The Design and Evaluation of Multitouch Marking Menus: Lepinski1,Grossman2,Fitzmaurice, chi 2010
–there are 31 possible combinations of putting fingers on a surface and they are called chords. this paper investigates performing all 31 comments in eight possible directions (N, NW, W, and so on).
-'Angular accuracy was very good, with an average angular error of only 5.6 degrees (Figure 7). In total, 98.2% of the gestures were completed with an angular accuracy of less than the 22.5 degrees which would be needed to select between eight radial items'
-' Chords with “gaps”, that is, requiring non-consecutive fingers to be depressed, tended to produce higher articulation times.'
GestureBar: Improving the Approachability of Gesture-based Interfaces Andrew Bragdon, Robert Zeleznik, Brian Williamson†, Timothy Miller, Joseph J. LaViola Jr., CHI 2009
- an attempt on creating a gesture learning environment for a diagram tool similar to the ribbon in the word 2007.
- extensive literature review on learning and presenting gestures. A combination of icons, animations, and descriptions were found to be best for teaching novices.
Experimental Analysis of Touch-Screen Gesture Designs in
Mobile Environments: Andrew Bragdon1, Eugene Nelson1, Yang Li2 and Ken Hinckley3, CHI 2011
-investigates the impact of distraction (walking, observing an object, performing mouse movement) on different types of mobile phone interaction (free shape gestures, bezel gestures, on-screen buttons)
-' We find that in the presence of environmental distractions, ges- tures can offer significant performance gains and reduced attentional load, while performing as well as soft buttons when the user‟s attention is focused on the phone'
- situation awareness task was to hold space button when a circle is displayed on a screen. Attention saturation task was to follow a dot with a computer mouse
–to simulate expert users every time an icon representing the gesture was displayed
–Participants were motivated to perform to their quickly and accurately with money incentives. reward was increased for a low average time, and decreased for a high error rate.
- The bezel gestures were found to be consistently faster and more accurate
- This result is excellent, showing that gestures can reduce user‟s attentional load over soft buttons, even though gestures involve reproducing geometry with some degree of accuracy and soft buttons can be performed in ~1.2 s
Gestural and Audio Metaphors as a Means of Control for Mobile Devices: Antti Pirhonen, Stephen Brewster and Christopher Holguin, chi 2002
- users were interacting with the touchscreen music player while walking. The advice was mounted on their hip. NASA TLX (with added annoyance measure) was used to record a workload, and the deviation from preferred walking speed was used as a measure of effort.
- The learning curve diagram was used to analyse the results: Y axis is a success rate of the last five trials. It looks really informative!
Squeeze Me, Hold Me, Tilt Me! An Exploration of Manipulative User Interfaces, Beverly ‘8;.Harrison, ‘Kenneth P. Fishkin, Anuj Gujar, Carlos Mochon*, Roy Want: chi 1998
- an attempt to add to a mobile digital text reader natural interactions known from reading a book. Series of tilt and pressure sensors were used to imitate turning pages and opening a book in a certain spot in the middle.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Papers 4 - more interaction and CLT
Paas et al 2003:Cognitive Load Measurement as a Means to Advance Cognitive Load Theory
–argues that the combination of performance and cognitive load measures has been identified to constitute a reliable estimate of the mental efficiency of instructional methods
- the overview of progress on measuring cognitive load is presented over the last 15 years. Researchers are moving towards less intrusive ways of measuring loads, like questioners and biosensing. While secondary task is a reliable to, it can interfere considerably with the primary task
–authors propose a measure of instructional efficiency which represents the relation between performance and mental effort.
- 'An interesting observation is that even though researchers are continuously trying to find or develop physiological and secondary task measures of cognitive load, subjective work- load measurement techniques using rating scales remain pop- ular, because they are easy to use; do not interfere with primary task performance; are inexpensive; can detect small variations in workload (i.e., sensitivity); are reliable; and pro- vide decent convergent, construct, and discriminate validity (Gimino, 2002; Paas et al., 1994). However, we must stress that the internal consistency of these measures requires fur- ther studies'
- others inverstigated split attention, expertie and age differences impact.
Oviatt 2006
-very well presented paper with exceptional graphs
-'the study evaluated whether student performance would deteriorate as interfaces departed more from students’ existing work practice (GT > PT > DP), with lower-performing students experiencing greater cognitive load and performance degradation than high-performing students when using the same interfaces. '
-'Typical performance measures of cognitive load have included time to complete tasks, reaction time, correct solutions, memory retrieval time and correctness, time estimation, rate of physical activity and speech, spoken disfluencies, multimodal integration patterns, and other indices'
- 'Dual-task methods are especially relevant and ecologically valid when applied to field and mobile interface design, which chronically involve multitasking and divided attention.'
