1. Exercise 1.1 Short term memory (STM) decay
Experiment
Split students into two groups. Each group builds 6 lists of 15 words (could try with both nonsense words and actual words to see any difference). Exchange lists between the groups. The students have to recall the submitted list either (a) immediately or (b) after 10,20,30,40,50 and 60 second delay.
Measure the number (or percentage) of the words remembered correctly.
independent variable -- delay in recall dependent variable -- number correctly recalled.
Group (b) should be given a task to do during the delay period in order to avoid rehearsal. If possible this task should occupy a different channel to minimise interference, e.g. a visual recognition task.
Hypothesis
Those in (b) will perform worse than those in (a) since STM will decay.
Analysis
graphs to see decay.

2. EXERCISE 1.2 : internet search
Locate one source (through the library or the Web) that reports on empirical evidence on human limitations.
Provide a full reference to the source. In one paragraph, summarize what the result of the research states in terms of a physical human limitation.
In a separate paragraph, write your thoughts on how you think this evidence on human capabilities impacts interactive system design.

5. EXERCISE 1.4 : Evaluation of text quality
Consider a 20 line of easy comprehensible text and 20 lines of a confused text. Split words in syllables, propositions in semantic units and phrases in propositions.
Make a program to compute the average length of words (in letters), the average number on syllables/words, the average number of words/proposition and the average number of propositions/phrase.
Analyse the numbers and infer conclusions about the texts.