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.

Introduction—Feelings Matter

Emotions are a hot topic in design, human–computer interaction and any area of business these days. Their significance in areas in which people make choices, decisions and engage in action has been undeniable for at least the last 40 years of psychology and consumer scholarship. What once was an extremely contested, fuzzy and (almost) easily scientifically avoidable area, is now at the centre of everyone’s interest. In an era of cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (so-called learning and thinking machines), and optimization, all attention is placed on what makes us human, and the ways in which human thought actually operates. This emotional logic, intentionality and consciousness i…

The Right Concepts for the Right Problems

A framework for intention-driven requirements engineering of innovative software products

Requirements engineering is highly challenging particularly when designing innovative software products. This is so because there are no corresponding products, ultimate needs of actors are difficult to capture, the products may have unforeseeable impacts on the actors’ behavior, and it is hard to find out how value-added and competitive the product actually is. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for intention-driven requirements engineering of innovative software products, which combines technological, social and business viewpoints. We illustrate its use with a short example related to the domain of web mapping services and augmented reality. peerReviewed

Emotional Dimensions of User Experience ? A User Psychological Analysis

User psychology is a human–technology interaction research approach that uses psychological concepts, theories, and findings to structure problems of human–technology interaction. As the notion of user experience has become central in human–technology interaction research and in product development, it is necessary to investigate the user psychology of user experience. This analysis of emotional human–technology interaction is based on the psychological theory of basic emotions. Three studies, two laboratory experiments, and one field study are used to investigate the basic emotions and the emotional mind involved in user experience. The first and second experiments study the measurement of…

Open Access Publishing as an Incorporator of Research and Innovation Cycle

Even though basic research doesn’t often result in immediately usable products, it plays an essential role in technological innovations, as it has formed the basis for many groundbreaking advances in product development over the decades. For instance, Maxwell’s 19 century research into electricity and magnetic fields (Copeland, 2000) has resulted in a vast array of products that many of us take for granted in modern daily life. And Turing’s intuitive consideration of the way mathematicians think paved the way for the development of computers (Friedel, 2002) and eventually to many digital technologies. A multitude of similar examples that demonstrate the connection between ideas emerging fro…

User psychological problems in implementing production control system

Aim of this study was to analyze user psychological problems in implementing new production control system. Our preliminary results suggest that main user psychological problem is rare use effect and learning.

Ethics in designing intelligent systems

The idea of Hume’s guillotine contains the argument that one cannot derive values from facts. As intelligent systems operate with facts, Hume’s famous dilemma seems to contradict the very idea of being able to create ethical intelligent systems. In a closer look, ethics is a system of rules guiding actions. Actions always have factual or cognitive aspects, as well as evaluative or emotional aspects. Therefore, Hume’s juxtaposition of facts and norms is not well-founded. Instead of separating the facts and norms it should rather ask what kinds of facts are associated to what kinds of norms. Consequently, Hume’s guillotine sets no limits in processing ethical information, as one can combine f…

Human Research in Technology Design

Modern technology design processes in intelligent societies are different from the classic electromechanical technology design processes. Future technology design must be based as much on human research as on natural scientific thinking. Today one can find technologies such as social media applications which are created with minimal technical effort. Thus, understanding the human dimension of technologies is becoming much more important today than in the time of electromechanical technologies. The change in focus motivates to pay attention to the foundational differences between natural science and human research in technology design. The differences between the two traditions have been dis…

Usability and emotional obstacles in e-learning

Emotions are important in interaction and open a vital perspective to e-learning. E-learning courses have higher dropout rates than the traditional courses taught in classrooms, and it seems logical to ask whether emotional processes could explain a part of them. This research investigates how emotions are involved in students’ behavior during e-learning courses. As human emotions are not independent of human cognitions and appraisal, we also consider here how cognitive difficulties affect emotional stances in e-learning on the ground of feedback collected from an e-learning course. However, here the main focus of emotion relevant cognitive processes is related to competence and usability. …

Sensory modalities and mental content in product experience

Contemporary research in human-technology interaction emphasises the need to focus on what people experience when they interact with technological artefacts. Understanding how people experience products requires detailed investigation of how physical design properties are mentally represented, and the theorisation of how people represent information obtained through different modalities still needs work. The objective of this study is to investigate how people experience modality-related affective aspects of products, using the psychological concept of mental content. For this purpose, we adopt the framework of user psychology, which is the sub-area of psychology involved with investigating…

Emotional obstacles for e-learning – a user psychological analysis

E-oppimisen merkitys koulutuksessa on kasvanut jatkuvasti. Sekä julkisen että yksityisen sektorin organisaatiot käyttävät sitä laajasti. Epäilyjä kuitenkin on ilmaistu sen tehokkuuden osalta. Nämä ongelmat johtuvat usein ihmisen ja järjestelmän vuorovaikutuksesta, minkä vuoksi on tarpeen tutkia vuorovaikutusta e-oppimisessa. Me lähestymme näitä vuorovaikutusongelmia käyttäjäpsykologisesta näkökulmasta. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että käytämme psykologisia käsitteitä, menetelmiä ja teorioita ratkaistaksemme vuorovaikutusongelmia. Tässä artikkelissa haluamme korostaa, että on olemassa monia tunneperäisiä näkökulmia ihmisen ja teknologian vuorovaikutuksen prosesseille, ja siksi me analysoimme e-opp…

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…

The Challenges and Opportunities of Human Technology

Technology is for human use. It is designed to satisfy some human needs and to aid people in reaching their goals. Technology, therefore, is a part of human activities and, for this reason alone, it should always be considered within the context of human life, the human experience. This basic credo forms the foundation for the concept of human technology. Instead of seeing technology as a construction following the laws of nature, the challenge of human technology is to explore and understand how humanist and social research can contribute to the conceptualization and implementation of technology.

