Menu interfaces often arrange options into semantic groups. This semantic structure is then usual... more Menu interfaces often arrange options into semantic groups. This semantic structure is then usually conveyed to the user by supplementary visual grouping cues. We investigate whether these visual grouping cues actually help users locate items in menus faster, and whether there is potential for these powerful grouping cues to impede search when used inappropriately. Thirty-six participants performed known-item searches of word menus. These menus differed along three dimensions: (1) whether visual grouping cues were used, (2) whether items were semantically organized, and (3) the number of items belonging to each semantic group. Results show that the usefulness of visual grouping entirely depends on the underlying semantic structure of the menu. When menus were semantically organized, having visual grouping cues delineate the boundaries between large semantic groups resulted in the fastest search times. But when semantically unrelated items were visually grouped together, participants took far longer to locate targets. Menu designers should therefore take great care to avoid visually grouping semantically unrelated items as this has the potential to hinder menu interactions.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, 2010
The process of interleaving two tasks can be described as making trade-offs between performance o... more The process of interleaving two tasks can be described as making trade-offs between performance on each of the tasks. This can be captured in performance operating characteristic curves. However, these curves do not describe what, given the specific task circumstances, the optimal strategy is. In this paper we describe the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to describe how participants should ...
In this paper we introduce the notion of media architectural interfaces (MAIs), which describe th... more In this paper we introduce the notion of media architectural interfaces (MAIs), which describe the relation between users engaging with dynamic content on media façades through tangible artifacts on street level. Firstly, we outline existing research concerned with public displays, urban screens and media facades, secondly we summarize related works that explore mediated urban interactions in connection with MAIs. We report on the technical set up of a field study, in which we deployed a novel tangible user interface (TUI), called the Smart Citizen Sentiment Dashboard (SCSD). This device gives citizens the opportunity to express their mood about local urban challenges. The input from this TUI is then instantly displayed on a very large (3700 sqm) media façade. The installation ran for three weeks during a media arts festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During this deployment period, we were able to gather data to help us understand the relationship between passers-by, participants, the TUI and the media façade. As a result we identified emergent behavior in the immediate space around the TUI and the wider urban space. The contribution this paper makes is in highlighting challenges in the design and deployment of large-scale media architectural interfaces.
Abstract The field of text entry has long been focused on purely alphabetical text entry, concent... more Abstract The field of text entry has long been focused on purely alphabetical text entry, concentrating on language typing tasks and paying little attention to the task of number entry. Not only does number entry often require a different interface from text entry, it is also subject to different errors and phenomena from text entry. Number entry occurs in many domains in the real world and for this reason this paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to this niche area of text entry.
An empirical investigation into strategies for guiding interactive search
Many people at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University have made the past few years academ... more Many people at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University have made the past few years academically stimulating and wholly enjoyable. I am especially grateful to Andrew Howes, my thesis advisor, for providing continuous support and guidance throughout the development of the work presented in this thesis. I would also like to thank Richard Young and Anna Cox at UCL for their collaboration over the course of conducting this research and in particular for kindly providing me with the source code for their model.
Abstract Portable music players such as Apple's iPod have become ubiquitous in many environments,... more Abstract Portable music players such as Apple's iPod have become ubiquitous in many environments, but one environment in particular has elicited new safety concerns and challenges--in-vehicle use while driving. We present the first study of portable music-player interaction while driving, examining the effects of iPod interaction by drivers navigating a typical roadway in a driving simulator.
Abstract Research skills are important, both for HCI professionals and for budding HCI profession... more Abstract Research skills are important, both for HCI professionals and for budding HCI professionals who attend workshops, courses and programs to improve their skill-base. However, the multidisciplinary nature of HCI can leave many students (perhaps especially those who were successful in undergraduate courses) at a loss as to what research methods to use and where to begin choosing and applying the methods in their own work.
Abstract Within the CHI community there has been sustained interest in interruptions and multitas... more Abstract Within the CHI community there has been sustained interest in interruptions and multitasking behaviour. Research in the area falls into two broad categories: the micro world of perception and cognition; and the macro world of organisations, systems and long-term planning. Although both kinds of research have generated insights into behaviour, the data generated by the two kinds of research have been effectively incommensurable.
