Task analysis and task models (Diaper and Stanton 2003) are also aimed at analysing or recording the behaviour of users, whether on existing systems or planned systems. The latter have continued to be surprisingly influential, however they are largely limited to numerical fitting of data with a few exceptions such as Eslambolchilar's work using control theory to model the cybernetic interaction between human movements and digital devices (Eslambolchilar and Murray-Smith 2010) (Eslambolchilar 2006). Users - Various forms of cognitive models have been used to analyse interaction, from cognitive architectures such as SOAR (Laird 2008) or ACT-R (Anderson 2005) to motor level models. One way to categorise them is by what gets represented: There are very many kinds of formal or semi-formal notations, models and techniques used within HCI. This is because the representation is chosen to encapsulate faithfully the significant features of the meaning.įrom (Dix 2003) 29.1 Kinds of Formal Methods in HCI Taken strongly, formalism in mathematics and computing is about being able to represent things in such a way that the representation can be analyzed and manipulated without regard to the meaning. That is, formal is about the outward form of things - a formal greeting may belie many emotions beneath the surface. In day-to-day life, formal may mean wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie or using proper language. This enables us to focus on certain aspects and understand or analyse those aspects using the representation itself (for example notice that there are some very long interaction paths to quite critical screens).Īs with all words, “formal” is used to mean different things by different people and in different disciplines. Always, some things are reduced or ignored (the precise contents of screens), whilst others are captured more faithfully (the pattern of links between them). While there are many more complex formal notations and methods, these simple networks of screens and links demonstrate the essence of a formal representation. In fact, anyone engaged in interaction design is likely to have used some kind of formal representation, most commonly some sort of arrow and sketch diagram showing screens/pages in an application and the movements between them. If you work with computers, you necessarily work with formalism.įormal Methods sit in this difficult nexus between logic and life, precision and passion, both highlighting the contradictions inherent in interaction design and offering tools and techniques to help understand and resolve them.
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However much we design devices and products to meet users’ needs or enrich their experiences of life, still the software inside is driven by the soulless, precise, and largely deterministic logic of code. And yet that is precisely what we have to do once we create any sort of digital system: whether an iPhone or an elevator, Angry Birds or Facebook, software is embedded in our lives. Human beings are rich, complex, nuanced, engaged in subtle and skilful social and material interactions reducing this to any sort of formal description seems at best simplistic. To some extent, Formal Methods sit uneasily within interaction design. The use of Formal Methods in human-computer interaction dates back to its earliest days as a growing discipline, including Phyllis Reisner's use of BNF to specify user interfaces in 1981 (Reisner 1981) and the author's own first paper on the topic at the first British HCI Conference in 1985 (Dix and Runciman 1985).
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