Human Computer Interaction: (Ellis Horwood Series in Computers and Their Applications)

Opening with an introduction to basic cognitive concepts, the author then proceeds to explain the rationale behind cognitive ergonomics. Egonomics is both traditionally concerned with cognition, but tasks involving interactive computers, almost by definition, have non-trivial cognitive components - even at the lowest level. Designers of interactive techniques therefore need to understand the process of cognition because it is so often the rate-determining step. A comprehensive discussion of the haptic, auditory and visual channels is included, and the author introduces a general, three-component model of cognitive ergonomics which he applied to some manual input devices. Considerable attention is paid to the area of vision, with details given of new work in the role of peripheral vision, visual search of screens, and conspicuity of information. THe work of Treisman and others is reviewed, and the author discusses the themes of serial versus parallel visual processing, and global versus local feature detection. Similarly, the huge area of speech generation and recognition, and areas that has seen extensive research in the past decade, is examined. Problems associated by users with VDU screens, including optimized reading, legability of font styles, and other areas of perception are addressed, and the author suggests some guidelines for making the best use of colour. A cognitive ergonomics approach which discusses windows, icons, menus and pointing devices is developed, followed by a presentation of the general philosophy of direct manipulation interfaces which includes the pros and cons of WYSIWYG and the desktop metaphore. Finally, the theory and experimental evidence provided in the book is applied within broad day-to-day conputer-based tasks - text editing and programming. Typical problems, and attempts to quantify performance measures, are considered. The book closes with a look at ways on reducing cognitive complexity, showing how it is possible to simulate the user device interaction to obtain rigorous measures of user complexity.

Table of Contents:
Psychology for computer scientists; limits to human information processing; introduction to cognitive ergonomics; the Haptic channel; input devices; the auditory channel; speech generation and recognition; the visual channel; reading VDUs; optimizing colour use; direct manipulation I - windows; direct manipulation II - icons; direct manipulation III - menus; direct manipulation IV - pointers; applications I - text editing; applications II - programming; reducing cognitive complexity.