Author: mwolters

Reader in Design Informatics

Week 3: Cognition

Course Organisation

  • The deadline for Questions and Comments is Monday midnight. No exceptions. I need the time to analyse 100+ submissions and extract themes for teaching.
  • The Case Study Assignment will be visible from Thursday onwards. We will do our best to return marks on time. Make sure you submit anonymously, and put your exam number and the number of words in the title. Captions and references don’t count towards the number of words.
  • For the next three weeks (January 31, February 7, February 14), I am running two sessions with the same content – 11-1 Wednesdays 5.05, 1-3 Wednesdays 6.06. After the “week off” (aka Festival of Creative Learning) I will go back to one session per week, because most of you need the 11-1 slot.
  • Strike action: I am currently not a member of UCU. However, I plan to join the Union and be part of the strike action for the last five days, March 14, 15, 16, 19, and 20, if there is no resolution by then. University staff in the UK do not have tenure, unlike staff in many other countries.
  • Session Recording: I will use my own laptop and set up session recording on it for next week. In the mean time, feel free to record me with your own devices. Since this is a flipped classroom, there are no slides except for those posted here. Sit at the front, stop me when you can no longer understand what I’m saying, and ask questions!

Starter

When Microsoft switched from Windows 7 to Windows 8, the new user interface was a shock, because it ditched most existing mental models of what the Windows operating system should look like.

This article is a good summary of the main critiques when Windows 8 first came out. (Also: Anyone remember netbooks?)

This article is a good reminder of why usability doesn’t predict sales. (Also remember: what Steve Jobs and Apple did was to make actual user needs, which can be quite different from what users think they need, part of their design process.)

Themes from Questions and Comments

Theme 1: Clarifying the different types of memory

What I am teaching you here is one particular type of theory, based on the approach of Alan Baddeley and colleagues, which is well studied and has a lot of evidence. The graphics below are based on this theory.

Long term memory versus sensory and short term memory
Relationship between short term, sensory, and working memory
Working memory in the context of different types of memory
How the detailed structure of working memory fits into the picture

Theme 2: Can we avoid user bias?

No – we have to work with them and around them. One of the main points of understanding how perception works is that this knowledge allows you to exploit perceptual biases to structure user interfaces and guide the user’s attention. Perception and cognition are closely linked, for good reason.

Theme 3: Human learning versus machine learning

Neural networks started out as a way of modelling the brain – now, the field of machine learning has become partly uncoupled from the aim of modelling human neural function.

Theme 4: Can mental models be changed and adapted?

Yes, they can – but you need to make sure it’s worth the effort.

Activities

Students without HCI experience: Write out the step by step script of adding an appointment to your phone or laptop calendar. Start with unlocking your phone. Treat any text entry as one single step. Write down which calendar app you are using.

Students with HCI / Design Informatics experience: There are still people who use paper calendars and planners. Why? Make a plan for searching the web for statements from people who use paper calendars. You can choose from the following options:

 

 

Week 2: Perception and Behaviour

Course Organisation

  • The location of this course is still not fixed, because we have an enrolment of  129 as of this morning, which is 2.5x the number that Timetabling originally scheduled. So keep an eye on announcements!
  • You will receive an announcement, both on LEARN and via email, as soon as the revised page with the readings and materials for the week goes live.
  • Questions and comments are about the material covered in the course. If you have any questions and comments about how the course is run, email me. I expect at least one pertinent question and/or comment pertinent to the material.
  • I am taking attendance, because many of you are here on Tier 4 visas, and the Home Office expects them to report in regularly.
  • You will need to access most of the papers referenced in this web site through a University account. I’m not allowed to link to Sci Hub, I’m afraid.
  • If you have any additional support needs, both documented and undocumented, please contact me now!

Themes from Questions and Comments (First Part)

Many of you requested discussion of examples from privacy and security and from game design and development.

Theme 1: Inclusive Design

Does inclusive design mean that we need to design for everyone? How does that work in practice, and how can we get it to work?

