Chapter 2

2. Human in HCI
2.1. Input/Output Channels/Information’s
A person’s interaction with the outside world occurs through the exchange of information, which
involves both receiving and sending: input and output. In an interaction with a computer, the user
receives information output by the computer and responds by providing input to it.
The user’s output becomes the computer’s input, and vice versa. Consequently, the use of the
terms input and output may lead to confusion, so we shall blur the distinction somewhat and
concentrate on the channels involved.
This blurring is appropriate since, although a particular channel may have a primary role as input
or output in the interaction, it is more than likely that it is also used in the other role. For
example, sight may be used primarily in receiving information from the computer, but it can also
be used to provide information to the computer, for example, by fixating on a particular screen
point when using an eye gaze system.
Input in the human occurs mainly through the senses and output through the motor control of
the effectors.
There are five major senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Of these, the first three are
the most important to HCI. Taste and smell do not currently play a significant role in HCI, and
it is not clear whether they could be exploited at all in general computer systems, although they
could have a role to play in more specialized systems (smells to give warning of malfunction, for
example) or in augmented reality systems. However, vision, hearing, and touch are central.
Similarly, there are a number of effectors, including the limbs, fingers, eyes, head, and vocal
system. In the interaction with the computer, the fingers play the primary role, through typing or
mouse control, with some use of voice, and eye, head, and body position.
i) The Human Eye:
Vision begins with light.
ii) Hearing:
Just as vision begins with light, hearing begins with the vibrations in the air or sound
waves.
iii) Touch:
The third and last of the senses that we will consider is touch or haptic perception.

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Movement
Before leaving this section on the human’s input–output channels, we need to consider motor
control and how the way we move affects our interaction with computers. A simple action, such
as hitting a button in response to a question, involves a number of processing stages. The
stimulus (of the question) is received through the sensory receptors and transmitted to the brain.
The question is processed, and a valid response is generated. The brain then tells the appropriate
muscles to respond. Each of these stages takes time, which can be roughly divided into reaction
time and movement time.
Movement time is largely dependent on the physical characteristics of the subjects, such as their
age and fitness. Reaction time varies according to the sensory channel through which the
stimulus is received. A person can react to an auditory stimulus by handling goods. E-commerce
has become very successful in certain areas of sales, such as travel services, books, CDs & food.
Speed and accuracy of movement are important considerations in the design of interactive
systems, primarily in terms of the time taken to move to a particular target on a screen. The
target may be a button, a menu item, or an icon, for example. The time taken to hit a target is a
function of the size of the target and the distance that has to be moved.
This is formalized in Fitts’ Law. There are many variations of this formula, which have varying
constants, but they are all very similar.
One common form is Movement time = a + b log2(distance/size + 1)
where a and b are empirically determined constants.
This affects the type of target we design. Since users will find it more difficult to manipulate
small objects, targets should generally be as large as possible, and the distance to be moved as
small as possible.

2.2. Human Memory

Have you ever played the memory game? The idea is that each player has to recount a list of
objects and add one more to the end. There are many variations, but the objects are all loosely
related: ‘I went to the market and bought a lemon, some oranges, bacon . . .’ or ‘I went to the zoo
and saw monkeys, and lions, and tigers . . .’ and so on. As the list grows, objects are missed out
or recalled in the wrong order, and so people are eliminated from the game. The winner is the
person remaining at the end. Such games rely on our ability to store and retrieve information,
even seemingly arbitrary items. This is the job of our memory system.

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Indeed, much of our everyday activity relies on memory. As well as storing all our factual
knowledge, our memory contains our knowledge of actions or procedures.

It allows us to repeat actions, to use language, and to use new information received via our
senses. It also gives us our sense of identity by preserving information from our past experiences.
But how does our memory work? How do we remember arbitrary lists such as those generated in
the memory game? Why do some people remember more easily than others? And what happens
when we forget? In order to answer questions such as these, we need to understand some of the
capabilities and limitations of human memory.
Memory is the second part of our model of the human as an information-processing system.
However, as we noted earlier, such a division is simplistic since, as we shall see, memory is
associated with each level of processing. Bearing this in mind, we will consider the way in which
memory is structured and the activities that take place within the system.
It is generally agreed that there are three types of memory or memory function: sensory buffers,
short-term memory or working memory, and long-term memory.
1. Sensory memory
The sensory memories act as buffers for stimuli received through the senses. A sensory memory
exists for each sensory channel: iconic memory for visual stimuli, echoic memory for
aural/hearing stimuli, and haptic memory for touch. These memories are constantly overwritten
by new information coming in on these channels.
2. Short-term memory
Short-term memory or working memory acts as a ‘scratch-pad’ for temporary recall of
information. It is used to store information that is only required fleetingly. For example, calculate
the multiplication 35 × 6 in your head. The chances are that you will have done this calculation
in stages, perhaps 5 × 6 and then 30 × 6 and added the results; or you may have used the fact that
6 = 2 × 3 and calculated 2 × 35 = 70, followed by 3 × 70. To perform calculations such as this,
we need to store the intermediate stages for use later. Or consider reading.