- think aloud protocol was used to assess whether learners were working on a low level of high-level issue
Oviatt, COulston, Lonsford 2004:When Do We Interact Multimodally? Cognitive Load and Multimodal Communication Patterns
- 'one critical objective of all mobile interface design is the need to manage multitasking, interruption, attentional distraction, fluctuations in the difficulty of natural field tasks and situations, and resulting cognitive overload [8, 18]. This is essential because mobile users need to focus on complex primary field tasks that can vary substantially in difficulty and also involve dual tasking between the field task and secondary tasks involved in controlling an interface. '
- users were using multimodal pen and word interfaces, but findlings are interesting, more multimodal interactions were found when working in a familiar area and when task was more difficult. It is possible that users maintain the working memory resources and distribute tasks to more centres when the task becomes difficult.
Sweller, Merrienboer, Paas 1998:Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design
- in this paper mechanisms concerning instructional procedures are described in depth: the goal free effect, worked example affect, completion problem effect, split attention effect modality effect, redundancy effect, variability affects,
–argues that the combination of performance and cognitive load measures has been identified to constitute a reliable estimate of the mental efficiency of instructional methods
- the overview of progress on measuring cognitive load is presented over the last 15 years. Researchers are moving towards less intrusive ways of measuring loads, like questioners and biosensing. While secondary task is a reliable to, it can interfere considerably with the primary task
–authors propose a measure of instructional efficiency which represents the relation between performance and mental effort.
- 'An interesting observation is that even though researchers are continuously trying to find or develop physiological and secondary task measures of cognitive load, subjective work- load measurement techniques using rating scales remain pop- ular, because they are easy to use; do not interfere with primary task performance; are inexpensive; can detect small variations in workload (i.e., sensitivity); are reliable; and pro- vide decent convergent, construct, and discriminate validity (Gimino, 2002; Paas et al., 1994). However, we must stress that the internal consistency of these measures requires fur- ther studies'
- others inverstigated split attention, expertie and age differences impact.
Oviatt 2006
-very well presented paper with exceptional graphs
-'the study evaluated whether student performance would deteriorate as interfaces departed more from students’ existing work practice (GT > PT > DP), with lower-performing students experiencing greater cognitive load and performance degradation than high-performing students when using the same interfaces. '
-'Typical performance measures of cognitive load have included time to complete tasks, reaction time, correct solutions, memory retrieval time and correctness, time estimation, rate of physical activity and speech, spoken disfluencies, multimodal integration patterns, and other indices'
- 'Dual-task methods are especially relevant and ecologically valid when applied to field and mobile interface design, which chronically involve multitasking and divided attention.'
- think aloud protocol was used to assess whether learners were working on a low level of high-level issue
Oviatt, COulston, Lonsford 2004:When Do We Interact Multimodally? Cognitive Load and Multimodal Communication Patterns
- 'one critical objective of all mobile interface design is the need to manage multitasking, interruption, attentional distraction, fluctuations in the difficulty of natural field tasks and situations, and resulting cognitive overload [8, 18]. This is essential because mobile users need to focus on complex primary field tasks that can vary substantially in difficulty and also involve dual tasking between the field task and secondary tasks involved in controlling an interface. '
- users were using multimodal pen and word interfaces, but findlings are interesting, more multimodal interactions were found when working in a familiar area and when task was more difficult. It is possible that users maintain the working memory resources and distribute tasks to more centres when the task becomes difficult.
Sweller, Merrienboer, Paas 1998:Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design
- in this paper mechanisms concerning instructional procedures are described in depth: the goal free effect, worked example affect, completion problem effect, split attention effect modality effect, redundancy effect, variability affects,
Papers 3 - When animation benefits from User Control
A. learner control being effective:
Mayer & Chandler, 2001; When Learning Is Just a Click Away: Does Simple User Interaction Foster Deeper Understanding of Multimedia Messages?
- students were presented twice with animation explaining how the storm begins. Some students could control the speed of animation the first time around while the others were controlling the second time around. Having control at the beginning facilitating better learning.
- This supports cognitive load thory: when there is more spare mental load (low extraneous load when animation is not rushed) there is more resources for learning and creating schemas (germane load)
-introducing interactivity and as such did not improve learning.
Hasler et al., 2007; Learner Control, Cognitive Load and Instructional Animation
-'The animations were either system-paced using a continuous animation, learner-paced using discrete segments or learner paced using ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons. The two learner-paced groups showed higher test performance with relatively lower cognitive load compared to the two system-paced groups, despite the fact that the ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons were rarely used'
-results were obtained only for tasks of higher difficulty
-'Environmental organising and linking principle: Working memory is only limited when dealing with novel information. When dealing with previously organised information from long-term memory, there are no known limits to working memory. Large amounts of information can be brought into working memory from long-term memory and used to determine activity in the environment (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995).'
