AR+S The Role Of Abstraction In Human Computer Interaction

The Role of Abstraction

in Human Computer Interaction Design

Acknowledgement

This presentation has been made possible

under the auspices of Prof. Dr. Ali Tamer ÜNAL

& his colleagues interalia at

Industrial Engineering Department of the Engineering Faculty

Acknowledgement

Herr EHRENBERGER,

The DFS air traffic controllers’ representative to EUROCONTROL Software Team Karlsuhe has provided the inspiration

to work on HCI

Objectives

To introduce the role of abstraction in human cognition, specificly in human computer interaction

To maintain a mathematical point of view in HCI

Objectives

To introduce discrete stages models, workload analysis, Miller theorem, multiple resources

To give a sense of recent developments in HCI such as situation awareness

Topics covered

Definition & Modelling of abstraction

The role of abstraction in human cognition

Multiple resources

Miller Theorem

Workload

The role of abstraction in HCI design

Discrete stages model – DSM

Critics of DSM and intro to Situation Awareness – SA

A few application suggestions for HCI designs

Abstraction

Merriam-Webster

Main Entry:

ab·strac·tion

Pronunciation: ab- ’ strak-shən, əb-

Function: noun

Date: 1549

1 a: the act or process of abstracting : the state of being abstracted

Definition of Abstraction

ab·stract ab- ’ strakt, ‘ab-’ ( adjective)

Etymology: Medieval Latin abstractus, past participle of abstrahere to drag away, to pull, draw, (14th century)

1 a: disassociated from any specific instance <an abstract entity>

b: difficult to understand : abstruse < abstract problems>

c: insufficiently factual : formal <possessed only an abstract right>

2: expressing a quality apart from an object <the word poem is concrete, poetry is abstract >

3 a: dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects : theoretical < abstract science>

b: impersonal , detached <the abstract compassion of a surgeon — Time >

4: having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content < abstract painting>

A Close Look at the Definition of Abstraction

1 a: disassociated from any specific instance

<an abstract entity>

b: difficult to understand : abstruse

< abstract problems>

c: insufficiently factual : formal

<possessed only an abstract right>

2: expressing a quality apart from an object

<the word poem is concrete, poetry is abstract >

A Close Look at the Definition of Abstraction

3 a: dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects : theoretical

< abstract science>

b: impersonal , detached

<the abstract compassion of a surgeon — Time >

4: having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content

< abstract painting>

Abstraction Exercise 1

Please form 5 teams of two

Team formation:

A tester (pilot)

A reporter (copilot)

Task:

The tester will feel-test the object

The tester will tell the result of the test to the reporter quietly

The reporter will write the result to a paper

All the reporters will read the results one by one

Pith: Abstraction helps us to identify things that we do not now.

Abstraction Example 1 – SWISS mid-air collision

The reasons of the accident

Maintenance activities at an Air Traffic Control(ATC) Center

Collective feeling of the current sitution

Like holding a small stone and feeling a pebble

Abstraction Exercise 2

Task: Make an abstraction of stone pictures

Discuss the process

Create a team organisation

A Possible Solution: STONES, archeological, carved Fragility Ornamentation Sculpture Time

An Other Solution Time Utility Tomb Don’t forget to form levels Fragility Architecture Ornamentation Sculpture

Abstraction Levels and Depth Time Utility Tomb Don’t forget to form levels

A Mathematical Model of Abstraction

Obj = { o : o   real things}

Grp = { g : g = (o 1 , o 2 , …,o j ) & j = 1 …n & o j   Obj }

Inp = { i : i   Grp }

definedGrp = {defGrp(g,nameGrp) : g  Grp & nameGrp is a semantic name ??? }

Abs = { f(i, g) : i,g  Grp & g  definedGrp }

JFK AIRPORT

BOSTON LOGAN AIRPORT

TOWER

Tower Control Operations Room

APPROACH

Area Control Center

Control Sector

Area Control Operations Room

Area & Approach Control Operations Room

Operations Room Layout

Radar

Turkish Air Space Control Areas

Turkish Air Space Routes

Part of Karlsruhe UAC Area

Ground Seperation

Terminal Area Seperation

Abstraction - view - metaphore - analogy

Operations(Planning, Communication, Radar)

Technical Support (Hardware-Software)

Seperation

Safety

Organization

Accounting

Keep the safety of people in the air above everthing.

Multiple resources and performance prediction

CHRISTOPHER D. WICKENS

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Institute of Aviation Willard Airport, Aviation Human Factors Division, Aviation Research Laboratory

the origins and history of multiple resource theory in accounting for differences in dual task interference.

the 4-dimensional multiple resources model,

there will be greater interference between two tasks to the extent that

they share

stages (perceptual/cognitive vs response)

sensory modalities (auditory vs visual),

codes (visual vs spatial) and

channels of visual information (focal vs ambient).

Multiple Resources

1. Introduction

Driving along a crowded highway on a rainy evening, while trying to glance at the map and search the road side for the right turn off, the driver's cellular phone suddenly rings.

The driver feels compelled to answer it and engage in conversation with the caller. Will the driver be successful?

What is the likelihood that this added demand will seriously impair safety? Could a different interface on the phone make a difference?