Techno-Trust and Rational Trust in Technology – A Conceptual Investigation

Part 2: Methodological; International audience; Trust is essential when using technology. If people do not trust new technology, they do not accept it. If people do not accept new technologies such as autonomous ships, their development is hampered in the absence of financial support. The importance of trust brings into question the essential conceptual components of phenomena that contribute to trust. This knowledge is required for the basis of investigating trust in technology. Especially, it is important to understand why humans trust. The reasons can be intuitive but they can also be supported by rational arguments. The latter type of trust can be called rational trust. A beneficial way…

Challenge of tacit knowledge in acquiring information in cognitive mimetics

Intelligent technologies are rising. This is why methods for designing them are important. One approach is to study how people process information in carrying out intelligence demanding tasks and use this information in designing new technology solutions. This approach can be called cognitive mimetics. A problem in mimetics is to explicate tacit or subconscious knowledge. Here, we study a combination of thinking aloud in ship simulator driving and focus group commenting the solutions of subjects. On the ground of these early experiments, a multiple method combination seems to be the best way forward to solve problems of tacit or subconscious knowledge. peerReviewed

Interaction with Information Graphics: A Content-Based Approach

Understanding information graphics rely on thought process of graphics' reader, and thinking has the most important role in interpretation and exploitation. We are interested in the cognitive mechanisms underlying interaction with information graphics. In this study, we studied those cognitive processes which are employed when interacting with information graphics. Based on these experiments, we have separated four different types of thought processes which occur during the interactions with information graphics. We propose that these thought processes are apperception, restructuring, reflection and construction.

Ubiquitous Co-Driver System and Its Effects on the Situation Awareness of the Driver

The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of ubiquitous computing in cars on the situation awareness and expectations of the driver. In a driving simulation environment with participants using a co-driver system, we investigated how people took and recovered from misinformation provided by the system. The system presented safety-critical information about the upcoming curves on the road, but in the experiment part of the messages contained false information. The effects of this information on participants’ behavior were investigated. On the grounds of the experiment, we discuss two approaches for investigating drivers’ situational awareness, which are based on either mental workload o…

An ontology for cognitive mimetics

AI and autonomous systems are intended to replace people in several jobs. People have worked in these jobs being able to execute the required information processing. This implies that new technical artefacts must be able to perform equitably effective information processing. Thus, it makes sense to develop the analysis of human information processing in designing intelligent systems. This approach has been termed cognitive mimetics. This paper studies how it would be practical to gain knowledge about human information processing and organize this knowledge using ontologies.

Reflections on the human role in AI policy formulations : how do national AI strategies view people?

Abstract Purpose There is no artificial intelligence (AI) without people. People design and develop AI; they modify and use it and they have to reorganize the ways they have carried out tasks in their work and everyday life. National strategies are documents made to describe how different nations foster AI and as human dimensions are such an important aspect of AI, this study sought to investigate major national strategy documents to determine how they view the human role in emerging AI societies. Approach Our method for analyzing the strategies was conceptual analysis since the development of technology is embedded with conceptual ideas of humanity, explicit or implicit, and in addition to…

The Conceptual Levels and Theory Languages of Interaction Design

In a way, concepts are like friends. Tell me what your concepts are and I can tell what you are. Modifying freely the way Wittgenstein (1921) expressed this important Kantian (1781) point on the limiting power of concepts on one’s thinking, the concepts that human– technology interaction designers of different scientific backgrounds use differ from each other and, consequently, they are apt to solve the same tasks in different ways. Theoretical concepts constrain the kinds of questions specialists can ask and what kinds of things they are interested in. Thus programmers have a different view of users than do psychologists or sociologists. Just as a lay person can understand little about ven…

Layout attributes and recall

The spatial arrangement of elements such as icons in a computer interface may influence learning the interface. However, the effects of layout organization on users' information processing is relatively little studied so far. The three experiments of this paper examined two attributes of layouts: spatial grouping by proximity and semantic coherence. Learning was assessed by tasks in which 30 participants recalled icon-like items' labels, locations, or both as a series of study-recall trials. The results show that layout organization interacts with task demands. Semantic organization improves recall of labels, and spatial grouping supports recall of locations. When both labels and locations …

Utilizing Experience Goals in Design of Industrial Systems

The core idea of experience-driven design is to define the intended experience before functionality and technology. This is a radical idea for companies that have built their competences around specific technologies. Although many technology companies are willing to shift their focus towards experience-driven design, reports on real-life cases about the utilization of this design approach are rare. As part of an industry-led research program, we introduced experience-driven design to metal industry companies with experience goals as the key technique. Four design cases in three companies showed that the goals are useful in keeping the focus on user experience, but several challenges are sti…

Lost People : How National AI-Strategies Paying Attention to Users

Abstract. This paper focuses on how major national strategies call attention to the human dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI). All intelligent technologies using AI are constructed for people as either active users or as relatively passive target persons. Thus, human properties and human research should have an important role in developing future AI systems. In these development strategies, it is interesting to pay attention to the underlying intuitive assumptions and tacit commitments. This issue is especially interesting when we think about what governmental working groups say about people and their changing lives in their strategies. The traditional stances adopted in writing nati…

Turing's error-revised

Many important lines of argumentation have been presented during the last decades claiming that machines cannot think like people. Yet, it has been possible to construct devices and information systems, which replace people in tasks which have previously been occupied by people as the tasks require intelligence. The long and versatile discourse over, what machine intelligence is, suggests that there is something unclear in the foundations of the discourse itself. Therefore, we critically studied the foundations of used theory languages. By looking critically some of the main arguments of machine thinking, one can find unifying factors. Most of them are based on the fact that computers canno…

