Cognitive Processing & Design Implications

Cognitive Processing & Driving

• Talking with a passenger can be less dangerous than talking on a phone because a passenger can see the road and will stop talking in the event of a hazard.
• A remote person on a phone call cannot see driving hazards and will continue speaking, making it difficult for the driver to focus on the road.

Design Implications for Attention

• Design elements such as color, ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing, and animation can make information salient (noticeable) at a given stage of a task.
• Too much information on a visual interface can be overwhelming, creating clutter and hindering effective switching and returning to an interface.

Design Implications for Perception

• Text should be legible and icons should be easily distinguishable and readable.
• Research proper color contrast techniques. For example yellow on black or blue is acceptable, but not yellow on green or white.
• Bordering and spacing effectively group information visually.

Design Implications for Memory

• Context is important for memory, affecting how we remember information.
• Encoding determines which information is attended to and how it is interpreted. The more attention paid to something, the more likely it will be remembered.
• Recognition is easier than recall. We can usually remember visual cues about things, such as color of items, location of objects, and marks on an object.

Design Implications for Recognition Versus Recall

• Graphical interfaces provide visually based options (menus and icons) that users can browse through until they recognize what they need.
• Web browsers support recognition memory by providing tabs and history lists of visited URLs.

Is the "7 Plus or Minus 2" Rule Helpful in HCI?

• The "7 +/- 2" rule (Miller, 1956) suggests that people's immediate memory capacity is limited to 7 items.
• This is not necessarily helpful in HCI design. Users can often scan lists of bullets, tabs, and menu items, so more than seven items can be displayed.

Personal Information Management

• People accumulate a vast number of files, which can be difficult to manage and retrieve. Naming is the most common approach to encoding files, but it can be difficult to remember when you have thousands of files.
• Bergman and Whittaker (2016) propose a three-step model for managing information: deciding what to keep, how to organize, and how to retrieve.
• Folders and naming are the most common approaches to organizing digital content. People tend to scan across and within folders to find something they are looking for.

Erroneous Mental Models

• People often form incorrect mental models about how devices work. For example:
  • People may believe that turning a thermostat higher will heat a room up faster, when it actually works on an on-off switch model.
  • People often press elevator and pedestrian crossing buttons multiple times, thinking it will make them work faster.

Designing for Better Mental Models

• Clear and easy-to-use instructions, appropriate tutorials, and contextual sensitive guidance can help people build better mental models.
• Online videos and chatbot windows can also be helpful for providing assistance when needed.

This quiz explores the relationship between cognitive processing while driving and the design implications for attention and perception. Understand how different factors, such as communication methods and visual interface elements, can impact focus and clarity. Test your knowledge on effective design techniques that enhance user experience.