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To comprehend this sentence, you need to hold in your mind the beginning of the sentence as
you read the rest. Both of these tasks use short-term memory.
3. Long-term memory
If short-term memory is our working memory or ‘scratch-pad’, long-term memory is our main
resource. Here we store factual information, experiential knowledge, and procedural rules of
behavior, in fact, everything that we ‘know’. These distinctions provide further evidence of a
memory structure with several parts. Long-term memory is intended for the long-term storage of
information. Information is placed there from working memory through rehearsal. Unlike
working memory, there is little decay: long-term recall after minutes is the same as that after
hours or days.

2.3. Thinking: Reasoning and Problem Solving

We have considered how information finds its way into and out of the human system and how it
is stored. Finally, we come to look at how it is processed and manipulated. This is perhaps the
area that is most complex and which separates humans from other information-processing
systems, both artificial and natural.
Although it is clear that animals receive and store information, there is little evidence to suggest
that they can use it in quite the same way as humans. Similarly, artificial intelligence has
produced machines that can see (albeit in a limited way) and store information. But their ability
to use that information is limited to small domains.
Humans, on the other hand, can use information to reason and solve problems, and indeed do
these activities when the information is partial or unavailable. Human thought is conscious and
self-aware: while we may not always be able to identify the processes we use, we can identify
the products of these processes, our thoughts. In addition, we are able to think about things of
which we have no experience and solve problems that we have never seen before.
How is this done?
Thinking can require different amounts of knowledge. Some thinking activities are very directed,
and the knowledge required is constrained. Others require vast amounts of knowledge from
different domains. For example, performing a subtraction calculation requires a relatively small
amount of knowledge from a constrained domain, whereas understanding newspaper headlines
demands knowledge of politics, social structures, public figures, and world events.

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Reasoning
Reasoning is the process by which we use the knowledge we have to draw conclusions or infer
something new about the domain of interest. There are a number of different types of reasoning:
deductive, inductive, and abductive. We use each of these types of reasoning in everyday life,
but they differ in significant ways.

a) Deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning derives the logically necessary conclusion from the given premises.
For example,
If it is Friday, then she will go to work
It is Friday
Therefore, she will go to work.
It is at this point, where truth and validity clash, that human deduction is poorest. One
explanation for this is that people bring their world knowledge into the reasoning process. There
is a good reason for this. It allows us to take shortcuts, which make dialogue and interaction
between people informative but efficient. We assume a certain amount of shared knowledge in
our dealings with each other, which in turn allows us to interpret the inferences and deductions
implied by others. If validity rather than truth were preferred, all premises would have to be
made explicit.

b) Inductive reasoning
Induction is generalizing from cases we have seen to infer information about cases we have not
seen. For example, if every elephant we have ever seen has tusks, we infer that all elephants have
tusks. Of course, this inference is unreliable and cannot be proved to be true; it can only be
proved to be false.
We can disprove the inference simply by producing an elephant without tusks.
In spite of its unreliability, induction is a useful process that we use constantly in learning about
our environment. We can never see all the elephants that have ever lived or will ever live, but we
have certain knowledge about elephants which we are prepared to trust for all practical purposes,
which has largely been inferred by induction.
Even if we saw an elephant without a trunk, we would be unlikely to move from our position that
‘All elephants have trunks’, since we are better at using positive than negative evidence.

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A common response to this (was it yours?) is to check the E and the 4. However, this uses only
positive evidence. In fact, to test the truth of the statement, we need to check negative evidence:
if we can find a card that has an odd number on one side and a vowel on the other, we have
disproved the statement. We must therefore check E and 7. It does not matter what is on the other
side of the other cards: the statement does not say that all even numbers have vowels, just that all
vowels have even numbers.

C) Abductive reasoning
Abduction reasons from a fact to the action or state that caused it. This is the method we use to
derive explanations for the events we observe. For example, suppose we know that Sam always
drives too fast when she has been drinking. If we see Sam driving too fast, we may infer that she
has been drinking. Of course, this too is unreliable since there may be another reason why she is
driving fast: she may have been called to an emergency, for example. In spite of its unreliability,
it is clear that people do infer explanations in this way and hold onto them until they have
evidence to support an alternative theory or explanation. This can lead to problems in using
interactive systems. If an event always follows an action, the user will infer that the event is
caused by the action unless evidence to the contrary is made available. If, in fact, the event and
the action are unrelated, confusion and even error often result.
Problem solving
If reasoning is a means of inferring new information from what is already known, problem-
solving is the process of finding a solution to an unfamiliar task, using the knowledge we have.
Human problem-solving is characterized by the ability to adapt the information we have to deal
with new situations. However, often solutions seem to be original and creative. There are a
number of different views of how people solve problems.