Human Digital Twins in Acquiring Information About Human Mental Processes for Cognitive Mimetics

Modern information technology makes it possible to redesign the ways people work. In the future, machines can carry out intelligence-requiring tasks, which previously were done by people. It is thus good to develop methodologies for designing intelligent systems. An example of such methods is cognitive mimetics, i.e. imitating human information processing. Today, machines cannot by themselves navigate in archipelagos. However, the fact that people can take care of ship steering and navigation means that there is an information process, which makes it possible to navigate ships. This information process takes place inside the minds of navigating people. If we are able to explicate the inform…

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONS:TOWARDS A COGNITIVE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MEANING IN HUMAN TECHNOLOGY INTERACTION

Information technology has perpetuated the role of symbolism in everyday life practice, through its reliance on sign systems for its creation and operation. Increasingly attention has been placed on applying semiotic techniques to analyze user interface design and usability. Surprisingly, although the move towards symbolic interaction has been one of the most striking components of the digital shift, it has proven difficult to build bridges between semiotics and HTI-design thinking. In this article we argue that the problems in linking semiotic analysis of human technology interaction with modern HTI-design paradigms such as usability or user experience arise from a theoretical gap between …

Symbolic Interactions : Towards a Cognitive Scientific Theory of Meaning in Human Technology Interaction

Information technology has perpetuated the role of symbolism in everyday life practice, through its reliance on sign systems for its creation and operation. Increasingly attention has been placed on applying semiotic techniques to analyze user interface design and usability. Surprisingly, although the move towards symbolic interaction has been one of the most striking components of the digital shift, it has proven difficult to build bridges between semiotics and HTI-design thinking. In this article we argue that the problems in linking semiotic analysis of human technology interaction with modern HTI-design paradigms such as usability or user experience arise from a theoretical gap between …

The Applications of Cognitive Mechanism of Verbal Humour to the Adjustment of Depressive Mood

Aims: To apply the findings of neurolinguistic research to the practical technological artifact design, the cognitive mechanism of verbal humour is comprehensively investigated and designed with EEG-based Brain Computer interfaces and Mobile Health, under the guidance of technology design theory, to help with the adjustment of depressive mood. Application Base: The intervention effect of verbal humour on depressive mood is rooted in their cognitive mechanisms. The right hemisphere of the brain has a dominant effect on both verbal humour and depressive mood; some specific brain regions, such as amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus etc., are particularly activated during the processing of…

Incompleteness in Conceptual Data Modelling

Although conceptual data modelers can ”get creative” when designing entities and relationships to meet business requirements, they are highly constrained by the business rules which determine the details of how the entities and relationships combine. Typically, there is a delay in realising which business rules might be relevant and a further delay in obtaining an authoritative statement of these rules. We identify circumstances under which viable database designs can be constructed from conceptual data models which are incomplete in the sense that they lack this “infrastructural” detail normally obtained from the business rules. As such detail becomes available, our approach allows the con…

Expertise and becoming conscious of something

Becoming conscious refers to how new mental content emerges in the mind. To understand this phenomenon, we studied how people experience graffiti by thinking aloud. In protocols, we found three types of becoming conscious: experiencing emotional and perceptual content directly linked to a perceivable object, non-perceivable or apperceived information content, and transformation and restructuring processes. On the grounds of the content-based study of protocols, we suggest that people can become conscious of either direct perception, apperception, or restructuring thinking. Research of the mind, which is grounded in analysis and explained by properties of mental content, can be called conten…

Types of Mimetics for the Design of Intelligent Technologies

Mimetic design means using a source in the natural or artificial worlds as an inspiration for technological solutions. It is based around the abstraction of the relevant operating principles in a source domain. This means that one must be able to identify the correct level of analysis and extract the relevant patterns. How this should be done is based on the type of source. From a mimetic perspective, if the design goal is intelligent technology, an obvious source of inspiration is human information processing, which we have called cognitive mimetics. This article offers some conceptual clarification on the nature of cognitive mimetics by contrasting it with biomimetics in the context of in…

From Technology to the Human User

When thinking of users, it is possible to look at them from a variety of perspectives. One essential way of considering users within the human–technology environment involves technical concepts. In this manner, we define what users should be able to do with a particular technical system. As such, there are tasks to accomplish and goals to reach by means of some technology, and therefore specific operations must be carried out in order to reach those goals or fulfill those tasks. For example, if someone wishes to buy boots from an eShop, it is necessary to get onto the Internet, find the eShop, find the boots, load them into a virtual shopping cart, and follow the process to check out. Savvy…

To Share or Not to Share: Supporting the User Decision in Mobile Social Software Applications

User's privacy concerns represent one of the most serious obstacles to the wide adoption of mobile social software applications. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual model which tackles the problem from the perspective of trade-off between privacy and trust, where the user takes the decision with minimal privacy loss. To support the user decision, we introduce the Mobile Access Control List (Macl), a privacy management mechanism which takes into account the user attitude towards mobile sharing, his communication history and social network relationships.