-'cognitive load effects disappear when dealing with low element interactivity material (Sweller, 2003, 2004). However, the level of element interactivity is relative to the level of learners’ expertise (Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003). For experienced learners, a whole set of interacting elements may be incorporated into a schema and treated as a single element in working memory'
- clt research describes few principles governing cognitive loads: split attention effects , redundancy effect, modality effect, pacing and segmentation
-'learners should be presented information rather than asked to explore a problem space. Accordingly, in the current experiment, learners were presented information on the causes of day and night rather than being asked to search for and explore possible causes.'
-in the second study one group has seen the continues animation twice while the other one has seen a controlled animation twice. Higher learning occured in the controlled condition
-''Learners may closely monitor the information in order to decide whether they need to think about it further by pausing the animation. [...] In contrast, the continuous animation group may have treated the animation as little more than a movie and given it very little thought. '
Schwan & Riempp, 2004:The cognitive benefits of interactive videos: learning to tie nautical knots
- users were presented with either interactive or not interactive movie of how to tie for different sailing knots. Students in the interactive condition took much less time (up to twice shorter) to learn the knots and interaction was much more frequently used when learning the more difficult knots.
-Students in interactive condition did not have more time. 'the effect of requiring more time to watch the more difficult parts of the video repeatedly, in slow motion, or with stops was more or less compensated by skipping the more easy parts of the videos or watching them in speeded mode. But although the viewing times were roughly the same, the viewers of the interactive videos developed a better understanding of the depicted processes than the viewers of the non-interactive videos'
-interactive application was keeping a log of all users interactions: number of stops to practice, number of stops without practising, slow motions, time lapses, number of the direction changes, variability of viewing time across the media.
B. learner control Mixed results
Kriz & Hegarty, 2007:Top-down and bottom-up influences on learning from animations
-in four studies participants were presented with diagrams or animations explaining a mechanical device (European toilet flush) with varying interactive controls and signalling devices. It was found that enhancing animation does not facilitate learning
- this is a very passionately written paper with interesting design (too little details to tell exactly how it workes). Very difficult task selected serves the purpose of escalating the cognitive load needed to analyse an animation way above the threshold. Also the animations might have been just the diagram with annotations (not obvious), so they could not use all the possibilities of animation medium.
Moreno & Valdez, 2005:Cognitive Load and Learning Effects of Having Students Organize Pictures and Words in Multimedia Environments: The Role of Student Interactivity and Feedback
- authors are trying to confirm the theory that 'learning improves when students make, rather than take, meaning'. Participants are learning about the Genesis of storm and either have to learn from cards arranged in a correct order or first ordered them and then learn. Because of a bad application design (intermediate correct/wrong feedback ), users employed trial and error method to organising the cards, and simply had less time learning. In the second study the error was corrected and additionally students were asked to explain why do they think that this is the correct order before they got any feedback on their ordering. He was found at being asked to explain facilitated learning.
- This paper is an interesting history of failure, and proves that reflecting on learning facilitates learning
C learner control frameworks and other:
Moreno & Mayer, 2007; Interactive Multimodal Learning Environments
-the authors describe five design principles: guided activity, reflection, feedback, control, and pretraining.
- Students learn better when allowed to interact with pedagogical agent who helps guide their cognitive processing, when asked to reflect upon correct answers, when getting explanatory rather than corrective feedback, when allowed to control the pace presentation, when they receive focused training
Lowe (2006) - Educational animation: Who should call the shots?
- Author argues that currently designed animations are overwhelming users and the more prescriptive and analytical methods needs to be devised.
- Giving user control might be bad because it introduces an additional task and beginner users might neglect some important details or inappropriately allocate the attention.
- Ideal presentation should emphasise, repeat and slowdown relevant sections without overwhelming users with too much control.
Love 2005 :Changing Perceptions of Animated Diagrams
-very simple and graceful study. Participants are presented with the recording of Newton's cradle, either in normal speed for a half speed. The eye movement patterns and voice descriptions are recorded and analysed.
- From vocabulary analysis it was found that slow motion condition participants were more analytical and explained more, they also looked at the system as a set of items rather than one item. The same effect was found in the eye tracker data.
Domagk, Schwartz & Plass (2010):Interactivity in multimedia learning: An integrated model
- interactivity is not a very well-defined concept and elements that need to be taken under consideration are: behavioural activity, learning environment, cognitive activity, a emotion/motivation, mental model.
Mayer & Chandler, 2001; When Learning Is Just a Click Away: Does Simple User Interaction Foster Deeper Understanding of Multimedia Messages?
- students were presented twice with animation explaining how the storm begins. Some students could control the speed of animation the first time around while the others were controlling the second time around. Having control at the beginning facilitating better learning.
- This supports cognitive load thory: when there is more spare mental load (low extraneous load when animation is not rushed) there is more resources for learning and creating schemas (germane load)
-introducing interactivity and as such did not improve learning.
