Conceptual Models I

From CS 160 Fall 2010

Slides

Readings

Cognetics and the Locus of Attention. The Humane Interface. Chap 2. Raskin.

Discussion Questions

Your Response

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Alex Aberle 13:09, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

[Note: The "discussion question" is the same as the last reading. I assume that that is a mistake. Instead, I'll just make some more general comments.]

I found the interplay between conscious and unconscious interesting. While the capacity of the unconscious is certainly much higher, it is not necessarily always a good thing for an action to be unconscious. They give the example of falling into bad habits. Similarly, they show that confirmation dialogues for file deletes are made useless by habituation. It goes to show that even though we can potentially get more done at once when more of a task is habitual and automatic, a bad UI can create bad habits that lead to unintended consequences (like accidental file deletion) and slowness (when your locus of attention is focused on figuring out the UI instead of the task).

I also liked the argument against being able to do things more than one way (perl, I'm looking at you). Having multiple pathways to accomplish the same task puts your locus of attention on the mechanism of accomplishing the task, instead of on the task itself. It can also cause confusion and hesitation, if a user can't decide which method is best (even if in reality, all the methods are equally good).

Frank Chew 15:54, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

One technique that works for a delete screen is color the delete confirmation button red, as well as have a red alert icon for the message "Are you sure you want to delete? ...". The red confirmation dialog is sufficiently different than the others the user has gained the habit of confirming. I learned in Cognitive Science that conscious awareness is the top-down amplification of a "preconscious" signal enough for it to exceed a threshold for awareness. You become "aware" of the signal as a result of the amplifying it enough to be aware of it. In the parallel processing of doing 'unconsious' tasks by habit, athletes describe a skill of "getting out of the way", putting aside top-down focus, so as not to divert consious awareness to something that could be irrelevant. This is useful in everyday life, where you want your conscious attention to "cease to be".

Benjamin Carpenter 19:38, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

While I think it is good to have a different type of button for a destructive operation like file deletion, I like the article's idea of being forgiving even more. When the UI allows you to do something destructive, and then hit undo, users feel mroe comfortable with the interface. I often see people who are working on systems they don't understand very well press buttons fearfully, worried that they are going to break something, or delete something important. While it is good to warn about a potentially destructive operation, in many cases, it is just as important to allow it to be undone. This teaches the good habit of not being afraid of your tools/technology. Everyone makes mistakes, and the ability to 'undo' something is usually possible in most cases. If it isn't, then maybe it's time for the big scary button that's hard to unconsciously ignore. For example, Debian Linux' package manager, APT, forces you to type out the line 'Yes, Do as I say!' when you tell it to do really uncommon and most likely unnecessary things, like uninstall itself or the main glibc library. In all other cases, it leaves your data and configuration files around when you uninstall, so you can just reinstall the application without losing any data if you accidentally removed it.

Jonathan Look 15:55, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

One point as mentioned by a previous student was in regards to having multiple ways of accomplishing a specific task. In some ways, I agree that having multiple paths to accomplish the same task can be confusing for some users. Nonetheless, I would like to argue the converse, and say that multiple paths in accomplishing the same task can provide improved functionality for a variety of different users. For example, take the editor in which I am writing this response. To embolden the text, I can either hit 1) Ctrl + B on my keyboard, 2) the 'B' icon near the menu, or 3) Right clicking my mouse to bring up the options menu so I can go to the 'Font' options. Each way accomplishes the same task, but each method has its advantages and disadvantages based on what I'm doing, where my hands are placed, at what text I am looking, etc.

Andy Lin 16:14, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

When people try to design something, there is a big chance that the interface may not be easy to use since the designers are too familiar to the process that they design. One sentence that gets my attention is that “perceptions do not automatically become memories.” As we all know, people tend to forget the information they glance quickly, and that is why we need to practice in order to master something. However, we should not expect users to practice using our interface but make it easy to use. As a result, I believe that this is important to keep in mind when we try to do the design since a good human-machine interface should take the users’ abilities and foibles into consideration.

Sean Tai 16:59, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

An interesting point made was that designs should be made such that habits that users develop when using them are not harmful, but instead help with their workflow. An example of this occurring is the difference in designs between Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. Users got used to the “toolbar” menu setup of 2003, essentially memorizing the steps needed to perform common tasks, and thus had difficulty adjusting to more graphical, arguably more intuitive setup of the “ribbon” menu used in 2007.