Conceptual basis of cognitive mimetics for information engineering

Abstract Intelligent information processing is topical in modern technology design and development. The fundamental idea was developed by Turing as he made the first conceptual models of information-processing computers. Though it has practically never been noticed, Turing’s work was a model of how to mimic human intelligent information processes and generate technologies, which can carry out intelligent tasks. The design method can be called cognitive mimetics as it imitates human information processes to design technologies and their applications. One can use cognitive mimetics even in solving techno-ethical problems. This is why we think that cognitive mimetics are vital as a method to g…

Microinnovations in Human-Technology Interaction

It has been claimed that the Web 2.0, the open source movement, and the emerging mode of peer production have inaugurated a new era of debate about openness, participation, and cooperation as bedrocks for rebuilding the civilizations of the modern world. By way of introducing the concept of wikipolitics, this paper examines whether, and if so how, politics and democracies can benefit from this emerging participatory spirit and modern ICTs, and to document possible dangers of such a shift in the democratic process

Cognitive Mimetics for Designing Intelligent Technologies

Design mimetics is an important method of creation in technology design. Here, we review design mimetics as a plausible approach to address the problem of how to design generally intelligent technology. We argue that design mimetics can be conceptually divided into three levels based on the source of imitation. Biomimetics focuses on the structural similarities between systems in nature and technical solutions for solving design problems. In robotics, the sensory-motor systems of humans and animals are a source of design solutions. At the highest level, we introduce the concept of cognitive mimetics, in which the source for imitation is human information processing. We review and discuss so…

Expertise and Skill in Minimally Invasive Surgery

New attitudes to medical ethics and demands for efficiency have brought increased attention to surgical skills and training. It is important to characterize the expertise and skill involved in the multidimensional surgical profession. At a time of change, there is a need to discuss the nature of surgical expertise, and also the prospects for resident training, with special reference to new minimally invasive techniques (MIS). In this paper, we selectively review knowledge on surgical expertise and the specific demands placed on a skilled MIS surgeon. In addition, the review contains a selection of studies from those areas that have been seen as important for the future of training in surge…

Designing a New Method of Studying Feature-Length Films

Measuring viewers’ experiences of films has become a critical issue for filmmakers because all kinds of audiences now have access to new releases from all over the world. Some approaches have focused on the cognitive level of the experience, while others have emphasized the structure of films. Additionally, some have used quantitative objective methods to examine audience reactions to short film sequences, while others have applied qualitative approaches to study feature-length films. However, an integrated method that combines the features of these approaches is needed. In this article, we describe a new method that combines quantitative and qualitative data to study viewers’ experiences o…

Looking at the Nature of Ideas Through New Lenses

What sets humans apart from other animals is not the use of technology: Many mammals are innovative in making simple tools to assist in life. But it is the sheer scale of technological development that distinguishes humans. Over the millennia, people have invented technologies, used them, and enhanced them. The once-innovative technologies become mundane elements of everyday contemporary life as human societies progress. The technological developments of the last decades have dramatically altered most humans’ way of life and perceptions of the myriad elements of the immediate and distant environment. It would not be an exaggeration to view humans as standing at the cusp of profound social c…

Emotional Dimensions of User Experience ? A User Psychological Analysis

User psychology is a human–technology interaction research approach that uses psychological concepts, theories, and findings to structure problems of human–technology interaction. As the notion of user experience has become central in human–technology interaction research and in product development, it is necessary to investigate the user psychology of user experience. This analysis of emotional human–technology interaction is based on the psychological theory of basic emotions. Three studies, two laboratory experiments, and one field study are used to investigate the basic emotions and the emotional mind involved in user experience. The first and second experiments study the measurement of…

Effects of menu structure and touch screen scrolling style on the variability of glance durations during in-vehicle visual search tasks.

The effects of alternative navigation device display features on drivers' visual sampling efficiency while searching forpoints of interest were studied in two driving simulation experiments with 40 participants. Given that the number of display items was sufficient, display features that facilitate resumption of visual search following interruptions were expected to lead to more consistent in-vehicle glance durations. As predicted, compared with a grid-style menu, searching information in a list-style menu while driving led to smaller variance in durations of in-vehicle glances, in particular with nine item displays. Kinetic touch screen scrolling induced a greater number of very short in-v…

Apperception, content-based psychology and design

A core area of scientific thinking is explaining. This means answering to the “why-questions and how questions” (Hempel 1965). Why does Sam have a fewer? Why did an organization fail abroad? Why a structure is able to support the weight of snow? How more effective valves for an engine can be designed? How to make computer games more attractive for female users? These are typical examples of design problems, all of which should be based on scientific explanation, i.e., what should be answered based on the laws of nature or as is becoming increasingly more evident, based on the laws of the human mind.

Mental Content and Content-Based Cognitive Ergonomics

In interacting with technologies, people represent their action and technical artefacts in their minds. The information in their mental representations, i.e., mental contents, explains what people do and why they do it. Therefore, mental contents and its analysis provide a good tool for analyzing several different types of issues in ergonomic. As argumentation is such ergonomic research is grounded on the properties of mental contents one can call this perspective to ergonomics content based cognitive ergonomics. nonPeerReviewed

Editorial:Governance AI ethics

Affective contents of cross-cultural audiovisual experience

Audiovisual presentation of a product has a direct impact on the mental representation of an individual when interacting with a product. Companies produce audiovisual contents that can be used in different cultural environments as a way of having broader impact at a cheaper cost. But do video contents have the same impact in different countries? We addressed this question by using images and videos of Iittala products (Finnish design) with the goal of finding whether participants from two countries, Finland and Spain, appraised the designs similarly. We performed an experiment in which participants interacted with three audiovisual products depicting images/videos of the brand design. Throu…

Designing digital well-being of senior citizens

In this paper, we illustrate a concrete case to apply the Life-Based Design approach to identifying human goals for technology to achieve. We focus on a form-of-life method of design, which seeks to reach a mental state of “digital wellbeing.” Digital well-being aims to facilitate digitalization and changes in the digital environment, and to maximize the availability and accessibility of services. We evaluate the target group of senior citizens, who are facing an accelerating pace of digitalization of the services in their daily lives. This increases their sense of anxiety and undermines their well-being. peerReviewed

