Raitis Linde

I am very interested in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) classess I am taking now. So this time about mental models that we were looking at.

The idea of the mental models seems very useful to me, as it is important to take into account what is going on in people’s heads  in order to make a successful user interface design (and of course other kind of design). With the successful design I mean one that user can learn easily and naturaly and use it effectively.

OpenID interface proposal

As the task for discussions in HCI class we needed to prepare proposals for a successful OpenID interface. We had to test the design on one user at least. In my case I used the Skype screen-sharing feature to watch and listen how my girlfriend is using various OpenID log in designs, such as Facebook, Twitter (at RWW to comment an article).

I immediately noticed a problem that different services puts different contexts on log in feature. In other words, users might think that by logging in by, for instance, Twitter account, it not only allows to post a comment in RWW, but also affects her Twitter accout (will a note appear in my Twitter? will I be required to follow someone?).

So I tried to develop common interface for all services (Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.), meaning that there won’t be differently designed pop-up windows, only similar username/password/url text boxes. However, I guess this violates the idea of OpenID, that you are redirected to the authentic website (e.g. Facebook) to confirm your data in order to log into website (such as RWW). Otherwise, I personally would be hesitant  to share my Facebook password with other website I don’t know.

So, my design was more like attempt to highlight a problem of different contexts in OpenID log in design.

Different understandings of OpenID

In the class we tried our designs on each other. I was surprised how diverse understandings (mental models) about OpenID were. And I was more surprised that each person defended their own mental model (belief?) quite convincingly, even if their mental model was incorrect. For instance, some people claimed that OpenID is a big database containing all password, while some people said that in their understanding it is decentralized collection of databases.

What is a mental model?

Before reading books, doing excercises and having discussions I had very blurred understanding of mental models. I knew that this is something that happens in people’s heads, but that’s all. How can that be used in design, and why? Does it change by the time? Do everyone have their own mental model and does it differ a lot? There were many questions I had no clue about (actually I didn’t have questions before that ).

From a book I understood that main concepts of mental models are information processing and external cognition.

Information processing

The mind is thought as information processor. Information comes into mind, goes through various processing stages (comparing, matching) and goes out in form of behaviour (including, no reaction at information). There is much interest in calculating how long does it take to perform a certain task.

Of course, there is limited amount of information that is possible to process. That creates bottlenecks in procession information.

Information overload is a common concept nowadays, so there is a need for structuring information, so I guess librarians and information designers (in physical world) together with information architects (in digital world) are doing a great job in making a complex clear.

As I am personally interested in information architecture and am following community for a longer time, I have noticed that there are some difficulties in defining this practice. However, I am glad that effort in explaining IA is being made and on right side there is a pretty neat explanation if IA. I guess something the same could be with information design practice.

External cognition

This concept refers to thought that people interact with or create information through using a variety of external representations including books, maps, diagrams, notes, images.

This is for reducing cognitive load:

1. memory load,
2. computing,
3. and to reflect changes (crossing out what’s done, manipulating models).

cognition, hci, Human Computer Interaction, mental models, openid, ui, user interface

Have you heard of  7 +/- 2 rule? It argues that average person can hold from 5 up to 9 unrelated objects in his/her working memory at one time. That comes from George Miller’s paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

This rule is sometimes applied to design including user interface design (UID). Even some recognized books devoted to UID refer to that rule. Read (old) post by Edward Tufte. There are lot of suggestions on the internet around rule of 7.

So, now we know that people can store  about 7 objects in their working memories, should we use only 7 elements in design?  7 options on menu? Well, as it appears, not really.

Well, when operating in UI, user doesn’t use only memory as the only one cognitive function. We can’t forget also about recognition. And there are a lot more cognitive functions that would help user to operate. For instance there are some techniques that helps people to memorize more by using their imagination. For instance I have personally found a very useful technique of memorizing things by relating them to constant pictures in my mind.

Well, in short words, usually there are more complicated things going out in user interfaces than some general rules (which might, and also might not be true in our specific cases). And as there is something about not having too many elements in user interface, it is always better to be critical and have real tests on users to tell whether our claims are true or not. Of course, there is always a problem of having a good testing in fast paced development environments where pressure from clients is an everyday event. Some people are talking about integrating user centred practices in such agile environments, but this is a story for other time.

Thank’s for our HCI course teacher Jared, for bringing attention upon that. I was one the people who sometimes blindly believed in such sticky-attractive-number-rule.

7+/-2, cognition, Plus or Minus Two, rule of 7, rule of seven, Seven, ui, user interface

As the last course of our first master’s semester, we were allowed to choose our own project that reflects our interests. Even though I am coming from computer science background, I felt that I lacked enough chances to do a user research . That’s why I decided to design a User Experience (UX), because this involves large spectrum of work related to users and visual design. As a bases we (me and my teammate Jia) used a structure created by Jesse James Garrett.

In a 3 week period that we had, we wanted to plan a collaborative creative writing website and felt that this UX structure can help us to structure our way forward.

1. User needs and requirements

We started by brainstorming sessions with people in Latvia and China who are interested (and have experience) in creative writing. There we were able to determine general attitude towards idea, and we got a lot of useful ideas as well which we categorized in form of mind map diagrams with a FreeMind software which is quite easy to use (even though we were making mind maps for the first time). It was quite useful to put these on a wall for making decision of features and form of website. In my case I conducted a brainstorming session in Skype (because I was in Denmark at that time). In the beginning I was afraid if textual environment (Skype chat) will be enough to understand each other and if this space will be encouraging to share thoughts. However, it appeared to be a nice brainstorming, definetly longer than 30 minutes I planned in the beginning. And people were actually able to understand each other, argue for idea, and provide valuable inputs on idea.

We conducted also a competitor research which contributed a lot to our idea. Even more, there actually were some experiments going on about collaborative writing like A million penguins project. Comments of participators gave us also a good insight on collaborative writing and user needs.

2. Video scenarious

In a first step we have got general ideas for our website. By many user inputs we have got, we were actually able to create 4 main user groups, that resulted in different personas. As I noticed later, these personas did a great job in helping to make decisions like “Would these people use a story commenting feature?”. In the same time we created wireframes of most important webpages like frontpage, user account page, read a story page etc.

After that we wanted to do a more detailed user inquiry. In order to do that, we needed to show them what we have got until this time. So we decided to make these personas alive – make a video of different use cases (relevant for each persona) using wireframes that we have created. As an inspiration for videos we took a Paper Prototype scenario for Restaurant Tablet menu available on Youtube.

3. Detailed user inquiry

As we still learned throught this project, we searched an internet for inspiration in user research field. We have found a great resource of User Experience Research method comparison by Jakob Nielsen. By taking account our time limit and possible outcome, we chose to show video scenarious to the same people we had on brainstorming and ask them to fill out more detailed inquiry. For creating a detailed inquire we also have found a source of inspiration.

Results gave us impression on which features would be most important on our collaborative writing website. We also got some fresh understanding on how people would use it.

4. Final thoughts

Even though we didn’t manage to go through all User Experience stages, I felt that we have got a good insight on the User Experience field. It is a fun and pleasure to work with people, as there are unexpected and surprising output. However, it requires some work to open people’s mind and get non-trivial responses.

mind maps, personas, user experience, ux, ux elements, video scenarios, web design, wireframes