The Human Feedback Loop - World Usability Day 2012

The Human Feedback Loop in Computing

Panel DiscussionWorld Usability DayNovember 08, 2012LexisNexis Dayton

Panelist overviews

Vishal Saboo & Dan Mecher, HobsonsLearning, Education, Information-seeking

Vishal Saboo is a Product Manager at Hobsons who cares deeply about user experience and customer service. Prior to Hobsons, he worked for 10 years as a Director of Consulting at Definitive Solutions and also as a Systems Analyst at Infosys. He loves sports photography, travel, music and his family.

Dan Mecher has over 10 years of experience in various design disciplines including creative, interactive, print, web site, web application and mobile. In his current role at Hobsons, his focus has shifted toward user experience and user research, combining aspects of design and human behavior.

Hobsons is dedicated to helping students progress successfully through each stage of the learning lifecycle. We develop software for education that allows students to create personalized academic and career plans…

Phil Wittmer, LexisNexisFitness and Exercise

Phil Wittmer is a Senior Idea Designer with Customer Discovery and Innovation. He works with business stakeholders to cultivate and develop product ideas, test those ideas with customers, and then send the best ones to product development.

Phil has worked at LexisNexis for 9 years. Before his current role, Phil worked at The Oxford Associates and Reynolds & Reynolds as a Technical Writer and Business Analyst.

Chris Hamant, ElsevierSelf-actualization

Chris is a graduate of Wright State University with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. He currently works at Elsevier in the User Centered Design group supporting development needs, producing prototypes and various other tasks.

Like most humans, his interests are pretty varied and wide ranging… probably too much to fit within the confines of a slide deck with a one-liner. He does have more than a passing interest in the various cultures and sub-cultures within the burgeoning 'Quantified Self' community and hopes to learn how it can help him be more effective in everything he does.

Jacob Myers, LexisNexisGaming

Graduate of Wright State University with a Masters in Computer Science, and has worked 5 years at LexisNexis in software development. The last 3 years have been in the iLabs research group working in a multitude of varying spaces from visualization to text classification. Currently heavily focused on text analytics work, involving classification technologies and search engines; primarily in the HPCC environment. Specialties include software design, system administration, electrical engineering, and playing too many video games. Incapable of resisting a puzzle.

Moderator: Rich Miller, LexisNexisSports Psychology & Coaching

Research Scientist in the LexisNexis R&D group for 12 years. Previously served in UI-related roles at AT&T, LexisNexis, and SDRC.

Focuses on new technology and approaches related to UI/UX, e.g. analytics/visualization, mobile computing, information capture, UI design, and product strategy. Rich has a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Miami University.

In his non-work life, Rich enjoys playing and coaching basketball, and following sports, music, and film.

The Human Feedback Loop in Computing

• Definition/Context• Loops through the interface that

evaluate, moderate, and confirm processes as they pass from the human through the interface to the computer and back (Wikipedia HCI entry)

• Our focus is on how to use the feedback loop to design better interfaces…

•WIRED article >>

4 Stages of the HFL

1. Evidence - A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored.

2. Relevance - info relayed to human - not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant.

3. Consequence - information must illuminate one or more paths ahead.

4. Action - human recalibrates a behavior, makes a choice, and acts…action is measured, and the feedback loop keeps going

Background and History• 18th century – steam engine design• 1940s – Norbert Wiener and cybernetics• 1960s - Albert Bandura

– Providing individuals a clear goal and a means to evaluate their progress toward that goal greatly increased the likelihood that they would achieve it.

– Self-efficacy = the more we believe we can meet a goal, the more likely we will do so.

– Since Bandura’s work, feedback loops have been thoroughly researched and validated in psychology, epidemiology, military strategy, environmental studies, engineering, and economics.

– Feedback loops are a common tool in athletic training plans, executive coaching strategies, and a multitude of other self-improvement programs (though some are more true to the science than others).

Why are feedback loops so hot now?• Tech drivers

– Faster computers/networks and cheap storage– More, cheaper sensors and automation of data capture

• accelerometers (which measure motion), GPS sensors (which track location), and inductance sensors (which measure electric current).

– Capabilities and preponderance of devices that can measure things– Explosion of apps– Central to the emerging Natural UI (NUI) model of design (e.g. Kinect)

• Human behavior drivers– Better methods and approaches

• e.g. Ambient Devices creates energy savings by using “pre-attentive processing” to achieve a feedback sweet spot (between too passive and too intrusive), where the information is delivered unobtrusively but noticeably.

– Bottom-up feedback loops have supplemented big-brother top-down practices

– Discovery of self-help power within personalized devices– Personalized data much more available and demanded

Why are HFLs important?• “The intransigence of human behavior has emerged as the root

of most of the world’s biggest challenges.”– Intransigence leads to many undesirable but avoidable things such as

obesity, smoking, chronic illnesses, pollution from personal energy consumption, etc.

• They provide previously missing pieces of info used to understand reality– One can go years without really knowing how to improve something

if you are never told or think much about the results of your actions– Previously impossible behavior and outcomes may now be possible

• Feedback taps into something core to the human experience, even to our biological origins.– “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” Feedback taps into those

aspirations.– Feedback loops are how we learn, whether we call it trial and error

or course correction.

HFL landscape: work/play X latency

Kinect FBloop overlayed onto real-world activity

FeedForward• A method of teaching and learning that… indicates a desired future

behavior or path to a goal (Wikipedia)– Provides information, images, etc. exclusively about what one could do

right in the future…focuses on learning in the future – Info provided is about anticipated events (what’s coming), not effects of

behavior on past events or success• Examples

– Tablet help for gesture-language learning– Nba baller beats

• See upcoming skill moves you will need to execute– Sports simulations as prep for actual games

• e.g. Madden football, NBA2K basketball– Pre-race course run-throughs for runners

Discussion questions

1. For the area that you are representing, please describe example(s) of the human feedback loop in action. – Which HFLs in UI design have been the most effective?– Under what conditions do they work best/least? – ?Group activity: audience places sticky notes on 2D

landscape poster

2. What are the design challenges for leveraging and incorporating feedback loops?

3. How can feedforward be used in UI design?4. What are potential applications that we have not yet

seen?

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