Hume’s Guillotine Resolved

According to Hume’s guillotine, one cannot derive values from facts. Since intelligent systems are fact processors, one can ask how ethical machines can be possible. However, ethics is a real-life process. People analyze actions and situations emotionally and cognitively. Thus they learn rules, such as “this situation feels good/bad.” The cognitive analysis of actions is associated with emotional analysis. The association of action, emotion and cognition can be termed a primary ethical schema. Through an ethical information process in which emotions and cognitions interact in social discourse, primary ethical schemas are refined into ethical norms. Each component of the process is different…

Expert Drivers' Prospective Thinking-Aloud to Enhance Automated Driving Technologies - Investigating Uncertainty and Anticipation in Traffic.

Abstract Current automated driving technology cannot cope in numerous conditions that are basic daily driving situations for human drivers. Previous studies show that profound understanding of human drivers’ capability to interpret and anticipate traffic situations is required in order to provide similar capacities for automated driving technologies. There is currently not enough a priori understanding of these anticipatory capacities for safe driving applicable to any given driving situation. To enable the development of safer, more economical, and more comfortable automated driving experience, expert drivers’ anticipations and related uncertainties were studied on public roads. First, dri…

What Can Linguistics Do to Technology Design?

Intelligent technologies have already revolutionized the economy, and they will continue to do so via autonomous, AI-based systems and artefacts. Artefacts can handle much more intellectually complicated tasks than was possible before. However, the technological transformation will set new demands for technology design and designers. Designing electromechanical technologies has been based on natural science, but intelligent technologies will extensively use knowledge of human research and information processing to create new artefacts. Intelligent information processing has so far been possible only for biological systems and especially for human minds. Therefore, their functions and behavi…

Activity typologies as a design model for the ubiquitous detection of daily routines

Emerging technologies open up new visions and business potential for systems design and development in the areas of wellbeing and health. New technologies enable the detection of human performance and early changes in physical and cognitive functioning, making it possible to monitor an older person’s wellbeing. This kind of technology or service sets significant requirements for design, as design concepts must be able to capture the complexity of people’s daily lives in terms of activities and environments. Technology itself is “blind” unless designers can adapt it to human life. There is thus a distinct need for comprehensive design and development models that generate adequate human requi…

Defining user experience goals to guide the design of industrial systems

The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing…

Theory languages in designing artificial intelligence

The foundations of AI design discourse are worth analyzing. Here, attention is paid to the nature of theory languages used in designing new AI technologies because the limits of these languages can clarify some fundamental questions in the development of AI. We discuss three types of theory language used in designing AI products: formal, computational, and natural. Formal languages, such as mathematics, logic, and programming languages, have fixed meanings and no actual-world semantics. They are context- and practically content-free. Computational languages use terms referring to the actual world, i.e., to entities, events, and thoughts. Thus, computational languages have actual-world refer…

The impact of visual working memory capacity on the filtering efficiency of emotional face distractors.

Emotional faces can serve as distractors for visual working memory (VWM) tasks. An event-related potential called contralateral delay activity (CDA) can measure the filtering efficiency of face distractors. Previous studies have investigated the influence of VWM capacity on filtering efficiency of simple neutral distractors but not of face distractors. We measured the CDA indicative of emotional face filtering during a VWM task related to facial identity. VWM capacity was measured in a separate colour change detection task, and participants were divided to high- and low-capacity groups. The high-capacity group was able to filter out distractors similarly irrespective of its facial emotion. …

Measuring Distraction at the Levels of Tactical and Strategic Control: The Limits of Capacity-Based Measures for Revealing Unsafe Visual Sampling Models

The control theory of driving suggests that driver distraction can be analyzed as a breakdown of control at three levels. Common approach for analyzing distraction experimentally is to utilize capacity-based measures to assess distraction at the level of operational control. Three driving simulation experiments with 61 participants were organized to evaluate which kind of measures could be used to analyze drivers' tactical visual sampling models and the related effects of distraction while searching textual information on in-car display. The effects of two different text types were evaluated. The utilized capacity-based measures seemed to be insufficient for revealing participants' tactical…

Emotions in Technology Design

Understanding emotions is becoming ever more valuable in design, both in terms of what people prefer as well as in relation to how they behave in relation to it. Approaches to conceptualising emotions in technology design, how emotions can be operationalised and how they can be measured are paramount to ascertaining the core principles of design.Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics provides a multi-dimensional approach to studying, designing and comprehending emotions in design. It presents emotions as understood through basic human-technology research, applied design practice, culture and aesthetics, ethical approaches to emotional design, and ethics as a cultural frame…

Book Review: Taking ICT to Every Indian Village: Opportunities and Challenges

Atanu Garai & B. Shadrach (2006). Taking ICT to every Indian village: Opportunities and challenges. New Delhi, India: One World South Asia; 133 pages. Information and communication technology (ICT) activities can easily be seen as a sort of technocracy, which is not surprising because the focus of attention is often dominated by issues such as the bandwidth, new devices, or the fierce competition between technological companies and their innovative products. In short, the discussion often is restricted to Habermasian technical interest of knowledge. At the end of the day, however, everything in ICT is about people and, more specifically, about the emancipatory application of knowledge for a…

