Donald Norman- The Design of Everyday Things…

Donald Norman- The Design of Everyday Things

I read chapters from this classic book many years ago, and I remembered Norman’s indictment of the VCR for its hard to read controls and widgets.  The VCR’s design doesn’t make its uses and functions “visible”, its “affordances” are not clear.  One of the most important principles of design, according to Norman, is “visibility”- visibility refers to the mapping between the design of an object and its operation, so that the design communicates cues and feedback about how to use and operate the object.

Mapping is another important idea. The user will have a mental model of how to use the object, and the object also yields a conceptual model (usually a product of the designer’s intentions) for how it can be used. When the two models coincide, then there is a close “mapping”. Norman writes that the designer usually expects the user’s model to follow the designer’s mental model- but this is obviously not always the case. The designer needs to better understand the user, the design itself must be user-centered.

Norman made the notion of “affordances” famous through this book, and though he didn’t invent the term, it seems he popularized it so that it entered the stream of standard design thinking.

The difference from Norman’s discussions in this book and his later book on ‘emotional design’ is in his de-emphasis here on aesthetics. Norman’s user-centered approach here is really more about functionality where aesthetics doesn’t really contribute a benefit. But clearly, Norman does move on to acknowledge the importance of aesthetics in the user’s relationship to the everyday things that support his or her functioning in the world, and also primarily to the processing of information about the world- that emotions play an undeniable role in the cognition and the forming of mental models.

Saffer- Interaction Design, Chapts. 1, 2, 3

Saffer gives a rationale for, an understanding of, and a brief history of the field of Interaction Design in the first chapter. In the 2nd chapter, Saffer’s analysis of the four approaches to interaction design is very helpful, including: User-centered, Systems-centered, Activity-centered, and Genius Design. Of these, I notice that I gravitate towards user and activity centered approaches because it seems it’s primarily about what the user needs and how to facilitate that into happening.

The 3rd chapter considers the “basic elements” of interface design, and I really appreciate Saffer’s consideration of the element of “space”, that even though many interfaces are on screens and thus 2-dimensional surfaces, the interactions happen over time and can be understood as creating a kind of space. What the interface can give you is a visual representation of the space for interactions, and at best, it would be a kind of representation of 3-dimensional space.

The 3rd chapter also describes some “laws” of interaction design, which are principles that have emerged through practitioners and people in the field such as Moore’s Law, the Poka Yoke principle and so on. And this chapter concludes with Saffer’s roundup of the “characteristics of good interaction design” which I find to be pretty comprehensive, if not hard to design for:

The characteristics of good interaction design:  Trustworthy, Appropriate, Smart, Responsive, Clever, Ludic, and Pleasurable.

Obviously the arena of video games has influenced a new generation of educational designers to think about how to design educational applications that are in particular, more “ludic and pleasurable”.  But it is still yet to be defined how to best tie the ludic and pleasurable aspects of game interactions to the goals of learning educational content.  Good interaction design for education would be “ludic, pleasurable, and… educational?”

Saffer- Interface Design, Chapt. 6

Saffer examines aspects of interface design- which he makes the note, works almost hand-to-glove with interaction design. The interface is there because users cannot manipulate (thus interact) the application in any other humanly possible way. Interface design has a primarily visual component, and he considers various pieces such as the layout, visual flow, typography and color. Then Saffer also lays out how the visual design can support interaction design through forms such as widgets, buttons, icons and so on.

The section I find particularly interesting is the speculation about new forms of interfaces that take embodied human input such as gestures and one’s very physical presence… Saffer calls this “Interfaces without Faces”, but I’d rather call it, “Interfaces with New Faces”.

Schnotz & Bannert: Structure Mapping Hypothesis

Schnotz, W., & Bannert, M. (2003). Construction and interference in learning from multiple representation. Learning and Instruction, 13, 141–156.

