Cognitive processes and User experience
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Success of a system depends on user experience. It is important to understand how users interact with the system and how a system can be refined considering various aspects of human cognition. Below I mention some of my studies related to user experience.
Text, table and graph: which is faster and better to represent information
Today's school and college textbooks are full of static, multimodal content. This research investigated which of the three modalities – text, table or graph – is more efficient in conveying a given message to students. Our results showed that graph mode might be faster but less accurate. However, when it comes to amount of correct comprehension, graph mode does come out better. Below images show participants' response.
Research Method:
Behavioural study: Response time, Correct response analysis.
Text and image interaction in news articles and fictional stories presented on web pages
Webpages include text and images. However, these two modalities are processed differently and interact at various levels of cognition. This study examined how this interaction influences the overall comprehension.
In this research we asked following questions:
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How text and images in a webpage interact?
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How the presence of images with text changes the perception of the content?
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Are images really important in a news article and in fictional stories?
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Which mode dominates the information source when both the modes (text and image) present contradictory information?
Research findings:
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Readers do not pay attention to images consciously.
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If the image is relevant then they help in remembering the content for a longer period of time.
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In the case of fictional stories, the verbal mode invites readers to imagine and visualise the story, which is often more vivid than the present image. Therefore, it is better to leave the visualisation part to the reader for a better experience.
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In the case of news article, images help restricting the wild imagination of readers and put things in perspective. Relevant images are essential in news articles.
Research Methods:
Behavioural studies: Response time, Memory tasks, Correct response analysis, Eye movement analysis
Figure. (1) Response time (2) Amount of answers per second, (3) Correct answers in three modes of information
Figure 2. (1) Dominating source for stories with relevant image, (2) Dominating source for stories with irrelevant image, (3) Recall patterns in the presence of an image, (4) Recall patterns in the absence of the image.
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Effect of background colour in information retention and retrieval on webpage and text books
We live in a world where most visualisations use colour. How colour is used in the instructional material such as webpages and text books is an important stimulus variable especially if we want learners to perceive and interact with the critical information presented in the visualisations.
In this research we asked following questions:
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Does the background colour influence the retention and retrieval of the content?
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Does the contrast of background colour and foreground text influence the retention and retrieval of the content?
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Does the background colour influences men and women differently?
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Research Findings
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High contrast helps in higher recall irrespective of gender and colour plays an important role in recognition memory for textual information when contrast is moderate to low.
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Women have better recall of information if the background has cool colour schema and men have better recall if the background has warmer colour schema.
Research Methods
Behavioural studies: Response time, Memory tasks, Eye tracking analysis, Correct response analysis, Priming
Figure 3. (1) Gender response to High contrast background and text, (2) Gender response to cool colour backgrounds, (3) Gender response to warm colour backgrounds, (4) Recall performance for three categories of stimuli
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How emotional words and pictorial smiles influence comprehension of message?
Cognitive load is the measure of cognitive effort imposed by a task demand. Emotion is considered to be an extraneous variable to influence the overall cognitive load.
In this pupillometry study we asked
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Can emotional words be considered intrinsic cognitive load in a cognitive task?
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How Emotional valence of words interfere with the parallel cognitive processing and influence the cognitive load?
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How individuals with high and low intelligence process information when the emotion is embedded in cognitive tasks?
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Do the use of pictorial smile effect the cognitive tasks in a communication scenario?
Research Findings
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Emotional words do interfere with parallel cognitive processing.
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Negative emotions significantly increase the cognitive load of individuals with lower intelligence but not of individuals with higher intelligence.
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Pictorial smiles do not influence the allocation of cognitive resources in a cognitive task.
Research Methods
Analysis of change in pupil size, Blink rate analysis, Response time, Memory tasks
Related Publications
Zaidi, S., Ojha, A. & Indurkhya, B. (2010) The effect of color on retrieval of textual information, Perception 39 ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 87