User In Mind Research Articles

User metaphors for health care professional workstations

The problem encountered by health care professionals and software developers has been a lack of demonstrable visions (prototypes) for Computer-based Patient Record (CPR) and Clinical Information System (CIS) applications. This deficiency has resulted in a quest for and consideration of models, metaphors, and mind maps for the Healthcare Professional Workstation (HPW) — the access mechanism for the CPR and the CIS. The familiar physician desktop and traditional paper-based metaphors are not adequate for all aspects of clinical information processes. In the clinical care environment, the flowsheet is a transporting metaphor because many different applications and tasks can be ‘transported’ into the flowsheet. 3D Rooms, Gopher and Genes are familiar and transporting metaphors to be exploited for HPWs. Using transporting metaphors for HPW software emphasizes commonality and de-emphasizes diversity. Each model and metaphor has an associated mind map. Only the mental model, mental metaphor or mind map for HPW software is important. Metaphors communicate real-world analogies, and communication is at the core of what defines usability. A mind map facilitates communication by building a model in the user's mind. The barriers to HPWs are not technical; they are related to economics, ownership of patient information, liability and information standards.

A 'room' with a 'view'

An immersive virtual reality system called the CAVE is described. To match virtual reality to real tasks, researchers built this smoothly functioning walk-in system mostly from off-the-shelf components. The CAVE represents a new model for the design of virtual reality systems, one that offers several advantages over existing models. CAVE users do not need to wear helmets, don bulky gloves and heavy electronics packs, or be pushed about by movement restricting platforms. Instead, they put on a pair of lightweight glasses and walk into the Cave, a 27 m/sup 3/ room with an open side and no ceiling. The Cave is in fact a partial cube, with the top and one vertical side missing. The three vertical sides are 3 m by 3 m rear projection screens facing the viewer, and the floor is a front projection screen. The glasses trick a user's mind into seeing the screen images as three-dimensional objects.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Reframing Decision Problems: A Graph-Grammar Approach

One fundamental requirement in the expected utility model is that the preferences of rational persons should be independent of problem description. Yet an extensive body of research in descriptive decision theory indicates precisely the opposite: when the same problem is cast in two different but normatively equivalent “frames,” people tend to change their preferences in a systematic and predictable way. In particular, alternative frames of the same decision-tree are likely to invoke different sets of heuristics, biases and risk-attitudes in the user's mind. The paper presents a modeling environment in which decision-trees are cast as attributed-graphs, and reframing operations on trees are implemented as graph-grammar productions. In addition to the basic functions of creating and analyzing decision-trees, the environment offers a natural way to define a host of “debiasing mechanisms” using graphical programming techniques. Some of these mechanisms have appeared in the decision theory literature, whereas others were directly inspired by the novel use of graph-grammars in modeling decision problems. The modeling environment was constructed using NETWORKS, a new model management system based on a graph-grammar formalism. Thus, a second objective of the paper is to illustrate how a general-purpose modeling environment can be used to produce, with relatively little effort, a specialized decision support system for problems that have a strong graphical orientation.

Interface structures: conceptual, logical, and physical patterns applicable to human-computer interaction

Structural patterns are known to be important to human memory and cognition. They are essential to the knowledge representation of conceptual, logical and physical entities. At the same time, computer interfaces are implemented using a variety of logical and physical structures that have implications for human use. These two categories of structures, representing both sides of the human-computer partnership, are characterized and compared. Emphasis is on identifying a basic set of structures amenable both to the user's mind and to the computer-based application. The user is capable of conceiving and visualizing structures in each of several different representation “spaces” behind the interface surface. Careful structural mappings between these spaces and the user-visible interface are essential. To aid interface designers in these tasks, a formal definition of interface structure is proposed and an example specification is presented. Expected benefits and required research are discussed.

‘Conceptual distance’ and interface-supported visualization of information objects and patterns

Users of information systems must deal with a great variety of visualizable objects and patterns of objects. Representations of those objects are distinguished according to five different spaces (physical, logical, software, interface, user-conceptual) within which they may be defined and/or visualized. The conceptual framework, although based in the user's mind, must reflect and transcend the other four spaces. ‘Conceptual distance’ is proposed as a measure having different effects on the user's required mental effort, depending upon which of the information spaces is involved. The challenge is to determine user-oriented structures and techniques that can be used to display information objects and patterns on the visible surface (interface space), in a manner that will minimize the user's mental (visualization) efforts.

Effectiveness of Metaphor in Mailing Procedure on Electronic Mail System

AbstractOne of the goals of studies on human interface is to make operating procedures of various systems easier to acquire. From past studies it is known that construction of appropriate mental models in the user's mind is effective in acquiring operating procedures. Furthermore, as a technique to construct easily and quickly appropriate mental models, metaphor and direct manipulation are being studied. However, it has not been clarified how effective these techniques are in acquiring operating procedures. For electronic mailing systems that enable key operations and drawing figures by touching the screen by a magnetic pen, experiments were conducted to clarify the effect on acquiring the operating procedures, regarding the procedure for sending electronic mails as “the one for sending letters by mail.” Subjects are grouped into threes and are taught the procedures for sending mails in different ways for the groups. They operate experimental systems on the first day, the third day, and three months later. Then the time required for each operation is measured and the percentage of those who performed misoperations is calculated. As the result, it is found that if users are taught that the procedure for sending mails is regarded as the one for sending letters, they acquire it easily and remember it well. Thus, it is shown that utilization of metaphor is effective. Also, from the results of the operating time, it is found that the percentage of acquisition of operating procedures can be estimated roughly.

Evaluation of mental models and meta models through interactions between users and helpers about software usage problems

This research investigates the concept of mental models by concentrating on the conversations between student users who as a result of encountering a problem on a software ask for assistance from student helpers who are assigned to support computer use. The research question is whether a human helper provides appropriate help for the user (problem solved in user's mind) if the helper understands the problem and the software from the user's view in addition to his/her own. A user's understanding of a software, user's mental model, and a helper's understanding of a user's understanding of that software, helper's meta model, are compared through software characteristics: objects, syntax, semantics, and actions.