Computer Interfaces
Chris, Peter, Fraser and Nick ponder the nature of computer interfaces.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And this week we're discussing how we talk to our computers. Chris, how do you talk to your computer?
Speaker B:Well obviously through a variety of mechanisms, I don't use any of the voice recognition services but really our sort of interest in this came about following a disagreement between myself and Peter in that I am not a very prolific user of keyboard shortcuts. I prefer to use the mouse to do most of my functions which Peter was very insistent about is a far inferior way of inputting information into a computer. And I got quite defensive about I like doing things through a mouse. Even if they take slightly longer, I like the overall utility of a mouse and just learning to use one interface on its own. I think a mouse is a very effective tool. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is there are a lot of them to learn whereas with a mouse, you simply need to learn how to click two buttons.
Speaker A:So it may or may not be quicker to do it as Peter says, let's agree that it is quicker to do it the way he says, but it's still quicker isn't everything, right?
Speaker B:Yes, exactly. I mean I suppose I equate it, you know, ideally it would be great to speak every language known to humanity but in the event where you turn up somewhere and you can't speak the language of the place you are in, it is quite useful to point to things and that to me is what a mouse does. It points to things. It's the equivalent of not being able to speak a language but wander around and say I'd like one of those please and to point to it.
Speaker A:Okay, I can see Peter's itching to come in but I actually don't use a mouse and I have not for a long, long, long time but I'll come onto that in a moment. Peter, I presume you agree with everything Chris just said?
Speaker C:All I'm saying Chris is now that you've mastered the mouse, maybe it's time to branch out to sort of improve your experience in using your computer systems. No, it is interesting, picking up around the aesthetic and the enjoyment of using your system. There have been a number of studies into productivity. Assuming that productivity is what you want in a computer interface, you want to get more done with any given interface. There's been an interesting finding that came from Apple, a big study that Apple did, that people who use a particular configuration of interface versus another particular configuration of interface, those who felt that they were more productive were often the people who were less productive. So there's a difference between your perception of productivity and the feeling of getting stuff done versus the people who are using a more efficient interface to get more actual work done. Interesting sort of difference in perception there.
Speaker A:Hold on, so let's narrow this down slightly. What shortcuts should Chris be using? Let's be specific.
Speaker C: t published was by IBM in the: Speaker A:So Chris, do you use copy and paste? Do you use the shortcuts?
Speaker B:I do and I do use some, but obviously there are a lot of them and I suppose my... And I accept, like a keyboard is obviously very useful. If you want to write a 1,000 page document, I wouldn't want to do that by having to point to every letter along the way. So I accept a keyboard definitely has its uses. I suppose it's, you know, to me a mouse is more tactile and a keyboard is more about writing really.
Speaker A:Yeah. Okay. I mean, just saying I don't use a mouse, haven't for years, that's because I use a trackpad. I don't know if you're familiar with trackpads, but I use that all the time. And I'm a bit unsure now if ever I have to use a mouse for some reason. But actually this happens a lot in my field of work with editing of films, where really good editors know the shortcuts. And if you can imagine editing on a timeline, editing a film, there's all sorts of shortcuts you can apply. I know a few, but not really that many. And it actually, it makes a big difference between a good editor and a bad editor, or certainly a fast editor and a slow editor of what shortcuts they know. But I guess one of the things that you said, I think you said something about the, I think the cost, let's say of learning what all the different systems and ways there are is certainly for maybe for you, but certainly for someone like me, I just can't be bothered to learn all this stuff, even though it might stand me in good stead. And I find that with, in Excel spreadsheets, when you can create, actually not just in Excel spreadsheets, but with your computer, what do you call it when your computer can record a series of steps, as it were? Macros. Macros, doing macros. I just, they're kind of slightly beyond me. And I just can't be bothered sort of learning, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I don't want to go down a rabbit hole on this one. Nick?
Speaker D: board up to up to, let's say,: Speaker A:Sorry, yeah, no, Nick, sorry, finish off what you were going to say. Sorry.