Additional Resources: The Inclusive Design Cube

Theme 2: Affordances

What is an affordance, why does it matter, and why do we differentiate between physical and perceived affordances and cultural conventions?

Additional resources: Bad Designs

Where does the term come from? An overview paper from Ecological Psychology

How is it used in HCI? A summary by McGrenere and Ho. See in particular Figure 3 in that paper for a good explanation of why we care about this concept.

Theme 3: Perception

Why do we care about perceptual thresholds, and how are they established?

Theme 4: Signal Detection Theory

How does signal detection theory work, and why does it matter for design?

Additional resources:

Introduction by David Heeger

Course Activities (Second Part)

You will be observing a variety of classrooms and set ups as you take this course. As an ongoing activity, I’d like you to keep notes about the way in which the environment affected your ability to learn. Did you have good seats? Could you see and hear? Was it immediately obvious to you where best to sit?

Top Hat Activities: Culture and Language, Neko Atsume reviews, Neko Atsume user experience

 

 

 

Week 1, 2018

Welcome to the course!

This is a plan of our first session.

Introduction: Why Human Factors matter – the Hawaii incident.

False emergency alert about an incoming missile. (BBC)

How the emergency could have been avoided. (blog post)

Overview of the Learning Outcomes

see the Course Handbook 

Setting Up Top Hat

When you set up Top Hat for the course, note down every single step you take, and every single problem you have.

Top Hat Activities

  • number of steps
  • description of errors
  • own goals for the course

Introduction to Human Factors

See Week 1 materials

Course Handbook and Assessments

see Course Handbook

For next week:

Read materials

Complete Questions and Comments by Monday, January 21, midnight. I will use the number of Q&Cs completed as an indication of the number of people who will actually be in the course, and move us to a bigger venue.

What Happens in Weeks 10 and 11?

Week 9 is the last week when we are meeting physically. During Weeks 10 and 11, I am in the States, and we will be meeting virtually. I have created Discussion Forums on the LEARN site for the course (Rubric: Course Forums), where we can discuss the assignment (due April 10) and any questions that arise about the course materials.

I will respond within one working day to emails and will check the forums every day, but bear in mind that I’ll be in the Central or Mountain time zones from March 29-April 13, that I will be mostly offline on March 29 and April 3, and that I will be checking email at most twice a day.

Please note that if you email me with questions at the last minute on April 10, I won’t be able to answer in time. If there are issues with TurnItIn, email the course secretary, Stephanie Fong (email address on LEARN).

Guidance on the Usability Report

The Usability Report is an essay where you document a usability problem, discuss potential solutions, and back up your findings with a discussion of the relevant literature.

The original specification reads as follows:

“Choose a web site, a piece of software, an app, or a small gadget of your choice, and choose what aspect of usability you want to focus on, and how you will measure it. Measure this aspect, discuss your findings, and suggest improvements.”

The most important advice I can give you is to focus on a small aspect of usability that you can document well, and for which you know the literature.

Example: Viewing survey results in the LEARN instructor interface versus Surveymonkey. In LEARN, the survey results are difficult to find, and options for viewing results are hidden in a dropdown menu. In Surveymonkey, you can access results via an icon straight from the list of available surveys.

The second most important piece of advice is to illustrate what you mean by using clearly annotated pictures and screenshots.

Example: I haven’t provided any screenshots with this post. How difficult is it for you to get an idea of the difference between the interfaces?

Suggested Structure

Introduction – what do you investigate and why does it matter?

Example: Surveys are a useful way of getting feedback from students. I have chosen to compare the survey functionality in LEARN to the survey functionality of another commonly used survey tool. Surveys in LEARN are part of the student interface, whereas using Surveymonkey requires an external link. Specifically, I am interested in how easy it is to track results (Note: your actual introduction would be longer and more specific than this!)

Background – context, user group, existing research, if any – both on the application and the usability aspect you will be considering

Example: Context is getting feedback on the course or on course design choices, the user group is instructors, existing research could be on feedback from students to teachers and on learning environments. The angle I’ll take focuses on mental models and consistency between interfaces versus consistency within the same interface

Method – how you investigated your aspect. Provide enough detail that somebody else can replicate your study.