Summary:

The authors present the “structure mapping hypothesis” which makes a subtler connection (compared to the dual coding hypothesis) between the relationship between visual and verbal representations and their processing through internal mental model constructions. Essentially, the authors are saying that the dual coding hypothesis assumes that there is a univalent relationship between kind of presentation and kind of tasks. But the structure mapping hypothesis is saying that the effects of different pictures will be different depending on the type of tasks. This hypothesis thus makes a distinction between how texts and pictures function. Texts and pictures are 2 different sign systems. The authors state that texts are “descriptive representations”- they describe their objects through relational information. Pictures or physical models are “depictive representations” and they function as iconic signs. Furthermore, descriptions are more powerful in representing forms of subject matter, but depictive are better for drawing inferences. The research that the authors set up seems to back up the authors’ hypothesis. Their results showed that presenting task-appropriate graphics helped learner comprehension, and task-inappropriate graphics interfered with comprehension.

 

My comments:

The authors make a good point for splicing the model more finely. And I’m especially interested in what they have to say about the construction of internal mental representations because it is on the one hand, all speculation- because mental processes lack material form though maybe neural research is getting better at mapping neuronal activity as a material trace. And also because I’m interested in how mental models can be formed through non-visual forms of perception- the authors mention auditive and kinaesthetic:

“Mental models, on the contrary, are not sensorically specific. A mental model of a spatial configuration, for example, can be constructed not only by visual perception, but also by auditive or by kinaesthetic or by haptic perception.” (143).

Schneiderman & Plaisant: Designing the User Interface, chapt. 14

Shneiderman, B., & Plaisant, C. (2005). Designing the User Interface. Chapter 14.5: Information Visualization (pp. 580–603). Boston: Pearson.

Schneiderman & Plaisant (SP) write that it was the success of “direct-manipulation interfaces” that enabled users to work with the computer in a more visual way. And pictures can convey a multitude of meaning and may be the representational mode (rather than text) that is preferred by many for processing information. “Information visualization” thus emerged through computational technology as a term for how we use “interactive visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition” (SP citing Card, Mackinlay and Schnedierman, 1999).  Interestingly, SP mention that information visualization is an abstraction of reality (590) but, like pure mathematics, the intention is to find the deeper patterns in phenomena, or the mess of relationships that is the real world.

Another great point that SP make is when they state that humans have fine-tuned perceptual abilities that aren’t accessed in most interface designs- and the examples SP give are visual perception related, but I believe we can extend the range of untapped abilities to the other sensory perceptions- touch, proprioception…. 

Anyway, the overview of the language and practice of information-visualization is laid out by SP.  They state the basic principle, or “mantra” of information-visualization to be:

“Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand…”

This mantra of information visualization invokes the basic activities or tasks involved. And SP provide a useful TAXONOMY that sorts information visualization then into a set of 7 tasks (overview, zoom, filter, details-on-demand, relate, history and extract) with 7 data types:

1. Linear data: 1-dimensional, including texts, dictionaries, alphabetical lists…

2. 2D map data: maps, plans and layouts with domain and interface attributes…

3. 3D World: include real world objects which have volume and complex relationships to each other, sometimes in the form of dimensional representations such as 3D maps- related to 3D computer graphical imaging & design, virtual reality design… “information-visualization in three dimensions is still controversial” (585)

4. Multidimensional data: Statistical and relational database contents that can be manipulated as multidimensional data…

5. Temporal data: Data that needs to be viewed temporally- as a time series…

6. Tree data:  Hierarchical or tree structured data

7. Network data: When a tree structure is not enough, relationships conveyed through linking as a network…

SP go on to describe the 7 tasks of information visualization in greater detail with examples, and then conclude the chapter with notes about “challenges” to information visualization. The most important one for me is: 1) the challenge of collaboration, that “support for social processes is  critical to information visualization”… a software design challenge and also theoretical challenge

Dickey- Engaging By Design: How Engagement Strategies in Popular Computer and Video Games Can Inform Instructional Design

Dickey points out how computer and video games excel at engaging players, and that there are a number of strategies that seem to be employed to keep players engaged in the gameplay. In the field of education, there is a growing movement now to try to bring gameplay strategies into educational applications, to motivate and engage students in learning to the same degree that they are engaged in playing video/computer games. Dickey identifies then several strategies and methods that foster engagement in games and discusses how such strategies and methods can inform instructional design. The key strategies are: Player positioning, or point of view; the use of narratives; and methods employed to make interactions interesting such as action and time hooks.

