When designing interactive systems such as a gaming console a person must take into consideration the limitations of human information processing capabilities. The first thing a person must do is understand how people perceive the world around them and how they think about certain things such as how to solve problems and handle objects that pertain to their problem or situation.
The model Human Processor consists of different systems, the
perceptual system, the motor system and the cognitive system. The perceptual
system, deals with sensory information, the motor system controls how a person
reacts to information such as if someone close to you dies, the person would
react very sad. Another example would be if someone throws a surprise birthday
party, the person’s reaction would be excited and thrilled. The cognitive
system connects the other two together so that they can work together. Humans
can be monitored by looking at these three system, if you look at human
input/output (what they take in and put out), memory storage (what a person
remembers and how they remember it) and applying/processing systems (how they
manipulate what they remember and what they take in and out and how they
combine them together) then you can understand how humans process information.
Let’s look at the human visual system process. This is a
two-stage process, receiving the stimulus and processing the stimulus. First
you must receive the visual stimulus, this is done by looking at it with your
eyes, within the eye there are rods and cones, these things help a person
understand what they are looking at. Cones are less sensitive to light and they
come in blue, red and green, they allow us to see colour. Identifying parts of
the eye and understanding how each part works is very important because when
creating a game a person must know what a player can and cannot see. If a
person cannot comprehend what is happening in a game he/she cannot enjoy the
game. Recently I was playing Resident Evil 6 and I found the game to be very
dark. I understand the creators wanted the mood of the game to be dark but as a
gamer I felt that I couldn’t see what was happening on the screen and I
couldn’t get into the story, my eyes started hurting and I turned the game off.
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| Figure 1: Resident Evil 6 dark gameplay |
When a person looks at something they can determine the
depth and size of the object. This is relevant to game design because designers
want to create depth in game. Even though the screen is flat you would want the
player to feel that he/she is in a deep ominous tunnel or a large open meadow.
Visual angle allows us to understand depth and size of an area; it indicates
how much of the view is taken up by an object that is seen. Overlapping is used
to determine perception of size and depth. Interpretation of brightness is
based on our reaction to different levels of light. In a game scenario if a
metallic item is in the sun there should be a glare or a shine on it, this
would show how a human should interoperate sun light on a shiny object. The
colour of an object is made up of hue, intensity and saturation. Hue is the
spectral light wavelength (blues have the shortest wavelength and reds have the
longest). Intensity describes the brightness of the colour (how strong the
colour is). Saturation is the amount of white in a colour, by adding white
to a colour it can become lighter and more faded. By changing these three
components a person can see roughly seven million different colours, making blue
turn into baby blue can be easily done by changing the hue, saturation and intensity.
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| Figure 2: Child playing video games and looking at the different colours on the screen |
When playing games it is important to use your eyes to
determine what a player’s surroundings are but it is also important to hear
what is going on around you too. Sight is good for a specific direction however
hearing can allow a person to understand what is going on around them in a 360
degree area. Sounds can be determined by pitch, loudness and timbre. Humans are
less accurate at distinguishing high frequencies rather than low ones, this is
important to understand when creating games. If you want to make a distinctive
sound that gives a player specific information the designer should use low
frequency sounds so that a player can determine it easily. The human ear is made
up of the outer ear which protects the ear and amplifies sounds, the middle ear
which transmits sound waves from the outer to the inner ear and the inner ear
which transmits the sounds to the brain so that they can be understood.
Another important human information processing capability is
touch. There are three receptors, thermo receptors (hot and cold), nociceptors
(pain) and mechanoreceptors (pressure). Bringing touch into gaming is very
important. When a controller rumbles that initiates a sense that a player is
being attacked or some type of action is happening in the game. For example, in
fighting games whenever the opponent hits the player, the player’s controller
will begin to rumble.
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| Figure 3: Gaming controller that rumbles |
Fitts’ Law is the time taken to move to a target. Understanding how long it takes for a mouse to move to a specific point on the screen or a cursor to hover over a specific item. A gaming example is when playing Call of Duty a player must know how long it takes to move the cross-hair from one point of the screen to another point, once you comprehend that you can determine how long it will take to shoot someone.
Human memory is also important to the gaming world. There is
sensory, short-term and long-term memory. Sensory memory is always being
replaced; it is things like visual and aural senses. When someone is talking to
you, you might remember what he/she said three seconds before that. Short-term
memory is good for temporary recall. Completing a short term task such as
writing a paragraph uses short term memory. As you continue the paragraph you
remember what you had written earlier to create a well-structured paragraph.
Short term memory is good for remembering something for a short period of time
and then forgetting it. Long term memory is good for holding information that
is important to you such as your pin for a debit or visa card. It might take a
longer time to recall it however it takes a very long time to forget it.
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| Figure 4: Human Information Processing |
Hick’s Law describes the time a user needs to make a
decision when multiple options are available. This is important to understand
for game designing because a designer must know how many options he/she should
give a player so that it isn’t easy to pick the right answer very fast as well
as not extremely hard where the player must choose an answer out of 100
options. When a player is looking at each of the options he/she must think
about what is a right answer and what is a wrong one. They must problem solve
in order to come up with a solution. The player must use reasoning to determine
what is correct; there are three types of reasoning. Deductive (try to find out
the ending given the beginning), inductive (determine what the most right
answer is in an unknown situation by using known information) and abductive
reasoning (given a fact what is the cause of the situation). By using these
types of reasoning a person or player can determine the best course of action
to take.
Some questions to consider when looking at human factors
are:
In the lecture we discussed rods and cones being able to
determine sight and colour and that some people are colour blind, can we make a
game that is suited for blind people but still be interesting to people that
can interpret colour?
Why can’t we create a game that incorporates hot and cold
into a controller? (Create a controller that can sustain temperature changes)
Why are games that emit pain to players so popular? Can we
make a controller that releases pain to players and successfully mass market
it?
Personal Experience
During the years of playing video games I have come across
something that will never change and it is error types. Slips and mistakes have
been seen throughout the course of gaming and it is something that I believe
will always be around. Slips is when you have the right intention but carry out
the wrong execution such as pressing the key ‘w’ instead of ‘e’ because they
are right beside each other. Mistakes are when you have a wrong intention and
because of that you have an incorrect understanding. Slips are bound to happen
when playing video games because when I’m playing games I need to move my
fingers really quick to create button sequences for combos and sooner or later
my hand will slip and I will press the wrong button even though I have the
right intention.
Work Cited
Figure 1 -
"New Resident Evil 6 Gameplay Footage Released | RipTen Videogame Blog." Ripten Videogame Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. <http://www.ripten.com/2012/07/20/new-resident-evil-6-gameplay-footage-released/>.
Figure 2 -
"Dürfen Kinder Videospiele spielen? Ein schlechter Einfluss? | Design weckt Leidenschaft – Design & Interface." Photoshop Tutorials Webdesign und Zeichenkurse. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. <http://tex-block.de/games/duerfen-kinder-videospiele-spielen-ohne-bedenken/3014/>.
Figure 3 -
"Sony confirms rumbling Dual Shock 3, gives list of supported titles | Ars Technica." Ars Technica.
N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013.
<http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/09/sony-confirms-rumbling-dual-shock-3-gives-game-list-of-supported-titles/>.
Figure 4 -
"NDE Reliability - Human Factors - Basic Considerations." NDT. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2013. <www.ndt.net/article/wcndt00/papers/idn736/idn736.htm>.
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