference simply by producing an elephant
without fangs
 The best that we can do with inductive reasoning is gather
evidence to support our inductive inference.
 In spite of its unreliability, induction is a useful process, which
we use constantly in learning about our environment.

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Inductive reasoning for the loan application
1. You start by an observation gathered from all the
people you met that they were able to read and
understand numbers.
This is learning from the environment by interacting with
the rural people
What did you induce?

Induced that an application interface which has numeric

written could be understood directly and integrate it in the
solution

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 Abductive reasoning
 Abduction reasons from a fact to the action or state that caused it.
 use to derive explanations for the events we observe
For example, suppose we know that Sam always drives too fast
when he is drunk. If we see Sam driving too fast we may infer
that he has been drinking.
Of course, this is unreliable since there may be another reason
why he is driving fast (he may have been called to an emergency).
 In spite of its unreliability, people do generally infer
explanations in this way, and hold onto them until they have
evidence to support an alternative theory or explanation.
 This can lead to problems in using interactive systems.
 If an event always follows an action, the user will infer that the event
is caused by the action. If, however, the event and the action are
unrelated, confusion and error often result.

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Abductive reasoning for loan application
1. During your survey, you observe mobile users
(especially women), to be using their phones during
midafternoon hours of 3 – 4 pm.
What do you abduct?
You start to think that maybe women are free at that time
in the village and think of creating an application which runs
a 15 min program. The app sends notification during this
one hour and educates the users of basic terminology of
the loan process through an interactive story.

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Problem solving
 reasoning is a means of inferring new information from what is
already known, problem solving is the process of finding a
solution to an unfamiliar task, using the knowledge we have.
 Gestalt theory - problem solving involves reuse of knowledge and
insight.
 problem solving is both productive (involves insight and restructuring of the
problem) and reproductive (draws on previous experience).

 Indeed, reproductive problem solving could be a obstacle to finding a

solution, since a person may ‘fixate’ on the known aspects of the problem
and so be unable to see novel interpretations that might lead to a solution.

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 Problem space theory
 problem space comprises problem states, and problem solving
involves generating these states using legal state transition
operators.
Initial state – operator – goal state
 Such problem spaces may be huge, and so heuristics
are employed to select appropriate operators to
reach the goal.
 One such heuristic is means–ends analysis
 the initial state is compared with the goal state and an
operator chosen to reduce the difference between the
two.
 For example, imagine you are reorganizing your office and
you want to move your desk from the north wall of the
room to the window.
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 Analogy in problem solving
 Mapping knowledge relating to a similar known domain to the
new problem.
 Example
 A doctor is treating a malignant tumor. In order to
destroy it he needs to blast it with high-intensity rays.
However, these will also destroy the healthy tissue
surrounding the tumor. If he lessens the rays’ intensity the
tumor will remain. How does he destroy the tumor?

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Activity 1
 Identify the goals and operators involved in the problem ‘delete
the second paragraph of the document’ on a word processor.
Now use a word processor to delete a paragraph and note
your actions, goals and subgoals.

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Mental models
 understanding and knowledge that we possess of something is
often referred to as a ‘mental model’ (e.g. Norman, 1998)
 Mental models are incomplete. People will understand some parts of
a system better than others.
 People can ‘run’ (or try out) their models when required, but often
with limited accuracy.
 Mental models are unstable – people forget details.
 Mental models do not have firm boundaries: similar devices and
operations get confused with one another.
 Mental models are unscientific, exhibiting ‘superstitious’ behaviour.
 Mental models are parsimonious. People are willing to undertake
additional physical operations to minimize mental effort, e.g. people
will switch off the device and start again rather than trying to
recover from an error.

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Emotion
 emotion involves both physical and cognitive events.
 Our body responds biologically to an external stimulus
and we interpret that in some way as a particular
emotion.
 That biological response – known as affect – changes the
way we deal with different situations.
 Negative affect can make it harder to do even easy tasks;
positive affect can make it easier to do difficult tasks (By
Don Norman)
 Positive emotions enable us to think more creatively, to
solve complex problems, whereas negative emotion
pushes us into narrow, focussed thinking.

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 what are the implications of emotion for design?

 in situations of stress, people will be less able to

cope with complex problem solving or managing
difficult interfaces, whereas if people are relaxed
they will be more forgiving of limitations in the
design.
 build interfaces that promote positive responses
 for example by using aesthetics or reward – then
they are likely be more successful.

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Individual differences
 Individual differences may be long term or short term.
 Long term differences include – gender, physical
capabilities and intellectual capabilities.
 Others are shorter term and include the effect of stress
or fatigue on the user.
 Still others change through time, such as age

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 differ in physical characteristics such as height and weight.
 Variability in the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell
and taste.
 What are the physical aspects of people that need to be
taken into account in the design? Think!!

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Psychology and the design of
interactive systems
 recall is assisted by the provision of retrieval cues so
interfaces should incorporate recognizable cues wherever
possible.
 It helps to predict how a typical computer user would
behave in a given situation, others analyze why particular
user behavior occurred.
 In addition to providing us with a wealth of theoretical
understanding of the human user, psychology also
provides a range of empirical techniques which we can
employ to evaluate our designs and our systems

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References
 A Dix, Janet Finlay, G D Abowd, R Beale., Human-
Computer Interaction, 3rd Edition, Pearson Publishers,
2008.

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