Example: I asked four instructors to take four different surveys implemented in LEARN and SurveyMonkey and report on the results of one LEARN and one SurveyMonkey survey. I timed how long it took them to look up the results and interviewed them about their experiences (Note how many other details you’d need to be able to replicate the study I suggest here.)

Results – what you found. descriptive statistics. Key themes of interviews

Example: instructors took twice as long on LEARN as on SurveyMonkey. They found LEARN very fiddly. (Note: your actual results section would be both longer and more professionally written than this!)

Discussion – how does what you found relate to the literature on the subject? What improvements could be made?

Example: While the LEARN approach is internally consistent within the Learning Environment, it is inconsistent with commonly used survey tools, and suboptimal when it comes to administering and looking up the results of surveys. This can be substantiated by [REFERENCES]. A redesign of the LEARN grade centre is recommended

For the references, if you don’t know what style you should be using, use APA style.

Any Questions?

Please post them in the comments.

If you want feedback on your own plans, email me, but be aware that I may post that feedback as an update to this post.

Week 8 Activities

Task 1: In groups of 4, look for information about how to summarise a variable like SUS scores in a few key numbers. Keep track of all information sources – what people in your group already knew, where you checked, etc.

Task 2: Compute those  numbers. Keep track how you sought out the information you needed to do that in your spreadsheet of choice. How was it presented? Text? Graphics? Pictures? A mix?

Task 3: What would be a good visualisation?

Task 4: Think about examples of information poverty.

 

 

 

Week 7 Activities

Discussion

Example presentation of an interface that invites errors.Errors Presentation I Errors Presentation 2

Task

In groups of 4: Student 1 chooses text of around 100 words and dictates, Student 2 types as quickly as possible, Student 3 times how long it takes, Student 4 counts typing errors. How often did Student 2 correct themselves? How many typos are in the final product?

Task

Stay in your groups. Look for examples where errors are monetised. Monetising errors PDF

Week 6 Activities

Task Analysis:

  • make a list of tasks that you typically do with your mobile phone
  • in groups of 2, do a task analysis of one sample task to be decided in class

Usability assessment:

Work in groups of 4. Person A does a task, while Person B notes down every single mouse click (Measure 1), Person C times the task start to finish, and Person D determines whether Person A was successful and keeps notes of any problems along the way.

Use two tasks:

1) Go onto LEARN, goes to the Discussion Forum (General) and answer the question about their favourite animal.

2) Go onto TopHat, and do the same

Complete the System Usability Scale for

a) LEARN

b) the Class blog

c) TurnItIn

Preliminary Survey Results for Mid-Term Course Feedback

Thank you for your submissions! 10 out of 34 have submitted the survey, and 4 are still pending. There’s no time limit on this survey, of course, but if I get your submissions before Week 6, I can start implementing changes 🙂

Even if you agree with the changes that I’m planning to make, it would still be good to get feedback.

Results so far

From what I have seen so far, 3 out of 10 would like more of a challenge, whereas for 7 out of 10, the pace was right.

Changes I will make based on your feedback:

  • Review Learning Outcomes at the start of each class. That’s relatively straightforward; I will do that after the initial questions, to give people time to come in and settle.
  • Draw a clearer line between blog and Top Hat. I will use Top Hat for in class activities, the blog for out of class activities / revision
  • Specify class activities more clearly. I will take care to write these down more clearly on Top Hat, and spend some more time typing at the front – especially for those activities that I make up on the fly in response to your questions
  • More workshops and interactive class activities, less school-style question answering. I will come prepared with more activities and more opportunities to identify useful activities.
  • Improve in-class discussions by ensuring that they have a specific outcome, which will discourage just chatting, are shorter, and more clearly linked to your own learning

What I will review for the next iteration of the course is whether I should keep using the blog / external web site. (Also, I will work on my handwriting …)

(Updated: previous feedback was based on 7 respondents, current on 10)