CSE 595, Winter 2000 1

Feb 24: Desinging to Fit Human Capabilities; Psychological Aspects; Participatory Design

Guest lecture: Dan Comden, UW DO-IT Program (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology)

Administrivia early turn in of introduction and methods section now

optional

Topics for tonight Participatory Design Various topics in cognitive and social psychology as they

relate to HCI Discussion of assigned papers “Computers as Social Actors” Role of metaphor

Universal Design for the Web

Dan ComdenAdaptive Technology LabDO-IT ProgramUniversity of Washington

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Web Overview

Multimedia text images sounds video

Hypermedia clickable text regions location of information isn’t important

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Evolution of the Web

Gopher

SGML - Standard Generalized Markup

Language

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language

XML - Extensible Markup Language

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Current Utilization

Commercial Sites

Intranets

Education/Reference

Personal “brag” pages

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Why Universal Design?

Equality of access to information

ADA

Commercial Implications

Examples from architecture

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What Affects Accessibility?

Browser not everyone uses IE or Netscape

Connection speedPersonal preferenceVisitor knowledge levelLanguage proficiency

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What Affects Accessibility?

Visitors with Disabilities such as:Visual impairmentsBlindnessHearing problemsMobility difficultiesLearning Disabilities

Adaptive Technology Video

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Tips and Tricks

Consistent InterfaceStick to HTML specsTest with more than one browserProvide alternate text for images/videoAvoid framesDon’t use client side image mapsHigh contrast color

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Consistent Layout

Provides a recognizable method of

navigation

Attempt consistency through domain

Benefits: Everyone, particularly those with

mobility and learning impairments

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HTML Specifications

Universally recognized tags

Unlike <BLINK>

Benefits: Anyone using text-based or non-

standard browsers

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Animation anyone?

“It is rare to see a web animation that has any goal besides annoying the user.“ Jakob Nielsen Alertbox, January, 1999

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Test your pages!

Use a variety of browsers

At least one text-based browser

SSL won’t work with Lynx

Benefits: All potential visitors.Server detection of web browser or text-

only versions mean more work!

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Provide alternate text

Not everyone can see images Visitors with visual impairments Browsers with images turned off

<ALT> attribute is a great tool

Benefits: anyone who can’t see graphics

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PDF files

Convert simple PDF to HTML or ASCII web email plug-in

Works poorly with complex PDF filesSource cannot be an imageNot a general purpose conversion tool

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Streaming Audio/Video

Open captioning is easiestTools for captioning existing files:

W3C’s Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL)

Microsoft’s Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI)

Text version should be included, with description

Streaming Audio/Video

Demonstration

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Java Accessibility

Java 2 has accessibility built-in to JFC

Java Accessibility Utilities offer extended services for JDK 1.2

IBM offers detailed guidelines linked from Sun’s site

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Single Design Pages

Some contradictory ideas:Different versions for different users?

Too much extra work often out of date

Different versions for different clients? screen sizes (handheld vs. desktop) Audio-only

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Cascading Style Sheets

Easy maintenanceHelps consistencyCan rarely be overridden by individual

designer!Ultimately decided by viewer

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Frames: Usability Snafu?

Bookmarking? Change frameset with TARGET =“_top” attribute

Does print model make sense?Screen real estateSearch engine problems

May be appropriate for intranet

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Future of the Web

New directions browser-specific (IE vs. Netscape vs.. ?) JAVA handheld/other clients

HTML updates XMLA return to consistent, clean

presentation of information?

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Universal Design <> Boring

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Priorities

Fix home and high traffic pages first

W3C’s priority guidelines

Usability testing

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Do’s and Don’ts

DO: use text consistent interface <ALT> text usability testing caption & transcribe accessibility statement descriptive links

DON’T: client side ISMAPS Frames omit <ALT> text browser-specific

features Difficult backgrounds use “click here”

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Resources

DO-IT W3C Accessibility Initiative PDF access Java access Trace R&D Center Nielsen’s useit.com Web Pages That Suck WGBH/NCAM Webwatch email list

www.washington.edu/doit www.w3c.org/WAI/ access.adobe.com www.sun.com/access www.trace.wisc.edu www.useit.com www.webpagesthatsuck.com www.wgbh.org/ncam/ www.teleport.com/~kford/

webwatch.htm

Questions & Comments

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Papers for This Week with Reviews

Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandanavian Scene Average rating: 4.5 (range 2-6)

The Diversity of Usability Practices Average rating: 4.4 (range 3-5)

Internet Paradox: A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? Average rating: 4.7 (range 2-6) a lively set of reviews:

“This is a great article not because I agree with it, but because I think such studies are incredibly dangerous.” (student A)

“Thanks for requiring us to read this paper. I’m going to distribute references to it to everyone I work with.” (student B)

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Other papers (no reviews) Human Information Processing

User Technology: from Pointing to Pondering The Growth of Cognitive Modeling in Human-Computer

Interaction Since GOMS The Contributions of Applied Psychology to the Study of

Human-Computer Interaction Let’s Get Real: A Position Paper on the Role of Cognitive

Psychology in the Design of Humanly Useful and Usable Systems

Error Human Error and the Design of Computer Systems Human Error and the Search for Blame Designing for Error

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GOMS Model A (low level) representation of a user’s cognitive

structure goals operators (actions belonging to a user’s repertoire of skills) methods (sequences of subgoals and operators often carried

out in an automatic fashion to achieve goals) selection rules (for choosing among different possible

methods for reaching a particular goal)

predicts the methods that a skilled person will employ to carry out editing tasks and the time they will take

various levels — keystroke level most heavily studied some applications: text editing, video games,

telephone operators

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The Role of Cognitive Psychology in HCI

contrasting positions: Phil Barnard, “The Contributions of Applied

Cognitive Psychology” Thomas Landauer, “Let’s Get Real: A Position

Paper on the Role of Cognitive Psychology in the Design of Humanly Useful and Usable Systems”

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Participatory Design

reading: “Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandanavian Scene”

Other resources: Proceedings of biennial Participatory Design

Conference (see http://www.cpsr.org)

G. Bjerknes, P. Ehn and M. Kyng, “Computers and Democracy: A Scandanavian Challenge”

J. Greenbaum and M. Kyng, “Design at Work: Comparative Design of Computer Systems”

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Participatory Design — Original Context

Scandanavian co-determination laws — workplace democracy

strong trade unionsin-house or specialized systems —

not mass-market shrinkwrap softwarelong tradition and current practice in

Scandanavia of related ideas, e.g. Citizen’s Panels in Denmark on controversial new technologies

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Participatory Design — Some Principles

Computer systems that are created for the workplace should be designed with full participation from the users.

Computer applications should enhance workplace skills rather than degrade them.

Computer applications should be viewed as tools, under the control of people using them.

Introducing computer applications changes the organization of work. The use situation is a fundamental starting point for the design process.

Computer applications should be looked at as a means of increasing quality of results, not just quantity.

The design process is a political one and includes conflicts at almost every step. These conflicts should be addressed, not ignored or pushed aside.

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Participatory Design — Tools

workplace visits with interviews and demonstrations

future workshops critique phase fantasy phase

mockupscooperative prototyping; rapid feedbackmore recently: ethnography

(Aside: note the influence on Contextual Design)

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Participatory Design — Theoretical Foundations

analytic tradition vs. social constructionphilosophical foundations:

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, not the Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus) — in particular Wittgenstein’s notion of language games

Martin Heiddegger Karl Marx

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Quote of the Week“Well, I don’t really know how to tell you what I don’t like

about the system. I guess one of the things is that it makes me think and work differently, like for example, when I want to make separate columns, I need to type it and then rearrange it. That’s not the way I see it in my mind.” -- Word processing user, quoted at the beginning of the chapter “Introduction: Situated Design” in Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems by Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng

“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

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“The Diversity of Usability Practices”

special section of May 1999 Communications of the ACM

juxtaposition of Danish and U.S. companies

interesting to note: influence of participatory design and information user involvement in the current practices of the Danish companies

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“Internet Paradox”

HomeNet study: longitudinal study — first 1 to 2 years online sample of 93 Pittsburgh families 8 diverse neighborhoods Year 1 sample drawn from families with

teenagers in high school journalism classes Year 2 sample drawn from families with an

adult on a Board of Directors of a community development organization

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from yesterday’s Seattle PI

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Joseph McGrath, “Methodology Matters”

“… it is not appropriate to ask whether any given study is flawless, and therefore to be believed (as in the query, ‘but is that study valid?’). Rather we should ask whether the evidence from any given study is consistent with other evidence on the same problem, done by the same or other researchers using other strategies and other methods. If two sets of evidence based on different methods are consistent, both of those sets of evidence gain in credibility. If they are not consistent, that inconsistency raises doubts about the credibility of both sets. … The fundamental principle in behavioral and social science is that credible empirical knowledge requires consistency or convergence of evidence across studies based on multiple methods.”