Don Arboleda 17:33, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

It seems amazing that technology has advanced to the point where, in our day-to-day interaction, the effectiveness of a tool's interaction with a person relies more on the mental side than on the physical. When before a tool was effective if one had the physical ability to utilize it, now we must hope to make our tools easy enough to understand to keep them useful.

The postulation on how the brain might work was thought-provoking. That the mind might not be the state of the brain but rather the change of state of the brain is something I had not yet considered. Perhaps we can liken the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind to RAM and some disk storage. Or even further, the train of thought is the current thread, while other underlying knowledge are threads in wait. We know much about the physical manifestation of the human mind, but the essence of this intangible wonder is still a mystery to us all.

The talk of habits is easily the most relevant to the class. We must rely on learning what our users' habits our so that we can utilize their already ingrained thoughts to our advantage and theirs. It's all very paradoxical, really. On the one hand, we have to make use of what habits there already are, especially if those habits are born of usage of similar situations. On the other hand, we must innovate and remove the inconsistency between what has been learned and what should be natural.

Samantha Paras 17:59, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

One interested point mentioned in the article is that the design of current Operating Systems are inefficient. When finishing one task you return back to the desktop instead of the previous task. I never thought about it, but it is wasteful. Many times while working on the computer I've gotten distracted by something (such as having to look up an address to a restaurant), and then gotten further distracted because I had forgotten what I was working on before. I think it's very important when designing something to not only research what is existing but to figure out how to improve upon these systems.

Also, I think having to change someone's habits is very difficult. This is probably why companies have so much trouble reinventing their programs/Operating Systems. Even though it could be an improvement in UI, users could be used to the past versions and have trouble adapting to the new one.

Raymond Williams 20:06, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

These readings were of particular interest to me.

Some of you may know that my ultimate goal in life is to create a device into which we can upload our consciousness to become truly digital beings.

However, once we are digitized there will no longer be an unconscious section. We will be conscious of everything. Now that's a ton of data to process!

So things like the formation of habits and the execution of simultaneous tasks will have to done intentionally, which sort of defeats their purpose.

Focusing on these sub-tasks will ultimately slow down the entire process because there will be many more processes per clock cycle. If the unconscious handles more data then the conscious parts of our brain, than we'll need some incredibly fast machines to handle that load.

This gives me a feeling of awe for the human brain - if only for a moment. I then begin to remember all of the flaws in the human system. I can't wait to become digital! If you're alive when I start the next phase of human evolution, you can live forever...

Chris Song 20:20, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

While this article discusses the importance of returning to the task one was working on previously instead of returning to the desktop, my personal experience tells me that there is not much difference at all. I sometimes find it difficult to fully “get back” to what I was doing even though the interface returned me to the exactly the same spot. Android OS basically implement such interface, but due to my “habit” of using windows, I never take advantage of such functionality. Instead, I find myself using the Home button to get my desktop screen back.

Canon Cat was particularly interesting. It would essentially “trick” the user into believing that it had no lags. I remember a game in original Playstaion that would let you play a small and simple game while loading the main game. In this case, I already knew that loading was taking place. However, I still felt like loading is more tolerable due to the fact that I was engaging in another activity. Basically, even if you don't “trick” the user, you can make transitions more tolerable for the user via clever interface.

James Yu 20:49, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

There were a lot of interesting points in this reading. First, the consious/unconsious discussion really did seem to make sense. The author's examples did show how a person can shift from consious to unconcious and how a person can only focus on one locus. His discussion on habit forming and error message also rings true, since there are a lot of confirmation messages that I do tend to habitually press yes or ok on. The author seemed to be focused more on how to take advantage of habit forming though. For example there are some programs with "bad" UI that a user may become used to and then struggle to use something with a more intuitive UI. In other words, he didn't focus much on learning curve, so his technique is applicable more to However, the author didnt' mention one use of confirmation, which is to prevent accidental button presses, although he did say the interface should be designed in a way that this is impossible. The idea of returning to where you left off does make sense, although I don't really see it much in computers today (the desktop is still central, and hybernation/standby/sleep seems more designed to reduce startup time than to return the user to where they left off).

Theron Ji 21:30, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

This article was very interesting in the sense that it made a strong connection between our brain and a computer. There is an analogy between our conscious and unconscious and a computer's volatile memory (RAM) and long-term memory (hard disk). Also, the author implies that our brain is like a single-core processor, in that it can only run one idea, or process, at once, but simulates multi-tasking the same way a computer simulates multi-processing through threads. One question I have when working with this analogy though, is how does human habits fit in with the computer model?

