• clear and concise covering the section headings above
• understandable audio spoken by you
• must include video of your face while presenting in the presentation
• must include at least 5 but no more than 10 slides
• title slides, personal introductions, tables of contents, reference slides are not required (waste of time!)

Suggested recording method: Microsoft Powerpoint’s built-in recording tool

no genAI or text-to-speech allowed for the video presentation!

A definition from Oxford English Dictionary:

The action or faculty of knowing taken in its widest sense, including sensation, perception, conception, etc., as distinguished from feeling and volition…

1. Attention
2. Perception
3. Memory
4. Learning
5. Reading, speaking, listening
6. Problem solving, planning, reasoning, decision making

(Eysenck & Brysbaert, 2023)

Selecting things to focus on, relevant to our needs, from possibilities.

• clear goals (directed searching vs browsing)
• information presentation (structure and layout in the interface)
• multitasking and attention
  • depends on individuals and context
  • relevance of distractions
  • effort to task switch
  • designing to support effective multitasking

• consider context to make information salient when required
• techniques: animation, colour, ordering, spacing
• avoid cluttered visual interfaces
• support switching and returning (but how?)

• how we sense information and transform it into experience
• proprioception: Awareness of position and movement of body through muscles and joints
• vision dominant for sighted folks
• followed by hearing and touch
• important to present information so that it can be readily perceived

• design icons and graphics to be distinguished
• white space and separators to group information
• sounds (earcons!) can help distinguish information
• colour contrast is important for perception (and accessibility)
• haptic feedback: use carefully, perhaps in response to user initiated actions

• brain filters what to remember and what to forget to avoid overload – but not always in the way we want to!
• filtering into memory – depends on encoding process (e.g., active vs passive learning) and context (e.g., seeing someone in a different context)
• people are better at recognition than recall
• relying on technology rather than memory (e.g., car navigation system, “let’s ask Claude..”)
• personal information management
• remembering passwords and multifactor authentication

• avoid long and complex procedures for carrying out tasks
• design interfaces for recognition rather than recall (familiar patterns and consistency)
• provide ways to label digital information for identification

accumulation of skills and knowledge through memory (Rogers et al., 2023, p. 119)

• incidental learning vs intentional learning
• learning by reading vs learning by doing
• learning through collaboration
• micro-learning
• multimodal learning through new and emerging technologies e.g., augmented reality and virtual reality

• design to encourage exploration
• design constraints and guide users to appropriate actions

Learning theory concept: “zone of proximal development”—we should get users into that state!

• communication skills
• meaning the same across modes
• writing is permanent, speaking is transient
• reading quicker than listening
• listening less cognitive effort than reading
• some more grammatical than others
• interactive books, speech technologies, natural language processing, tactile interfaces, assistive technologies

• keep length of speech menus to minimum (less than 3-4 options)
• extra intonation on artificial speech
• provide options for making text large

• Involve “reflective cognition” in relation to actions, choices, consequences
• How do you make purchasing decisions? What role does technology play?

Design Implications

• Provide information and help for users to improve their performance.
• Use simple and memorable functions for rapid decision making.
• Let users set their own configuration and options.

A mental model is our internal understanding of how a system works.

• used to reason about unfamiliar technology or troubleshoot problems
• develop through experience; often incomplete or incorrect
• common errors from misapplying logic of a system: thermostat/oven vs. water tap
• poor mental models lead to difficulty identifying problems and explaining system behavior
• interfaces can help through clear instructions, contextual help, and appropriate metaphors

influential early HCI framework describing gaps between user and interface (D. A. Norman, 1986)

• gulf of evaluation: understanding state
• gulf of execution: understanding controls
• design challenge is bridging these gulfs to reduce cognitive effort
• framework explores mappings between system design and user understanding
• provides discourse for identifying mismatches in user-system interaction

• interactions between multiple people and artefacts
• event-driven, systems as the unit of analysis, collective behaviours
• information flows and transformations through the system
• different levels of granularity
• analysis addresses problem solving, communication (verbal and non-verbal), coordination mechanisms, accessing and sharing knowledge
• analysis can inform design implications and decision-making in designing to support distributed cognition

• internal representations (in the head) and external representations (artefacts in the world) and how they interact
• combined with tools (e.g., pens, calculators, spreadsheets) to support cognitive activities
• the cognitive processes involved when we interact with different external representations
• cognitive offloading, computational offloading, annotating and cognitive tracing

Let’s consider one angle on social computer use.