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“Internet Paradox” — Findings

inferred a causal connection between increased internet use, decreased social involvement, and increased depression.

Caveats: not a large effect not a representative sample of people (the

participants already had various other social connections, lived in a large city, included few disabled people, etc.)

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“Internet Paradox” — Design Implications Any design implications are speculative at this

point! small sample, preliminary results Internet and computer technology changing rapidly

suggestions from the CACM paper: technologies such as Buddy Lists in AOL Instant

Messenger, HP’s Message Board may make Internet use more beneficial in the home

lower connection latencies make internet use more social (for example,

multiple keyboards, applications that encourage use by several people)

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Social Capital

related phenomenon (cited in paper) - decline in “social capital”

reference: Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”, Journal of Democracy Vol 6

Trends in the U.S. over the last 35 years: Citizens vote less go to church less discuss government with their neighbors less are members of fewer voluntary organizations have fewer dinner parties generally get together less for civic and social purposes

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Social Capital (2)

the cause …??Putnam blames televisionSome controversy — see e.g. Nicholas

Lemann, “Kicking in Groups”, Atlantic Monthly, April 1996 “Just as intriguing as Robert Putnam’s theory

that we are ‘bowling alone’ — that the bonds of civic association are dissolving — is how readily the theory has been accepted.”

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“Computers are Social Actors”

optional paper by Clifford Nass, Jonathan Steuer, and Ellen Tauber, CHI 94

Material here also taken from: “Computers Are Social Actors: A Review of Current

Research” by Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon, John Morkes, Eun-Young Kim, and B. J. Fogg, in Batya Friedman, “Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology”

a lecture by Clifford Nass at NSF HCI Grantees Workshop, August 1997

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Do People Respond Socially To Technology?

Folk wisdom: Of course. We mutter at the washing machine,

swear at the computer, talk back to the telephone (just the bell part, I mean).

Traditional academic response (according to Nass): it's an aberration (lack of knowledge, or

psychological or social dysfunction) social behavior is directed at the human

creator of the program or machine

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Nass’s Experimental Approach

Pick a social science finding (theory and method) concerning behavior or attitude toward other humans.

Change “human” to “computer” in the statement of the theory.

Replace one or more humans with computers in the method of the study.

Provide the computer with some human characteristics (language output, voice, etc)

Determine if the social rule still applies.

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Some Social Behaviors

politeness normsresponse to personality types

dominant/submissive friendliness

flatterygender stereotypesteam affiliation

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The Subjects

Stanford undergraduates in communications classes (in published paper)

Stanford computer science graduate students (mentioned in Nass’s lecture)

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Politeness Norms

Tutoring, testing, evaluation task. Following task completion, subject interviewed about the performance of the computer.

Conditions: 1. interview conducted by same computer2. interview conducted using pencil and paper3. interview conducted by an idential computer in

another room

Responses were significantly more positive and more homogeneous for condition 1.

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Politeness Norms (2)

These were all simple text-based interfaces.

In post tests, all the subjects said (sometimes vehemently) that it would be absurd to engage in polite behavior toward a computer.

Another set of experiments: voice output, using same voice or different voice. Subjects rated the performance more positively

for the same-voice condition.

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Design Implications (according to Nass)

Product evaluation questions should not be asked by product itself. Nor should they be asked by the technology used to test

the product (despite convenience). Use pencil and paper, or a different technology.

Users may expect politeness from computers. Most systems avoid direct insults, but for example error messages are often impolite.

Cultural issues: internationalization may require more than just translating the interface text.

Aside: results of usability studies conducted by the software developer are suspect!

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Attraction and Personality

Social psychology: one of the best predictors of whether two people will like each other is to find how similar they are.

