Laboratory 4

Part I – Coding a hotel website

The aim of this exercise is to design the home page of any hotel website. 

1.      Create a folder for the Hotel website.

2.      Identify the user group for this website. 

Mainly users who are over 25 perhaps, not for very young users certainly. It will be assumed they are discretionary users. The culture and abilities of these users must also be taken into account.

3.      Is your design going to incorporate mental models?

4.      Is your design going to incorporate metaphors? 

5.      Record your wireframe in your blog.

Part II – Perception & Attention 

1. Visual perception - visit the first two links and access the associated links:

·         http://www.eyecanlearn.com/index.htm#Figure%20Ground

http://www.eyecanlearn.com/index.htm#Closure

·         http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/  Seeing is believing …

What do these links tell you about yourself and users in general?

These games tell us a lot about Perception and how we take  the information presented to us.  Perception is fundamental aspect of how we interact with computers. Our perception can sometimes let us down and it is up to our powers of cognition to fully comprehend what it is we see.

Two types of Perception

Constructive: anything perceived is a result of prior knowledge and expectations

Ecological: Perception is a direct process of what you see, affordance in design can direct the user by making things obvious.

2. Visual memory – play the following game: http://www.playkidsgames.com/games/patternMemory/patternMemory.htm

• ·         What does this game tell you about yourself?

This game requires me to use my sensory and short term memory, using a snapshor process that does not last for very long. This game required me to focus my attention fully and could not be achieved using my divided attention, also Level 7 is the best I could ever hope for.

• ·         Did you use the Gestalt principles during this game?

Yes the proximity and similarity of the dots was used to allow me to take a snapshot of how they were laid out and subsequently I always able to remember them using this cognitive process.

• ·         How can this exercise help you as an interaction designer?

It’s very helpful for understand how information is processed and how our brain take in certain information on a very basic level. It allows us to understand how some information is processed in very quickly and the use of gestalt laws help us understand how it is that we perceive and then store this information .

3. Testing attention & working memory – do the following activity: http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/09/28/attention-and-working-memory/

• ·         How selective was your attention?

I managed to get 15 passes thinking that I had achieved something when the fact was I didn’t even notice there was a Gorilla there

• ·         How is this relevant to HCI?

It’s relevant because it shows us how are attention can become very narrow and focused and in many ways we forget broader aspects of an environment. We can have divided attention but some people are more focused and others are better at multitasking. I for one was unable to focus on both the Gorilla and the task I was given. Someone else may have noticed the Gorilla using based on an involuntary attention process, as in an external stimuli alerted their attention