Karl He 21:33, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

The analysis on human attention was enlightening. Especially surprising is the idea that you can only really focus on one task at a time. This goes with my long-running suspicion that multitasking isn't really a good idea.

It does seem that a lot of good interface design can come out of exploiting habits. For example, the idea that the minimize/maximize/close buttons are at the top right. For Windows users, this has been ingrained into them, and is the first place people look when they want to close a window. This is why, if you ask someone to compare working on a Mac or a Windows machine, you will often hear this point coming up even though it isn't nearly as significant as many of the other interface differences.

Exploiting "apparent speed" could also be very useful, such as what the Canon Cat did. This is probably something my PDF reader could start using. There was a noticable lag between loading the next page every time I scrolled down, which could likely have been alleviated by doing a quick half-render of the next page without interrupting my attention, which became annoying after about the 3rd page.

Melissa Lim 21:44, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

This article makes interesting points in relating properties of human psychology to design decisions. In order to be a successful interaction designer, it is necessary to understand how humans use, become conditioned to, and respond to a new product. People will always multi-task and it is crucial to ensure that the user's main focus remains uninterrupted from what they consider to be most important. I particularly enjoyed reading about how people develop automatic responses after receiving the same warning alerts over and over again. I never thought about designers having to address these types of issues. What do people do that even they are not aware of themselves? How do designers recognize these actions and develop solutions? This is where user research comes into play. In order to develop a successful, intuitive product, it is necessary to recognize and understand how our use of technology is affected by aspects of the human psyche.

Chao liu 21:49, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

this artical bring some intresting points. the interface need to take care of the unconscious part and conscious part and sometimes the interface will help people to form a habit! In fact, in our life there do are some obviously example, such as now people are get used to use touch screen and it's almost impossible for like 10years ago, and now more and more interface are based on touch screen. And sometimes the UI will affect the way of people thinking. There is a example in reality that the data now is visualized and people are more willing to "see" some abstract objects such as "sound" "wind" there are already "visualized music" application now and I think there will be more in the future.

Now UI are become more imporant for people, because it's not only about how to use the app,but how to make the app more easy and convenience.

The best UI is not let you feel it, or you can say, the best Ui need to be where it should be. But where is "should be" That's all our designers' job to find it out...

Tiago Bandeira 22:13, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

The articles focus on conscious and unconscious behavior explanation felt like it distracted me from the implications in user interface design since only a handful of direct examples were given. These examples (the car, the delete button, the pilots in the airplane and the cat computer/program) were good but I felt like the article was bogged down with theory.

I liked the authors point about how habits are formed in specific applications and when a similar application attempts to do the same thing it should have the same process for achieving this. What happens however if someone comes up with a better scheme of doing something? When is it appropriate for an application to change the process if the previous process is inefficient? An example of this would be the keyboard. The QWERTY design is slow and inefficient in comparison to DVORAK yet it is still by far the most prevalent means of inputting text simply because people are used to it.

Richard Laroue 22:35, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

Being that I am a Cogntive Science major, I've come across several articles regarding cognitive models and the cognitive unconscious. I have also taken a course on scientific approaches to consciousness with Professor Kihlstrom, who was mentioned in this reading. Human attention capacities is something we discussed in great detail in his class and I can recall several phenomena that caught my interest. For example, when your locus of attention is on some task (maybe taking an exam or reading a book), there can be chatter going on all around you and you will not pick up on any of it, but if your name is called, your attention is redirected to the source of the calling. I think it is interesting how breakthroughs in cognitive science research can open the doors for improvements in user interface design. One example from the reading that I really appreciated is the idea of taking an interface for a card game that takes some time to shuffle the cards and inserting a "shuffling" sound to make the time seem shorter for the user.

Vincent Rodriguez 22:58, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

I found the idea of a computer interface inadvertedly forcing the user to form a bad habit hilarious, but in a sobering way. When I actually think about it, any program that uses any sort of UI has the responsibility to not only make sure that anyone using their interface is able to do exactly what they needed to do out of it in the most efficient way possible, but to also make sure that their users do not leave the product with terrible misconceptions of default keyboard shortcuts and the like. To give an extreme example, having a piece of software aimed at children/first-time computer users have Alt+f4 as the confirm button is setting up their users to a terrible future.