Personality trait tested: dominance/submissiveness Personality programmed using very simple

preprogrammed text-based cues. Example from Desert Survival Task tutoring

program: “You should definitely rate the flashlight higher. It is your

only night signalling device.” “Perhaps the flashlight should be rated higher? It may be

your only reliable night signalling device.”

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Attraction and Personality: Results

Users identified dominance and submissiveness in the programs.

Users were able to detect similarity of the computer's personality to their own.

There was strong evidence that subjects preferred interacting with computers that shared their personality type. (This was consistently true for all personality types.)

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Flattery

“People are phenomenal suckers for flattery.’” Experiment: a guessing game. Test conditions:

generic feedback (“Begin next round.”) sincere praise (“Great job! You seem to have an

uncommon ability to structure data logically.”) flattery (same, but subjects told that evaluation portion of

program not yet written, and computer feedback had nothing to do with their performance)

Result: subjects in both sincere praise and flattery conditions felt much more positive about themselves and the computer.

No significant difference between sincere praise and flattery.

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Flattery: Design ImplicationsMost current computer applications are

heavily geared toward critical feedback.Add positive feedback? Even

noncontingent feedback?Categories of software for which this might

be important: training and tutorial software software that enhance user creativity software for performing unpleasant tasks

(Aside: should we be doing this, even if it works?)

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Gender Differences

Stereotypes tested:

dominant behavior by men vs. womenevaluation coming from men vs. womenknowledge about various topics

experiment: knowledge about computers and technology, knowledge about love and relationships

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Gender Differences: Results

Female-voiced computer in a dominant role was evaluated more negatively than a male-voiced computer in the same role. It was perceived as significantly less friendly. This was true for both female and male subjects.

Evaluations from a male-voiced computer was regarded as significantly more “competent” than from a female-voiced computer. This again was true for both female and male subjects.

The female-voiced computer was perceived as a better teacher on the subject of love and relationships; the male-voiced computer was perceived as better for computers and technology.

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Gender Differences: Theoretical and Design Implications

The tendency to gender-stereotype is so deeply ingrained in human psychology that it extends even to computers. Vocal cues alone elicited this response.

Choice of gender of a computer's voice is an important design decision. Choosing a male voice or a female voice cannot be a neutral decision.

Computer voices may indicate much more than gender — for example, age, social class, geographic location. This may create expectations about how the computer will behave.

Example: what voice should be chosen for a CD-ROM with medical advice for pregnant women? Male or female? How old should it sound? Accent? Two or more voices?

Should computer agents conform to stereotypes at all? Should we design agents that challenge stereotypes? (Example: synthetic gender-neutral voice.)

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An Alternative Explanation? Is the social behavior directed at the human creator of

the program or machine? Social psychology predicts no — people orient toward

proximate sources (“blame the messenger”). Experiment: half of subjects told they were working

with computers, half told they were working with programmers.

Result: subjects who were told they were working with computers perceived the tutor to be significantly more friendly, effective, playful, and similar to themselves.

If social behavior were directed at the programmer rather than the program, there should have been no difference.

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Implications for Agent Research

Maes: “The agents have deliberately all been drawn as simple cartoon faces, in order not to encourage unwaranted attribution of human-level intelligence.”

Nass: “Furthermore, these studies suggest that it does not take extremely sophisticated technology to generate social responses.”

But: see the Maes/Shneiderman debate (in next week’s optional readings)

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Metaphor in User Interface Design

Folk wisdom: outside of the computer domain, metaphor is restricted to poetry and flowery writing.

Within the computer domain, for user interfaces the desktop metaphor is well-known, and other kinds of graphical user interfaces are often consciously designed with a metaphor in mind (see e.g. Thomas Erickson's chapter "Working with Interface Metaphors").

However, we don't usually talk about other kinds of interfaces, e.g. textual ones, as being constructed based on a conscious metaphor, nor do we often talk about the metaphors behind other aspects of computers.

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“Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphors are not just

restricted to poetry, flowery writing, and Macintoshes, but an essential part of everyday speech, and indeed our conceptual system.

Particularly if they are correct, the study of metaphor becomes an essential part of studying human-computer interaction.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

They further argue (based primarily on linguistic evidence) that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. Examples: “argument is war,” “time is money.”