Obviously in the design of our Microarray learning modules, we are interested in making the learning interactive and game-like. It has been hard though to take the fairly abstract scientific concepts which Microarrays deal with and import game strategies into their presentation. The use of narrative doesn’t really make sense given that this is a pretty specialized laboratory procedure and any kind of lab-based narrative seemed both artificial and cartoonish. So we could only think about some of the kind of “hooks” that might be employed in playing more visually abstract games like Tetris- which actually can look a lot like a microarray sometimes. Still we have been constrained by needing the game- even the microarray rearranging type game to adhere to scientific accuracy so a row of squares has to retain its meaning as a microarry, and so we can only allow a certain amount of manipulation of the variables… We haven’t quite figured this out.

Moreno & Mayer- Engaging Students in Active Learning, the Case for Personalized Multimedia Messages

Moreno & Mayer start by citing research that shows that people pay more attention in situations where there is some reference to themselves- like the sharpness of ears when one over-hears one’s name spoken aloud by someone at a cocktail party! Also research seems to show a “self referential effect” where information is retained, memorized better when it is given a personal reference.

So the question is how to transfer this phenomena to educational applications. Through their studies here, Moreno & Mayer show that indeed, when students are given personalized messages in a multimedia science lesson, there was a greater degree of engagement by the students and more active learning. The greater degree of engagement was related then to reducing cognitive processing load thus facilitating processing for understanding.

It seems both common sense and common place to encounter personal referencing in so many online and digital applications. The marketing and customer service industries have been practicing the art of personal referencing for years. Maybe in educational settings, this has been less the case. I think it’s a good idea and in the Microarray Experiment modules that Yookyung and I are designing, I wanted there to be some kind of personalized messaging as well- especially because we are trying to increase the sense of control the student has over their learning. Maybe that students need to login to the modules, and so there would be a welcome box that acknowledged them and kept track of their use of the modules…?

Schwann & Riemp-The cognitive benefits of interactive videos: learning to tie nautical knots

Pretty straightforward study that establishes the benefit of interactive dynamic visualisations over non-interactive forms in that the interactivity allows persons great control over their learning- the pace, and process.  With the caveat that the interactive features shouldn’t increase cognitive load.  In this study, participants learned to tie nautical knots (of increasing degrees of difficulty) by watching videos. With the interactive videos, participants were able to pause, replay, slow down and so on, which was essential when the knots became more complex.  The participants that had access only to non-interactive videos took much longer than their counterparts to learn the knots.

Morville- Defining Information Architecture

Good overview of the growing field of information architecture- its definition(s), its uses, its major concepts and concerns. The analogy Morville gives in the beginning is of the information architect as a builder of structures, just as a physical architect may build structures- shaping the forms to the needs of the people that will inhabit them- functional as well as emotional needs. But as Morville concedes, it’s almost easier to say “What isn’t information architecture” than what it is because the field encompasses so much- its practice is often intertwined with so many other disciplines such as graphic design, interaction design, experience design, software development, usability… it’s an emerging field that has really taken its most persistent shape through the emergence of the internet.

The major “reason” or need for information architecture though that Morville seems to stress, at least in the first chapter, is that information needs to be organized in order to be findable and usable. The information architect as a digital librarian of sorts. But information architecture is becoming much more than that, I believe, as the internet morphs (as web 2.0) into not just a huge repository of information, but into a creative space for information creation. Morville serves up the classic diagram of the 3 areas of IA including content, context and users. With web 2.0, the IA’s job is not just to organize content but to facilitate the content creation of users.

Steuer- Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence

Steuer, J. (1992). Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of Communication: Autumn 1992; 42(4), 73- 93.
Nice article, seems to be an early contribution to the now growing field of “presence” research, and also, there is a mention of the cognitive load issue towards the end of the article which may be an effect of multimedia that is high in “telepresence”.