Suppose the map was presented in a head up location? Will the benefits of not having to look downward be offset by the clutter costs of trying to see two overlapping images? (Tufano 1997, Fadden et al. 1998.)

Miller : Seven Plus Minus Two

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information

George A. Miller

Harvard University

When only two or three tones were used the listeners never confused them. With four different tones

confusions were quite rare, but with five or more tones confusions were frequent. With fourteen different tones the listeners made many mistakes.

Miller : Seven Plus Minus Two

The transmitted information increases linearly up to about 2 bits and then bends off toward an asymptote at

about 2.5 bits. This value, 2.5 bits, therefore, is what we are calling the channel capacity of the listener for absolute judgments of pitch.

Workload

the hypothetical relationship between a group or individual human operator and task demands

problems such as workload bottlenecks and overload

The assessment of operator workload has a vital impact on the design of new human-machine systems

Discrete Stages Model MOTOR RESPONSE COGNITION (match, decide, memory transfer) PERCEPTION (transfer to working memory) Short-term Sensory Store Long-Term Memory Visual Image Store Auditory Image Store ATTENTION RESOURCES dVIS=1500[900-3500] msec muVIS=5[4.4-5.2] letters kVIS=Physical dAIS=200[70-1000] msec muAIS=17[7-17] items kAIS=Physical dLTM=infinity muLTM=infinity kLTM=Semantic Working Memory muWM=3[2.5-4.1]chunks muWM(1 chunk)=7[5-9] chunks dWM(3 chunks)=7[5-226] sec dWM(1 chunk)=73[73-226] sec dWM(3 chunks)=7[5-34] sec kWM=Acoustic or Visual R E S P O N S E S T I M U L I Tp=100[50-200]msec Tc=70[25-170]msec Tm=70[30-100]msec dVIS:decayVIS mu:storage amount k:storage format

Abstraction in DSM : CHUNKS

The primary metric of information

Bit  chunk Miller(1956)

The chunk is a familiar unit of organised stimulus material.

Learning plays an important role in the formation of these chunks.

Chunks are key to the problem of information bottlenecks

CHUNKS – MORSE ALPHABET SOS . . . - - - . . .

Use of Abstraction in HCI Design

Menus (cascade)

Screen designs (Rational App Dev – BANKJAVA, BANKStruts(after the presentation), PPS example)

Desktop example

Information hiding

Reducing percieved complexity, temporarily dealing with one aspect only not the whole, ability to ignore

Metaphores and analogies

Symbols and memory locking

Complex HCI design Example Rational Application Developer

Discrete Stages Model MOTOR RESPONSE COGNITION (match, decide, memory transfer) PERCEPTION (transfer to working memory) Short-term Sensory Store Long-Term Memory Visual Image Store Auditory Image Store ATTENTION RESOURCES dVIS=1500[900-3500] msec muVIS=5[4.4-5.2] letters kVIS=Physical dAIS=200[70-1000] msec muAIS=17[7-17] items kAIS=Physical dLTM=infinity muLTM=infinity kLTM=Semantic Working Memory muWM=3[2.5-4.1]chunks muWM(1 chunk)=7[5-9] chunks dWM(3 chunks)=7[5-226] sec dWM(1 chunk)=73[73-226] sec dWM(3 chunks)=7[5-34] sec kWM=Acoustic or Visual R E S P O N S E S T I M U L I Tp=100[50-200]msec Tc=70[25-170]msec Tm=70[30-100]msec dVIS:decayVIS mu:storage amount k:storage format

The contributions of the Wickens Model

1. Perception does not happen in a single moment. On the contrary, human processes the inputs and a functional transformation (for ex. from visual to semantical) happens.

2. Processing information requires time. The time that passes between the moment input comes and human responses is called the reaction time.

3. The mental timing of events that happen in a single response process. The nomenclature of the stages, durations and the definition of operations or transformations done in each stage.

The contributions of the Wickens Model

4. Transformations related to the presentation of information.

5. Limits that do exist in the time and quantity domains.

6. The unit of information. Miller’s seven plus/minus two rule is alluded above in the working memory. This also points at the effect of the gained experience on the size of chunks and thus determines the perception speed.

Critics of Discrete Stages Model

I am afraid,

Wickens Model

is being used in areas other than human response time analysis

Human mind is not as rigid and simple as Wickens depicts - Deviating Mind

Wickens ignores sub-conscious, automatic processes, embodiment etc. and

reduces the human operator to a simple push botton.

Situation Awareness

Situation awareness is the continuous extraction of environmental information,

the integration of this information with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture,

and the use of that picture in directing further perception and anticipating future events (Dominguez et al. , 1994).

Situation Awareness

Put simply, situation awareness (SA) means knowing what is going on around you.

More specifically, in the context of complex operational environments SA is concerned with the person’s knowledge of particular task-related events and phenomena.

For example, for a fighter pilot SA means knowing about the threats and intentions of enemy forces as well as the status of his/her own aircraft.

Situation Awareness

For an air traffic controller, SA means (at least partly) knowing about current aircraft positions and flight plans and predicting future states so as to detect possible conflicts.

Therefore, in operational terms, SA means having an understanding of the current state and dynamics of a system and being able to anticipate future change and developments (EUROCONTROL - The Development of Situation Awareness Measures in ATM Systems).

What is Situation Awareness?