Hasler et al., 2007; Learner Control, Cognitive Load and Instructional Animation
-'The animations were either system-paced using a continuous animation, learner-paced using discrete segments or learner paced using ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons. The two learner-paced groups showed higher test performance with relatively lower cognitive load compared to the two system-paced groups, despite the fact that the ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons were rarely used'
-results were obtained only for tasks of higher difficulty
-'Environmental organising and linking principle: Working memory is only limited when dealing with novel information. When dealing with previously organised information from long-term memory, there are no known limits to working memory. Large amounts of information can be brought into working memory from long-term memory and used to determine activity in the environment (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995).'
-'cognitive load effects disappear when dealing with low element interactivity material (Sweller, 2003, 2004). However, the level of element interactivity is relative to the level of learners’ expertise (Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003). For experienced learners, a whole set of interacting elements may be incorporated into a schema and treated as a single element in working memory'
- clt research describes few principles governing cognitive loads: split attention effects , redundancy effect, modality effect, pacing and segmentation
-'learners should be presented information rather than asked to explore a problem space. Accordingly, in the current experiment, learners were presented information on the causes of day and night rather than being asked to search for and explore possible causes.'
-in the second study one group has seen the continues animation twice while the other one has seen a controlled animation twice. Higher learning occured in the controlled condition
-''Learners may closely monitor the information in order to decide whether they need to think about it further by pausing the animation. [...] In contrast, the continuous animation group may have treated the animation as little more than a movie and given it very little thought. '
Schwan & Riempp, 2004:The cognitive benefits of interactive videos: learning to tie nautical knots
- users were presented with either interactive or not interactive movie of how to tie for different sailing knots. Students in the interactive condition took much less time (up to twice shorter) to learn the knots and interaction was much more frequently used when learning the more difficult knots.
-Students in interactive condition did not have more time. 'the effect of requiring more time to watch the more difficult parts of the video repeatedly, in slow motion, or with stops was more or less compensated by skipping the more easy parts of the videos or watching them in speeded mode. But although the viewing times were roughly the same, the viewers of the interactive videos developed a better understanding of the depicted processes than the viewers of the non-interactive videos'
-interactive application was keeping a log of all users interactions: number of stops to practice, number of stops without practising, slow motions, time lapses, number of the direction changes, variability of viewing time across the media.
B. learner control Mixed results
Kriz & Hegarty, 2007:Top-down and bottom-up influences on learning from animations
-in four studies participants were presented with diagrams or animations explaining a mechanical device (European toilet flush) with varying interactive controls and signalling devices. It was found that enhancing animation does not facilitate learning
- this is a very passionately written paper with interesting design (too little details to tell exactly how it workes). Very difficult task selected serves the purpose of escalating the cognitive load needed to analyse an animation way above the threshold. Also the animations might have been just the diagram with annotations (not obvious), so they could not use all the possibilities of animation medium.
Moreno & Valdez, 2005:Cognitive Load and Learning Effects of Having Students Organize Pictures and Words in Multimedia Environments: The Role of Student Interactivity and Feedback
- authors are trying to confirm the theory that 'learning improves when students make, rather than take, meaning'. Participants are learning about the Genesis of storm and either have to learn from cards arranged in a correct order or first ordered them and then learn. Because of a bad application design (intermediate correct/wrong feedback ), users employed trial and error method to organising the cards, and simply had less time learning. In the second study the error was corrected and additionally students were asked to explain why do they think that this is the correct order before they got any feedback on their ordering. He was found at being asked to explain facilitated learning.
- This paper is an interesting history of failure, and proves that reflecting on learning facilitates learning
C learner control frameworks and other:
Moreno & Mayer, 2007; Interactive Multimodal Learning Environments
-the authors describe five design principles: guided activity, reflection, feedback, control, and pretraining.
- Students learn better when allowed to interact with pedagogical agent who helps guide their cognitive processing, when asked to reflect upon correct answers, when getting explanatory rather than corrective feedback, when allowed to control the pace presentation, when they receive focused training
Lowe (2006) - Educational animation: Who should call the shots?
- Author argues that currently designed animations are overwhelming users and the more prescriptive and analytical methods needs to be devised.
- Giving user control might be bad because it introduces an additional task and beginner users might neglect some important details or inappropriately allocate the attention.
- Ideal presentation should emphasise, repeat and slowdown relevant sections without overwhelming users with too much control.
Love 2005 :Changing Perceptions of Animated Diagrams
-very simple and graceful study. Participants are presented with the recording of Newton's cradle, either in normal speed for a half speed. The eye movement patterns and voice descriptions are recorded and analysed.
- From vocabulary analysis it was found that slow motion condition participants were more analytical and explained more, they also looked at the system as a set of items rather than one item. The same effect was found in the eye tracker data.
