2. Overview
• What is cognition?
• What are users good and bad at?
• Describe how cognition has been
applied to interaction design
• Explain what are Mental Models
• Cover relevant theories of cognition
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3. Why do we need to understand users?
• Interacting with technology is cognitive
• Need to take into account cognitive processes involved and
cognitive limitations of users
• Provides knowledge about what users can and cannot be
expected to do
• Identifies and explains the nature and causes of problems
users encounter
• Supply theories, modelling tools, guidance and methods that
can lead to the design of better interactive products
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4. Cognitive processes
• Attention
• Perception
• Memory
• Learning
• Reading, speaking and listening
• Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and decision-
making
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5. Attention
• Selecting things to concentrate on at a point in time from the mass
of stimuli around us
• Allows us to focus on information that is relevant to what we are
doing
• Involves audio and/or visual senses
• Focussed and divided attention enables us to be selective in terms
of the mass of competing stimuli but limits our ability to keep track
of all events
• Information at the interface should be structured to capture users’
attention, e.g. use perceptual boundaries (windows), colour,
reverse video, sound and flashing lights
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6. Activity: Find the price of a double room at the Holiday Inn
in Columbia
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7. Activity: Find the price for a double room at the Quality Inn
in Pennsylvania a
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8. Activity
• Tullis (1987) found that the two screens produced quite
different results
– 1st screen - took an average of 5.5 seconds to search
– 2nd screen - took 3.2 seconds to search
• Why, since both displays have the same density of
information (31%)?
• Spacing
– In the 1st screen the information is bunched up together, making it
hard to search
– In the 2nd screen the characters are grouped into vertical categories
of information making it easier
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9. Multitasking and attention
• Is it possible to perform multiple tasks without one or
more of them being detrimentally affected?
• Ophir et al (2009) compared heavy vs light multi-taskers
– heavy were more prone to being distracted than those who
infrequently multitask
– heavy multi-taskers are easily distracted and find it difficult to
filter irrelevant information
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10. Design implications for attention
• Make information salient when it needs attending to
• Use techniques that make things stand out like color,
ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing and
animation
• Avoid cluttering the interface with too much information
• Search engines and form fill-ins that have simple and
clean interfaces are easier to use
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11. Perception
• How information is acquired from the world and
transformed into experiences
• Obvious implication is to design representations that
are readily perceivable, e.g.
– Text should be legible
– Icons should be easy to distinguish and read
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13. Are borders and white space
better? Find french
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14. Activity
• Weller (2004) found people took less time to
locate items for information that was grouped
– using a border (2nd screen) compared with using color contrast
(1st screen)
• Some argue that too much white space on web
pages is detrimental to search
– Makes it hard to find information
• Do you agree?
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15. Which is easiest to read and why?
What is the time?
What is the time?
What is the time?
What is the time?
What is the time?
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16. Design implications
– Icons should enable users to readily distinguish their meaning
– Bordering and spacing are effective visual ways of grouping
information
– Sounds should be audible and distinguishable
– Speech output should enable users to distinguish between the
set of spoken words
– Text should be legible and distinguishable from the background
– Tactile feedback should allow users to recognize and distinguish
different meanings
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17. Memory
• Involves first encoding and then retrieving knowledge.
• We don’t remember everything - involves filtering and
processing what is attended to
• Context is important in affecting our memory (i.e. where, when)
• We recognize things much better than being able to recall things
• we remember less about objects we have photographed than
when we observe them with the naked eye (Henkel, 2014)
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18. Processing in memory
• Encoding is first stage of memory
– determines which information is attended to in the environment
and how it is interpreted
• The more attention paid to something…
• The more it is processed in terms of thinking about it and
comparing it with other knowledge…
• The more likely it is to be remembered
– e.g. when learning about HCI, it is much better to reflect upon it,
carry out exercises, have discussions with others about it, and
write notes than just passively read a book, listen to a lecture or
watch a video about it
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19. Context is important
• Context affects the extent to which information
can be subsequently retrieved
• Sometimes it can be difficult for people to recall
information that was encoded in a different
context:
– “You are on a train and someone comes up to you and says
hello. You don’t recognize him for a few moments but then
realize it is one of your neighbors. You are only used to seeing
your neighbor in the hallway of your apartment block and seeing
ahim out of context makes him difficult to recognize initially”
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20. Activity
• Try to remember the dates of your grandparents’ birthday
• Try to remember the cover of the last two DVDs you
bought or rented
• Which was easiest? Why?