The idea of having a computer interface being able to focus my concentration on exactly what I need to be working on is also fantastic. I feel that this should be one of the main ideas on the top of designers' heads when they think up a UI.

Kyle Gorlick 23:00, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

I never realized how important habits were for user interfaces. Unfortunately, ui elements that conflict between different programs may cause difficulty due to habit formation. Even if one program's design was very poor, if users already have formed habits for it, it might be good to incorporate similar ui elements into new, similar programs. Also noteworthy, is how to balance between the efficiency of habits and the ignorant automation that goes along with it.

Evan Rosky 23:24, 19 September 2010 (PDT)

The idea of one locus of attention is an interesting detail that isn't commonly thought about. Often people multitask, but in the sense that they slice up multiple activities into chunks and rotate between them. Because of this, being able to guide the locus quickly seems important in designing an interface. Switching between tasks is common for some people and if two different programs present different ways of doing similar things, the user can get confused. At the same time, however, interfaces should also be designed to allow for certain usage habits to develop that can make operation smoother. Unfortunately this grows into a problem when certain design decisions become convention and can't easily be broken for better designs in the future or in the case of multitasking between similar applications with slightly different mechanisms (as the writer pointed out in his own word-processor hotkey mixup).

Arthur Huang 00:21, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I thought it was really interesting when the article compared the human mind to the computer. Our brain is really like a single processor, only able to focus on one idea at a time, but can also multitask in the same way that computers use threads to multitask. The article also makes a good point regarding users' habits; they tend to stick around, and designing an efficient, better system can encounter the problem where the design has to take into consideration the habits the user might have already developed. This creates an even worse problem when coupled with a bad initial U.I.- attempting to fix the problem in a later patch of the program or product might force the users to feel like the design is unintuitive and hard to use, simply because it doesn't conform to the habits they already formed.

Sara LaVigna 00:21, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I identified with a lot of the unfortunate users in the examples given in this chapter. I have often been too absorbed in a task to see the warning not to do something. I can't count the number of times I have been totally surprised when my computer has shut down because of low battery, yet there is a warning that shows in the bottom of my screen for 5 minutes! When my locus of attention is elsewhere, especially for a frustrating task, outside stimuli are ignored. The tips in italics on how to use this information about consciousness and loci of attention for designing better user interfaces were really cool. It's interested how you can manipulate the user's automaticity of tasks to help them be more productive, their lag in remembering where they left off to make it seem like something booted up faster, and the addition of sounds to make a lag seem intentional and not annoying as it would be without the sound. There is a careful balance to these designs as you can't have a task become too automatic ("Are you sure you want to delete this?") or warnings too unnoticeable. I really hope to use this empirical data on how human minds work, "cognetics," to make a better use interface in what is often regarded as a subjective work.

Daniel Yoo 01:19, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I like the argument that the article says where it can be difficult to deal with the psychologically, philosophically, and historically laden terms – such as conscious and unconscious – that we use to describe aspects of the way our minds work. Designing an interface is not as easy because people have their different perspectives and perceptions do not automatically generates memories. People are not always conscious at one moment and are conscious of it at other moment. This is where the designers should find the solution to address the users to have less confusion.

Derrick Tao 01:31, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

One of the biggest problems with developers is that they sometimes design with themselves as the users instead of the non-technical users that will be using the product. The problem with this is that often times user won't have the technical background to think the same way as the developers. This results is poorly design products that are very confusing the the users. For example, the delete button should not just do what it says but allows the users to realize the full process that will go on if they press the button. This could include reminding the user what the button will do by a confirmation screen. Another useful thing for users to see and use is an Undo button. If they see it, they will know that if the make a mistake they can always go back thus allowing them to explore the application more throughly without fear of doing unretrackable changes.

Geobio Boo

The part I learned most from, or found most intriguing, about the chapter was the importance of the unconscious and prevalent habits. Yes, I am one of those people who glance over dialogs very VERY quickly. Once I've seen it once, I never read it a second time if it pops up again (for example, a confirm dialog the next time I use it). Which is why I really like that some programs have improved on that to have the button actually say what it will do: "Delete" or "Cancel" verses "Yes" and "No". Yes and No requires me to read the sentence/paragraph above. And from personal experience, habits have a huge influence--even when working between Windows and Mac, pressing Ctrl vs Apple button. I've become so use to what I've used, that sometimes it is nearly impossible to make me pay attention to something such as a browser' open-exe-file confirmation or a delete confirmation.