ABSTRACT Analysis of eye movement data provides a valuable methodology to evaluate and inform use... more ABSTRACT Analysis of eye movement data provides a valuable methodology to evaluate and inform user interface design. However, there are a number hurdles that must be overcome on the path to successfully gaining meaningful eye movement data. We describe how we used a commercially available eye tracking system to evaluate a new interface for personal desktop search called Phlat.
Abstract A novel dual-task paradigm was used to investigate how people adapt their task interleav... more Abstract A novel dual-task paradigm was used to investigate how people adapt their task interleaving behavior to meet a specific performance objective. The study required participants to encode and enter a series of route instructions from a secondary display while driving a simulated vehicle. Explicit instructions were given to give greater priority to either safe driving or rapid completion of the secondary navigation task.
ABSTRACT When searching a novel Web page, people often estimate the likelihood that labeled links... more ABSTRACT When searching a novel Web page, people often estimate the likelihood that labeled links on the page will lead to their goal. A rational analysis of this activity suggests that people should adjust their estimate of the likelihood that any one item will lead to the goal in a manner that is sensitive to the context provided by the likelihoods that other items on the page will lead to the goal.
Abstract The paper describes an approach to modeling the strategic variations in performing secon... more Abstract The paper describes an approach to modeling the strategic variations in performing secondary tasks while driving. In contrast to previous efforts that are based on simulation of a cognitive architecture interacting with a task environment, we take an approach that develops a cognitive constraint model of the interaction between the driver and the task environment in order to make inferences about dual-task performance.
Abstract How do people efficiently locate content in a display? We investigate the effect of text... more Abstract How do people efficiently locate content in a display? We investigate the effect of text layout on how people decide which area of a display to search first. Using a visual search paradigm, participants were required to locate a known target within a two-column display, in which items were grouped into semantic clusters, and the physical distance between items varied. For 'mixed'trials, the distance between items in each column was varied.
ABSTRACT When searching a web page for information that is relevant to some search goal, people f... more ABSTRACT When searching a web page for information that is relevant to some search goal, people focus on labelled links and estimate the likelihood that these links will lead to the goal. Evidence presented in this paper supports the idea that people adapt their search strategy to the statistics of the environment and that assessments of menu items are interdependent. The work contributes to the development of a cognitive model of how people search web sites, which may serve as an engineering tool to support web design.
How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion... more How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks (eg, Salvucci, 2005). But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries leads to poor performance? In this paper, we investigate how drivers allocate their attention to a secondary phone dialing task while driving. We use a computational model to explain why we expect a particular pattern of task interleaving.
Abstract We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking an... more Abstract We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to provide explicit feedback on how participants should trade off performance between the tasks. Results show that participants' dual-task interleaving strategy was sensitive to changes in the difficulty of the tracking task and resulted in differences in overall task performance.
While you are driving your car, it is sometimes not too difficult to direct your attention away f... more While you are driving your car, it is sometimes not too difficult to direct your attention away from the road in order to complete a secondary task, such as dialing a number on a cell phone. Constrains on the human cognitive architecture often limit perfect task parallelism during such multitasking situations. As a consequence, task operators must be interleaved. Just how these basic cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes are ordered affords a range of possible multitasking strategies.
ABSTRACT Drivers are frequently observed interacting with in-car devices despite the well-documen... more ABSTRACT Drivers are frequently observed interacting with in-car devices despite the well-documented dangers and (financial) penalties of such behavior. It is therefore useful to think about how to make such in-car multitasking situations safer. In this position paper we discuss how the consideration of “natural breakpoints” in tasks can be useful. We discuss the virtues of designing for such breakpoints, but also highlight limitations especially related to people's awareness of their performance.
During goal-directed menu search the user assesses the relevance of an item to their goal and the... more During goal-directed menu search the user assesses the relevance of an item to their goal and then has a choice between selecting the current item or continuing to assess the remaining items in the choice set. An obvious influence on selection is the relevance of the goal label to the task description (Franzke, 1995). Interestingly, Young (1998) has proposed that there is interdependency between the assessments of each item. Previous models, in contrast, have tended to assume that assessments were independent.