Domagk, Schwartz & Plass (2010):Interactivity in multimedia learning: An integrated model
- interactivity is not a very well-defined concept and elements that need to be taken under consideration are: behavioural activity, learning environment, cognitive activity, a emotion/motivation, mental model.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Literatute: CLT (/distraction theory) and eCommerce
Speier, Vessey, Valacich 2003 - the effects of interruptions, as complexity, and information presentation on computer supported decision-making performance
–"the interruptions facilitate performance an simple tasks, while inhibiting performance on more complex tasks"
–" special presentation formats were able to mitigate the effects of interruption while symbolic formats were not"
-interruptions have been defined as uncontrollable unpredictable stressors that produce information overload, requiring additional decision-makers effort they require immediate attention and insist on action.
–The difference between distractions and interruptions. Distractions are detected by different sensory channel from the one used for primary primary task and maybe ignored, interactions however use the same sensory trial for both the interruption and the primary task, does decision maker cannot choose to ignore interaction clues. This might need to laws of memory contents and confusion, negatively influencing performance
–distraction conflict theory suggests that distractions facilitate performance on simple tasks and inhibit performance on complex tasks. The narrowing of attention likely results in a decision maker processing fewer information cues, some of which may be relevance to completing tasks successfully
- interruptions and presentation format: a match or cognitive fit occurs when the information emphasised in the particular presentation format (symbolic or spatial) matches that required to most easily complete the task. Symbolic format (tables) are good for presenting discrete set of symbols while spatial format (graphs) is better for depicting relationships among discrete sets of symbols
Schmitz, Heinz, Metrailler,Opwis 2009: cognitive load in e-commerce applications–measurement and effects of user satisfaction
–guidelines for designing usable interfaces recommend reducing short-term memory load. NASA TLX and secondary task (visual monitoring) were used to assess usage of four online bookstores. Users were not allowed to use search, but only to browse the menus. At the end users were asked how much would they prefer search feature then just browsing. While there was no significance on secondary task the high correlation between NASA test and browse/search preference suggests that browse/search preference could be used as a heuristic for assessing how good the browsing environment is.
–Well-designed websites take up more of the cognitive resources for an experienced users, it can be explained by users being able to focus more.
–It's easily lead in this study the secondary task was too difficult and badly placed on the screen
Todd, Benbasat 1994 : the influence of decision aids on choice strategies under conditions of high cognitive load
–According to cost benefit framework the joint objectives of decision-makers are to maximise accuracy and to minimise effort. Often referred may be weighted more heavily than accuracy because feedback in an effort is relatively immediate.
–In many studies effort reduction was far more important than accuracy maximisation, but this might be because effort is the only salient variable. In settings where the decision maker must live with the consequences of the decisions it may be that the decision quality becomes the primary concern.
Hong THing Tam 2003: designing product listing pages on e-commerce websites: and examination of presentation mode and information format
–unclear paper but the really interesting methodology. A mockup website for shopping for groceries contained products of 20 made up brands. In one condition products were shown with the picture in another condition they were shown without a picture. Every time the brand name was shown exactly the same way, and the participants were tested on how well the remembered brand names. It was found that brand names in the pictured condition were remembered better.
Nicholson et all 2005: using distraction conflicts theory to measure the effect of distractions an individual task performance in a wireless mobile environment
- A group of students was given laptops and asked to perform Excel tasks of different difficulty while being in the same room in the cafeteria setting. From the projector different distractions were shown on the wall in front of students eyes: high distraction was a video of a group of students talking about holiday, low distraction was a news TV, no distraction was nothing.
- It was found that performance decreased only enter high distraction condition and only for the high difficulty task.
- It is suggested that mobile wireless work [laptops] is more suitable for simple or well-trained tasks, while more complex tasks should be performed in a more controlled setting, such as an office.
–"the interruptions facilitate performance an simple tasks, while inhibiting performance on more complex tasks"
–" special presentation formats were able to mitigate the effects of interruption while symbolic formats were not"
-interruptions have been defined as uncontrollable unpredictable stressors that produce information overload, requiring additional decision-makers effort they require immediate attention and insist on action.
–The difference between distractions and interruptions. Distractions are detected by different sensory channel from the one used for primary primary task and maybe ignored, interactions however use the same sensory trial for both the interruption and the primary task, does decision maker cannot choose to ignore interaction clues. This might need to laws of memory contents and confusion, negatively influencing performance
–distraction conflict theory suggests that distractions facilitate performance on simple tasks and inhibit performance on complex tasks. The narrowing of attention likely results in a decision maker processing fewer information cues, some of which may be relevance to completing tasks successfully
- interruptions and presentation format: a match or cognitive fit occurs when the information emphasised in the particular presentation format (symbolic or spatial) matches that required to most easily complete the task. Symbolic format (tables) are good for presenting discrete set of symbols while spatial format (graphs) is better for depicting relationships among discrete sets of symbols
Schmitz, Heinz, Metrailler,Opwis 2009: cognitive load in e-commerce applications–measurement and effects of user satisfaction
–guidelines for designing usable interfaces recommend reducing short-term memory load. NASA TLX and secondary task (visual monitoring) were used to assess usage of four online bookstores. Users were not allowed to use search, but only to browse the menus. At the end users were asked how much would they prefer search feature then just browsing. While there was no significance on secondary task the high correlation between NASA test and browse/search preference suggests that browse/search preference could be used as a heuristic for assessing how good the browsing environment is.
