HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

LECTURE 4

Professor Dr. Sajjad Mohsin

 chapter 2

the computer

1A-2
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
 A ‘typical’ computer system
?
 screen, or monitor, on which there are windows
 keyboard
 mouse/trackpad

 variations
 desktop
 laptop
 PDA

the devices dictate the styles of interaction that the system supports
If we use different devices, then the interface will support a different style of
interaction
How many …
 computers in your house?
 hands
up, …
… none, 1, 2 , 3, more!!

 computers in your pockets?

are you thinking …

… PC, laptop, PDA ??
How many computers …
ininyour
yourhouse?
pockets?
PCPDA
 
TV,phone,
  VCR, camera
DVD, HiFi, cable/satellite TV
 microwave,
 smart card,cooker,
card with
washing
magnetic
machine
strip?
 central
 electronic
heating
car key
 security
 USB memory
system

can
tryyou
your
think
pockets
of more?
and bags
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

sensors
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.
alternative keyboard layouts
Alphabetic
 keys arranged in alphabetic order
 not faster for trained typists
 not faster for beginners either!

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
special keyboards
 designs to reduce fatigue for RSI
 for one handed use
e.g. the Maltron left-handed keyboard

repetitive strain injury (RSI)

Chord keyboards
only a few keys - four 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
phone pad and T9 entry
 use numeric keys with
multiple presses
2–abc 6-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
Numeric keypads
 for entering numbers quickly:
 calculator, PC keyboard
 for telephones
1 2 3 7 8 9

4 5 6 4 5 6
not the same!!
7 8 9 1 2 3

.
ATM like phone *
0 # 0 =

telephone calculator
positioning, pointing and
drawing
mouse, touchpad
trackballs, joysticks etc.
touch screens, tablets
eyegaze, cursors
the Mouse
 Handheld pointing device
 verycommon
 easy to use

 Two characteristics
 planar movement
 buttons
(usually from 1 to 3 buttons on top, used for making
a selection, indicating an option, or to initiate
drawing etc.)
the mouse (ctd)
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 …
… an indirect manipulation device.
 device itself doesn’t obscure screen, is accurate and fast.
 hand-eye coordination problems for novice users
How does it work?
Two methods for detecting motion
 Mechanical
 Ball on underside of mouse turns as mouse is
moved
 Rotates orthogonal potentiometers
 Can be used on almost any flat surface

 Optical
 light emitting diode on underside of mouse
 may use special grid-like pad or just on desk
 less susceptible to dust and dirt
 detects fluctuating alterations in reflected light
intensity to calculate relative motion in (x, z)
plane
Even by foot …
 some experiments with the
footmouse
 controlling mouse movement with
feet …
 not very common :-)

 but foot controls are common

elsewhere:
 car pedals
 sewing machine speed control
 organ and piano pedals
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
Trackball and thumbwheels
Trackball
 ball is rotated inside static housing
 like an upsdie down mouse!
 relative motion moves cursor
 indirect device, fairly accurate
 separate buttons for picking
 very fast for gaming
 used in some portable and notebook
computers.

Thumbwheels …
 for accurate CAD – two dials for X-Y cursor
position
 for fast scrolling – single dial on mouse
Joystick and keyboard nipple
Joystick
 indirect
pressure of stick = velocity of
movement
 buttons for selection
on top or on front like a trigger
 often used for computer games
aircraft controls and 3D navigation

Keyboard nipple
 for laptop computers
 miniature joystick in the middle of the
keyboard
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
 Mouse like-device with cross
hairs

 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!
 mainly used for evaluation (ch x)
 potential for hands-free control
 high accuracy requires headset
 cheaper and lower accuracy devices
available
sit under the screen like a
small webcam
Cursor keys
 Four keys (up, down, left, right) on keyboard.
 Very, very cheap, but slow.
 Useful for not much more than basic motion for text-editing tasks.
 No standardised layout, but inverted “T”, most common
Discrete positioning controls
 in phones, TV controls etc.
 cursor pads or mini-joysticks
 discrete left-right, up-down
 mainly for menu selection
display devices

bitmap screens (CRT & LCD)

large & situated displays
digital paper
bitmap 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
anti-aliasing
Jaggies
 diagonal lines that have discontinuities in due to horizontal raster
scan process.

