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Chapter 3:- The computer

Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
 The Computer

 A computer system is made up of various elements

 Each of these elements affects the interaction
– Input devices – text entry and pointing
– Output devices – screen (small&large), digital paper
– Virtual reality – special interaction and display devices
– Physical interaction – e.g. sound, haptic, bio-sensing
– Paper – as output (print) and input (scan)
– Memory – RAM & permanent media, capacity & access
– Processing – speed of processing, networks
 Interacting with computers

To understand human–computer interaction

… need to understand computers!

what goes in and out

devices, paper,
sensors, etc.

what can it do?

memory, processing,
networks
 6-4
How many computers …

In your house? In your pockets?

– PC - PDA
– TV, VCR, DVD, HiFi, cable/satellite – phone, camera
TV – smart card, card with magnetic
– microwave, cooker, washing strip?
machine – electronic car key
– central heating – USB memory
– security system
try your pockets and bags
can you think of more?
 Interactivity?
 Long ago in a galaxy far away … batch processing
– punched card stacks or large data files prepared
– long wait ….
– line printer output
… and if it is not right …
 Now most computing is interactive
– rapid feedback
– the user in control (most of the time)
– doing rather than thinking …

 Is faster always better?

 Richer interaction
 Richer interaction refers to the design and implementation of interfaces and systems
that enable more engaging, intuitive, and effective interactions between users and
computers.
 It emphasizes creating interfaces that go beyond basic input and output to provide a
more natural, immersive, and satisfying user experience.
 Richer interaction in HCI often involves the use of natural user interfaces that
leverage intuitive and familiar interaction techniques.
 This can include touch gestures, voice commands, motion sensing, haptic feedback, or
other modalities that align with users' existing skills and behaviors.
 NUIs strive to bridge the gap between human and computer capabilities, making
interactions more intuitive and seamless.
 Richer interaction
Richer interaction in HCI considers the user's body and physical engagement with the
interface or system.

sensors
Internet fridge
and devices
everywhere
 Text Entry Devices

keyboards (QWERTY et al.)

chord keyboards, phone pads, handwriting, speech

 Keyboards
Most common text input device
Allows rapid entry of text by experienced users
Keypress closes connection, causing a character code to be sent
Usually connected by cable, but can be wireless
 Layout – QWERTY
 Standardised layout but …
– non-alphanumeric keys are placed differently

– accented symbols needed for different scripts

– minor differences between UK and USA keyboards

• QWERTY arrangement not optimal for typing

– layout to prevent typewriters jamming!
• Alternative designs allow faster typing but large social base of QWERTY typists
produces reluctance to change. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G H J K L
Z X C V B N M , .
SPACE
 Alternative keyboard layouts
Alphabetic
– keys arranged in alphabetic order
– not faster for trained typists
– not faster for beginners either!
Special keyboards
• Designs to reduce fatigue for RSI(Repetitive strain injury)
• For one handed use
e.g. the Maltron left-handed keyboard
 Dvorak
 common letters under dominant fingers
 biased towards right hand
 common combinations of letters alternate between hands
 10-15% improvement in speed and reduction in fatigue
 But - large social base of QWERTY typists produce market pressures not to
change
 6-12
Chord keyboards
Only a few keys - 4 or 5
Letters typed as combination of keypresses
Compact size
– ideal for portable applications
Short learning time
– keypresses reflect letter shape
Fast
– once you have trained

BUT - social resistance, plus fatigue after extended use

NEW – niche market for some wearables
 6-13
Phone pad and T9 entry
• Use numeric keys with multiple presses
2–abc6-mno
3-def 7-pqrs
4-ghi 8-tuv
5-jkl 9-wxyz
hello = 4433555[pause]555666
surprisingly fast!
• T9 predictive entry
• type as if single key for each letter
• use dictionary to ‘guess’ the right word
• hello = 43556 …
• but 26 -> menu ‘am’ or ‘an’
 Handwriting recognition
 Text can be input into the computer, using a pen and a digesting tablet
 natural interaction