–Well-designed websites take up more of the cognitive resources for an experienced users, it can be explained by users being able to focus more.
–It's easily lead in this study the secondary task was too difficult and badly placed on the screen
Todd, Benbasat 1994 : the influence of decision aids on choice strategies under conditions of high cognitive load
–According to cost benefit framework the joint objectives of decision-makers are to maximise accuracy and to minimise effort. Often referred may be weighted more heavily than accuracy because feedback in an effort is relatively immediate.
–In many studies effort reduction was far more important than accuracy maximisation, but this might be because effort is the only salient variable. In settings where the decision maker must live with the consequences of the decisions it may be that the decision quality becomes the primary concern.
Hong THing Tam 2003: designing product listing pages on e-commerce websites: and examination of presentation mode and information format
–unclear paper but the really interesting methodology. A mockup website for shopping for groceries contained products of 20 made up brands. In one condition products were shown with the picture in another condition they were shown without a picture. Every time the brand name was shown exactly the same way, and the participants were tested on how well the remembered brand names. It was found that brand names in the pictured condition were remembered better.
Nicholson et all 2005: using distraction conflicts theory to measure the effect of distractions an individual task performance in a wireless mobile environment
- A group of students was given laptops and asked to perform Excel tasks of different difficulty while being in the same room in the cafeteria setting. From the projector different distractions were shown on the wall in front of students eyes: high distraction was a video of a group of students talking about holiday, low distraction was a news TV, no distraction was nothing.
- It was found that performance decreased only enter high distraction condition and only for the high difficulty task.
- It is suggested that mobile wireless work [laptops] is more suitable for simple or well-trained tasks, while more complex tasks should be performed in a more controlled setting, such as an office.
Friday, 20 May 2011
Literature 1 - Cognitive load measurement, and how it could influence interface design
Over last few days I was reading a bunch of papers from the Cognitive Load Theory area that could have something to do with my work. Most of them had very interesting methodology. Below are few notes about each:
[currently I am investigating a new line of literature, where business people implement the same techniques as CLT to investigate interfaces which are interruption-safe in working conditions, i.e. Speier, Vessey, Valacich 2003]. I will blog about it next. I also had a meeting With Nadine, where we discussed possible avenues and designs of experiments with shoogle. I will blog about them early next week]
// LITERATURE 1 ///
Chandler, Sweller 1996, Cognitive load while learning to use computer
- 'Hypothesizes that instructional design only takes on a crucial role when there is a high level are in the of interaction between learning elements, resulting in those elements having to be simultaneously held in working memory'
- secondary task used was a program running on a second screen which every eight seconds was attracting attention with the sound and displaying a letter for two seconds. participants had to memorise that letter and in the same time say out loud what the previous letter was
–three learning scenarios were used presenting exactly the same learning information (how to use a software package) in three different types of tutorials. tutorials differed by how much split attention split occurred (extraneous cognitive load) when they were used ( one with words and screenshots which didn't requiring using of computer [low load], one only with commands which were to be followed on a computer screen, and one with text and screenshots which had to be followed and compared with computer [highest split/load]).
- secondary task, , confirmed the order of cognitive load ratings, while skills test confirmed that for complicated tasks ( those with high element interactivity, connected in the long chains of actions) were learned much better with tutorials which did not require a lot of split of attention.
Salomon, '84 ' television is easy and print this tough':
- children were asked about their perceived usefulness of TV and text for learning. They were also asked about realism and possible reasons to fail and succeed in learning with that media. After the children were presented at TV story and equivalent text description.
– It was found that efficacy (usefulness) was in negative correlation with TV and positive with next. Children who rated TV as easy invested less mental effort and hvad worse results. This suggests that there is a connection between preconceptions about interface and its usefulness.
Sweller 2010, element interactivity and intrinsic, extraneous and germane cognitive Load:
- author argues that element interactivity is a defining mechanism not only of intrinsic cognitive load but also underlies extraneous could be developed. ' The same information may impose an intrinsic or an extraneous cognitive load depending on what needs to be learnt'. In other words explanation which is important for a novice can be just slowing down and obscuring learning material for an expert.
- In turn germane cognitive load may not be our separate source of cognitive load, but rather resources used up to handle element interactivity. When the useless interactivity is added the extra use load increases while germane decreases - material seems to be messy, and patterns can be created.
