0000000000049580
AUTHOR
José J. Cañas
The Psychology of Fluent Use
In a perfect world, it would always be possible to operate technology effortlessly and to reach the desired goal. However, in the real world many factors may make technologies difficult to use or even hinder people from using technical artefacts. Most of these factors pertain to usability (i.e., technology’s ability to fit users’ capabilities) and thus concern technological solutions from the point of view of human beings as users of technology. Therefore, designing technical artefacts that are easy to use requires understanding the psychological and mental preconditions for using technology.
Do graphical overviews facilitate or hinder comprehension in hypertext?
Educational hypertexts usually include graphical overviews, conveying the structure of the text schematically with the aim of fostering comprehension. Despite the claims about their relevance, there is currently no consensus on the impact that hypertext overviews have on the reader's comprehension. In the present paper we have explored how hypertext overviews might affect comprehension with regard to (a) the time at which students read the overview and (b) the hypertext difficulty. The results from two eye-tracking studies revealed that reading a graphical overview at the beginning of the hypertext is related to an improvement in the participant's comprehension of quite difficult hypertexts…
How older and younger people see technology in Northern and Southern Europe : Closing the generation gap
Background Mental representations of technology can be affected by many social and biological factors. The aim of this study was to test the effects of two of these factors, age and culture, on how people mentally represent and experience technologies by comparing the conceptions of old and young people in Spain and Finland. Both Spain and Finland are European countries, but they are historically, geographically, and culturally very different. Method The study is framed within the life-based design (LBD) paradigm, where culture and age interact to define particular forms of life in which technology might be used and perceived differently. We hypothesised that there are differences in the me…
Do Sign Language Videos Improve Web Navigation for Deaf Signer Users?
The efficacy of video-based sign language (SL) navigation aids to improve Web search for Deaf Signers was tested by two experiments. Experiment 1 compared 2 navigation aids based on text hyperlinks linked to embedded SL videos, which differed in the spatial contiguity between the text hyperlink and SL video (contiguous vs. distant). Deaf Signers’ performance was similar in Web search using both aids, but a positive correlation between their word categorization abilities and search efficiency appeared in the distant condition. In Experiment 2, the contiguous condition was compared with a text-only hyperlink condition. Deaf Signers became less disorientated (used shorter paths to find the tar…
Information structure and practice as facilitators of deaf users' navigation in textual websites
Deaf users might find it difficult to navigate through websites with textual content which, for many of them, constitutes the written representation of a non-native oral language. With the aim of testing how the information structure could compensate for this difficulty, 27 prelingual deaf users of sign language were asked to search a set of headlines in a web newspaper where information structure and practice were manipulated. While practice did not affect deep structures (web content distributed through four layers of nodes), wide structures (web content concentrated in two layers) did facilitate users' performance in the last trial block and compromised it in the first trial block. It is…
Technology in Life
Technological advancements have changed human life throughout history as technical inventions have emancipated people from many mundane, necessary tasks. The development of technical artefacts has long relied on the natural sciences and engineering. However, recent technical advancements—such as ubiquitous and multifunctional technologies as well as the emergence of social media—have made it necessary to approach design from a multidisciplinary perspective and to ground design thinking more on the understanding of human mind and human life. As the natural sciences and human research are in many respects different practices, it is time to discuss their mutually inclusive roles in design and …
Life-Based Design
Technical artefacts should exist to bring added value and quality to people’s lives. HTI design should, therefore, be considered in a much broader context than merely the usage of technology. It should be based on an understanding of people’s lives and well-grounded design methods and tools, which can investigate life and apply this knowledge to the design work. The conceptual model of life-based design (LBD) is based on segregating unified systems of actions called forms of life. Investigating the structure of actions and related facts relevant to particular forms of life, in addition to the values that people follow, is the core tool of LBD. The knowledge produced constitutes a template f…
Emotions, Motives, Individuals, and Cultures in Interaction
Cognitive aspects of the human mind form the foundations of solving usability problems. However, being able to use a technology is not the only critical psychological question in the design of successful HTI. In addition to understanding users’ capabilities, it is equally important to comprehend their preferences and what they want to accomplish with the help of technologies. Knowledge of the dynamic mind—in particular human emotions, motives, and personality—helps address such ‘liking and wanting’ concerns in HTI design.
Epilogue: Designing for Life
The main criterion for HTI design is that it should not only concern the development of a technical artefact and the design of the immediate usage situation, but also help illustrate how technologies can advance the quality of human life. People should be motivated to adopt and use technology by the added value it can bring to everyday life to help them accomplish their goals. The question of how much a technology can improve the quality of human life defines the worth of the particular technology.
The Logic of User Interface Design
Technical artefacts exist so that people can use them to make something happen. Their capacity to do so depends on the functions and functionalities of the technology, which requires users. Technologies thus have to give users the ability to control them, and the designer’s role is to create the actions and work processes for which the artefacts are intended. This basic HTI pursuit is called user interface design. It applies technical interaction concepts to solve design problems. This chapter presents the overall principles and goals for the user interface design of any technical artefact.
Human digital twins and cognitive mimetic
Digital twins – digital models of technical systems and processes – have recently been introduced to work with complex industrial processes. Yet should such models concern only physical objects (as definitions of them often imply), or should users and other human beings also be included? Models that include people have been called human digital twins (HDTs); they facilitate more accurate analyses of technologies in practical use. The cognitive mimetic approach can be used to describe human interactions with technologies. This approach analyses human information processes such as perceiving and thinking to mimic how people process information in order to design intelligent technologies. The …