Speaker D:No, that's it really. So, basically, what I'm saying is that we don't need to design another interface. We have the interface we need to be able to operate faster than we can think. But it's about learning to use it. But when you say we have the interface, do you mean speaking? Yeah, well, what I'm saying, no. A keyboard, imagine an idealized keyboard. An idealized keyboard. So, in other words, things like keyboard shortcuts, where we're able to communicate the most information as we can with the fewest keystrokes about what we want to do, we already have the tools to do that faster than we can think. So, what I'm saying is that actually, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker B:Chris, I was just wondering about the sort of the efficiency of information transfer and why I think a mouse might be superior. So, for example, if you simply want to communicate, I'd like to open this particular piece of software, you could write that down and there would be the transfer of the information related to that, or you could point and click at it. So, you're transferring the same information, but one requires more information almost to be transferred than the simple visual.
Speaker D:No, no, no, in theory, because if you imagine, I'm going to describe a hypothetical interface where when you press the left button, it selects the left half of the screen. Then when you press up, it selects the top half of that half. And then when you press left, it selects the left half of that. So, you could imagine zeroing very quickly on an area of the screen. That would actually be, I think that would be about the same as using a mouse if you taught yourself to use it. But the thing is that the mouse is so intuitive, we are not going to bother learning an interface like that.
Speaker C:And the reason why the mouse feels quicker when information is displayed in a certain way is because the information is displayed that way. So, if your information is displayed in a spatial dimension in front of you, then it kind of makes sense to gesture in some way to the thing you want. Whereas if you're using a command line and you're trying to access a particular file, they might be presented in alphabetical order, then it's much quicker to rather than scroll up or down or gesture to start typing the thing you're looking for. And it helps zero in on what it is based on what.
Speaker B:And this is why I think, you know, this points to the success of the touchscreen, I think, is that intuition and that ability to actually physically move, you know, rather than manipulate a mouse to move your finger, which you're, you know, well trained to do to the thing you're interested in.
Speaker D:But it's massively less efficient than a mouse. Touchscreens are actually, I, and again, I just sort of, through working it out, I think you can do far less because you've got, it's a much bigger space. You can't point to as many things. And it's still actually slower to point to different things with your finger than it is to use a mouse, which can get across the screen in a fraction of the time than your finger can.
Speaker A:So, hold on, but given the success of touchscreens.
Speaker D:It's because there isn't a peripheral. You can't carry a mouse with you. So, I mean, it's the best you can do, given that what you've got is a little phone. What I'm, what I'm saying is that if you were optimizing it, if you wouldn't, you would not use your touchscreen on your PC if you had a keyboard and a mouse, right? Now, it just, it just is, it's definitely worse than a mouse and a keyboard. And yeah, so I.
Speaker C:For those kinds of interactions. But as soon as you're doing, as soon as you're drawing, you could, using a graphics tablet and a light pen, then that is far superior to a mouse because it's a different sort of input. Yeah. You're looking for precision with a precision point.
Speaker A:And also, if you're lying on a sofa eating pizza, you know, you don't want to be messing around with a mouse, right? Right. So, it depends on the situation.
Speaker D:Well, sort of. But I mean, I was thinking about if you actually want to try and communicate with your computer as quickly as possible. And if you're eating a pizza, you're not doing it. Put the pizza down.
Speaker A:But this is, but this is where, you know, as I often say, this is where I have learned from Aleph. It depends what your aims are. So, if your aims are efficient. Sorry, if your aims are quickest communication with your interface, with your device, then yes, perhaps. I can't remember what we agreed.
Speaker C:So, Nick is talking about the theoretical maximum, whereas the maximum in any given circumstance would be different. Based on what the information is, how it's laid out, and what are your immediate circumstances.
Speaker B:But I think there is an interesting sort of tension between, potentially, between what is most efficient and what is, what creates the greatest cognitive burden, but also the training around that. And so, like, intuitive, things that you can pick up and use with almost no training, and which feel, you feel comfortable doing. I'm not sure what's happening there, but that, to me, is good design. They've designed it around what I can already do and what doesn't seem to tire me. And whereas some mechanisms I accept, they would be quicker, but there would be a training burden to do that. And they feel sort of fiddly, you know, using the little finger on my left hand is not something I'm terribly, terribly good at.