Quick Affective Judgments: Validation of a Method for Primed Product Comparisons

A method for primed product comparisons was developed, based on the methodological considerations of emotional appraisal process and affective mental contents. The method was implemented as a computer tool, which was utilised in two experiments (N = 18 for both). Ten adjectives served as primes, and five drinking glass pictures as stimuli. Participants' task was to choose a preference between two glasses, given the priming adjective. The results validate the method by providing test-retest reliability measures and showing convergence with questionnaires. Further, different evaluation times between the primes and the stimuli reveal the existence of different mental processes associated with …

Appraisal and Mental Contents in Human-Technology Interaction

User experience has become a key concept in investigating human-technology interaction. Therefore it has become essential to consider how user experience can be explicated using psychological concepts. Emotion has been widely considered to be an important dimension of user experience, and one obvious link between modern psychology and the analysis of user experience assumes the analysis of emotion in interaction processes. In this paper, the focus is on the relationship between action types and elicited emotional patterns. In three experiments including N = 40 participants each, it is demonstrated that the types of emotions experienced when people evaluate and use technical artefacts differ…

Affective Mimetics, Emotional Information Space, and Metaverse

Current technology design pursues applying human-like features to AI technologies. These attempts have faced many challenges due to the essential complexities of the human mind. Cognitive mimetics is a design approach to mimic human information processes in designing intelligent technologies. The focus is on mimicking cognition, human knowledge structures, and represented mental information contents which addresses a fundamental issue in technology design. However, cognition is one aspect of information processing in the human mind. Affective information processing also plays an essential role in addressing the meaningfulness of cognitive processes. This paper discusses affective mimetics (…

Surviving task interruptions: Investigating the implications of long-term working memory theory

Typically, we have several tasks at hand, some of which are in interrupted state while others are being carried out. Most of the time, such interruptions are not disruptive to task performance. Based on the theory of Long-Term Working Memory (LTWM; Ericsson, K.A., Kintsch, W., 1995. Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211-245), we posit that unless there are enough mental skills and resources to encode task representations to retrieval structures in long-term memory, the resulting memory traces will not enable reinstating the information, which can lead to memory losses. However, once encoded to LTWM, they are virtually safeguarded. Implications of the theory were tested in…

Explanatory frameworks for interaction design

Explanatory design means the practice by which design solutions are evidence-based. This practice has been the norm in engineering design, relying as it does on the laws of science, but much less attention has been paid to the necessity of abandoning intuitive practices in designing for the human element within technological systems. One reason for this may have been the variety of explanatory bases within psychology. There is no single psychological framework for explaining human behaviour; instead different types of problems must be solved by using very different types of explanatory frameworks and theory language. Cognitive capacity, emotions and mental contents may serve as examples of …

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 …

Making It Possible

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.

Towards Action-Oriented User Interface Design

The ultimate goal of user interface design is to develop a product which people can use to reach their goals. By action we normally refer to our attempts to reach certain goals, and this is why it is natural to think user interface design as an activity we engage in when designing tools, instruments or technologies for people to realize their action goals. This paper suggests a novel action-oriented user interface development method that aims to develop a user interface interaction model. This interaction model is based on an organized tree structure composed of node states with relevant usability-related attributes and operations between the nodes. peerReviewed

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.

User Psychology in Interaction Design: The Role of Design Ontologies

In the various forms of interaction design, it is essential to analyze, understand, and predict human behavior. This is equally true with devices such as information systems that are meant to interact with people. The importance of these problems has inspired scientists to develop numerous approaches to investigate and explicate human actions. However, they have mainly been characterized by intuitive and folk psychological approaches to the human mentality in interaction. To improve the scientific foundations of design, we present here a psychology-based approach to collecting user knowledge, as well as a related design practice. The former can be called user psychology and the latter the a…

Emotional Information Space in Designing AI Technologies

Current and future AI design needs to recognize the intertwined nature of cognition and affect to design more human-like intelligent systems. The majority of current AI design focuses on cognitive information processes and knowledge. However, human action and human-like actions must also consider the emotional aspects of the environment. We present the concept of emotional information space, which incorporates all issues within a certain environment with cognitively appraised affective meanings and the ability to encode these information contents into designing emotionally intelligent technologies.

CONTENT-BASED ANALYSIS OF MODES IN DESIGN ENGINEERING

Action-oriented classification of families' information and communication actions: exploring mothers' viewpoints

Action-oriented service and technology development begins with the idea that people use technologies to reach their action goals. Consequently, we should investigate user needs and how they can be satisfied, and adapt services and technologies to the natural course of actions. Here, we focus on family communication and investigate mobile communication service types for families. For this study 10 mothers were interviewed; we investigated the nature of their everyday information and communication needs and the different knowledge and information transfer actions that were discovered in their families. Qualitative analysis of these interviews was used to generate a taxonomy, which, in turn, c…

Long-term working memory and interrupting messages in human – computer interaction

The extent to which memory for information content is reliable, trustworthy, and accurate is crucial in the information age. Being forced to divert attention to interrupting messages is common, however, and can cause memory loss. The memory effects of interrupting messages were investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, attending to an interrupting message decreased memory accuracy. Experiment 2, where four interrupting messages were used, replicated this result. In Experiment 3, an interrupting message was shown to be most disturbing when it was semantically very close to the main message. Drawing from a theory of long-term working memory it is argued that interrupting messages ca…

The Psychology of Thinking in Creating AI

The broad-scale emergence of AI in industry calls forth basic questions in terms of the knowledge bases and approaches relevant for its design. Engineering design has been mainly developed for electromechanical artifacts. In practice, this has meant that the scientific knowledge required for creating technical artifacts such as engines, cars, ships, cranes, telephones, radios, TVs, and simple data processing units has been natural science. However, one cannot find intelligent processes by means of physics and chemistry. Natural scientific phenomena follow their deterministic laws, but intelligence is based on selection and decision processes. The conceptual landscape of natural science is o…

