Milliseconds matter: An introduction to microstrategies and to their use in describing and predicting interactive behavior.

Abstract

Interactive behavior is constrained by the design of the artifacts available (e.g., a mouse and button) as well as by the ways in which elementary cognitive, perceptual, and motor operations can be combined. Any 2 basic activities, for example, (a) moving to and (b) clicking on a button, can be combined to yield a limited number of microstrategies. The results of an experimental study suggest that alternative microstrategies can be deployed that shave milliseconds from routine interactive behavior. Data from a usability study are used to explore the potential of microstrategies for (a) bracketing the range of individual performance, (b) profiling individual differences, and (c) diagnosing mismatches between expected and obtained performance. These 2 studies support the arguments that the microstrategies deployed can be sensitive to small features of an interface and that task analyses at the millisecond level can inform design.

Cites (4)

1. Deictic codes for the embodiment of cognition
   Ballard, Dana H., Hayhoe, Mary M., Pook, Polly K., Rao, Rajesh P. N. · 1997 · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2. Memory Representations in Natural Tasks
   Ballard, Dana H., Hayhoe, Mary M., Pelz, Jeff B. · 1995 · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
3. The GOMS family of user interface analysis techniques: comparison and contrast
   John, Bonnie E., Kieras, David E. · 1996 · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
4. The Effects of Operator Implementation Cost on Planfulness of Problem Solving and Learning
   O'Hara, Kenton P., Payne, Stephen J. · 1998 · Cognitive Psychology

Show all 4 references

Cited by (14)

1. Cognitive Offloading
   Risko, Evan F., Gilbert, Sam J. · 2016 · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
2. The soft constraints hypothesis: A rational analysis approach to resource allocation for interactive behavior.
   Gray, Wayne D., Sims, Chris R., Fu, Wai-Tat, Schoelles, Michael J. · 2006 · Psychological Review
3. Example-centric programming: integrating web search into the development environment
   Brandt, Joel, Dontcheva, Mira, Weskamp, Marcos, Klemmer, Scott R. · 2010 · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
4. Soft constraints in interactive behavior: the case of ignoring perfect knowledge in-the-world for imperfect knowledge in-the-head*1, *2
   GRAY, W · 2004 · Cognitive Science
5. Storing information in-the-world: Metacognition and cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task
   Risko, Evan F., Dunn, Timothy L. · 2015 · Consciousness and Cognition

See all 268