Consider dialing a phone while driving. Here people tend to interleave dialing in bursts of three... more Consider dialing a phone while driving. Here people tend to interleave dialing in bursts of three or four digits at a time with checks of the heading of the vehicle and steering control in between (Salvucci, 2005). Why do people interleave tasks at this particular interval? The answer seems rather obvious: Deprived of regular attention, driving performance rapidly falls below criterion, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Menu interfaces often arrange options into semantic groups. This semantic structure is then usual... more Menu interfaces often arrange options into semantic groups. This semantic structure is then usually conveyed to the user by supplementary visual grouping cues. We investigate whether these visual grouping cues actually help users locate items in menus faster, and whether there is potential for these powerful grouping cues to impede search when used inappropriately. Thirty-six participants performed known-item searches of word menus. These menus differed along three dimensions: (1) whether visual grouping cues were used, (2) whether items were semantically organized, and (3) the number of items belonging to each semantic group. Results show that the usefulness of visual grouping entirely depends on the underlying semantic structure of the menu. When menus were semantically organized, having visual grouping cues delineate the boundaries between large semantic groups resulted in the fastest search times. But when semantically unrelated items were visually grouped together, participants took far longer to locate targets. Menu designers should therefore take great care to avoid visually grouping semantically unrelated items as this has the potential to hinder menu interactions.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, 2010
The process of interleaving two tasks can be described as making trade-offs between performance o... more The process of interleaving two tasks can be described as making trade-offs between performance on each of the tasks. This can be captured in performance operating characteristic curves. However, these curves do not describe what, given the specific task circumstances, the optimal strategy is. In this paper we describe the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to describe how participants should ...
In this paper we introduce the notion of media architectural interfaces (MAIs), which describe th... more In this paper we introduce the notion of media architectural interfaces (MAIs), which describe the relation between users engaging with dynamic content on media façades through tangible artifacts on street level. Firstly, we outline existing research concerned with public displays, urban screens and media facades, secondly we summarize related works that explore mediated urban interactions in connection with MAIs. We report on the technical set up of a field study, in which we deployed a novel tangible user interface (TUI), called the Smart Citizen Sentiment Dashboard (SCSD). This device gives citizens the opportunity to express their mood about local urban challenges. The input from this TUI is then instantly displayed on a very large (3700 sqm) media façade. The installation ran for three weeks during a media arts festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During this deployment period, we were able to gather data to help us understand the relationship between passers-by, participants, the TUI and the media façade. As a result we identified emergent behavior in the immediate space around the TUI and the wider urban space. The contribution this paper makes is in highlighting challenges in the design and deployment of large-scale media architectural interfaces.
Abstract The field of text entry has long been focused on purely alphabetical text entry, concent... more Abstract The field of text entry has long been focused on purely alphabetical text entry, concentrating on language typing tasks and paying little attention to the task of number entry. Not only does number entry often require a different interface from text entry, it is also subject to different errors and phenomena from text entry. Number entry occurs in many domains in the real world and for this reason this paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to this niche area of text entry.
An empirical investigation into strategies for guiding interactive search
Many people at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University have made the past few years academ... more Many people at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University have made the past few years academically stimulating and wholly enjoyable. I am especially grateful to Andrew Howes, my thesis advisor, for providing continuous support and guidance throughout the development of the work presented in this thesis. I would also like to thank Richard Young and Anna Cox at UCL for their collaboration over the course of conducting this research and in particular for kindly providing me with the source code for their model.
Abstract Portable music players such as Apple's iPod have become ubiquitous in many environments,... more Abstract Portable music players such as Apple's iPod have become ubiquitous in many environments, but one environment in particular has elicited new safety concerns and challenges--in-vehicle use while driving. We present the first study of portable music-player interaction while driving, examining the effects of iPod interaction by drivers navigating a typical roadway in a driving simulator.
Abstract Research skills are important, both for HCI professionals and for budding HCI profession... more Abstract Research skills are important, both for HCI professionals and for budding HCI professionals who attend workshops, courses and programs to improve their skill-base. However, the multidisciplinary nature of HCI can leave many students (perhaps especially those who were successful in undergraduate courses) at a loss as to what research methods to use and where to begin choosing and applying the methods in their own work.
Abstract Within the CHI community there has been sustained interest in interruptions and multitas... more Abstract Within the CHI community there has been sustained interest in interruptions and multitasking behaviour. Research in the area falls into two broad categories: the micro world of perception and cognition; and the macro world of organisations, systems and long-term planning. Although both kinds of research have generated insights into behaviour, the data generated by the two kinds of research have been effectively incommensurable.
ABSTRACT Analysis of eye movement data provides a valuable methodology to evaluate and inform use... more ABSTRACT Analysis of eye movement data provides a valuable methodology to evaluate and inform user interface design. However, there are a number hurdles that must be overcome on the path to successfully gaining meaningful eye movement data. We describe how we used a commercially available eye tracking system to evaluate a new interface for personal desktop search called Phlat.