Speaker D:You're having, it's, that's like sort of trying to, I mean, you've got to train yourself. A piano is fairly intuitive, but you still have to, you know, put in a bit of work to make sure that all your fingers are able to press the keys at the same, with the same weight and so on. But no, I mean, I think the, for me, the interesting thing about when I worked it out was that actually it corresponded with my intuition, which is that when I have a keyboard and a mouse in front of a computer, and I'm using the right hotkeys, because I'm editing a document or something, I don't notice the interface at all. Things happen. I think I want to do that. And it just happens. And it turns out my hand is doing it, but I'm not really aware of that. Whereas when, when I'm using voice commands, which I hate, hate doing, or I'm, or I've got to use a touchscreen, I'm aware of the interface and I'm aware of it slowing me down. So, you know, I was quite, that's, that's something I hadn't really considered. But actually, if you're aware of the interface at all, it shows that it is not going as fast as you're thinking. Whereas if you're not aware of it, then it shows that actually you, there's no point in trying to improve that because you're the constraint now.
Speaker A:Okay. So I want to wrap up fairly quickly. So can we move towards some sort of conclusion of this? So, I mean, we floated this.
Speaker C:I think that one of the things that's going to affect how far towards this theoretical maxima is, as we've discussed, the layout of the information, how it's presented. But the keyboard and the mouse are fundamentally pretty different things. There's one with loads of buttons that doesn't move. There's one that moves that has a small number of buttons. And they are targeting very different parts of the information spaces, different possibilities of where the information space is laid out. So the mouse is inherently spatial, it's navigating two dimensions, whereas the keyboard is inherently sequential because you can't press, you can't press something after you've pressed the first thing. When you press something, it always happens after the previous press. So it's good for language, so it's good for letters because they come in a sequence. Whereas the mouse is much more spatial. Now, it's hard, I think, to imagine something that kind of combines both. You've got these two necessary maxima in this thing, but try to imagine an interface that does kind of both, like a mouse with loads of buttons on it or a keyboard that moves around. It's going to be difficult to try to combine. There are almost two different modes which you have to flip between when you're using the computer, one which is sort of spatial and one which is sequential.
Speaker D:Well, I don't know. Well, I know. I know what you mean. But it doesn't feel like that to me. And I feel like I could probably retrain myself. And I mean, you know, the classic sort of gamer setup of having a mouse to move your head around and WASD to move your body around. It feels completely intuitive. I mean, it doesn't feel like I'm having to think about, you know, code switch between different types of activity. It's just my brain has learned. That's how I make something happen on screen. So I've got the proof, I think, that we could probably use any interface. And it's not actually, you know, keyboard for letters necessarily, mouse for pointing. If we could retrain ourselves, do it the other way around if we wanted, is a guy I discovered called Benjamin Guinn, who played a game called Dark Souls and completed it. And he's in the Guinness Book of Records for having completed it with the most different types of interface. Apparently the things that he's used to complete this game have included a rock band guitar peripheral, which is basically a kind of guitar shaped game controller, a drum kit, a keyboard, a bongo drum, a microphone. So he's just done it with voice control, a dance mat, a steering wheel and an Xbox 360 pad where he only used one finger. So, you know, the thing is that he can complete a computer game that presumably halfway through, you know, after a bit of lead in time, he's stopped thinking about what interface he's using. And he's just looking at the screen and it's happening because his body has learned to associate those things with the actions he's taking.
Speaker B:But he has devoted quite a lot of his life to doing that.
Speaker D:Well, hats off to him.
Speaker A:Well, exactly. And this is the Chris preempted the point I was going to make there. Well, what's this guy doing? Is he got a life beyond doing this? And the point is, he's got the time to learn.
Speaker D:Are you in the Guinness Book of World Records? And if so, what for?
Speaker C:Most number of Aleph Insights podcasts. But I think there's something. This is the final point. On the optimization of interfaces. So apart from your standard regional keyboard, there are lots of alternatives. And given that the QWERTY keyboard in English was designed to reduce the rate of typing and to prevent key clashes. So it's inherently designed to be inefficient. There are lots of alternatives being proposed. And the Dvorak keyboard is a good example that's been optimized to make it quicker to type on something.
Speaker A:What's a Dvorak keyboard?
Speaker C: nto the QWERTY keyboard since: Speaker A:And on that note, we're going to wrap up. So we'll wrap up there. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I enjoyed that. As always, you've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare. Thank you very much. And until next time, bye-bye.
