Interaction Styles: Old and New

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Interaction Styles Old and New

• How theories of the past apply today

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Agenda

• Questions?
• Exam prep
• Hutchins, Hollan and Norman paper
• Hutchins, Hollan, and Norman (1986) Direct
  Manipulation Interfaces, in Donald Norman and
  Stephen Draper, User Centered System Design,  
  pp. 87-124.
• Elements of a theory on DM
• Does it still apply?

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What is Direct Manipulation?
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What is DM? (Shneiderman 74)

• Continuous representation of the object of
  interest.
• Physical actions or labeled button presses
  instead of complex syntax.
• Rapid incremental reversible operations whose
  impact on the object of interest is immediately
  visible.

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Benefits of DM (Shneiderman 82)

• Novices learn basic functionality quickly,
  usually through demonstration of an expert
• Experts can work extremely rapidly to carry out a
  wide range of tasks, even defining new functions
  and features
• Knowledgeable intermittent users can retain
  operational concepts

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Benefits of DM (cont)

• Error messages are rarely needed
• Users can see immediately if their actions are
  furthering their goals, and if not, they can
  simply change the direction of their activity
• Users have reduced anxiety because the system is
  comprehensible and because actions are so easily
  reversible.

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Goal Cognitive Account of DM

• What is directness?
• Why is DM sometimes compelling and sometimes
  painful?

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The HHN theory

• Feeling of directness is related to use of
  cognitive resources
• distance (goals lt-gt action)
• engagement (illusion)
• Then (mid 80s) vs. now

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Distance

• Amount of effort to convert goals into physical
  action
• Remember the 7-stage model

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Semantic and Articulatory Distance

• Interface language (input and output)
• Independence of meaning and form

Semantic distance
Goals
Meaning of Expression
Articulatorydistance
Form of Expression
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Semantic Distance

• Can I say what I want?
• Can I say it concisely?
• Gulf of Execution
• Gulf of Evaluation

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Reducing Semantic Distance

• Higher-level languages
• Make output show concepts directly

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Understanding Semantic Distance

• Automated behavior does NOT reduce semantic
  distance
• Users can adapt to system representation
• Virtuosity

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Articulatory Distance

• Relationship between meaning and form
• Gulf of execution
• (e.g. gesture)
• Gulf of evaluation
• (e.g. audio feedback)

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Engagement

• Feeling that one is directly manipulating the
  objects of interest
• Model of the world

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Reqs for Direct Engagement

• Creating an illusion
• Minimize Gulfs of Execution Evaluation
• Input and output languages are interreferential
  (e.g., subsitution)
• System is realistically responsive
• Interface is unobtrusive

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Rapid Feedback

• Allows modification of actions
• Removes the perception of the computer as
  intermediary
• Allows monitoring of actions in order to
  understand outcome

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Problems with DM

• Not good at supporting
• repetitive operations
• handling variables
• distinguishing individual elements from a class
  of elements
• Limited to how we think
• Flies in face of 2000 years of developing
  abstract formalisms

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Another model of interaction

• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2000) Instrumental
  interaction an interaction model for designing
  post-WIMP user interfaces, Proceedings of
  CHI'2000, pages 446-453.
• Domain objects Interaction Instruments

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Instrumental Interaction

• Analyze the effectiveness of tools
• Indirection
• Spatial and temporal
• Integration
• Comparing physical-logical degrees of freedom
• Compatibility
• Does tool match our intuition