I think that when I try to design, I will keep in mind that users have previous habits from other interactions (computers, etc), and to stay in line with those expectations. Things that help easily, clearly, and unmistakably signify actions helps a lot too. For example, on the iPhone, buttons that terminate or delete something is consistently red--suggesting that it might do something bad (end a call, delete an event, etc). And importantly, make it very clear what my action will lead to.

Alan.choi 02:57, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I must admit that I found myself nodding my head a lot and agreeing with what happens to people, good and bad. I truly do think that if I think about something I can usually do with ease because of habitual practice, like parking my car in my tight parking space, I'll screw up and that's how my car has ended up with a few scratches.

Now onto the actual response in relation to usability. I hadn't really given much though to the locus of attention in terms of using a program. For example, putting a confirmation for a deletion is a pretty good idea. I would've thought to done it, but only because I'm used to that being the case for all my other programs, but then again, even that can become a moot point if the user is habitualized to press yes to any dialog box. But this also brings up some concerns with doing things differently and differentiating from peer programs basically. If people are used to one thing already (like the pilot with the buzzer and thinking it had to do with the brakes). Even though we can make a point to distinguish it and teach that to the users, the fact remains that at least to start, they're going to have to catch themselves when they first use it, and that could detract users. I know that I'm personally not too fond of Macs because of where all the shortcuts are and are not on their keyboards. I'm not too sure at the moment, which is better.

Bichen Wang 04:00, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

Despite the fact that humans only have one “conscious attention,” multitasking still seems incredibly popular. Driving is so easy to just go into autopilot. Then we all hear about the guy who was driving with his cell phone and texting/calling and crashing into something or other. However, most of the time, these distracted drivers are relatively fine when it comes to handling the car. So when is it dangerous to multitask and when is it safe? Since people know that a person can only pay attention to one thing, shouldn’t all cell phones, ratio, music, talking, GPS, and etc be banned? Yes the GPS can help navigate, but using it steals attention from the actual driving. However, not using a navigation helper might have some drivers turn right from the farthest left lane in a last ditch effort to make the correct turn. Then again, are the act of driving itself and navigation different tasks? Then we would have the problem that driving steals attention to an equally important task while driving! Then we can put a lot of that into our unconscious attention. Then what if we put most or all of it into our unconscious attention? Could we make it from point A to point B simply by cruising along without major thought? I certainly have driven several miles without recalling that I already drove so far. It was on a route I had driven many times, and there were not very many cars out there. When I got off the freeway, I realized I had no memory of driving the last few miles before the exit. Unconscious power!

Terrance Ng 04:39, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I agree that there are a lot of conscious and unconscious behaviors that people have. Users will have some expectation of what performs what function in an interface based on previous experience, even when faced with a new interface. Even a confirmation for a deletion, while a good idea, can become useless if a user becomes overly familiar (and perhaps overly zealous in getting rid of dialogue boxes) and habitually presses 'yes' to the pop up. Also, trying to do things too differently runs the risk of making an interface unusable because people cannot familiarize themselves with the way that the interface functions.

Adam Vogt 04:57, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

A common complaint with Apple’s iOS for mobile devices is the way it handles notifications. On the iPhone when there is a notification a message pops up in the center of the screen and it completely interrupts the current task to notify the user. People complain that this method of notification is annoying and bad for productivity and point to other less intrusive notification methods like that of PalmOS and Android as being a better solution. However, when you take into account the singularity of the locus of attention, and the concept of absorption, it makes Apple’s method seem more appropriate. If a person is deeply absorbed into a task there is a much higher risk of overlooking a subtle notification. So even though some people find Apple’s notification system annoying it is likely preventing them from missing an important notification.

Tsung Han Tsai 06:56, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The thing about giving confirmation of deletion is that even though it makes you think twice, after a while, people will just click yes out of habit. Other examples are from browsers. If a popup tells you that a certificate is outdated, would you still go onto the site? Probably. Also when installing software, people are so used to clicking next and not reading anything such as the terms of conditions. If programmers want to grab user's attentions, they'll have to come up with something other than confirmation dialogues, because too many programs in the past has already used them.

