How People Approach Technology-Based Interactions

Design teams should not consider a person’s computer interface as just a set of hardware and software that make upcompose the computer (Grudin, 1990). Instead, from the person’s point of view, the interface includes all of the elements which compose its context of use. From this perspective, one can view the interface of a computer as more than the screens, buttons, and knobs, and also include any documentation, other people present, and past knowledge directly relevant to the situation. In these situations, HII needs to consider more than just the button-pushing or system response, but how people and information interact with the situation in building comprehension.

Information in the Situation

Although in an ideal form the information in the world would not involve people, in reality, it has no meaning without people observing and interacting with it. There is a widespread myth (a positivistic view) that information is something in the world that does not depend on people’s point of view and that it is independent of the situation in which it occurs. But information never has fixed significance. The available data is simply the raw material that must be processed. Any particular information element gains significance only from its relationship to other information in the context in which it occurs (Woods, Patterson, & Roth, 2002). However, this chapter tries to minimize those interaction and interpretation aspects, deferring those for the later parts of the book. Instead, it concentrates on the issues of the information in the situation before it gets mentally processed.

How People Make Decisions and Take Action

The earlier chapters of this book have looked at how people interact with and interpret information. This chapter looks at the factors that influence how people use that information to make a decision. In the end, effective communication depends on people doing something with the information; a decision needs to be made and actions taken. Those decisions and actions feed back into the overall situation, which modifies the available information. People then interpret the changes and makes more decisions, even if the decision is that everything is ok and no further actions are required (Figure 1).

How People Approach Numbers, Statistics, and Risks

The previous chapter dealt with how people interpret graphics. This chapter examines how people interpret numbers, typically given as probabilities or risks (Figure 1). In a majority of HII situations, numbers are essential for gaining a full understanding of the situation. This chapter covers how people react to numbers. Since many people have a high literacy level but a low numeracy (number literacy), design teams must understand how people interact with and interpret numbers as it is essential to understanding how it affects the communication process.

How People Perform a First Glance Evaluation

This chapter looks at some of the factors that drive how people form their first impression of a text and how design teams can ensure their material leaves a good impression within the first 2 seconds of people looking at a page, the time during which people evaluate the appearance and begin to read and comprehend the text. People’s initial perception of text happens within a few seconds, long before they actually read any text; some research has found initial impressions can form within 50 milliseconds (Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek, & Brown, 2006). That first glance evaluation depends on their initial perception of the font choices, text design, and graphics. The first few seconds of viewing a text can be critical to the HII by activating a mental model and setting up how the text will be interpreted. Or if it creates a poor first impression, people may flag the text as unreadable and ignore it.

How People Read

When people try to read technical information, they try to assess the relevance of information as quickly as possible. They set their own reading goals in performing this task and skip the paragraphs or sections they do not consider relevant (Janssen & Neutelings, 2001). This idea is reflected in the Web reading mantra that if a website does not grab a person immediately, they will leave. While the full truth of this mantra can be debated, the rapid reading and evaluation of information must be considered as part of designing for HII to allow people to comprehend the information.

Conclusion

People process information on three levels: readability, understandability, and comprehension (Warren, 1993). Readability, how people perceive individual words, has been the focus of the majority of the research, but does not guarantee people understand the content. But the other two carry the information’s meaning. Comprehension, the highest level, is extracting the intending meaning from the text and being able to relate it to the world and use it in the situation. Fitting information to the situation requires comprehension, not just being able to read the content. HII works to focus design teams at the comprehension level for maximally effective communication.

How People Approach Information

Information interaction and interpretation will vary dependent on people’s goals and information needs. These differing goals and information needs shape what information is actually deemed important, and how hard people will work to understand it. As a result, information importance can also differ radically between people. In any particular situation, even after the information has been found and is being considered, factors inherent in human nature come into play to influence the interpretation. This chapter considers some of those factors influencing the ways people approach and interpret information. The white area in Figure 1 shows the area of the HII model relevant to this chapter.

What People Bring with Them

The psychology literature has many articles on how people react to information and the deeper cognitive process behind those reactions, but, unfortunately, this information has not transferred over to the literature relevant to HII. This chapter provides a high level overview of some of those findings and connects them to HII needs. This chapter considers the cognitive aspects people bring to a situation. Design teams have no influence over them, but instead must work within the limitations of how the human mind operates. The white area in figure 1 shows the area of the HII model relevant to this chapter. Comprehending any situation requires people to expend cognitive resources. Depending on the quality of the overall HII design, that expenditure may be high or low. Too high and they may reject the information as too hard or incomprehensible. The design team’s goal must be to minimize the cognitive resources required, which in turn requires an understanding of what drives people’s allocation of cognitive resources.

How People Approach Finding Information

This chapter does not address the topics typically covered in articles on searching for Web information, such as search engine optimization or how to develop an information architecture (IA). At best it could only touch on those topics, and many more sources give better coverage. Instead, it considers the cognitive processes of how people go about searching for information, which is at the root of any effective IA. It considers the forces which drive people to search for information and what mental processes are involved as they evaluate search results as they work toward a stopping point. For an extensive review article on information search research, see Hsieh-Yee (2001).