• Technical problems:
 capturing all useful information - stroke path, pressure, etc. in a natural manner

 segmenting joined up writing into individual letters

 interpreting individual letters

 coping with different styles of handwriting

 Used in PDAs, and tablet computers …

… leave the keyboard on the desk!
 Speech Recognition
 Improving rapidly
 Most successful when:
 single user – initial training and learns peculiarities

 limited vocabulary systems

 Problems with
 external noise interfering

 imprecision of pronunciation

 large vocabularies

 different speakers
Positioning, Pointing and Drawing

Mouse, touchpad
trackballs, joysticks etc.
touch screens, tablets
eyegaze, cursors
 The Mouse
Mouse located on desktop
– requires physical space
– no arm fatigue
Relative movement only is detectable.
Movement of mouse moves screen cursor
Screen cursor oriented in (x, y) plane,mouse movement in (x, z) plane …
Two methods for detecting motion
 Mechanical
 Ball on underside of mouse turns as mouse is moved

 Optical
 light emitting diode on underside of mouse and a light detector to detect

movement relative to a surface

 Touchpad
 Small touch sensitive tablets
 ‘stroke’ to move mouse pointer
 used mainly in laptop computers
 good ‘acceleration’ settings important
 fast stroke

• lots of pixels per inch moved

• initial movement to the target
 slow stroke

• less pixels per inch

• for accurate positioning
 Touch-sensitive screen
 Detect the presence of finger or stylus on the screen.
 works by interrupting matrix of light beams, capacitance changes or ultrasonic

reflections
 direct pointing device

• Advantages:
 fast, and requires no specialised pointer

 good for menu selection

 suitable for use in hostile environment: clean and safe from damage.

• Disadvantages:
 finger can mark screen

 imprecise (finger is a fairly blunt instrument!)

• difficult to select small regions or perform accurate drawing

 lifting arm can be tiring
 Stylus and light pen
Stylus
– small pen-like pointer to draw directly on screen

– may use touch sensitive surface or magnetic detection

– used in PDA, tablets PCs and drawing tables

• Light Pen
– now rarely used

– uses light from screen to detect location

BOTH …
– very direct and obvious to use

– but can obscure screen

 Digitizing tablet
 An input device that enables you to enter drawings and sketches into a
computer.
 Used on special surface
- rather like stylus
 Very accurate
- used for digitizing maps
 Eyegaze
 Control interface by eye gaze direction
 e.g. look at a menu item to select it

 Uses laser beam reflected off retina

 … a very low power laser!

 Potential for hands-free control

 High accuracy requires headset
 cheaper and lower accuracy devices available
sit under the screen like a small webcam
 Display devices

Bitmap screens (CRT & LCD)

large & situated displays
digital paper
 Ditmap displays
• Screen is vast number of coloured dots
 Resolution and colour depth
• Resolution … used (inconsistently) for
– number of pixels on screen (width x height)

• e.g. SVGA 1024 x 768, PDA perhaps 240x400

– density of pixels (in pixels or dots per inch - dpi)

• typically between 72 and 96 dpi

• Aspect ratio
– ration between width and height

– 4:3 for most screens, 16:9 for wide-screen TV

• Colour depth:
– how many different colours for each pixel?

– black/white or greys only

– 256 from a pallete

– 8 bits each for red/green/blue = millions of colours

 Cathode ray tube
 Stream of electrons emitted from electron gun, focused and directed by magnetic
fields, hit phosphor-coated screen which glows
 used in TVs and computer monitors
electron beam

electron gun

focussing and
deflection

phosphor-
coated screen
 Health hazards of CRT !
 X-rays: largely absorbed by screen (but not at rear!)
 UV- and IR-radiation from phosphors: insignificant levels
 Radio frequency emissions, plus ultrasound (~16kHz)
 Electrostatic field - leaks out through tube to user. Intensity dependant on distance
and humidity. Can cause rashes.
 Electromagnetic fields (50Hz-0.5MHz). Create induction currents in conductive
materials, including the human body.
 Two types of effects attributed to this: visual system - high incidence of cataracts in
VDU operators, and concern over reproductive disorders (miscarriages and birth
defects).
 Health hints …
Do not sit too close to the screen
Do not use very small fonts
Do not look at the screen for long periods without a break
Do not place the screen directly in front of a bright window
Work in well-lit surroundings

Take extra care if pregnant.

but also posture, ergonomics, stress
 Liquid crystal displays
• Smaller, lighter, and … no radiation problems.
• Found on PDAs, portables and notebooks,
..... and increasingly on desktop and even for home TV
• also used in dedicted displays:
digital watches, mobile phones, HiFi controls
• How it works …
– Top plate transparent and polarised, bottom plate reflecting.