Albert Tseng 07:39, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The readings on cognetics and the locus of attention suggest an underlying model of our loci of attetion being dictated by the cognitive conscious and cognitive unconscious of our minds. It is interesting to see how these circumstances compare, as well as understanding then the greater-than-ever need to create designs that cater fully to the human mind's idiosyncracies. In addition, I found particularly interesting -- and agree with -- the author's viewpoint that designs should consider humans' tendency to develop habits, using it to their advantage instead of allowing sloppy designs to cause users to develop detrimental habits that impede their workflow. Also, the influence that our current loci of attention has over our actions is surprisingly great, and so, when creating designs, the designers must be careful to retain the users' loci of attention.

Courtney Wang 08:19, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The chapter "Cognetics and the Locus of Attention" from this week's reading made it even more clear just how important it is to understand users when designing applications; specifically, how non-trivial it is to consider the fact that they are human. Applications (especially mobile ones in the context of this class) are all about pushing the limits of human interaction, but we often forget that regardless of how innovative we are, there are still human factor limitations. The most important thing to take away from the article is that computer difficulties and other frustrations in dealing with various products are often related to poor interface design, not poor effort or intelligence. As designers, we must realize that users are not the enemy. We must take advantage of human limitations and conditions rather than let them hinder design if we want to create truly innovative and useful products. The idea of exploiting the single locus of attention like magicians do can be very powerful if utilized correctly. Other ways to let user conditions guide design is to take advantage of the fact that humans form habits. The notion of there being no good way to warn of bad interaction because of forming habits is important, but it's more important to understand that habit-forming is something that can be taken advantage in design. How can we do this?

Avery Gee 10:45, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I think one of the most important lessons from the reading is that humans are really imperfect and have many cognitive deficiencies that UI programmers need to be aware of when designing good user interfaces. Specifically, human attention is easily disrupted (probably left over evolutionarily from when we had to be able to shift focus quickly to avoid being hunted). Another deficit mentioned is the human tendency to mechanize things (form habits). This is somewhat of a cognitive shortcut since you don't have to recalculate the best way to do something if you've already internalized a way to do things. It is important for us to know about this because people will resist figuring out new ways to do things and want their old paths supported by new interfaces.

Christine Lu 10:46, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The author brings up an interesting point of having too many options of completing a task as a way that designers often inadvertently cause shifts in the user's locus of attention. Often, we as designers become so engrossed in whether or not our users will be able to easily figure out how to use our app that we think of all the different ways people will try to use it, and thereby we try to incorporate all these differences into our design. I think this also goes hand-in-hand with having a very detailed persona that we are designing for. Perhaps people who are very similar will intuitively perform tasks the same, leading designers to feel less anxiety about taking out some complexities, and hopefully keeping the user's locus of attention directed upon one task.

Alexander Wong 10:46, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I particularly liked the example of swapping the gas and brake pedal in a car to illustrate the power of your unconscious tendencies. I've always had a few qualms about taking UI from another person's program to use in my own, either as a whole or in part, but now it would advantageous to do so. Building a UI consistent with other programs means that you are playing nicely with the user's unconscious behavior. If they expect "print" to be under "File" then it better be there or they will have a hard time finding it. Modal boxes should also always have an "X" in the top right corner to close it. Playing nice with the unconscious will make your program instantly easier to use and eliminate the possibility of existing habits interfering with operation.

Designing a good UI means you also have to play to the locus of attention. Modal windows are a nice way to draw the locus of attention, but there are other subtle ways as well. For example, confirm and cancel buttons. If the user typically clicks confirm at a particular dialog box it would be a good design choice to make the confirm button prominent and the cancel button smaller.

The difficulty with these suggestions, as with UI design as a whole, is discovering user tendencies.

Danica Shei 10:59, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I thought this article was pretty interesting because I’ve never realized that a design that optimized a user’s subconscious habits could be crucial in developing good habits when interacting with the machine/device’s interface. It definitely would be a good idea to emphasize warnings because a surprising pop up will alert me to future warnings and I will definitely avoid actions that may induce a somewhat shocking/disturbing warning. Machines that have a bad UI may cause the reader to form bad habits that in turn will detriment the efficiency/usability of the device/machine. And when users start feeling that the device caused them the bad habits. users will lose interest and faith in that device.

Sui Kun Guan 11:27, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The aircraft accident in 1972 is an example of human beings are most like to ignore other tasks while they are concentrating in one particular task. Usually, a designer will give hints or warnings after the user have interface operational error. However, this is not a good design strategy because the user will focus on how to fix the error and ignore the warming very easily. Therefore, as a good design strategy, a designer should design the application with making sure that users can not make interface operational error, and any actions due to the user is reversible.

