The MITRE Corporation | bminnery@mitre.org
The MITRE Corporation | mfine@mitre.org
cal toolkit—measuring hidden metrics like interest, affect, or satisfaction. Even further down the road, neuroscience offers the potential to truly close the gap between humans and computers through the development of devices that engage directly with the brain. The aim of this article is to describe these and other synergies between neuroscience and HCI and to make a case for greater collaboration between the two communities.
[ 1] Card, S., T. Moran, and A. Newell. The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1983.
If Carl Sagan had been a neuroscientist instead of an astronomer, he might have mused wondrously about the “billions and billions” of neurons that make up the human brain— approximately one hundred billion neurons with each neuron wired to communicate with thousands of neighbors. This massive mesh of computation gives rise to the impressive spectrum of human cognitive capabilities. To date, most HCI researchers have focused on readily observable behavioral metrics (for example, the speed of a keystroke or the accuracy of a mouse click) rather than on the mental machinery operating under the surface. Modern neuroscience offers HCI researchers a way to “lift the veil” on user cognition, greatly expanding the available tool kit for both research and design.
Neuroscience is the study of the brain and nervous system. Although the field concerns itself with the study of neu-robiological systems at the smallest scales (molecules and genes), neuroscience also works to understand how the nervous system contributes to macro-level behaviors of interest to HCI researchers. Over the past 20 years, our understanding of brain function
has expanded dramatically— partially driven by advances in experimental methodology, but also enabled by a swell of research funding for the study of brain-related disorders like autism, Parkinson’s disease, and traumatic brain injury. This growth is reflected in the scale and diversity of membership in the Society of Neuroscience. Founded in 1969, its ranks have doubled in the past 20 years, to more than 38,000 members. A quick tour of the society’s annual meeting reveals the broad range of cognitive functions that neuroscientists are studying from a biological perspective—from perception to decision to action.
These advances in neuroscientific discovery are poised to have a profound impact on multiple facets of HCI research and system design. For starters, neuroscience enables us to build more accurate and robust models of human cognitive functions. These models may allow us to evaluate usability and predict user behavior through computation alone. In addition, neuroscience research methods will allow HCI researchers to answer questions that previously lay outside the reach of their methodologi-
Building Better Models The idea that one could use cognitive models in lieu of real humans as a way of reducing the time/costs associated with designing an interface and conducting usability studies is not in itself novel [ 1]. This so-called “engineering” approach employs sophisticated cognitive models—such as EPIC, SOAR, and ACT-R—to predict how a user (or class of users) might interact with a given interface to perform a specified task. These models represent the cumulative insights of decades of psychological and behavioral research, and their ability to replicate human behavior in some narrow domains has been remarkable. However, a common criticism leveled against
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