– Light passes through top plate and crystal, and reflects back to eye.

– Voltage applied to crystal changes polarisation and hence colour

– N.B. light reflected not emitted => less eye strain

 Large displays
• Used for meetings, lectures, etc.
• Technology
plasma – usually wide screen
video walls – lots of small screens together
projected – RGB lights or LCD projector
– hand/body obscures screen
– may be solved by 2 projectors + clever software
back-projected
– frosted glass + projector behind
 Situated displays
• Displays in ‘public’ places
– large or small

– very public or for small group

• Display only
– for information relevant to location

• or interactive
– use stylus, touch sensitive screem

• in all cases … the location matters

– meaning of information or interaction is related to the location
Virtual reality and 3D interaction

Positioning in 3D space
moving and grasping
seeing 3D (helmets and caves)
 Positioning in 3D space

• Cockpit and virtual controls

– steering wheels, knobs and dials … just like real!

• The 3D mouse
– six-degrees of movement: x, y, z + roll, pitch, yaw

• Data glove
– fibre optics used to detect finger position

• VR helmets
– detect head motion and possibly eye gaze

• Whole body tracking

– accelerometers strapped to limbs or reflective dots and video processing
Pitch, yaw and roll
 3D displays
• Desktop VR
– ordinary screen, mouse or keyboard control

– perspective and motion give 3D effect

• Seeing in 3D
– use stereoscopic vision

– VR helmets

– Screen plus shuttered specs, etc.

 VR headsets
• Small TV screen for each eye
• Slightly different angles
• 3D effect
 VR motion sickness
• Virtual reality sicknes is the physical discomfort that occurs when an end user's
brain receives conflicting signals about self-movement in a digital environment.
• Time delay
– move head … lag … display moves

– conflict: head movement vs. eyes

• Depth perception
– headset gives different stereo distance

– but all focused in same plane

– conflict: eye angle vs. focus

• Conflicting cues => sickness

– helps motivate improvements in technology
 Simulators and VR caves

• Scenes projected on walls

• Realistic environment
• Hydraulic rams!
• Real controls
• other people
Physical controls, sensors etc.
special displays and gauges
sound, touch, feel, smell
physical controls
environmental and bio-sensing
 Dedicated displays
• Analogue representations:
– dials, gauges, lights, etc.

• Digital displays:
– small LCD screens, LED lights, etc.

• Head-up displays
– found in aircraft cockpits

– show most important controls

… depending on context
 Sounds
• Beeps, bongs, clonks, whistles and whirrs
• used for error indications
• confirmation of actions e.g. keyclick
Touch, feel, smell
• Touch and feeling important
– in games … vibration, force feedback

– in simulation … feel of surgical instruments

– called haptic devices

• Texture, smell, taste

– current technology very limited
 BMW iDrive
• For controlling menus
• Feel small ‘bumps’ for each item
• Makes it easier to select options by feel
• uses haptic technology from Immersion Corp.
 Environment and bio-sensing
• Sensors all around us
– car courtesy light – small switch on door

– ultrasound detectors – security, washbasins

– RFID security tags in shops

– temperature, weight, location

• … and even our own bodies …

– iris scanners, body temperature, heart rate, galvanic skin response, blink rate
Paper: Printing and scanning

Print technology
fonts, page description, WYSIWYG
scanning, OCR
 Memory
Short term and long term
Speed, capacity, compression
formats, access
 Short-term Memory - RAM
 Random access memory (RAM)
 on silicon chips

 100 nano-second access time

 usually volatile (lose information if power turned off)

 data transferred at around 100 Mbytes/sec

 Some non-volatile RAM used to store basic set-up information

 Typical desktop computers:

64 to 256 Mbytes RAM
 Long-term Memory - disks
• Magnetic disks
– floppy disks store around 1.4 Mbytes

– hard disks typically 40 Gbytes to 100s of Gbytes

access time ~10ms, transfer rate 100kbytes/s

• Optical disks
– use lasers to read and sometimes write

– more robust that magnetic media

– CD-ROM

- same technology as home audio, ~ 600 Gbytes

– DVD - for AV applications, or very large files
 Blurring boundaries
• PDAs
– often use RAM for their main memory

• Flash-Memory
– used in PDAs, cameras etc.