Seng Heng 11:41, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The article more or less made sense. Anything that allows a user to build habits regarding its use allows the user to become more efficient at using that tool, because they no longer have to consciously think about using it; likewise, making a program that fits a user's unconscious notions of how a program should work results in a much lower learning curve. The part about the singular locus of attention also seems to reinforce support for a simple UI - too many UI elements and a user may just tune out everything that they don't care about at the moment. A user is at their most productive when they are singularly focused on one task and don't have any conscious overhead regarding what they're doing - when using a programming SDK, focused entirely on generating their code, as opposed to interrupting their mental state to maintain cross references.

Brian Maissy 11:47, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I found the author's suggestion of using MRI and PET to analyze user reactions to interface fascinating. I had not previously considered using the physical to gauge the mental.

The paradigm of locus of attention is a useful one when designing interfaces. Previously when I designed things I was designing purely for the conscious. This will make me deeply reconsider everything I design and use.

Aaron Loessberg-Zahl 11:49, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

Chapter 2 reaffirms a lot of the things that I've come to find in computing, and just in life in general. For example, if I am reading a book, and I start thinking about something else--say, what I'm planning for the weekend--I will find myself three-quarters of the way down the page, realizing that I have comprehended nothing of what I have just read. In the case of computers, I have developed the bad habit of pressing SHIFT+DELETE (delete, skipping Recycle Bin) then ENTER (yes, I'm sure) when I want to delete any files. This came back to bite me just yesterday, when I accidentally deleted a large portion of my Documents folder, and had to resort to a file recovery program to get it back.

I would also read the recommended chapter, but according to Adobe, "The file is damaged and cannot be repaired."

Richard Nguyen 11:53, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I really enjoyed this article because it addresses the cognitive restrictions of users which often get overlooked in the initial designs of systems and interfaces. I know that I often idealize the user and expect them to be able to do many things at once effectively or at least be aware of the many things going on in the views. But I am now more aware of the limitations and training required to multitask and form habits. So ideally the apps that we build should help the users focus on exactly what they want to do and not give any more information than is necessary so they don't get distracted. There are successful apps that thrive on how well users manage their locus of attention such as real time strategy games where the user's focus must be divided in an efficient way in order to succeed.

Anthony Puccinelli 12:17, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I was intrigued by the statement, "We must master an ergonomics of the mind". It was compelling and appropriate rhetoric for talking about computer UI design, a form of design with a much vaguer set of restrictions and guidelines than most mechanical designs. This is, in part, because this type of design is one that has not had as much time to develop over years and in part because people's minds seem (at least initially) to differ much more than their bodies. The first article helped establish a means of finding common grounds amongst minds in much the same way mechanical engineers find statistical common ground amongst bodies (mainly through what's statistically shown to be a human limitation for everybody). The sections about humans having a singular locus of attention made me ponder the similarities between human minds and computers (i.e. a computer can only have certain stuff in "concious" RAM, but can "remember" other things by taking some time to access an "unconcious" hard disk and bringing that info into the "concious" RAM). Unfortunately, as other also experienced, I couldn't access the chapter 3 reading as it was "damaged".

Calvin Wang 12:20, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I have a friend who always attributes user mistakes to the users being "stupid". "How could you possibly have missed that warning message? What were you thinking?" It might be surprising at first that so many people are unbelievably bad with computers, but it's not their fault. Most CS majors have a distinct personality (**TJ in Meyer-Briggs personality theory) that makes it easy to understand computers but, at the same time, hard to understand humans well, especially people who aren't blessed with a natural technological savviness. This is also related to attention and multitasking. Many CS majors play RTS games like StarCraft, which trains one's ability to quickly switch between different tasks with minimal delay, an ability that seems to come more easily to us than to others. A direct manifestation of this fact in user interface is that we are much more comfortable using complex control interfaces such as the automatic oil level detection in the old Mercedes than average users. As the people designing computer systems and user interfaces, we should always remember who we are designing for and not assume that anything that we regard as easy is necessarily easy for a typical user.

James Butkovic 12:22, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

The wildcard of designing software is human psychology, which is far less easy to design for than the machine side of things. How about the sociological and anthropological variables that one must come to terms with when designing something like a social networking site? Ergonomically speaking, it might not make business sense to design for 5% of the population defined by some limiting characteristic that sets them apart from the 95%. For example, some captchas can't be read by blind people (unlike http://www.captcha.net/). Given that people have one "locus of attention", the use of ajax in web applications is a great example of how we make changes to the system asynchronously and outside of their attention to greatly improve the user's experience.