• People are very good at remembering visual cues about
things
– e.g. the color of items, the location of objects and marks on an object
• They find it more difficult to learn and remember arbitrary
material
– e.g. birthdays and phone numbers
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25. Recognition versus recall
• Command-based interfaces require users to
recall from memory a name from a possible set
of 100s
• GUIs for MP3 players visually-based options that
users need only browse through until they
recognize one
• Web browsers, etc., provide lists of visited URLs,
song titles etc., that support recognition memory
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26. The problem with the classic ‘72’
• George Miller’s (1956) theory of how much
information people can remember
• People’s immediate memory capacity is very
limited
• Many designers think this is useful finding for
interaction design
• But…
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27. What some designers get up to…
• Present only 7 options on a menu
• Display only 7 icons on a tool bar
• Have no more than 7 bullets in a list
• Place only 7 items on a pull down menu
• Place only 7 tabs on the top of a website page
– But this is wrong? Why?
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28. Why?
• Inappropriate application of the theory
• People can scan lists of bullets, tabs, menu
items for the one they want
• They don’t have to recall them from memory
having only briefly heard or seen them
• Sometimes a small number of items is good
• But depends on task and available screen
estate
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29. Digital content management- memory and
search
• Is a growing problem for many users
– vast numbers of documents, images, music files, video clips,
emails, attachments, bookmarks, etc.,
– where and how to save them all, then remembering what they
were called and where to find them again
– naming most common means of encoding them
– but can be difficult to remember, especially when have 1000s
and 1000s
– How might such a process be facilitated taking into account
people’s memory abilities?
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31. Digital content management
• Memory involves 2 processes
– recall-directed and recognition-based scanning
• File management systems should be
designed to optimize both kinds of memory
processes
– e.g. Search box and history list
• Help users encode files in richer ways
– Provide them with ways of saving files using colour, flagging,
image, flexible text, time stamping, etc.
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33. Design implications
• Don’t overload users’ memories with
complicated procedures for carrying out tasks
• Design interfaces that promote recognition
rather than recall
• Provide users with various ways of encoding
information to help them remember
– e.g. categories, color, flagging, time stamping
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34. Learning
• How to learn to use a computer-based
application
• Using a computer-based application or
YouTube video to understand a given topic
• People find it hard to learn by following
instructions in a manual
• prefer to learn by doing
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35. Cognitive prosthetic devices
• We rely more and more on the internet and
smartphones to look things up
• Expecting to have internet access reduces the
need and extent to which we remember
• Also enhances our memory for knowing where
to find it online (Sparrow et al,2011)
• What are implications for designing technologies
to support how people will learn, and what they
learn?
