The Monster in the Light

The purpose of speaking with users about products and interfaces is to align them more closely with user expectations and abilities. Observing the users as they attempt tasks, listening to them, and querying them for more details are all elements of what I call "looking for the monster in the light". Compiling the data to eventually produce actionable recommendations is the goal, but the value of the recommendations is deeply linked to the accuracy of the data.

When my two year-old began waking up in the middle of the night last week, I wanted some immediately actionable recommendations. So, I needed some accurate data to analyze.

I decided to conduct a contextual inquiry. As I carried him back to his bed, I began the interview.

"Do you want a drink of water?"
"No"
"Are you cold?"
"No"
"Do you want different pajamas?"
"No"
"So, do you want to go back to sleep?"
"Yes"

I put him in his bed.

"OK, now close your eyes."
"Can I hold your hand?"
"Yes...why do you want to hold my hand?"
"Because..."
"Because what?"
"...monster."
"Monster? Where?"
"...in the light."

My experience with his older siblings told me that no amount of convincing him otherwise will work; he sees a monster in the light.

So, I asked him to show me; he pointed to the light in the ceiling. At this point, I was stumped. I know that it's just a light. So, I changed my vantage point. I lay down on his bed and saw...a light fixture in the ceiling. Not a monster. But I know my kids, so I tried to look at the light like a child would look at the light, and suddenly, there it was; a monster.



There is a nightlight on the other side of the room that was casting a shadow across the ceiling light. As I looked at it, the sockets inside the frosted glass dome became eyes, the knob that holds the dome to the fixture became a nose, and the shadow of the dome became a hat.

Not exactly what I would call a monster, but I haven't been two for a *long* time.
So when usability professionals are interacting with users, there is a very delicate process taking place. We're trying to preserve normalcy as much as possible , so that the user behaves as they would if they were actually engaged in the task- but it's difficult to remove your own perceptions and sensibilities from the observation process.

Kind of like looking for the monster in the light. You have to divest yourself of everything that you know about the product or interface, which can smooth the underlying user-perceived reality.

PS- I moved the nightlight to the other side of the room, and we all sleep soundly now.

Creative Thought ,Part Three of Three- Focusing

As the cycle of creative thought matures, we enter the second “focusing” stage and move from identifying correlated items to causally related items. During this phase, we refine the idea, gradually narrowing our options as we seek to arrive at a conclusion. We also move into the realm of direct, conscious thought in the working memory space, and we let the mind direct its higher cognitive functions to consider the potential solution for appropriateness and validity. However, working memory is self-limiting for efficiency, and can hold a handful of items at most. We can extend its capacity through representing its output graphically, thereby preserving the creative idea and offloading the burden from working memory to a medium that we can still leverage. The use of imagery specifically can produce greater success than text alone, as our minds are extremely well suited for image recognition and recall. Since the vast majority of the experiential content that we encounter everyday is made up of shapes, colors, spatial relationships and other non-textual inputs, the mind needs to store much more than just words. The creation of a graphic artifact can increase comprehensibility of a concept or problem through pictorially representing things that are harder to store in short-term (working) memory if presented textually. Again, working memory is limited, so a bulleted list detailing the physical characteristics of a person is less efficient than a simple drawing, which conveys the same information but in a format that is a better fit with the cognitive power of the mind. The visualization of the creative thought has further benefits in that working memory can now better analyze the output…missing items are more obvious, new connections can be made, and causal relationships made evident.

Creative Thought Part Two- Brainstorming

The early stage of creative cognitive activity is familiar to most, and is often known as “brainstorming”. This “anything goes” phase of a creative session is characterized by the free-form generation of long lists of items. Since this material typically includes the final product, albeit in an embryonic state, it is critical to obtain as much raw material as possible. This phase of almost subconscious tapping of the mind should be sustained until a suitable amount of data has been generated, but the mechanics of this associative phase and the pre-disposition of the mind to reach conclusions introduce their own limitations. As the mind traverses long-term memory, it gradually narrows its options and resists returning to the associative state that results in novelty. This can be problematic if the creative process has not proven fruitful, and more incubation is necessary. In the words of Donald Norman, “People tend to focus on the active hypothesis and once focused find it difficult to change even in the face of contradictory evidence.”

Let's look at what must happen cognitively during this phase. First, by definition, creative thought is implicitly novel. That means that it cannot already exist in the mind. Rather, existing memories must be combined through association to form new insights. The associative nature of the mind encourages creative thought by allowing thought to wend through various regions, retrieving more data along the way. As previously mentioned, the mind will soon turn to pattern and routine, and the opportunity for creativity may be lost. The use of a visualization technique such as a “Mind Map” can play an important role in encouraging the preservation of this associative mode. Through writing or drawing a key concept of the task on a blank page, branching sub-topics can be added and then further extended. As elements of creative thought are added to the visualization, we can prolong this associative brainstorming phase and mine the rich store of potential contained in our long term memory through this external mirror.