Simran Chaudhry 12:30, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

Really interesting article! Especially find the chapter on habits interesting. Skilled athletes/programmers/musicians have practiced for so long that their basic motions become unconscious. Even we have amazing skills b/c of habituation..I don't think about which letter to hit when typing -- it just happens. The power of habit probably explains why certain systems are copied again and again in new designs (QWERTY keyboard), even if they were, initially, poorly designed.

Yue Chang Hu 12:38, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

This article is very interesting because I can related some of the idea that it is talking about to myself. I totally agree with the author that good design will take into an account of the user's cognitive conscious and cognitive unconscious mind. For an example, when I switch from Adobe PhotoShop to GIMP in Ubuntu, I alway find it very difficult to get adjusted into using the new interface because I can never use the pen tool and trace tool like I did in PhotoShop. I think this is probably what the author called as the user's habit. Thus, it is also very important to make user interface as simple and similar to other widely used programs or devices because it will make life easier for the user and helps them prevent avoidable errors.

Jeremy Sasson 12:41, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I thought this article was very interesting with regard to the conscious and the subconscious. Specifically, it is supremely important that the UI designer of a product develop the product in such a way that bad habits are not developed. A great example of this is the security warnings issued by web browsers upon surfing to a potentially dangerous website. People get so used to bypassing that warning that their bad habits can be taken advantage of by hackers. I also think the notion of a single locus of attention is something that definitely needs to be taken into account by people designing a product. The user needs to only have one critical task to accomplish at a time (perhaps some sort of abstract threading model could be organized to accomplish this).

Robert Connick 12:46, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

Ha, now it all makes sense! Notepad2, Notepad++, and GIMP all have a default "hotkey" combination to "Save File As..." but they each do it differently! One is Ctrl+Alt+S, one is Ctrl+Shift+S, and one is F6, but I always forget which is which and have to look in the menu. Now I know that's because the slightly different methods for doing the same thing inserted a decision into what should be an automatic action, thus preventing me from forming a habit and also tearing my attention from whatever task is at hand. That, according to Raskin, just wasted at least twenty seconds (ten for switching away, ten for switching back), because the human mind can only have one "locus of attention" at a time. Although it sounds very reasonable (one point that emerged during our project brainstorming was that it's impossible for one person to count cricket chirps and seconds at the same time to determine the temperature), it would be interesting to see (and maybe try) some more experiments that show that.

Asa Zernik 12:49, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

This article brings up a point I had heard before in (of all things) security class - it is the task of the software designer to 1) make it possible for the user to learn the use of the product as a habit, 2) make certain that the habits formed do not lead to "bad" behavior (undesirable use of the program, for example bypassing security measures), and 3) make sure that decisions which are not meant to be reflexive and routine do not become habit. Habit and the unconscious are useful - they vastly increase the speed at which a user can respond to an interface - but they can force the user to abdicate certain decisions to force of habit and the unconscious.

Mark Wei 13:00, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

Habits are hard to change, so good design is crucial to help the user's workflow instead of hindering it. It's interesting that the text implies that current systems are inefficient, while we have to work with mobile operating systems that are even more restricted. Users are used to multi-tasking on the desktop, and yet arguably non of the smartphone OS's provide any satisfiable multitasking. I as a user have learned to work around this fact. For example, running less programs at the same time, or completing one task completely before starting another. But it should be the designer's job to facilitate an easy and familiar multitasking solution.

Karthik Jagadeesh 13:33, 20 September 2010 (PDT)

I thought that the section on creation of habits was very interesting and it is something that I have noticed in my life. During middle school and high school I played a lot of tennis, and spend multiple hours everyday hitting the ball and serving. I didn’t even realize it, but a lot of the motions went into my subconscious and I did not even think about the motions. After coming to college, I took a break from tennis for a couple months, and this is when I realized that a lot of the motions were things that I didn’t think about. Since I hadn’t played for a while, what I noticed was that I didn’t actively think about the motions since I was used to it being in my subconscious, but the motion wasn’t in my subconscious since I hadn’t played for a while. As a result, I was playing tennis very poorly.

So one thing to note is that even things that are in your subconscious can be erased if the motion is not done for a long period of time. This can be bad since you don’t actively think about the motions, so you will need to partially re-learn it.