What are the kinds of situations in which you would phone someone (rather than text)?

Write for 2-3 minutes, vote for 1 minute, then let’s discuss.

conversation may seem effortless but is a skilled collaborative achievement. how do these unfold?

• turn-taking rules: speaker chooses next, someone else starts, or current speaker continues (Sacks et al., 1978)
• adjacency pairs: first utterance sets expectation for response
• repair mechanisms: repetition, gestures, and clarifications
• nonverbal cues coordinate conversation flow
• interfaces that emulate human conversational patterns are a long term goal! recent progress with AI.

• video conferencing: early research (1980s-90s) showed people spoke louder, took longer turns, interrupted less
• mainstream adoption via Skype, FaceTime, then Zoom/Teams
• virtual 2D spaces (e.g., Gather.Town) aim to recreate social presence and community
• telepresence creates perception of being present in a physical location while actually elsewhere
• telepresence through robots, rooms, virtual reality, games
• social presence: the feeling of being there in a virtual space
• features of interaction design can establish a sense of presence and facilitate remote conversation

supporting people in activities when they are interacting in the same physical space

• supporting effective collaboration
• hand gestures, body language, use of objects
• awareness: knowing what is going on around you, functioning as “close-knit teams”
• shareable interfaces: whiteboards, touch screens
• social translucence: enabling participants and activities to be visible

games designed to facilitate social interaction between two or more players who are aware of each other’s presence and actions

• can be cooperative or competitive, played with or without technology (board games, video games, online platforms)
• three heuristics: synchronous vs asynchronous interaction, symmetrical vs asymmetrical relationships, strong vs weak social ties (Ricchetti, 2022)
• unconventional approaches, e.g. Journey (shared exploration)
• communities through live streaming (Twitch) foster social bonds

Understanding emotions assists with design. Positive and negative emotional states have different effects on creativity and tolerance (D. Norman, 2005)

Ortony et al. (2012) model of emotional design:

• visceral: look, feel, sound
• behavioural: use (usability)
• reflective: meaning, personal value, culture

• design features that seek to create an emotional connection with users or elicit emotional responses in users
• expressivity through animation, sonification, vibrotactile feedback (e.g., mobile phone or watch buzzing)
• aesthetics affects perceptions of usability and pleasure of use
• annoying interfaces elicit negative responses

• computers recognising and expressing emotions (Rosalind Picard: Affective Computing, Engineering Emotion)
• measuring of feelings using facial expressions, voice, and physiological data
• sensing technologies: cameras, biosensors, speech analysis, motion capture, accelerometer sensors
• typical ML task classify emotions (anger, joy, sadness) as percentages from facial markers
• mood tracking apps: help manage emotions, moods, and mental health

persuasive design uses interface techniques to change user behavior and thinking

• pop-ups, recommendations, prompts, and one-click purchasing
• playful interventions (piano stairs, echoing bins)
• fitness trackers use dashboards, leaderboards, and social comparison for motivation
• social norms influence consumption - households adjust behavior based on neighborhood comparisons
• effective persuasion balances being noticeable without being intrusive or overly abstract

anthropomorphism is the human tendency to attribute human qualities to animals and objects, widely applied in technology design

• applied in software designs, as well as hardware such as robots
• e.g., “ChatGPT” vs “Claude”.
• personalized first-person interaction (“Hi Charles!”) proves more engaging than impersonal third-person commands
• robot dolls incorporate sensors, speech recognition, and servos
• should robots be hard (Sony AIBO) or soft designs that enhance emotional connection through touch? (e.g., haptic creature, Yohanan & MacLean (2008))

Who has a question?

• I can take cathchbox question up until 2:55
• For after class questions: meet me outside the classroom at the bar (for 30 minutes)
• Feel free to ask about any aspect of the course
• Also feel free to ask about any aspect of computing at ANU! I may not be able to help, but I can listen.