How do we find what we are looking for? And how do we do it? Visual search deals with the problem of how we find what we are looking for (relevant things) in a world full of things that might … Continue reading
09/10/2021
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Category Archives: Human cognition and behaviour
28/06/2020
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On Attention
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – Herbert A. Simon. Cognitive psychologist, economist (and a pioneer in AI) See also “There is no “intuitive” design, #2“
09/07/2019
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Security and UX: Don’t blame the users
A very good read by Albrecht Schmidt (LMU Munich) about security and UX >> Don’t Blame the User: Toward Means for Usable and Practical Authentication “[…]When the user comes to use a service for the first time, many companies require … Continue reading
06/06/2019
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Variable interval rewards are evil.
If you question what this might have to do with interaction design, please observe for example peoples scrolling behavior. This is a good example of a reward with a variable schedule of reinforcement. It’s operant conditioning, making you behave just … Continue reading
22/09/2018
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Deus Ex Machina
“Would you like to print out your blessing?” Bless U-2 offers automatic blessings in different languages (even in Hessisch which is a German accent) to the faithful and yes, it even beams lights from its hands! The robot is an … Continue reading
09/05/2018
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Google Duplex’ natural speech pattern: It’s a human? No it’s not!
I think we now go really deep into the uncanny valley. I think it is of psychological and also sociological relevance that we know if we speak to another human or a machine.The point is, it may be perceived as … Continue reading
15/04/2018
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Clark on Brains
“Brains (…) are essentially prediction machines” (Clark, 2013) I like that quote very much.
29/03/2018
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There is no “intuitive” design, #2
“The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” ― Herbert Simon Related: There is no … Continue reading
18/03/2018
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A “Norman” sign
? #usability #Quiz: in which floor is #terminal 1? pic.twitter.com/JeJ3FWw0mi — Ravid V. Aloni (@AloniRavid) March 15, 2018 Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI
15/01/2018
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Location matters.
The #Hawaii alert system was activated by a dropdown with “test missile alert” and “missile alert” next to each other. Confusing labeling aside, this is an example of @MrAlanCooper’s UI axiom (paraphrased) “Don’t put the ejection seat button near less … Continue reading
03/12/2017
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Where are we when we are talking about creating conversations that feel “human” and “natural?”.
Imagine you ask your digital assistant or some conversational interface of your choice where you can get a “Berliner” now. What will happen? How could a conversational interface distuingish between terms with multiple semantic meanings, semantically ambiguous terms or how … Continue reading
06/11/2017
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The Wonderful World of Human Cognition: The time course of visual perception
“We see the forest before the trees” – Navon, D. (1977) How do we perceive objects? Classic theories of object recognition (so-called feature theories) often claim that we first process specific features/details of something followed by a more general processing. … Continue reading
04/11/2017
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The Wonderful World of Human Cognition: How the Ames Room tricks our Brain
Despite the fact that we know that people normally don’t change their sizes so fast this knowledge – which is normally used to estimate our size and distance perception – is simply overwritten by the cues suggesting the wall is … Continue reading
31/10/2017
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How our expectations determine how we process information
Both, top-down and bottom-up processing are the two famous approaches on how we interpret information in cognitive psychology and as humans, we do both. Please read the sentence below: Now read again. Have you skipped over the extra “the” or … Continue reading
08/10/2017
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How cognitive biases affect decision making: Anchor heuristics
04/10/2017
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On cognitive dissonance and rewards
„We try to reduce the dissonance between how we think we should act and how we actually act by changing one or the other“ This is interesting because it is contrary to incentive / economic theories which claim that the … Continue reading
05/09/2017
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Interaction & the social function of intelligence
“Like chess, a social interaction is typically a transaction between social partners. One animal may, for instance, wish by his own behaviour to change the behaviour of another; but since the second animal is himself reactive and intelligent the interaction … Continue reading
25/08/2017
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Are we in control of our decisions?
„We wake up in the morning and we open the closet; we feel that we decide what to wear. we open the refrigerator and we feel that we decide what to eat. What this is actually saying, is that many … Continue reading
03/07/2017
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Effects of normative influence and conformity in social groups
After Philip Zimbardo’s introduction to the topic the video above shows one of the classic experiments in social psychology. Solomon Asch conducted those series of experiments in 1951 to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group … Continue reading
10/06/2017
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password too strong
Love this. Found this cartoon. pic.twitter.com/N5PIeBdLZG — passwordistoostrong (@PWTooStrong) 10. Juni 2017 See also this study and this one