CMSC 20370/30370 Winter 2020 Understanding human abilities for - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

CMSC 20370/30370 Winter 2020 Understanding human abilities for inclusive technology Case Study: Accessibility

Feb 5, 2020

Quiz Time (5-7 minutes).

Quiz on SeeingVR

Principles of Good Design

Administrivia

• Midterm on Friday
• Feedback for 4 groups on Monday

coming

• ~2 weeks to conduct user research by

Feb 14 for GP2

– Assume if you have not heard from us that we are happy with your materials for data collection

Today’s Agenda

• Accessibility area
• Mid-course review

– Provide feedback to improve the course – Will use to adjust as needed/possible

Case Study: SeeingVR

• Low vision users – not fully blind, blurred vision, light

sensitivity, can’t correct with contact lenses or glasses

• Formative work with low vision users
• SeeingVR prototype of 14 augmentations to VR e.g. Bifocal

lens

• Unity toolkit for integrating SeeingVR into applications
• Evaluation with low vision users and developers
• Limitations

– Small user sample – Biases from apps tested – Within subjects

Let’s start with inclusion…

Source:h)ps://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-usability-inclusion

And usability….

Source:h)ps://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-usability-inclusion

Accessibility is a subset of this area

Source:h)ps://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-usability-inclusion

The fundamental issue behind accessibility is that our own human abilities affect how we use a system and also how a system can be designed to accommodate us

Let’s talk about cognition for instance.

• Cognitive processes include thinking,

remembering, listening…

• Need to account for cognitive limitations of

users

• Knowledge about what users can and can’t be

expected to do

• Identifies and explains nature and causes of

problems users encounter

• Theories + models + guides to improve design
• f interactive products

– (take Prof Lopes’s Intro to HCI class)

Cognitive processes

• Attention
• Perception and recognition
• Memory
• Learning
• Reading, speaking, listening
• Problem-solving, planning, reasoning,

and decision-making

Attention

Attention

• Selecting things to concentrate on at a point in time

from the mass of stimuli

• Allows us to to focus on information that is relevant to

what we are doing

• Involves audio and/or visual senses
• Limits our ability to keep track of all events
• Information at the interface should be structured to

capture users’ attention

Activity: Find the price of a double room at the Holiday Inn in Bradley

Activity: Find the price for a double room at the Quality Inn in Columbia

Activity

• First screen harder to search but they

have the same density of info

• Why?
• Spacing
• Case Study: In SeeingVR, one of the tools

was to highlight where to focus attention in case of lots of visual information

Multitasking and attention

• Is it possible to perform multiple tasks

without one or more of them being detrimentally affected?

• Let’s think about the taste of chocolate and at the

same time, add 47 to 78.

• Or let’s time, the following:
• Everybody spell out aloud “CMSC 20370/30370 is

amazing” while writing your full name

• Let’s try it again, everybody spell out “CMSC

20370/30370 is amazing”. Now write your full name.

• What do you notice?
• Heavy multi-taskers

– easily distracted – find it difficult to filter irrelevant info

20

Design implications for attention

• Make information salient when it needs attending

to

• Use techniques that make things stand out

– Color, ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing and animation

• Avoid cluttering the interface with too much

information

Perception

• How information is acquired from the world

and transformed into experiences

Is color contrast good? Find italian

Is color contrast good? Find italian

Is color contrast good? Find italian

Are borders and white space better? Find french

Are borders and white space better? Find french

Are borders and white space better? Find french

Activity

• People took less time to locate items for

information that was grouped with border

• Too much white space on web pages may

make it harder to find info

• Do you agree?

Which is easiest to read and why?

What is the Bme? What is the Bme? What is the Bme? What is the Bme? What is the Bme?

Design implications

– Bordering + spacing = effective visual ways of grouping information – Sounds should be audible +distinguishable – Speech output should enable users to distinguish between the set of spoken words – Text should be legible and distinguishable from the background – Tactile feedback should allow users to recognize and distinguish different meanings – Case Study: SeeingVR helps users with low vision perceive similar things about the environment such as what is in the distance

Memory

Memory

• Involves first encoding and then retrieving

knowledge

• We don’t remember everything

– Involves filtering and processing what is attended to

• Context is important in affecting our memory

(i.e. where, when)

• We recognize things much easier than being

able to recall things

• Case Study: SeeingVR low vision users less

able to recognize things at a distance or easily glean information from the virtual environment

Processing in memory

• Encoding is first stage of memory

– determines which information is attended to in the environment and how it is interpreted