Abstract A novel dual-task paradigm was used to investigate how people adapt their task interleav... more Abstract A novel dual-task paradigm was used to investigate how people adapt their task interleaving behavior to meet a specific performance objective. The study required participants to encode and enter a series of route instructions from a secondary display while driving a simulated vehicle. Explicit instructions were given to give greater priority to either safe driving or rapid completion of the secondary navigation task.
ABSTRACT When searching a novel Web page, people often estimate the likelihood that labeled links... more ABSTRACT When searching a novel Web page, people often estimate the likelihood that labeled links on the page will lead to their goal. A rational analysis of this activity suggests that people should adjust their estimate of the likelihood that any one item will lead to the goal in a manner that is sensitive to the context provided by the likelihoods that other items on the page will lead to the goal.
Abstract The paper describes an approach to modeling the strategic variations in performing secon... more Abstract The paper describes an approach to modeling the strategic variations in performing secondary tasks while driving. In contrast to previous efforts that are based on simulation of a cognitive architecture interacting with a task environment, we take an approach that develops a cognitive constraint model of the interaction between the driver and the task environment in order to make inferences about dual-task performance.
Abstract How do people efficiently locate content in a display? We investigate the effect of text... more Abstract How do people efficiently locate content in a display? We investigate the effect of text layout on how people decide which area of a display to search first. Using a visual search paradigm, participants were required to locate a known target within a two-column display, in which items were grouped into semantic clusters, and the physical distance between items varied. For 'mixed'trials, the distance between items in each column was varied.
ABSTRACT When searching a web page for information that is relevant to some search goal, people f... more ABSTRACT When searching a web page for information that is relevant to some search goal, people focus on labelled links and estimate the likelihood that these links will lead to the goal. Evidence presented in this paper supports the idea that people adapt their search strategy to the statistics of the environment and that assessments of menu items are interdependent. The work contributes to the development of a cognitive model of how people search web sites, which may serve as an engineering tool to support web design.
How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion... more How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks (eg, Salvucci, 2005). But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries leads to poor performance? In this paper, we investigate how drivers allocate their attention to a secondary phone dialing task while driving. We use a computational model to explain why we expect a particular pattern of task interleaving.
Abstract We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking an... more Abstract We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to provide explicit feedback on how participants should trade off performance between the tasks. Results show that participants' dual-task interleaving strategy was sensitive to changes in the difficulty of the tracking task and resulted in differences in overall task performance.
While you are driving your car, it is sometimes not too difficult to direct your attention away f... more While you are driving your car, it is sometimes not too difficult to direct your attention away from the road in order to complete a secondary task, such as dialing a number on a cell phone. Constrains on the human cognitive architecture often limit perfect task parallelism during such multitasking situations. As a consequence, task operators must be interleaved. Just how these basic cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes are ordered affords a range of possible multitasking strategies.
ABSTRACT Drivers are frequently observed interacting with in-car devices despite the well-documen... more ABSTRACT Drivers are frequently observed interacting with in-car devices despite the well-documented dangers and (financial) penalties of such behavior. It is therefore useful to think about how to make such in-car multitasking situations safer. In this position paper we discuss how the consideration of “natural breakpoints” in tasks can be useful. We discuss the virtues of designing for such breakpoints, but also highlight limitations especially related to people's awareness of their performance.
During goal-directed menu search the user assesses the relevance of an item to their goal and the... more During goal-directed menu search the user assesses the relevance of an item to their goal and then has a choice between selecting the current item or continuing to assess the remaining items in the choice set. An obvious influence on selection is the relevance of the goal label to the task description (Franzke, 1995). Interestingly, Young (1998) has proposed that there is interdependency between the assessments of each item. Previous models, in contrast, have tended to assume that assessments were independent.
Consider dialing a phone while driving. Here people tend to interleave dialing in bursts of three... more Consider dialing a phone while driving. Here people tend to interleave dialing in bursts of three or four digits at a time with checks of the heading of the vehicle and steering control in between (Salvucci, 2005). Why do people interleave tasks at this particular interval? The answer seems rather obvious: Deprived of regular attention, driving performance rapidly falls below criterion, with potentially disastrous consequences.
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Papers by Duncan Brumby