Up next- Focusing.

Grouping

In order to rapidly make sense of novel situations and interfaces, our minds will "smooth" things. It's important to note that this smoothing will override reality if reality is too difficult to comprehend. We don't like the unknown as it may contain threats, which in turn incur stress. So, a great deal of cognitive resources are devoted to decoding and understanding that which is in front of us at any given time.

Since this decoding can't take too long (our defensive mechanisms "demand" a response and attentional resources cannot be pointed at one thing for too long) our minds will actively engage in parsing scenes by grouping elements. We seek relationships where none may exist simply because it helps us to understand, and if we understand, we can formulate a response. A preattentive feature that can be used effectively to indicate grouping is similarity. This can be further broken down into text size, color, and shape. Items within a scene that share any of these characteristics are liable to be grouped preattentively, especially if they share proximity. A good example of this can be seen by looking up at the stars on a clear night- Orion. The three-star belt with the four-star extremity square seems to "pop" out at the eye. Why? The stars are roughly the same size, color, and intensity, and easily "form" a geometric shape.

The grouping instinct was demonstrated to me by my own mind a few years ago. I went to a library to conduct some research and approached a study table. No one was sitting there, but a crumpled paper bag from a bakery was on the table. Instinctively, I looked around for an owner; not seeing anyone that fit my definition of an owner, I sat down and immediately felt uncomfortable. A thought occurred to me- "Anyone looking at the table will assume the bag is mine, because it is close to me and because an inanimate object like this bag has to have an owner; it can't get around by itself". A few minutes later, a student came to the table, looked at the bag, and then looked at me.

I found it easy to believe that he had grouped me with the bag. He thought it was mine.

After a few more minutes, I saw that a computer station had opened up, and I decided to move. As I picked up my papers and bag, I watched the person who had joined me. He didn't look at me, but he did look at the crumpled bag.

I also found it easy to believe that he was now grouped with the bag.

Implications for information design are that users will group elements of your interface, whether those groupings are real or not, simply in an attempt to understand. Since this is the case, use color and shape carefully, as these can act as confirmational cues to a user-created group that may not reflect reality. This may in turn cause confusion and unsatisfactory experiences.

Form vs. Function

Here's a chart I just pulled from MOSS 2007. The stylized tubular column looks great, but makes it difficult to determine what the number is. Look at the two columns on the right.

For quick analysis of numbers, use simple line charts. Our eyes are excellent at determining line-length, but far less able to judge area.

Creative Thought

The human mind is a marvel. It allows us to experience life through managing our senses, it directs our emotions, it maintains our bodies, and it has produced each technological, medical, and societal advancement in human history. As is well known, it contains billions of neurons, each capable of holding an event or sensation for later recall. In order to allow humans to occupy a dominant role in the world, it is designed for maximum efficiency in the areas of communicating and survival, and it is here that we encounter the first signs of the limitations of the mind. When we ask the mind to perform tasks that are less directly related to its core functions, the very same traits that act as facilitators turn into hindrances. Creative thought is one such task…the mind excels at recording experiences and storing them in long term memory as what is termed “knowledge” and can later be rapidly searched to identify opportunities for advancement or countering perceived threats, but creative thinking must extent beyond the known. Breaking free of the limitations of the mind requires external assistance, which can be effectively offered through the use of information visualization.

The demand for creative output exists within almost all spheres of human experience. Regardless of the nature of the task, there are common cognitive requirements that characterize this mode of thought. Once tasked with engaging in the creative process, the creator and the eventual output will move through a number of stages. The initial preparation stage sees the creator assembling the raw materials that will be used to address the task, such as understanding and evaluating previous efforts. As the creator enters the second incubation stage, the process typically recedes to the subconscious, where associations between the raw data gathered in the first stage can be made. Ideally, this phase will see the crystallization of creative thought into a rough solution in the third illumination phase. The final verification phase involves the refining and communicating of the new thought. These four phases can be arguably combined into two categories, unconscious brainstorming and conscious focusing. An examination of these two models will lead us to understand how the mind’s strengths and weaknesses can be manipulated through visualization.
Models of the first category will focus on the presence of associational mechanisms as related to creative success. This mode of thought is more intuitive, and can reveal connections that are not obvious, but may contain potential solutions. However, the mind does not predictably enter this spontaneous state of defocused attention. Models of the second category will be constructed on the premise that “the expression of a creative insight requires a high level of skill, knowledge, and/or technique that depends upon continuous problem solving” (Dietrich 2004). This focused mode of thought, while potentially more manageable and therefore predictable (i.e. applying a trial and error approach), can limit the amount of raw data available in working memory to about four items, which presumably affects the level of innovative thought that is possible. Research has also shown that performing at a high level of concentrated thought over time is draining to the attentional system, and cannot be sustained. It is further suggested that these two categories may not be mutually exclusive, but may be cyclical phases of a single, integrative model.

Stay tuned for the first phase, Brainstorming.