- if Materials are too easy then to remain cognitive load is not activated.
–It might be useful to measure cognitive load during the task rather than after and before
–this possible to determine overall cognitive load, but it may be difficult to determine which cognitive load is of what kind
–goal free approach seems to activate more germane than extraneous load, because learners explored by creating schemas, rather than forcing the information in.
- Introducing interactive elements separately and then joining them produces better learning outcomes than presenting old elements in the same time, in other words it might be useful to train participants in using every element of the interface separately.
–Modality effects can be explained by assigning more resources, while imagination effects increases germane and intrinsic mode only for experts
Chan, Black 06, direct manipulation animation: incorporating the haptic channel in the learning process the suburbs middle school students in science learning a mental model position:
- text, visual and a game context were used to teach children physics problems of different difficulty. ' Findings showed that as the content became increasingly complicated (i.e. increased levels of interactivity between system entities) game like animation proved to be an effective support for students to comprehend the content'.
- This might provide proof that using purpose-built interfaces is suitable only for difficult tasks
Abrams, Davoli 2007: altered vision near the hands:
–participants were asked to perform different vision tasks while their hands were positioned right next to the monitor and when they were positioned at the participants knees.
- In visual search task participants performed better with your hands next to screen only when the task was difficult. During inhibition of return task participants took longer to disengage their attention with their hands next to the monitor. During the attention blink experiment proximity of the screen had negative effect on second task performance right after the first task happened. - attention blink was longer and more severe when object is near our hands.
Wagner, Nusbaum 2004. Probing the mental representation of gesture columns is handwriting spatial?:
- Groups of participants were asked to explain mathematical problems while using or not using gestures. Those using gestures had better learning outcomes.
–He was found that propositional (carrying a meaning) gestures were more useful than simply pointing.
Brunken, Steinbacher, et al 2002 - assessment of cognitive load in multimedia learning using dual task methodology
–when a task is more difficult it requires more cognitive resources, which can be measured by performance on a secondary task.
–"To evaluate variant of interface design drafts for a multimedia system that differ with respect to the format in which information is presented, it is conceivable that this approach could be used to determine the amount of cognitive load induced in the user by each design. On the basis of such an economics of the revelation one could determine for example which interface design variant minimises cognitive load"
[currently I am investigating a new line of literature, where business people implement the same techniques as CLT to investigate interfaces which are interruption-safe in working conditions, i.e. Speier, Vessey, Valacich 2003]. I will blog about it next. I also had a meeting With Nadine, where we discussed possible avenues and designs of experiments with shoogle. I will blog about them early next week]
// LITERATURE 1 ///
Chandler, Sweller 1996, Cognitive load while learning to use computer
- 'Hypothesizes that instructional design only takes on a crucial role when there is a high level are in the of interaction between learning elements, resulting in those elements having to be simultaneously held in working memory'
- secondary task used was a program running on a second screen which every eight seconds was attracting attention with the sound and displaying a letter for two seconds. participants had to memorise that letter and in the same time say out loud what the previous letter was
–three learning scenarios were used presenting exactly the same learning information (how to use a software package) in three different types of tutorials. tutorials differed by how much split attention split occurred (extraneous cognitive load) when they were used ( one with words and screenshots which didn't requiring using of computer [low load], one only with commands which were to be followed on a computer screen, and one with text and screenshots which had to be followed and compared with computer [highest split/load]).
- secondary task, , confirmed the order of cognitive load ratings, while skills test confirmed that for complicated tasks ( those with high element interactivity, connected in the long chains of actions) were learned much better with tutorials which did not require a lot of split of attention.
Salomon, '84 ' television is easy and print this tough':
- children were asked about their perceived usefulness of TV and text for learning. They were also asked about realism and possible reasons to fail and succeed in learning with that media. After the children were presented at TV story and equivalent text description.
– It was found that efficacy (usefulness) was in negative correlation with TV and positive with next. Children who rated TV as easy invested less mental effort and hvad worse results. This suggests that there is a connection between preconceptions about interface and its usefulness.
Sweller 2010, element interactivity and intrinsic, extraneous and germane cognitive Load:
- author argues that element interactivity is a defining mechanism not only of intrinsic cognitive load but also underlies extraneous could be developed. ' The same information may impose an intrinsic or an extraneous cognitive load depending on what needs to be learnt'. In other words explanation which is important for a novice can be just slowing down and obscuring learning material for an expert.
- In turn germane cognitive load may not be our separate source of cognitive load, but rather resources used up to handle element interactivity. When the useless interactivity is added the extra use load increases while germane decreases - material seems to be messy, and patterns can be created.
- if Materials are too easy then to remain cognitive load is not activated.