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37. Design implications
• Design interfaces that encourage
exploration
• Design interfaces that constrain and guide
learners
• Dynamically linking concepts and
representations can facilitate the learning
of complex material
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38. Reading, speaking, and listening
• The ease with which people can read, listen, or
speak differs
– Many prefer listening to reading
– Reading can be quicker than speaking or listening
– Listening requires less cognitive effort than reading or
speaking
– Dyslexics have difficulties understanding and
recognizing written words
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39. Applications
• Speech-recognition systems allow users to interact with
them by asking questions
– e.g. Google Voice, Siri
• Speech-output systems use artificially generated speech
– e.g. written-text-to-speech systems for the blind
• Natural-language systems enable users to type in
questions and give text-based responses
– e.g. Ask search engine
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40. Design implications
• Speech-based menus and instructions
should be short
• Accentuate the intonation of artificially
generated speech voices
– they are harder to understand than human
voices
• Provide opportunities for making text large
on a screen
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41. Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and
decision-making
• All involves reflective cognition
– e.g. thinking about what to do, what the options
are, and the consequences
• Often involves conscious processes, discussion with
others (or oneself), and the use of artefacts
– e.g. maps, books, pen and paper
• May involve working through different scenarios and
deciding which is best option
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42. Design implications
• Provide additional information/functions for users
who wish to understand more about how to carry
out an activity more effectively
• Use simple computational aids to support rapid
decision-making and planning for users on the
move
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43. Dilemma
• The app mentality developing in the psyche
of the younger generation is making it worse
for them to make their own decisions
because they are becoming risk averse
(Gardner and Davis, 2013)
• Relying on a multitude of apps means that
they are becoming increasingly more anxious
about making decisions by themselves
• Do you agree? Can you think of an example?
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44. Mental models
• Users develop an understanding of a system through
learning about and using it
• Knowledge is sometimes described as a mental model:
– How to use the system (what to do next)
– What to do with unfamiliar systems or unexpected situations (how
the system works)
• People make inferences using mental models of how to
carry out tasks
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45. Mental models
• Craik (1943) described mental models as:
– internal constructions of some aspect of the
external world enabling predictions to be made
• Involves unconscious and conscious
processes
– images and analogies are activated
• Deep versus shallow models
– e.g. how to drive a car and how it works
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46. Everyday reasoning and mental models
(a) You arrive home on a cold winter’s night to a cold house.
How do you get the house to warm up as quickly as
possible? Set the thermostat to be at its highest or to the
desired temperature?
(b) You arrive home starving hungry. You look in the fridge
and find all that is left is an uncooked pizza. You have an
electric oven. Do you warm it up to 375 degrees first and
then put it in (as specified by the instructions) or turn the
oven up higher to try to warm it up quicker?
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47. Heating up a room or oven that is
thermostat-controlled
• Many people have erroneous mental models (Kempton,
1996)
• Why?
– General valve theory, where ‘more is more’ principle is
generalised to different settings (e.g. gas pedal, gas cooker, tap,
radio volume)
– 12
– Thermostats based on model of on-off switch model
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48. Heating up a room or oven that is
thermostat-controlled
• Same is often true for understanding how
interactive devices and computers work:
– poor, often incomplete, easily confusable, based on
inappropriate analogies and superstition (Norman,
1983)
– e.g. elevators and pedestrian crossings - lot of people
hit the button at least twice
– Why? Think it will make the lights change faster or
ensure the elevator arrives!
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49. Exercise: ATMs
• Write down how an ATM works
– How much money are you allowed to take out?
– What denominations?
– If you went to another machine and tried the same what would happen?
– What information is on the strip on your card? How is this used?
– What happens if you enter the wrong number?
– Why are there pauses between the steps of a transaction? What
happens if you try to type during them?
– Why does the card stay inside the machine?
– Do you count the money? Why?
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50. Gulfs of execution and evaluation
• The ‘gulfs’ explicate the gaps that exist between
the user and the interface
• The gulf of execution
– the distance from the user to the physical system
• The gulf of evaluation
– the distance from the physical system to the user
• Bridging the gulfs can reduce cognitive effort
required to perform tasks
Norman, 1986; Hutchins et al, 1986
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53. Model Human processor (Card et
al, 1983)
• Models the information processes of a user
interacting with a computer
• Predicts which cognitive processes are
involved when a user interacts with a
computer
• Enables calculations to be made of how long
a user will take to carry out a task
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55. Limitations
• Based on modelling mental activities that
happen exclusively inside the head
• Do not adequately account for how people
interact with computers and other devices
in real world
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56. External cognition
• Concerned with explaining how we interact with
external representations (e.g. maps, notes,
diagrams)
• What are the cognitive benefits and what
processes involved
• How they extend our cognition
• What computer-based representations can we
develop to help even more?