• The more attention paid to something…
• The more it is processed in terms of thinking

about it and comparing it with other knowledge…

• The more likely it is to be remembered

– E.g. in this class

Context is important

• Context affects the extent to which

information can be subsequently retrieved

• Sometimes difficult for people to recall

information that was encoded in a different context:

– “You are on a train to the NYC and someone comes up to you and says hello. You don’t recognize her for a few moments but then realize it is one of your classmates from your Inclusive Tech class. You are only used to seeing your class mate in the lecture theatre and seeing her out of context makes her difficult to recognize initially”

Activity

• Try to remember the dates of your

grandparents’ birthday

• Try to remember the covers of the last two

books you read

• Which was easiest? Why?
• People are very good at remembering

visual cues about things

– e.g. the color of items, the location of objects and marks on an object

• They find it more difficult to learn and

remember arbitrary material

– e.g. birthdays and phone numbers

Recognition versus recall

• Command-based interfaces require users

to recall from memory a name from a possible set of 100s

Recognition versus recall

• GUIs provide visually-based options that

users need only browse through until they recognize one

• Providing recently visited links/files/songs

listened to/history of use

The problem with the classic ‘7±2’

• George Miller’s (1956) theory of how

much information people can remember

• People’s immediate memory capacity is

very limited

• Many designers think this is useful

finding for interaction design

• But…

What some designers get up to…

• Present only 7 options on a menu
• Display only 7 icons on a tool bar
• Have no more than 7 bullets in a list
• Etc
• Is this right?

Why?

• People can scan lists of bullets, tabs,

menu items for the one they want

• They don’t have to recall them from

memory having only briefly heard or seen them

• Sometimes a small number of items is

good

• But depends on task and available

screen estate

Personal information management

Personal information management

• Memory involves 2 processes

– recall-directed and recognition-based scanning

• File management systems designed to
• ptimize both kinds of memory

processes

– e.g. Search box and history list

• Help users encode files in richer ways

– Provide them with ways of saving files using colour, flagging, image, flexible text, time stamping, etc

Is Apple’s Spotlight search tool any good?

Design implications

• Don’t overload users’ memories with

complicated procedures for carrying out tasks

• Design interfaces that promote recognition

rather than recall

• Provide users with various ways of

encoding information to help them remember

– e.g. categories, color, flagging, time stamping

• SeeingVR design implication of making it

easy to present menu of augmentations to users, shortcuts for frequently used ones

Learning

• How to learn to use a computer-

based application

• Using a computer-based application

to understand a given topic

• People find it hard to learn by

following instructions in a manual

• prefer to learn by doing

Toddlers and iPads

• Why do you think it works?

Design implications

• Design interfaces that encourage

exploration

• Design interfaces that constrain and

guide learners

• Dynamically linking concepts and

representations can facilitate the learning of complex material

• Case study SeeingVR: augmentations

are not as useful if there is a steep learning curve

Reading, speaking, and listening

• The ease with which people can read,

listen, or speak differs

– Many prefer listening to reading – Reading can be quicker than speaking/ listening – Listening requires less cognitive effort than reading or speaking

The vision

• Then:

Design implications

• Use natural interactions
• Distinguish from other interactions
• Decide when its appropriate to use

voice vs text vs other forms of interaction

• Privacy and security implications?
• SeeingVR: text to speech

augmentation

Problem-solving, planning, reasoning and decision-making

• All involves reflective cognition

– e.g. thinking about what to do, what the

• ptions are, and the consequences
• Often involves conscious processes, discussion

with others (or oneself), and the use of artifacts – e.g. maps, books, pen and paper

• May involve working through different

scenarios and deciding which is best option

Design implications

• Provide additional information/functions for users

who wish to understand more about how to carry

• ut an activity more effectively
• Use simple computational aids to support rapid

decision-making and planning for users on the move

• SeeingVR: highlight what’s salient, could help find

clues in a game

Summary

• Cognition involves several processes including attention,

memory, perception and learning

• Interface design can greatly affect how well users can

perceive, attend, learn and remember how to do their tasks

• We have only talked about cognition but humans differ on

many axes and we need to accommodate accordingly

• Accessibility is about accommodating differing human

abilities (e.g. cognition, motor, sensory, physical, etc)

Coming up next class

• Midterm!

Get in touch:

Office hours: Fridays 2-4pm (Sign up in advance) or by appointment JCL 355 Email: marshini@uchicago.edu