User Psychology

This chapter gives an overview of cognitive psychology which is relevant to human-computer interaction. It starts with how we perceive information from the environment with the senses of sight and hearing and then progresses to understanding the information we receive. Memory is then investigated: how information is coded and possibly stored, with the limitations of human memory. This leads on to mental activity and how we reason and solve problems, and the control of mental activity as attention is reviewed together with more general topics of stress and fatigue. The chapter concludes with a summary of the principles of interaction based on knowledge of human psychology.