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EXTERNAL COGNITION-----
recognizes the role of external tools and resources in
supporting and augmenting human cognitive processes.
suggests that cognition is not just limited to the individual's
mind but can extend into the environment through the use of
external artifacts and tools.
refers to the idea that interactive systems can be designed to
offload cognitive tasks from the user's internal memory and
processing capacity to external representations or tools. T
These external representations act as cognitive aids, helping
users to better understand, remember, and solve complex tasks
or problems.
By leveraging external resources, users can offload some
mental burden, improve their decision-making processes, and
enhance their overall performance.
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External cognition is concerned with explaining the
cognitive processes involved when we interact with
different external representations (Scaife and Rogers,
1996). A main goal is to explicate the cognitive
benefits of using different representations for
different cognitive activities and the processes
involved.
The main ones include:
1. Externalizing to reduce memory load
2. Computational offloading
3. Annotating and cognitive tracing.
59. 1. Externalizing to reduce
memory load
• Diaries, reminders, calendars, notes, shopping lists, to-do lists
– written to remind us of what to do
• Post-its, piles, marked emails
– where placed indicates priority of what to do
• External representations:
– Remind us that we need to do something (e.g. to buy something for
mother’s day)
– Remind us of what to do (e.g. buy a card)
– Remind us when to do something (e.g. send a card by a certain date)
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63. Computational offloading
• When a tool is used in conjunction with an external
representation to carry out a computation (e.g. pen
and paper)
• Try doing the two sums below (a) in your head, (b) on
a piece of paper and c) with a calculator.
– 234 x 456 =??
– CCXXXIIII x CCCCXXXXXVI = ???
• Which is easiest and why? Both are identical sums
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Computational offloading involves using external tools or
devices in combination with an external representation to assist
in performing a computation.
The external representation serves as a cognitive aid that helps
individuals understand, process, and manipulate information
more effectively, while the computational offloading transfers
certain computation tasks to external resources or devices to
enhance performance.
The external representation could be a visual diagram, chart, or
any other form of representation that helps individuals better
comprehend the data or information involved in the
computation.
The tool or device could be a computer, smartphone, specialized
software, or any other computational resource that provides
additional processing power or capabilities to handle complex
tasks.
67. Annotation and cognitive tracing
• Annotation involves modifying existing
representations through making marks
– e.g. crossing off, ticking, underlining
• Cognitive tracing involves externally
manipulating items into different orders or
structures
– e.g. playing Scrabble, playing cards
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When you design with external cognition in mind, you will
create truly user-centered products that support your user’s
mental capacity throughout various user flows of your product.
External cognition can be an extremely useful method of
reducing the strain on users' limited memory and cognitive
resources.
Visualizing user’s events, setting up reminders, storing and
displaying data for ongoing calculations, and keeping track of
user’s decisions by allowing them to annotate are just some of
practical examples that embody the use of external cognition.
Calendars, spreadsheets and calculators, as well as checklists
and annotations are just several of the widely used products
that exhibit the benefits of utilizing external cognition.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE
71. Design implication
• Provide external representations at the
interface that reduce memory load and
facilitate computational offloading
– e.g. Information visualizations have been designed
to allow people to make sense and rapid decisions
about masses of data
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72. Summary
• Cognition involves several processes including attention,
memory, perception and learning
• The way an interface is designed can greatly affect how
well users can perceive, attend, learn and remember
how to do their tasks
• Theoretical frameworks, such as mental models and
external cognition, provide ways of understanding how
and why people interact with products
• This can lead to thinking about how to design better
products
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Editor's Notes
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Many of us now spend a large proportion of our time staring at a screen, be it a smartphone, laptop, TV, or tablet. As mentioned in the introduction, while focusing on one task at a screen, we switch constantly between others. For example, every 5 or 10 minutes while writing this chapter, I check my email, breaking off sometimes in mid-sentence to see who has sent me a message and then finding myself diverted to looking at the latest news item or URL recommended to me by a colleague. Like nearly everyone else, I am addicted; I can't stop myself from looking. But is it possible for us to perform multiple tasks without one or more of them being detrimentally affected?
