CHAPTER 4
COGNITIVE ASPECTS
INTRODUCTION
Imagine it is late in the evening and you are sitting in front of your
computer. You have an assignment to complete by tomorrow
morning – a 3000 word essay on how natural are natural user
interfaces – but you are not getting very far with it. You begin to
panic and start biting your nails. You see two text messages flash
up on your smartphone. You instantly abandon your essay and
cradle your smartphone to read them. One is from your mother and
the other from your friend asking if you want to go out for a drink.
You reply straight away to them both. Before you know it you're
back on Facebook to see if any of your friends have posted
anything about the party you wanted to go to but had to say no.
INTRODUCTION
FaceTime rings and you see it is your dad calling. You answer it
and he asks if you have been watching the football game. You say
you are too busy working toward your deadline and he tells you
your team has just scored. You chat with him and then say you have
to get back to work. You realize 30 minutes has passed and you
return your attention to the essay title. You type ‘Natural User
Interface’ into Google Scholar and click on the top article. You click
on the PDF icon for the article and it takes you to another page
that requires a login and password. You don't have them for that
publisher.
INTRODUCTION
You go back to Google Scholar and click on the next link. This time
it takes you to the ACM digital library that your university has
access to. But before you realize it you have clicked on the BBC
Sports site to check the latest score for the football game. Your
team has just scored again. Your phone starts buzzing. Two new
WhatsApp messages are waiting for you. One is from your dad
and another one from your girlfriend. You reply to both and within
seconds they text back. And on it goes. You glance at the time on
your computer. It is 3.00 a.m. You really are in a panic now and
finally switch everything off except your word processor.
INTRODUCTION
In the past 10 to 15 years it has become increasingly common for
people to be always switching their attention between multiple tasks. At
its most extreme form, such behavior has been found to be highly
addictive: instead of focusing on our work we're really waiting for the
next hit – be it a new email, text, Facebook posting, news feed, tweet,
and so forth. For some, such chronic media multitasking can be
debilitating as they are unable to focus their attention on a single task
for very long. For others, they have become very adept at using multiple
sources of information to perform multiple tasks.
The study of human cognition can help us understand these and other
new kinds of computer-augmented behaviors by examining humans’
abilities and limitations when interacting with technologies
WHAT IS COGNITION?
There are many different kinds of cognition, such as thinking,
remembering, learning, daydreaming, decision making, seeing, reading,
writing, and talking.
Norman (1993) distinguishes between two general modes: experiential
and reflective cognition.
Examples include driving a car, reading a book, having a conversation,
and playing a video game.
Other ways of describing cognition are in terms of the context in which
it takes place, the tools that are employed, the artifacts and interfaces
that are used, and the people involved.
COGNITION HAS ALSO BEEN DESCRIBED IN TERMS
OF SPECIFIC KINDS OF PROCESSES.
attention
perception
memory
learning
reading, speaking, and listening problem solving,
planning, reasoning, and decision making
ATTENTION
This is the process of selecting things to concentrate on, at a point
in time, from the range of possibilities available.
Attention involves our auditory and/or visual senses.
Attention allows us to focus on information that is relevant to what
we are doing.
PERCEPTION
Perception refers to how information is acquired from the
environment via the different sense organs – eyes, ears, fingers –
and transformed into experiences of objects, events, sounds, and
tastes. It is complex, involving other cognitive processes such as
memory, attention, and language.
Vision is the most dominant sense for sighted individuals, followed
by hearing and touch. With respect to interaction design it is
important to present information in a way that can be readily
perceived in the manner intended.
MEMORY
Memory involves recalling various kinds of knowledge that allow us
to act appropriately. It is very versatile, enabling us to do many
things.
It is not possible for us to remember everything that we see, hear,
taste, smell, or touch, nor would we want to, as our brains would
get completely overloaded. A filtering process is used to decide
what information gets further processed and memorized.
LEARNING
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.
READING, SPEAKING, AND LISTENING
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.
PROBLEM SOLVING, PLANNING, REASONING, AND
DECISION MAKING
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.
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.