– silicon based but persistent

– plug-in USB devices for data transfer

 Speed and Capacity
• What do the numbers mean?
• some sizes (all uncompressed) …
– this book, text only ~ 320,000 words, 2Mb

– the Bible ~ 4.5 Mbytes

– scanned page ~ 128 Mbytes

• (11x8 inches, 1200 dpi, 8bit greyscale)

– digital photo ~ 10 Mbytes

• (2–4 mega pixels, 24 bit colour)

– video ~ 10 Mbytes per second

• (512x512, 12 bit colour, 25 frames per sec)

 Virtual memory
• Problem:
– running lots of programs + each program large

– not enough RAM

• Solution - Virtual memory :

– store some programs temporarily on disk

– makes RAM appear bigger

• But … swopping
– program on disk needs to run again

– copied from disk to RAM

– slows things down

 Compression
• Reduce amount of storage required
• lossless
– recover exact text or image – e.g. GIF, ZIP

– look for commonalities:

• text: AAAAAAAAAABBBBBCCCCCCCC 10A5B8C

• video: compare successive frames and store change
• lossy
– recover something like original – e.g. JPEG, MP3

– exploit perception

• JPEG: lose rapid changes and some colour

• MP3: reduce accuracy of drowned out notes
 Storage formats - text
• ASCII - 7-bit binary code for to each letter and character
• UTF-8 - 8-bit encoding of 16 bit character set
• RTF (rich text format)
- text plus formatting and layout information
• SGML (standardized generalised markup language)
- documents regarded as structured objects
• XML (extended markup language)
- simpler version of SGML for web applications
 Storage formats - media
• Images:
– many storage formats :

(PostScript, GIFF, JPEG, TIFF, PICT, etc.)

– plus different compression techniques

(to reduce their storage requirements)

• Audio/Video
– again lots of formats :

(QuickTime, MPEG, WAV, etc.)

– compression even more important

– also ‘streaming’ formats for network delivery

 Methods of access
• large information store
– long time to search => use index

– what you index -> what you can access

• simple index needs exact match
• forgiving systems:
– Xerox “do what I mean” (DWIM)

– SOUNDEX – McCloud ~ MacCleod

• access without structure …

– free text indexing (all the words in a document)

– needs lots of space!!

Processing and networks

finite speed (but also Moore’s law)

limits of interaction
networked computing
 Finite processing speed
• Designers tend to assume fast processors, and make interfaces more and more
complicated
• But problems occur, because processing cannot keep up with all the tasks it needs
to do
– cursor overshooting because system has buffered keypresses

– icon wars - user clicks on icon, nothing happens, clicks on another, then

system responds and windows fly everywhere

• Also problems if system is too fast - e.g. help screens may scroll through text
much too rapidly to be read
 Moore’s law
• Computers get faster and faster!
• 1965 …
– Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, noticed a pattern

– processor speed doubles every 18 months

– PC … 1987: 1.5 Mhz, 2002: 1.5 GHz

• similar pattern for memory

– but doubles every 12 months!!

– hard disk … 1991: 20Mbyte : 2002: 30 Gbyte

• baby born today

– record all sound and vision

– by 70 all life’s memories stored in a grain of dust!

 The myth of the infinitely fast machine
• Implicit assumption … no delays
an infinitely fast machine
• what is good design for real machines?
• good example … the telephone :
– type keys too fast

– hear tones as numbers sent down the line

– actually an accident of implementation

– emulate in deisgn
 Limitations on interactive performance
Computation bound
– Computation takes ages, causing frustration for the user

Storage channel bound

– Bottleneck in transference of data from disk to memory

Graphics bound
– Common bottleneck: updating displays requires a lot of effort - sometimes helped by

adding a graphics co-processor optimised to take on the burden

Network capacity
– Many computers networked - shared resources and files, access to printers etc. - but

interactive performance can be reduced by slow network speed

 Networked computing
Networks allow access to …
– large memory and processing

– other people (groupware, email)

– shared resources – esp. the web

Issues
– network delays – slow feedback

– conflicts - many people update data

– unpredictability
 The internet
• History …
– 1969: DARPANET US DoD, 4 sites

– 1971: 23; 1984: 1000; 1989: 10000

• common language (protocols):

– TCP – Transmission Control protocol

• lower level, packets (like letters) between machines

– IP – Internet Protocol

• reliable channel (like phone call) between programs on machines

– email, HTTP, all build on top of these
Thanks!!!