While attending a talk at a conference I watched a student volunteer in front of me deftly switch between four ongoing instant message chats (one at the conference, one at school, one with friends, one at her part-time job), read, answer, delete, and place all new messages in various folders of her two email accounts, check and scan Facebook and her Twitter feeds – while appearing to listen to the talk, take some notes, Google the speaker's background, and open up his publications. When she had a spare moment she played a game of patience. I must say, I felt quite exhausted just watching her for a few minutes. It was as if she were capable of living in multiple worlds, all at the same time, while not letting a moment go to waste
A main finding is that it depends on the nature of the tasks and how much attention each demands. For example, listening to gentle music while working can help people tune out background noise, such as traffic or other people talking, and help them concentrate on what they are doing. However, if the music is loud, like Drum and Bass, it can be very distracting. Individual differences have also been found. For example, the results of a series of experiments comparing heavy with light multitaskers showed that heavy media multitaskers (such as the one described above) were more prone to being distracted by the multiple streams of media they are looking at than those who infrequently multitask
heavy Multitaskers: Heavy multitaskers refer to individuals who frequently and intensively engage in multitasking. They tend to divide their attention among multiple tasks or stimuli simultaneously or rapidly switch between tasks. They often have a higher tendency to engage with multiple streams of media, such as texting while watching television, browsing the internet while listening to music, or checking social media while working on a computer task.
Light Multitaskers: Light multitaskers, on the other hand, are individuals who engage in multitasking less frequently and with lower intensity. They may prefer focusing on one task at a time and dedicating their attention to that task until completion before moving on to another. They tend to have a lower tendency to divide their attention among multiple tasks or stimuli simultaneously.
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It is well known that people find it hard to learn by following a set of instructions in a manual. Instead, they much prefer to learn through doing. GUIs and direct manipulation interfaces are good environments for supporting this kind of active learning by supporting exploratory interaction and, importantly, allowing users to undo their actions, i.e. return to a previous state if they make a mistake by clicking on the wrong option.
There have been numerous attempts to harness the capabilities of different technologies to help learners understand topics. One of the main benefits of interactive technologies, such as web-based learning, elearning, multimedia, and virtual reality, is that they provide alternative ways of representing and interacting with information that are not possible with traditional technologies, e.g. books. In so doing, they have the potential of offering learners the ability to explore ideas and concepts in different ways. For example, interactive multimedia simulations have been designed to help teach abstract concepts (e.g. mathematical formulae, notations, laws of physics) that students find difficult to grasp. Different representations of the same process (e.g. a graph, a formula, a sound, a simulation) are displayed and interacted with in ways that make their relationship with each other more explicit to the learner
The Google effect and digital amnesia are two related psychological phenomena, which have to do with our tendency to forget information that is available online or stored digitally. For example, the Google effect and digital amnesia could cause someone to forget a certain piece of information, if they know they can find it later by searching the internet or their computer.
Because people are storing more and more of their information in digital formats, these phenomena are playing an increasingly large role in human cognition, so it’s important to understand them
Increasingly, we rely on the Internet and our smartphones to act as cognitive prostheses in the way in which blind people use walking sticks. They have become a cognitive resource that we use in our daily lives as part of the extended mind. Sparrow et al (2011) showed how expecting to have Internet access reduces the need and hence the extent to which we attempt to remember the information itself, while enhancing our memory for knowing where to find it online. Many of us will whip out our smartphone to find out who acted in a film, what the name of a book is, what the word in another language is, and so on. Besides search engines, there are a number of other cognitive prosthetic apps that instantly help us find out or remember something, such as Shazam, the popular music recognition app. This has important implications for the design of technologies to support how future generations will learn, and what they learn.
