Department of Industrial Management Engineering 2. Psychology and HCI ○Hard science (ComSci) would drive out soft science (Psy)  “harden Psy” to improve scientific caliber ○Evaluation tool rather than design tool ○3 possible roles in Psy 1.Primary professionals like in mental health and counseling 2.Working with primary professionals, the system engineers 3.The primary professionals could apply psychology themselves Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 3. INFORMATION THEORY 1.THE COMMUNICAION SYSTEMS ○Hick-Hyman assessed the cognitive info capacity in choice reaction experiments. Fitts’ law for an empirical determination of the info capacity of the human motor system Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering ○Channel capacity (C) – the amount of info transmitted per time through a channel ○1/b (bits/sec) = the rate of gain of information (Hick, 1952) and index of performance (IP) in Fitts (1948) Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 4. THE HICK-HYMAN LAW 1.Hick (1952) Original Experiments Hick-Hyman Law  choice RT vs. stimulus info content  Trained himself until attaining errorless responses (over 2,400)

Department of Industrial Management Engineering ○Experiment II ○3 phases – as fast as possible, then as accurately as possible, finally as fast as possible again Hick-Hyman Law training (accurate) diamonds for fast RT antilogarithm of the info gained

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 2.Hyman (1952) Original Experiments Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 2.Hyman (1953) Original Experiments ○The amount of info extracted is proportional to the time taken to extract it, on the average (1952) ○Not postulate a linear relationship between RT & H t ○The first to articulate the linearity between RT and H T ○Altered the probabilities of the stimuli to assess RT as a function of H T ○RT was linear as a function of bits of the alternatives with unequal probabilities ○RT = a + b H T ○1/b: the rate of gain of information (information capacity) Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 3.Theoretical Developments ○Longstreth et al. (1985) – the law is false ○RT = a + b (1 – N -1 ) ○Welford (1987) against Longstreth ○Negative intercept ○Decreasing RT variability as function of the number of alternatives ○Effective for a sequential and hierarchical process ○Christie and Luce (1956), Laming (1968) ○Parallel exhausted process model instead of serial process Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 4.Research and Applications Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff Stimulus-Response Compatibility (SRC) ○Compatible S-R pairs facilitate the responding of a stimulus, thus yielding a higher rate of information transfer Psychometrics ○ investigate RT-IQ relationship HCI Applications Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering Fitts’ Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering Fitts’ Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering

○ Accot and Zhai (2003) – classical paradigm as AP (pointing with amplitude constraints); paradigm with height constraints as DP (pointing with direction constraints)

Department of Industrial Management Engineering Semantic Pointing. ○ both decreasing A and increasing W Text Entry on Soft Keyboards. ○ text entry on GUI Navigation.

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 6.INTEGRATION OF THE LAWS ○Combine the Hick-Hyman Law and Fitts’ Law ○Beggs et al. (1972) ○Fitts’ Law did not hold in the fusion ○Hoffman and Lim (1997) ○Home-to-target paradigm with both sequential and concurrent tasks ○The sum of the decision and movement time (sequential) ○Substantial interference (concurrent) ○Soukoreff and MacKenzie (1995) ○Unable to fit the data to the model Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 7.THE HICK-HYMAN LAW AND HCI ○Common characteristics in both Laws a.Same analogies based on Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) IT b.Same temporal dependent measures and accuracy to address performance rates & limits of a human system c.Substantial support in research ○Possible reasons for the lack of momentum in HCI (Laming, 1966) 1.The law’s analogy to the classic IT cannot be maintained 2.Victim for the eviction of the soft sciences by hard sciences I.Fitts’ Law has also comparable quantitative components II.HCI has shifted its focus to include some soft sciences such as sociology Hick-Hyman Law

Department of Industrial Management Engineering 1.Difficulty in Application ○No need to engage in the complexity of the information theoretic measures 2.Complexity of Stimuli ○Multidimensional stimuli for the highly complex interfaces needed with simple unidimensional stimuli to reduce confounding 3.Levels and Types of Performance ○Fitts’ for somewhat monotonous tasks Hick-Hyman Law