SENG 310 - Lecture 10

15 February 2016

Reading, speaking and listening

  • The ease with which people an 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
  • People with dyslexia have difficulties understanding and recognizing written words

Design implications:

  • Speech-based menus and instructions should be short
  • Accentuate the intonation of artificially generated speech voices
  • Provide opportunities for making text large or otherwise modify reading material

Problem-solving planning, reasoning and decision-making

  • All involve 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 the best options

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

Information Processing

Information in

  1. Encoding
  2. Comparison
  3. Response selection
  4. Response execution

output or response out

Human processor model 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

Cognition in the wild

  • Cognitive processes may be distributed across members of a social group
  • Cognitive processes may involve coordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure
  • Process may be distributed through time – with products of earlier events transforming nature of later events

Externalizing to reduce memory load

Diaries, reminders, calendars, notes, shopping lists, to-dos
on Post-its, piles, marked emails

External representations:

  • Remind us that we need to do something
  • Remind us of what to do
  • Remind us when to do something

Computational offloading

Using technology to compute information which could otherwise (with more difficulty) be computed by the human

Annotation and cognitive tracing

Annotation: e.g. cross off, ticking underlining
Cognitive Tracing: e.g. playing scrabble, playing with graphs

Design implications

Provide external representations at the interface that reduce memory load and facilitate computational offloading

Guest Lecture

Blah

Assignments

None