Jonathan Steuer is writing in the early 1990’s, but even then, is making the argument to redefine virtual reality in terms of its experience rather than in terms of specialized technology, as it was until then defined. So rather than in terms of the technological hardware of computers, displays, motion-sensing gloves and so on, Steuer defines virtual reality in terms of the experience of “tele-presence”. Drawing from an earlier definition of “presence” as “the sense of being in an environment” (Steuer citing Gibson, 1979, p. 4) and connecting presence to “the phenomenon of distal attribution or externalization, which refer to the referencing of our perceptions to an external space beyond the limits of the sensory organs themselves” (Steuer citing Loomis, 1992). Steuer then proposes the term telepresence to distinguish the mediated aspect of the experience of presence in a virtual environment, “telepresence refers to the mediated perception of an environment” (76). However, researchers have used the term presence and telepresence sometimes interchangeably, and sometimes to denote distinct cases. The distinction seems understandable, but Steuer insists on using telepresence as the broader term that incorporates all cases.

Now Steuer feels free to define the term, virtual reality (VR): “A virtual reality is defined as a real or simulated environment in which a perceiver experiences telepresence” (76-7). Again, Steuer is trying to make a broader case for the terms so that various technologies can be included, not just the specialized technologies typically associated with VR. Examples included: the experience of using the telephone for the first time, the experience of listening to live recordings of music, the experience of video game play.

Two factors of the medium determine telepresence
Citing Durlak (1987), Steuer writes that “Face-to-face interaction with other humans is used as a model for all interactive communication” (79-80). VR environments need to engage the same processes invoked in the perception (mental and sensory) of real-world environments in order to re-create a sense of telepresence. The medium needs to convey these perceptual processes, and so factors that influence the sense of telepresence include two factors of vividness (sensory richness) and interactivity (ability to act on the environment).
More precisely, vividness is the “the representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal features; that is, the way in which an environment present information to the senses” (81). Vividness is made up of “sensory breadth, which refers to the number of sensory dimensions simultaneously presented, and sensory depth, which refers to the resolution within each of these perceptual channels” (81). And here, redundancy of sensory information presented over multiple channels serves moreover to enhance vividness. Newer technologies such as hi-def TV for example provide greater depth of sensory information. And Steuer looks forward to a day when media systems are capable of representations that are so close to the real thing that the distinction between representation and reality becomes blurred.

And in fact, although we are not there yet, the blurring has already started over the synapse of experienced worlds- Lemke’s notion of “traversals” seems useful here to appreciate the kind of blurring that happens as people become immersed in moving back and forth between virtual and physical realities- SecondLife comes to mind- the traversals are the boundary over which the distinction between representation and reality have become blurred… perhaps?

Interactivity “refers to the degree to which users of a medium can influence the form or content of the mediated environment” (80) and can be further understood in terms of degrees of speed, range and mapping. Speed has to do with how responsive the system is to the user’s actions. Range refers to how many possibilities for manipulation there are in the mediated environment, so intensity (loudness, brightness, etc.), spatial organization (where objects appear, etc.), temporal ordering, and so on. Thus, by these definitions, a book is not that interactive. Mapping refers to Donald Norman’s term, and how closely actions taken on the mediated environment are mapped to corresponding “natural” actions in the human physical environment. Actions in the mediated environment that map closer to real world counterparts contribute to a sense of telepresence.

Constraints on telepresence
Of course, the experience of presence/telepresence is internal to individuals and thus constrained by the particularity of individual sensibilities and situations that individuals are located in. Steuer gives examples of how one sensory modality might be more important in some situations than in others, and yet depending on the individual also, some sensory modalities may be more important than others for the experience to be meaningful and comprehensible. The variabilities of situation and individual will always constrain the degree of telepresence experienced through the given media.

Implications for designing educational media
Steuer injects a paragraph towards the end of the article for another constraint or concern (though he doesn’t name it as such here) which has bearing on the use of immersive technologies for educational purposes, and it is essentially the concern for cognitive load: it is that although the dimensions of vividness and interactivity seem to contribute to the sense of presence, sometimes the vividness may overwhelm the ability to engage in more “reflective” cognitive processing. Hmmm…