We rely more and more on the internet and smartphones to look things up
Reduced Need for Remembering Information: When we have easy access to information through the Internet and smartphones, the need to remember specific details decreases. Instead of committing information to memory, we rely on external resources to retrieve information when needed. This shift in reliance on external sources can impact how we prioritize memory formation and the depth of our understanding of the information.
While our reliance on external sources reduces the need to remember specific information, it can enhance our memory for knowing where to find that information online. Studies, such as the one by Sparrow et al. (2011), have shown that we develop a "Google effect," where we remember where to access information rather than the information itself. This shift in memory focus highlights the importance of designing technologies that facilitate efficient information retrieval and organization.
One form of interactivity that has been found to be highly effective is dynalinking (Rogers and Scaife, 1998). Abstract representations, such as diagrams, are linked together with a more concrete illustration of what they stand for, such as a simulation. Changes in one are matched by changes in the other, enabling a better understanding of what the abstraction means. An early example of its use was software developed for learning about ecological concepts, such as food webs (Rogers et al, 2003). Aconcrete simulation showed various organisms swimming and moving around and occasionally an event where one would eat another (e.g. a snail eating the weed). This was annotated and accompanied by various eating sounds, like chomping, to attract the children's attention. The children could also interact with the simulation. When an organism was clicked on, it would say what it was and what it ate (e.g. ‘I am a weed. I make my own food’). The concrete simulation was dynalinked with other abstract representations of the pond ecosystem, including an abstract food web diagram (
Reading, speaking, and listening are three forms of language processing that have similar and different properties. One similarity is that the meaning of sentences or phrases is the same regardless of the mode in which it is conveyed. For example, the sentence ‘Computers are a wonderful invention’ essentially has the same meaning whether one reads it, speaks it, or hears it. However, the ease with which people can read, listen, or speak differs depending on the person, task, and context. For example, many people find listening easier than reading.
Dyslexics have difficulties understanding and recognizing written words, making it hard for them to write grammatical sentences and spell correctly
dyslexia is a learning disorder that affects reading, writing, and spelling abilities. Individuals with dyslexia often struggle with understanding and recognizing written words, which can make it challenging for them to write grammatically correct sentences and spell accurately.
Many applications have been developed either to capitalize on people's reading, writing, and listening skills, or to support or replace them where they lack or have difficulty with them
Speech-recognition systems that allow users to interact with them by using spoken commands (e.g. word-processing dictation, Google Voice Search app, and home control devices that respond to vocalized requests
Speech-output systems that use artificially generated speech (e.g. written-text-to-speech systems for the blind).
Natural-language systems that enable users to type in questions and give text-based responses (e.g. the Ask search engine)
Keep the length of speech-based menus and instructions to a minimum. Research has shown that people find it hard to follow spoken menus with more than three or four options. Likewise, they are bad at remembering sets of instructions and directions that have more than a few parts. Accentuate the intonation of artificially generated speech voices, as they are harder to understand than human voices. Provide opportunities for making text large on a screen, without affecting the formatting, for people who find it hard to read small text.
Accentuating the intonation of artificially generated speech voices involves enhancing the rhythm of the speech to make it sound more natural and expressive
Consider a text-to-speech (TTS) system that converts written text into spoken words. Without accentuating the intonation, the synthesized speech may sound monotonous and lack expressiveness, as if every word is given equal emphasis and delivered with the same pitch and duration.