–It might be useful to measure cognitive load during the task rather than after and before
–this possible to determine overall cognitive load, but it may be difficult to determine which cognitive load is of what kind
–goal free approach seems to activate more germane than extraneous load, because learners explored by creating schemas, rather than forcing the information in.
- Introducing interactive elements separately and then joining them produces better learning outcomes than presenting old elements in the same time, in other words it might be useful to train participants in using every element of the interface separately.
–Modality effects can be explained by assigning more resources, while imagination effects increases germane and intrinsic mode only for experts
Chan, Black 06, direct manipulation animation: incorporating the haptic channel in the learning process the suburbs middle school students in science learning a mental model position:
- text, visual and a game context were used to teach children physics problems of different difficulty. ' Findings showed that as the content became increasingly complicated (i.e. increased levels of interactivity between system entities) game like animation proved to be an effective support for students to comprehend the content'.
- This might provide proof that using purpose-built interfaces is suitable only for difficult tasks
Abrams, Davoli 2007: altered vision near the hands:
–participants were asked to perform different vision tasks while their hands were positioned right next to the monitor and when they were positioned at the participants knees.
- In visual search task participants performed better with your hands next to screen only when the task was difficult. During inhibition of return task participants took longer to disengage their attention with their hands next to the monitor. During the attention blink experiment proximity of the screen had negative effect on second task performance right after the first task happened. - attention blink was longer and more severe when object is near our hands.
Wagner, Nusbaum 2004. Probing the mental representation of gesture columns is handwriting spatial?:
- Groups of participants were asked to explain mathematical problems while using or not using gestures. Those using gestures had better learning outcomes.
–He was found that propositional (carrying a meaning) gestures were more useful than simply pointing.
Brunken, Steinbacher, et al 2002 - assessment of cognitive load in multimedia learning using dual task methodology
–when a task is more difficult it requires more cognitive resources, which can be measured by performance on a secondary task.
–"To evaluate variant of interface design drafts for a multimedia system that differ with respect to the format in which information is presented, it is conceivable that this approach could be used to determine the amount of cognitive load induced in the user by each design. On the basis of such an economics of the revelation one could determine for example which interface design variant minimises cognitive load"
Monday, 16 May 2011
First post: what I was up to so far
This blog is mainly for myself and my supervisor Mike so we can keep track of what i am doing and how cooperation with Nadine works on everyday basis.
So far I was working here for almost 3 weeks from 25th of May with few days off. I've had my workspace setup and all the equipment is here for me to use, UNSW tech people are helpful, over few lunchtimes I've been gathering participants for a friend and it actually turns out that it is not so difficult here as well (unless you require lab and strict experimental conditions, in which case it is very tricky, or so they say).
So far I had few meetings with Nadine and we discussed few possible ways that my work could go into to use her experience and research. It seems that at least 1,2 experiments could be run which can tie our interests together. We recon that during my stay here those experiments will be designed, and I will run them at HW. If results are promising we will write them up with Nadine and try to publish. Right now I found a large bunch of papers which help me to scan the area, and I am making my way trough them. Next meeting is on Thursday, and before this meeting I will write a short note about all of those papers here.
In the meantime I am also changing my iPad app for Liina, a MSc student from London (Nadia's). After few days of on and off work it turned out that she needs too many samples to be displayed, and memory didn't take it well in current design of the app :( This all happened partly because I wanted this app to be more universal, and reusable (common mistake, I guess). That's why today I will start and bash up something quick that will meet all her needs, but not much more. For that purpose I edited even further the sounds that we've been working on with Douglas. They sound quite well by now.
I will keep this blog updated, probably on daily basis. With any questions, just email me.
So far I was working here for almost 3 weeks from 25th of May with few days off. I've had my workspace setup and all the equipment is here for me to use, UNSW tech people are helpful, over few lunchtimes I've been gathering participants for a friend and it actually turns out that it is not so difficult here as well (unless you require lab and strict experimental conditions, in which case it is very tricky, or so they say).
So far I had few meetings with Nadine and we discussed few possible ways that my work could go into to use her experience and research. It seems that at least 1,2 experiments could be run which can tie our interests together. We recon that during my stay here those experiments will be designed, and I will run them at HW. If results are promising we will write them up with Nadine and try to publish. Right now I found a large bunch of papers which help me to scan the area, and I am making my way trough them. Next meeting is on Thursday, and before this meeting I will write a short note about all of those papers here.
In the meantime I am also changing my iPad app for Liina, a MSc student from London (Nadia's). After few days of on and off work it turned out that she needs too many samples to be displayed, and memory didn't take it well in current design of the app :( This all happened partly because I wanted this app to be more universal, and reusable (common mistake, I guess). That's why today I will start and bash up something quick that will meet all her needs, but not much more. For that purpose I edited even further the sounds that we've been working on with Douglas. They sound quite well by now.
I will keep this blog updated, probably on daily basis. With any questions, just email me.
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