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The earliest, dating back to the first half of the 20 th century, is the Gestalt view that problem-
solving involves both reuse of knowledge and insight. This has been largely superseded, but the
questions it was trying to address remain, and its influence can be seen in later research.

Gestalt theory
Gestalt psychologists were answering the claim, made by behaviorists, that problem-solving is a
matter of reproducing known responses or trial and error. This explanation was considered by the
Gestalt school to be insufficient to account for human problem-solving behavior. Instead, they
claimed, problem-solving is both productive and reproductive.
Reproductive problem-solving draws on previous experience, as the behaviorists claimed, but
productive problem-solving involves insight and restructuring of the problem.
Skill acquisition
All of the problem-solving that we have considered so far has concentrated on handling
unfamiliar problems. However, for much of the time, the problems that we face are not
completely new. Instead, we gradually acquire skills in a particular domain.
Each of these differences stems from a better encoding of knowledge in the expert: information
structures are fine-tuned at a deep level to enable efficient and accurate retrieval. But how does
this happen? How is a skill such as this acquired? One model of skill acquisition is Anderson’s
ACT* model.
ACT* identifies three basic levels of skill:
1. The learner uses general-purpose rules that interpret facts about a problem. This is slow and
demanding on memory access.
2. The learner develops rules specific to the task.
3. The rules are tuned to speed up performance.
General mechanisms are provided to account for the transitions between these levels. For
example, proceduralizing is a mechanism to move from the first to the second. It removes the
parts of the rule that demand memory access and replaces variables with specific values.
Generalization, on the other hand, is a mechanism that moves from the second level to the third.
It generalizes from the specific cases to general properties of those cases. Commonalities
between rules are condensed to produce a general-purpose rule. These are best illustrated by
example. Imagine you are learning to cook. Initially, you may have a general rule to tell you how

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long a dish needs to be in the oven, and several explicit representations of dishes in memory.
You can instantiate the rule by retrieving information from memory.
IF cook[type, ingredients, time]
THEN
cook for: time
cook[casserole, [chicken,carrots,potatoes], 2 hours]
cook[casserole, [beef,dumplings,carrots], 2 hours]
cook[cake, [flour,sugar,butter,eggs], 45 mins]
Gradually, your knowledge becomes proceduralized, and you have specific rules for each case:
IF type is casserole
AND ingredients are [chicken,carrots,potatoes]
THEN
cook for: 2 hours
IF type is casserole
AND ingredients are [beef,dumplings,carrots]
THEN
cook for: 2 hours
IF type is cake
AND ingredients are [flour,sugar,butter,eggs]
THEN
cook for: 45 mins
Finally, you may generalize from these rules to produce general-purpose rules, which
exploit their commonalities:
IF type is casserole
AND ingredients are ANYTHING
THEN
cook for: 2 hours
The first stage uses knowledge extensively. The second stage relies upon known procedures.
The third stage represents skilled behavior. Such behavior may, in fact, become automatic and,
as such, be difficult to make explicit.

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For example, think of an activity at which you are skilled, perhaps driving a car or riding a bike.
Try to describe to someone the exact procedure that you go through to do this. You will find this
quite difficult.
In fact, experts tend to have to rehearse their actions mentally to identify exactly what they do.
Such skilled behavior is efficient but may cause errors when the context of the activity changes.

Errors and mental models

Human capability for interpreting and manipulating information is quite impressive. However,
we do make mistakes. Some are trivial, resulting in no more than temporary inconvenience or
annoyance. Others may be more serious, requiring substantial effort to correct.
Occasionally, an error may have catastrophic effects, as we see when ‘human error’ results in a
plane crash or nuclear plant leak. Assuming a person builds a mental model of the system being
dealt with, errors may occur if the actual operation differs from the mental model.

2.4. Emotion
So far in this chapter, we have concentrated on human perceptual and cognitive abilities. But
human experience is far more complex than this. Our emotional response to situations affects
how we perform. For example, positive emotions enable us to think more creatively, to solve
complex problems, whereas negative emotion pushes us into narrow, focused thinking.
A problem that may be easy to solve when we are relaxed will become difficult if we are
frustrated or afraid.
Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear/hyena/elephant,
are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here . . . is
that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.
“As Donald Norman says: Negative affect can make it harder to do even easy tasks;
positive affect can make it easier to do difficult tasks”.

2.5. Individual Differences

We have assumed that everyone has similar capabilities and limitations and that we can therefore
make generalizations. To an extent, this is true: the psychological principles and properties that
we have discussed apply to the majority of people.

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Notwithstanding this, we should remember that, although we share processes in common,
humans, and therefore users, are not all the same. We should be aware of individual differences
so that we can account for them as far as possible within our designs. These differences may be
long-term, such as sex, physical capabilities, and intellectual capabilities.

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