Processing Mechanism of Chinese Verbal Jokes : Evidence from ERP and Neural Oscillations

The cognitive processing mechanism of humor refers to how the system of neural circuitry and pathways in the brain deals with the incongruity in a humorous manner. The past research has revealed different stages and corresponding functional brain activities involved in humor-processing in terms of time and space dimensions, highlighting the effects of the time windows of about 400 ms, 600 ms, and 900 ms. However, much less is known about humor processing in light of the frequency dimension. A total of 36 Chinese participants were recruited in this experiment, with Chinese jokes, nonjokes, and nonsensical sentences used as the stimuli. The experimental results showed that there were signific…

Hume’s Guillotine in Designing Ethically Intelligent Technologies

Intelligent machines can follow ethical rules in their behaviour. However, it is less clear whether intelligent systems can also create new ethical principles. The former position can be called weak ethical AI and the latter strong ethical AI. Hume’s guillotine which claims that one cannot derive values from facts appears to be a fundamental obstacle to strong ethical AI. The analysis of human ethical information processes provides clarity to the possibility of strong ethical AI. Human ethical information processing begins with positive of negative emotions associated to situations. Situations can be seen as consequences of actions and for this reason people can define rules about acceptabi…

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.

The Problems of Professionals

User Psychology: Re-assessing the Boundaries of a Discipline

Currently, efforts of psychologists to improve interactive technology have fragmented and the systemization of scientific knowledge stalled. There is no home for integrative psychological research on computer use. In this programmatic paper, we reassess three meta-scientific issues defining this discipline. As the first step, we pro- pose to extend the subject of study from the analysis of human mind in the interaction to the broader view of human as an intentional user of interactive technology. Hence, the discipline is most aptly called user psychology. Secondly, problem-solving epistemology is advocated as an alternative to the notion from natural sciences that progress in science involv…

In-service and prospective teachers’ conceptions of creativity

Abstract Teachers play a crucial role in the development of primary school students’ creative potential in either a positive or a negative way. This paper aims to draw attention to in-service and prospective teachers’ conceptions of creativity and answer three main research questions: “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in general?”, “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in the context of primary education?”, and “How well-trained and equipped do teachers feel to play their key role in the development of students’ creative potential?” A self-report questionnaire was used as an instrument to gather qualitative and quantita…

A preliminary framework for differentiating the paradigms of human-technology interaction research

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the differences between approaches in the research field of human-technology interaction. We are especially interested in individuating user psychology from the more traditional paradigms. Therefore, we suggest a preliminary theoretical framework of criteria for distinguishing and individuating the different interaction research paradigms. The framework consists of five dimensions in which the paradigms may vary from each other. In this paper, we also discuss how ubiquitous computing is related to some of the dimensions. In addition, we focus on defining the new elements user psychology can bring to the discussion and analysis of human-technology inte…

Scientific and Design Stances

Human technology interaction is a strange field of expertise, because both academics and industry are interested in it. And yet, every now and then, it becomes apparent that academics and industry do not always see eye to eye (Carroll, 1997). They seem to think in different manner. While scientists look for how things are, industry mostly seeks out how things should be. Indeed, sometimes two very different stances behind the basic thinking of the two important human–technology interaction (HTI) communities surface. Scientists primarily are interested in general laws and principles, even eternal truths with no exceptions. They want to identify general laws and use them to explain individual …

Cognitive Mimetics and Human Digital Twins : Towards Holistic AI Design

AI is replacing and supporting people in many intelligence-requiring tasks. Therefore, it is essential to consider the conceptual grounds of designing future technical artefacts and technologies for practical use. We are developing two new practical design tools: cognitive mimetics and human digital twins for AI designers. Cognitive mimetics analyses human information processing to be mimicked by intelligent technologies. Human digital twins provide a tool for modelling what people do based on the results of cognitive mimetics. Together they provide a new way of designing intelligent technology in individual tasks and industrial contexts. nonPeerReviewed

Älykäs informaatioyhteiskunta ja maanpuolustusajattelu

Väkivalta konflikteissa on esimerkiksi ydinaseiden vuoksi tullut yhä kontrolloidummaksi, ja siksi nykyään yhteisöjen toimintaprosesseihin vaikuttaminen informaation ja disinformaation avulla on yhä suositumpaa. Kansakunnalle on olennaista turvata informaatioidentiteettinsä, vaikka sitä yritettäisiin ulkopuolisten toimesta vahingoittaa joko sodan ja väkivallan tai informaatiovaikuttamisen keinoin. nonPeerReviewed

How cyber breeds crime and criminals

Understanding how cyber breeds novel crime and new criminals is a contribution to criminological models with significant applied value. It is highly important for law enforcement and particularly pivotal for preventive intervention. In this paper we propose a human rights-based crime definition, present explanatory models for cybercrime, and outline future arenas and drivers to suggest to the stakeholder community prevention focuses and priorities. The presented work ultimately aims towards supporting two crime preventive design initiatives, one targeted at accounting for and narrowing the cybercriminal space of means, opportunities, and motives; the other aiming at augmenting early and pro…

Turing's Error-revised

Many important lines of argumentation have been presented during the last decades claiming that machines cannot think like people. Yet, it has been possible to construct devices and information systems, which replace people in tasks which have previously been occupied by people as the tasks require intelligence. The long and versatile discourse over, what machine intelligence is, suggests that there is something unclear in the foundations of the discourse itself. Therefore, we critically studied the foundations of used theory languages. By looking critically some of the main arguments of machine thinking, one can find unifying factors. Most of them are based on the fact that computers canno…

Designs, Systems, Scapegoats, and Business Cultures

Emotions and Technoethics

The relationship between emotions and ethics has been debated for centuries. The act of understanding emotions through the framework of ethics involves accepting that emotions are to some extent culturally dependent. By linking emotions in design to larger ethical discussions, it may be accepted that ethics and design are both technological constructions designed to shape a collective worldview. While both are cultural constructions, they are in constant dialogue with one another through social discourse and individualistic cognitive–affective appraisal processes. This chapter presents an account of technoethics that challenges ideas of ethical values embedded within technology, drawing att…

Fashion Technology : What Are the Limits of Emerging Technological Design Thinking?

