Introduction to User Experience Design:

Understanding user’s
conceptual cognition

Satishkumar L. Varma
Professor, Department of Information Technology
PCE, New Panvel
Google Site
Scopus
Web
 Introduction to UED: Outline
● Introduction to User Experience Design
○ Introduction to interface design
■ What is interaction design?
○ Understanding and conceptualizing interface
○ Understanding user’s conceptual cognition

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Students will be able to
○ What cognition is and why it is important for Interaction Design
○ Main ways cognition has been applied to Interaction Design
○ Number of examples from cognitive research
○ Explain what mental models are
○ Give examples of conceptual frameworks useful for Interaction Design
○ Enable you to try to elicit a mental model and understand what it means

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
○ Focuses on Users and Cognition
● Cognitive aspects of Interaction Design include:
○ What humans are good and bad at
○ How this knowledge can be used to inform design of technologies that,
○ Extend human capabilities and
○ Compensate for their weaknesses

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Norman said there are 2 modes of cognition:
○ Experiential cognition: real world experiences
○ Reflective cognition: thinking, comparing, deciding, etc.
○ Both are necessary for everyday life
● Cognition has been described in 6 kinds of processes

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Cognition has been described in 6 kinds of processes:
○ Attention: selecting things to concentrate on
○ Perception / Recognition: how information is acquired from the environment via
sense organs and translated into experiences (vision is the most dominant)
○ Memory: recalling various knowledge
■ We filter what knowledge to process / memorize. (most researched area)
○ Learning: how to do something (like learning to use a program)
○ Reading / Speaking / Writing: using language
○ Problem Solving/Planning/Reasoning/Decision Making: involves reflective
cognition
● Often designers try to emulate the physical world with designs in the digital world
● Sometimes this works well, other times it doesn't

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Conceptual Frameworks for Cognition:
○ Mental Models
○ Information Processing
○ External Cognition

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Users' Mental Models (UMM)
○ Definition: when people are using a system, they develop knowledge of
how to use the system and to lesser extent how the system works.
○ the mental model is used to help people carry out tasks
○ it can also give suggestions on what to do in unpredictable situations
○ in cognitive psychology
■ UMM are defined as some sort of internal construction of the external
world that are manipulated enabling predictions and i/f to be made
○ wrt system design: ideally, the users' mental models should match the
designer's conceptual model
○ to increase transparency- might make system image easier to learn (example page 95)

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Information Processing
○ an approach to conceptualize how mind works: through metaphors and analogies
○ thinks of the mind as an information processor
○ mental repres. can be images, mental models, rules, other knowledge forms
● The human processor model is the best known approach (see p. 96)
○ it predicts which cognitive processes are involved when a user interacts with a
computer, allowing for calculations to be made on how long it will take a user to
complete a task
○ this is helpful for comparing different interfaces (efficiency)
○ it is based on modeling mental activities that happen exclusively in the head
○ there are always external cues in the environment
○ so how truly representative are these models?

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Information Processing
○ there has been an increase in people studying cognitive activities 'in the
wild'
○ in the context in which they take place
○ i.e how can things in the environment aid human cognition and lighten the
cognitive load
● Alternative frameworks have been suggested:
○ External cognition and Distributed Cognition

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● External Cognition
○ main idea: people interact with or create information through using a
variety of external representations (books, etc.)
○ an impressive array of technology has been created by humans to aid
cognition (calculators, pens, etc)
○ these tools have combined with external representations to extend and
support our ability to carry out cognitive activities

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● External Cognition: some of the main goals of this
■ Externalizing to reduce memory load (external representations / cues
as reminders)
■ Computational offloading (using a tool / device to carry out a
computation - like a pen / paper to do a math problem) Note:
representation of the task is key- imagine the difficulty of
multiplication if the numbers were represented as Roman numerals
■ Annotating / Cognitive tracing (modifying representations to show
changes - like crossing something off a list
● Back to Interaction Design
○ provide external representation at the interface to reduce memory load
○ e.g. visualizations, cues, etc.
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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● Informing Design: From Theory to Practice
○ Theories, models and frameworks provide abstractions for thinking about
phenomena
○ They provide generalizations, but can be difficult to digest
○ For this reason researchers have tried to make them more practical by
providing design principles / concepts, design rules, analytic methods and
design / evaluation methods.
○ This has helped - for instance - the human processor model
○ For example, this model (Card et al. 1983) has been simplified into GOMS
○ GOMS: Stands for goals, operators, methods, and selection rules

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 Understanding User’s Conceptual Cognition
● 4 components of the GOMS model describe
○ how a user performs a computer-based task in terms of goals (e.g., save a
file) and
○ the selection of methods and operations from memory that are needed to
achieve them
● GOMS model has also been transformed into the keystroke level method that
essentially provides a formula for determining the amount of time each of the
methods and operations takes
● Main attractions of the GOMS approach is that
○ it allows quantitative predictions to be made
○ for further readings see Chapter 14

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 References
[1] Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer
Interaction, 2002.
[2] Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla, The UX Book - Process and Guidelines for
Ensuring a Quality User Experience, 2012.

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 Thank You.

Satishkumar Varma, PCE