Problem solving, planning, reasoning, and decision making are processes involving reflective cognition. They include thinking about what to do, what the options are, and what the consequences might be of carrying out a given action. They often involve conscious processes (being aware of what one is thinking about), discussion with others (or oneself), and the use of various kinds of artifacts (e.g. maps, books, pen and paper). For example, when planning the best route to get somewhere, say a foreign city, we may ask others, use a paper map, get directions from the web, or use a combination of these. Reasoning involves working through different scenarios and deciding which is the best option or solution to a given problem. In the route-planning activity we may be aware of alternative routes and reason through the advantages and disadvantages of each route before deciding on the best one. Many a family argument has come about because one member thinks he knows the best route while another thinks otherwise. Nowadays, many of us offload this kind of decision making (and the stress) onto technology, by simply following the instructions given by a car GPS or a smartphone map app.
instead of providing ever more information to enable people to compare products when making a choice, a better strategy is to design technological interventions that provide just enough information, and in the right form, to facilitate good choices. One solution is to exploit new forms of augmented reality and wearable technology that enable information-frugal decision making and which have glanceable displays that can represent key information in an easy-to-digest form
Provide additional hidden information that is easy to access for users who wish to understand more about how to carry out an activity more effectively (e.g. web searching). Use simple and memorable functions at the interface for computational aids intended to support rapid decision making and planning that takes place while on the move
Simple computational aids in interfaces can support rapid decision-making and planning for users on the move by providing quick access to relevant information and facilitating efficient decision-making processes
magine a mobile shopping application that assists users in making informed purchasing decisions. The interface could include the following features:
Product Reviews and Ratings: The application provides access to product reviews and ratings from other customers. Users can quickly browse through the feedback to assess the quality and suitability of the product before making a purchase decision. The reviews can be displayed with an overall rating or highlighted key points for easy scanning.
Price Comparison: The interface includes a feature that allows users to compare prices for the same product across different online retailers. By entering the product name or scanning the barcode, the application retrieves prices from various sources, enabling users to quickly identify the best deal available.
Howard Gardner and Katie Davis (2013) in their book The App Generation note how the app mentality developing in the psyche of the younger generation is making it worse for them to make their own decisions because they are becoming more risk averse. By this they mean that young people are now depending on an increasing number of mobile apps that remove the risks of having to decide for themselves. They will first read what others have said on social media sites, blogs, and recommender apps before choosing where to eat, where to go, what to do, what to listen to, etc. But, relying on a multitude of apps means that young people are becoming increasingly more anxious about making decisions by themselves. For many, their first big decision is choosing which university to go to. This has become an agonizing and prolonged experience where both parents and apps play a central role in helping them out. They will read countless reviews, go on numerous visits to universities with their parents over several months, study the form of a number of league tables, read up on what others say on social networking sites, and so on. But in the end, was all that necessary? They may finally end up choosing where their friends are going or the one they liked the look of in the first place. Many will have spent hours, weeks, and even months talking about it, reading up on it, listening to lots of advice, and procrastinating
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The human information processing model, which focuses on modeling mental activities occurring inside the head, has some limitations when it comes to accounting for how people interact with computers and other devices in the real world. A few limitations:
In the information processing model, the emphasis is primarily on the internal cognitive processes involved in perceiving and processing information. While the model recognizes the importance of mental representations and cognitive processes, it may not explicitly address the role of the user interface in facilitating or hindering human-computer interaction.
In reality, the design of the user interface significantly influences how people interact with computers and devices. Elements such as layout, navigation, feedback, and visual cues play a crucial role in shaping user behavior and engagement. However, the information processing model does not explicitly consider the impact of these design factors on the user's cognitive processes and decision-making.
For example, the model may not account for the challenges users face when encountering a poorly designed user interface. If a website has confusing navigation or lacks clear visual hierarchy, users may struggle to locate relevant information or complete tasks efficiently. This frustration and cognitive load imposed by a suboptimal interface design can impact the user's information processing and decision-making, which the model does not explicitly address.
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Examples of external cognition in HCI include:
Visualizations and Graphs: Presenting data through visualizations and graphs allows users to perceive patterns and relationships more efficiently than reading raw data. Visual representations offload the cognitive load of mentally processing large datasets.
Note-taking and Annotations: Taking notes or adding annotations in digital documents or applications helps users remember important information, organize thoughts, and later retrieve relevant details without relying solely on memory.