Anti-aliasing
 softens edges by using shades of line colour
 also used for text
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
special displays
Random Scan (Directed-beam refresh, vector
display)
 draw the lines to be displayed directly
 no jaggies
 lines need to be constantly redrawn
 rarely used except in special instruments

Direct view storage tube (DVST)

 Similar to random scan but persistent => no flicker
 Can be incrementally updated but not selectively
erased
 Used in analogue storage oscilloscopes
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 screen
 in all cases … the location
matters
 meaning of information or
interaction is related to the location
Hermes a situated display
 small displays beside office doors
 handwritten notes left using stylus
 office owner reads notes using web interface
small displays
beside
office doors

handwritten
office owner
notes left
reads notes
using stylus
using web interface
Digital paper
 what? appearance

 thin flexible sheets

 updated electronically
 but retain display cross
section
 how?
 small spheres turned
 or channels with coloured liquid
and contrasting spheres
 rapidly developing area
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

yaw

roll
pitch
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
 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
 foundin 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

also see chapter 10

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.
 physical controls

 specialist controls needed …

 industrial controls, consumer products,
etc.
easy-clean
smooth buttons

multi-function
control
large buttons
clear dials

tiny buttons
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
Printing
 image made from small dots
 allows any character set or graphic to be
printed,
 critical features:
 resolution
 size and spacing of the dots
 measured in dots per inch (dpi)

 speed
 usually measured in pages per minute
 cost!!
Types of dot-based printers
 dot-matrix printers
 use inked ribbon (like a typewriter
 line of pins that can strike the ribbon, dotting the paper.
 typical resolution 80-120 dpi
 ink-jet and bubble-jet printers
 tiny blobs of ink sent from print head to paper
 typically 300 dpi or better .
 laser printer
 like photocopier: dots of electrostatic charge deposited on drum, which
picks up toner (black powder form of ink) rolled onto paper which is then
fixed with heat
 typically 600 dpi or better.
Printing in the workplace
 shop tills
 dot matrix
 same print head used for several paper rolls
 may also print cheques

 thermal printers
 special heat-sensitive paper
 paper heated by pins makes a dot
 poor quality, but simple & low maintenance
 used in some fax machines
Fonts
 Font – the particular style of text
Courier font
Helvetica font
Palatino font
Times Roman font
 §´µº¿Â Ä¿~ (special symbol)

 Size of a font measured in points (1 pt about 1/72”)

(vaguely) related to its height
This is ten point Helvetica
This is twelve point
This is fourteen point
This is eighteen point
and this is twenty-four point
Fonts (ctd)
Pitch
 fixed-pitch – every character has the same width
e.g. Courier
 variable-pitched – some characters wider
e.g. Times Roman – compare the ‘i’ and the “m”
Serif or Sans-serif
 sans-serif – square-ended strokes
e.g. Helvetica
 serif – with splayed ends (such as)
e.g. Times Roman or Palatino
Readability of text
 lowercase
 easy to read shape of words
 UPPERCASE
 better for individual letters and non-words
e.g. flight numbers: BA793 vs. ba793

 serif fonts
 helpsyour eye on long lines of printed text
 but sans serif often better on screen
Page Description Languages
 Pages very complex
 different fonts, bitmaps, lines, digitised photos, etc.

 Can convert it all into a bitmap and send to the printer

… but often huge !

 Alternatively Use a page description language

 sends a description of the page can be sent,
 instructions for curves, lines, text in different styles, etc.
 like a programming language for printing!

 PostScript is the most common

Screen and page
 WYSIWYG
 what you see is what you get
 aim of word processing, etc.
 but …
 screen: 72 dpi, landscape image
 print: 600+ dpi, portrait
 can try to make them similar
but never quite the same
 so … need different designs, graphics etc, for screen
and print
Scanners
 Take paper and convert it into a bitmap
 Two sorts of scanner
 flat-bed: paper placed on a glass plate, whole page converted into
bitmap
 hand-held: scanner passed over paper, digitising strip typically 3-4” wide

 Shines light at paper and note intensity of reflection

 colour or greyscale

 Typical resolutions from 600–2400 dpi

Scanners (ctd)
Used in
 desktop publishing for incorporating
photographs and other images
 document storage and retrieval systems,
doing away with paper storage
+ special scanners for slides and photographic
negatives
Optical character recognition
 OCR converts bitmap back into text
 different fonts
 createproblems for simple “template
matching” algorithms
 more complex systems segment text,
decompose it into lines and arcs, and
decipher characters that way
 page format
 columns, pictures, headers and footers
Paper-based interaction
 paper usually regarded as output only
 can be input too – OCR, scanning, etc.
 Xerox PaperWorks
 glyphs – small patterns of /\\//\\\
 used to identify forms etc.
 used with scanner and fax to control applications
 more recently
 papers micro printed - like wattermarks
 identify which sheet and where you are
 special ‘pen’ can read locations
 know where they are writing
 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 Mbytes
 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 t h i n g s d o w n
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 – Smith ~ Schmidt
 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