Chapter 3 Understanding users

1
Chapter 3Understanding users

• Francisco Arcediano
• Simon Bowen
• Nicole Burrell
• Charles Carter

2
Introduction

• Design with the users capabilities and the
  demands of the activity in mind.
• Goal Examine some of the core cognitive aspects
  of interaction design to both extend human
  capabilities and compensate for their weaknesses.

3
What is cognition?

• Cognitive processes thinking, daydreaming,
  talking, seeing
• Categories of cognition (Norman 1993)
  
  
  
• Experiential cognition perceive, act, and react
  to events around us
• Reflective cognition think, comparing, and
  decision-making
• Discussion Question
• Do you think one cognitive category is
  exercised more than the other when it comes to
• 1) Planning an interface with the customer
• 2) Designing the interface
• 3) Reviewing progress of the interface with the
  customer
• 4) Evaluating interface effectiveness with
  actual user

4
What is cognition?

• Specific kinds of cognitive processes
• 1) Attention
• 2) Perception and recognition
• 3) Memory
• 4) Learning
• 5) Reading, Speaking, and Listening
• 6) Problem solving, Planning, Reasoning,
  Decision Making
• Many of these cognitive processes are
  interdependent
• Discussion Questions
• 1) Can you think of activities related
  to interface design that
• involves at lest two of these processes?
• 2) Are there any activities that require only
  one of these
• processes?

5
What is cognition?

• Reading, Speaking, and Listening forms of
  language processing
• Similarity Meaning of sentences or phrases is
  same in all modes
• Differences
• 1) Written language is permanent, listening is
  transient
• 2) Reader can be quicker than speaking or
  listening
• 3) Listening requires less cognitive effort
• There are differences between peoples ability to
  use language
• Discussion Questions
• 1) How might these differences affect
  the way you design your
• interface?

6
Applying Knowledge from the physical world from
the Digital World

• "A well known approach to applying knowledge
  about everyday psychology to interaction design
  is to emulate, in the digital world, the
  strategies and methods people commonly use in the
  physical world.
• Picking task that are familiar to people and
  using them in the digital world, allows users to
  master the implementation.
• It makes using the design implementation more
  enjoyable and less frustrating.

7
Applying Knowledge from the physical world from
the Digital World

• Direct mapping from the physical world to digital
  world is not always successful.
• It can turn out to be "counter-productive,
  forcing users to do things in bizarre,
  inefficient, or inappropriate ways".
• This happens when the activity being emulated is
  more complex than assumed.
• The designers need to think through how and
  whether this design will work in the new context
  (that being the digital context).
• Questions Do you know any good mappings from the
  real world to the Digital? Any Bad?

8
Informing design from theory to practice

• Theories, models, and conceptual frameworks
  provide abstractions for thinking about how
  people interact with products, but they are
  difficult to apprehend.
• Thus, researchers have tried to make theory more
  accessible and practical translating into
• Design principles and concepts
• Design rules
• Analytic methods
• Design and evaluation methods
• E.g., GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, and
  Selection rules)
• GOMS allows quantitative predictions of how
  people interact with products.

9
Informing design from theory to practice

• Discussion questions
• Dilemma faced with interface design Keep the
  same structure adding more functions or design a
  new model of interaction? (Evolutionary versus
  Revolutionary upgrading)
• The ultimate goal is to extend human capabilities
  and compensate for their weaknesses. How far
  should we take this goal? Could we become too
  dependent on technologies?