Reminders and Notifications: Providing timely reminders and notifications within an application or through other communication channels helps users stay on track with tasks and appointments, reducing the need to remember everything.
Calendars and Schedulers: Digital calendars and schedulers help users manage their time and plan activities effectively, reducing cognitive demands for keeping track of events and appointments.
Spell Checkers and Grammar Tools: These tools support users in composing written content, ensuring correct spelling and grammar, and freeing cognitive resources for higher-level writing tasks.
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Over decades, there have been numerous strategies developed to reduce memory load by externalizing information. Examples of things that are better to be externalized include information that is difficult to remember such as phone numbers and addresses of your personal contacts, birthdays, or appointments. The various bits of information are easier to handle when they are offloaded from your memory and externalized either in the form of paper notes or software.
A mobile app for saving contact information helps the user offload their memory and instead, focus on the task at hand like calling or texting a friend.
Google Calendar, a free online calendar that has the ability to be synced across desktop and mobile devices, makes it easy for users to keep track of events and reminders. The calendar does a great job of giving users the control to categorize their events, set reminders, and input various location and contact details of their appointments. Such features greatly reduce a person’s memory load by externalizing information they are faced with in their daily lives.
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By leveraging computational offloading along with external representations, individuals can optimize their cognitive processes, reduce cognitive load, and enhance their problem-solving and decision-making abilities. This approach is especially valuable when dealing with large datasets, complex calculations, or resource-intensive tasks that would be challenging to perform solely with internal cognitive processes or limited local computing resources.
In the context of the "Image Recognition Mobile App" scenario, let's define the external representation and computational offloading:
External Representation: The external representation in this example refers to the visual interface provided by the mobile app, where users can interact with the app to capture or upload images for recognition. The visual interface typically includes elements like a camera view, gallery, or buttons to trigger image capture or image selection. It allows users to see and interact with the images and controls presented on the screen.
Computational Offloading: Computational offloading occurs when the mobile app transfers the resource-intensive image recognition tasks from the user's device (local processing) to a cloud-based image recognition service (remote processing). Instead of using the mobile device's limited processing power and local resources to analyze and recognize the uploaded or captured images, the app offloads this computational task to a more powerful server in the cloud.
A calculator can be used to calculate a variety of everyday expenses. Instead of having to work out the calculations in our heads and keep track of each result along the way, a calculator helps us store the numerical results and lets us focus on the task at hand – like calculating the cost of groceries for the week.
Google Sheets, a spreadsheet application for organizing, storage, and analysis of data in tabular form, is a great example of a tool that allows users to externalize information and use it to work out computational problems.
With the help of the calculator functions within Google Sheets, the user is able to calculate their monthly spending by looking at the total sum of item costs.
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In Google Keep, the user can makes several grocery lists and sets a reminder for when to go get groceries. It’s a great example of how annotations and cognitive tracing helps free up your user’s time and head space.
Google Keep is a note taking application that allows you to literally save what’s on your mind. It allows you to take notes, make lists, store photos, and sync them to all your devices. It’s a great example of how annotations and cognitive tracing can give your users a sense of control and assist them in making decisions. In Google Keep, users can modify checkboxes, move items around, and set reminders. This helps users trace where they are at in any given cognitive process.
Cognitive tracing entails the manipulation of external representations to form new information. An example of cognitive tracing can be seen in various content-sharing software containing user annotations marked with the date and time of the last annotation. This allows for the user to follow what happened or what’s been manipulated when they work on something and go back to it later.
Annotating involves the explanation or modification of external representations. For example, annotating documents can relieve the user of having to scan the whole document in the event of returning to the document in future. Allowing users to make annotations has the added benefit of permitting large amounts of information to be synthesized into small, personalized notes. Annotations shift the burden away from users by allowing them to externalize their thoughts, instead of them having to recall previous thoughts and figure things out all over again every time they revisit the same section of information.