Designing intelligent technologies is a multidisciplinary process. From this perspective, fashion has continued to be an under explored dimension of technology design. While there persistently are connections between the term fashion and the clothing design industry, an historical and sociological approach to fashion reveals a much deeper and permeating understanding of the notion and its implications across the technological world. During recent popular developments, the interrelationship between fashion as a concept and technology as components and proponents of fashion – technology as fashion promoter (think of Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and even LinkedIn for example), and technology as…

Appraisal and Mental Contents in Human-Technology Interaction

User experience has become a key concept in investigating human-technology interaction. Therefore it has become essential to consider how user experience can be explicated using psychological concepts. Emotion has been widely considered to be an important dimension of user experience, and one obvious link between modern psychology and the analysis of user experience assumes the analysis of emotion in interaction processes. In this paper, the focus is on the relationship between action types and elicited emotional patterns. In three experiments including N = 40 participants each, it is demonstrated that the types of emotions experienced when people evaluate and use technical artefacts differ…

Open Access Publishing as a Bridge Across the Digital Divide

In today’s world of snappy catchphrases, the complexity of a phenomenon is often hiddenbehind the simplicity of the terminology. Take, for instance, the concept of the digital divide.In short, the term means that there is a gap between those people who have effective access todigital technologies (and all the benefits that brings) and those who do not (Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2001; Selhofer & Husing, 2002). Whilethe definition seems simple enough, in fact, there are numerous reasons for the technologygap among people in the world. Typical reasons for the digital divide include material access(i.e., no access to a computer, lack of access to specific soft…

The Importance of the Free Flow of Information and Knowledge

Hume’s guillotine and intelligent technologies

AbstractEmerging intelligent society shall change the way people are organised around their work and consequently also as a society. One approach to investigating intelligent systems and their social influence is information processing. Intelligence is information processing. However, factual and ethical information are different. Facts concern true vs. false, while ethics is about what should be done. David Hume recognised a fundamental problem in this respect, which is that facts can be used to derive values. His answer was negative, which is critical for developing intelligent ethical technologies. Hume’s problem is not crucial when values can be assigned to technologies, i.e. weak ethic…

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 …

Designing Ethical AI in the Shadow of Hume’s Guillotine

Artificially intelligent systems can collect knowledge regarding epistemic information, but can they be used to derive new values? Epistemic information concerns facts, including how things are in the world, and ethical values concern how actions should be taken. The operation of artificial intelligence (AI) is based on facts, but it require values. A critical question here regards Hume’s Guillotine, which claims that one cannot derive values from facts. Hume’s Guillotine appears to divide AI systems into two ethical categories: weak and strong. Ethically weak AI systems can be applied only within given value rules, but ethically strong AI systems may be able to generate new values from fac…

Explaining failures in innovative thought processes in engineering design

Abstract The aim of this study is to explore factors causing failures in innovative thought processes in engineering design. An innovation process is here understood as a complex and multi-phased thinking and problem solving process generating new and mostly unforeseeable solutions. The phases are partly overlapping and simultaneous. This complicated nature of innovation process demands a lot from innovation management, and thus it is not unusual that innovation processes fail. Identifying problems and shortcomings is important because it helps organizations to eliminate them in the future. This study focus on thought processes of individual participants in an innovation process, which is r…

Mental contents in interacting with a multiobjective optimization program

User psychology aims at understanding human-machine interaction from a psychological point of view. Its ultimate goal is to provide knowledge about human psychological properties for interaction designers. In this article, we are particularly interested in applying the theoretical concepts of mental contents (i.e., the information contents of users’ mental representations), in studying interaction with professional software. The immediate motivation for adopting such an approach arises from problems met in designing interaction processes in multiobjective optimization software. These types of software are meant to support complex thought and decision-making processes and this is why interac…

From the Editor in Chief: The Right Concepts for the Right Problems

From the Editor in Chief: From Technology to the Human User

Book review: Taking ICT to Every Indian Village : Opportunities and Challenges by Atanu Garai & B. Shadrach

From the Editor in Chief : Intuitions in Human-Technology Integration Design

Measuring Distraction at the Levels of Tactical and Strategic Control: The Limits of Capacity-Based Measures for Revealing Unsafe Visual Sampling Models

The control theory of driving suggests that driver distraction can be analyzed as a breakdown of control at three levels. Common approach for analyzing distraction experimentally is to utilize capacity-based measures to assess distraction at the level of operational control. Three driving simulation experiments with 61 participants were organized to evaluate which kind of measures could be used to analyze drivers' tactical visual sampling models and the related effects of distraction while searching textual information on in-car display. The effects of two different text types were evaluated. The utilized capacity-based measures seemed to be insufficient for revealing participants' tactical…

From the Editor in Chief: The Problems of Professionals

From the Editor-in-Chief: Open Access Publishing as an Incorporator of Research and Innovation Cycle

From the Editor in Chief: Microinnovations in Human–Technology Interaction