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Metaphorical Systemacity

Everyday metaphors are used pervasively and systematically.

Examples: conduit metaphor orientational metaphors personification metonomy

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The Conduit Metaphor

Ideas (or meanings) are objects. Linguistic expressions are containers. Communication is sending. Examples:

deliver a lecture Powerpoint presentation “Did you get that?” a spirited exchange of views

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Orientational Metaphors

happy is up; sad is down conscious is up; unconscious is down health and life are up; sickness and death

are downhaving control or force is up; being subject

to control or force is down more is up; less is down rational is up; emotional is down

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Other Metaphors

Ontological metaphors (ontology: “the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being”) entity and substance metaphors container metaphors

Personification example: inflation as a person

Metonymy (using one entity to refer to another that is related to it)

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Challenges to Coherence of Metaphor Example: time as a moving object ... apparent

contradiction in our metaphor for time. “In the weeks ahead of us …” (future is in front

of us) “In the following weeks …” (future is behind us)

However, in the first example, time is moving toward us; in the second, the weeks that follow are following the current week.

Another example: love as a journey ... different kinds of journeys (car trip, train trip, sea trip). Here, there are various metaphors for love, but they are all coherent.

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How is Our Conceptual System Grounded?

Are there any concepts that can be understood directly, without metaphor? If not, how can we understand anything at all?

prime candidates: simple spatial concepts, such as "up", that arise out of our direct experience as beings with bodies in the world.

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Connecting Lakoff and Johnson with User Interfaces

First, note that all UI's have a metaphorical basis, whether this was part of the designer's conscious thought or not.

Example: unix command file system link shell process (process as a person; process as a path) stream etc!

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Computer examples of Lakoff & Johnson's metaphor lists:

Conduit metaphor: send data give it an input expression

Orientational metaphor: network is down high-level language low-level systems programming high-level design descend into hacking

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Computer examples of using ontological metaphors data as a substance (capture the data from the

experiment) data as food (the computer ate my data; it spit out

the data; raw data) data as a liquid (data flows from one place to

another, streams) configuration or state as an object (save your

current state) Computer as vehicle: the system crashed; the

processor is running. Computer as a container: input-output Process as a path: fork off a new process; do a join.

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Personification

the computer ate my file. It first looks at the characters in the input buffer, then ...

Agents. Reactive systems. metonymy: Fred is hogging the disk drive.

Sue is going to buy a 486. importance of direct manipulation user

interfaces -- they tap into early childhood experience and prototypical causation

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Metaphor in the Alternate Reality Kit

The Alternate Reality Kit was a system constructed by Randy Smith at Xerox PARC in the 80's. It has a very strong physical system metaphor. All objects have position and velocity, for example.

Smith notes that there can be a tension between literally following a physical metaphor, and ease of use, functionality, and performance. He proposes a literalism-magic distinction.

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Alternate Reality Kit Examples of Literal/Magical distinction

use of the hand - literal activation of simple buttons - literal manipulating buttons (dropping a button on an object) -

moderately magical interactors - highly magical

multiple realities - highly magical generalizing: it seems that people usually don't have

much trouble with extending a metaphor, mixing metaphors, or (to a lesser extent) moving way beyond a metaphor. (Compare this with the notion of “coherence” in Lakoff & Johnson.) They really don't like things that fall within the metaphor and contradict it. (L&J call this “consistency” or “lack of consistency.”)

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Thomas Erikson, "Working with User Interface Metaphors"

The interface to a program will have metaphors, whether we design it that way or not.

Metaphor evalation: How much structure does the metaphor provide? How much of the metaphor is applicable to the

problem? (Lakoff & Johnson call this the “used” portion of the metaphor.)

Is the interface metaphor easy to represent? Is it suitable for the audience? Is it extensible? (Can we usefully employ the unused

portion of the metaphor?) What are the metaphor's connotations? (These will

depend on the user!)

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Metaphors for the World Wide Web

Example to be used in class discussions: W3 is a spider web. The internet is a highway system. W3 pages

are destinations on the highway. (Compare with infobahn metaphor.)

W3 is an ocean. The internet is outer space (cyberspace). W3

pages are different worlds. W3 is a city. W3 is a (very big) desktop.