Posts Tagged cognitive science
The Myth of Hand-Eye Coordination
Posted by Todd Toler in Interaction Design on February 10th, 2010
Teens work on their hand-eye coordination playing Dragon's Lair - circa 1983. Photo credit: The Tribune News
I’m from the earliest generation of gamers. The first, really. I played table-top Pong when I was 7 or 8, even though it was only available in bars (parenting was more relaxed then.) I played Missile Command, despite the fact that it was kinda boring. Robotron was an obsession. I played Zork, with it’s command line interface, on my Apple IIc - drawing my own map. In college I got sucked into Myst, and Super Mario Bro.’s and there were dozens of others along the way. And then, like nearly everybody else of my generation, I quit playing video games. Why? In a word, guilt. Games were considered indulgent, addictive, violent -something for man-boys. Certainly not suitable terrain for serious people. But throughout this entire period of moralization against gaming there was always a bit of pop cognitive science floating around in defense of video games. Games build hand-eye coordination, people would say -everybody would say. After a 7 hour stint on the couch I’d think, well, at least I’ve got that going for me. In graduate school I studied cognitive science and learning theories and even video games- and never once encountered the phrase hand-eye coordination. So I set myself to wondering – what is it? is it important? and does playing video games improve it?
The Rounded Corner Debate
Posted by Todd Toler in Visual Design on August 27th, 2009
Rounded Corners Are Cognitively Cheaper, Yet Facebook Drops Them Anyways: Image Source: UI & US
Yesterday Facebook announced that it decided to drop all rounded corners in their latest UI refresh, sacrificing those cheerful corner radii on most of its interface modules for the more severe but coder-friendly squared off look. It’ s almost like they’re declaring the end of web 2.0, once and for all. Keith Lang’s UI & Us has consolidated a terrific history of where this rounded rectangle thing started in the first place… with the original Macintosh apparently. Folklore has it that Steve Jobs pointed out to Bill Gates that the real world is full of rectangles and squarish shapes that have rounded corners -stop signs, coffee tables, beverage coasters – so why not user interfaces? Right angled shapes are computationally efficient to draw, but let’s face it – you can put an eye out with one of those things if you’re not careful. And that’s exactly the kind of human-centric thinking that has Apple rounding the corners on everything from your iPhone to those error message pop-ups that you’re getting in iTunes. Interestingly, Lang makes a cognitive processing argument for the benefits of the roundedness, quoting author Jurg Nanni. “A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size. Our fovea is even faster in recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down.”
Think Like an Instructional Designer: Germane Cognitive Load
Posted by Todd Toler in Interaction Design on August 20th, 2009
It’s been understood since the 1950’s that human cognitive processing capacity is severely limited. In fact, you can put a more or less precise number on the amount of discrete pieces of information that a person can manage in their working memory at any given time – the “magic number” of seven. (see Miller, 1956) When asked to repeat a list of random digits or tones (e.g. 5,6,2,10), most people can manage about 5 to 7 of these “chunks” of information when drawing only from their working memory. It is no accident that we can all remember our phone numbers but only the most acquisitive of us can remember our credit card numbers. Of course, it’s a complicated business of how information gets moved in and out of working memory from long term memory (the closest thing nature has to the $4.4 million hard drive, the RamSan-6200). To get into that we’d have to talk about schema theory and the expertise reversal effect and all sorts of other cognitive science concepts… so let’s keep this simple. How can a basic understanding of working memory and cognitive load theory make us into better UI designers?
Think Like an Instructional Designer: Website Imagery
Posted by Todd Toler in Interaction Design, Visual Design on August 14th, 2009
Everybody Loves Puppies, but The Instructional Potential of This Image is Zero
Careless use of imagery – particularly photographs – is often the difference between a dull “brochure-ware” site and a persuasive information experience. When we redesigned www.dummies.com, we initially populated our design mock-ups with the type of stock photography that professional designers mostly use… only to find that the otherwise attractive imagery added a level of generic-ness that felt downright off-brand. Then we created a style guideline only to use imagery that had true instructional value, whenever possible framed and centered on the action that was being discussed in the content. This applied not only to imagery embedded in the how-to articles, but also the landing page teaser thumbnail photos for the articles and videos. This is a policy the mega-successful book line has had for years, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to us on the web design side. Once we made this change the site felt instantly better. The difference? We thought like an instructional designer.
Interaction designers, graphic designers, and anybody else involved in the ongoing production of commercial websites should pay a lot more attention to instructional principles – even if the site is not overtly instructional. What makes material good for learning also makes it good for other conversion goals – such as explaining products, services, and brand building.
Dummies.com Uses Explanatory Imagery Even in Thumbnails
In fact, why not audit your site’s imagery right now for instructional potential? If you find that most or all of your visuals are falling into the “decorative” category – unless of course it’s fluffy puppies or blondes on the hoods of sports cars (two time-tested exceptions) – then it’s time to make a change. Fortunately, the educational psychologist Richard Mayer has conveniently classified types of imagery in terms of their instructional benefit and effectiveness for learning. The good folks behind the Wiley Visualizing series, which is a textbook line that is highly committed to applying cognitive theories of learning to the design of their products, put together the following summary table, which I’ve adapted with examples that might apply to a typical web designer’s challenge…
Validity and Think-Aloud Protocols
Posted by Todd Toler in User & Design Research on August 5th, 2009
First adapted from the work of experimental psychologists – most notably, Ericsson and Simon’s landmark 1993 work Protocol Analysis, – think-aloud protocols are the de-facto standard for usability research in both the lab and field settings. If you’ve seen or given a usability test before then you know what this is, it’s when the moderator tells the respondent to use a website or other application and then says “Hey, tell me what you are thinking.” Jakob Nielsen and other HCI researchers were quick to trump the merits of this technique for uncovering usability problems with sample sizes as small as four people. Why is the technique so effective? Well, it’s validity stems largely from the fact that it’s a direct measure of what’s happening in a subject’s short-term memory. Other examples of direct measures of human cognition are hard to find… in fact, the two others that are primarily used are response tests (e.g. reaction time indicators) and MRI brain scans! So to have a direct measure that is cheap and easy to administer and also provides qualitative insights into the user experience is powerful indeed! But if the interview is poorly moderated, or descends into a Q & A session between moderator and respondent, then this validity flies out the window… so let’s look at the issue more closely.
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