Appendix B. Glossary

Affordances

Perceived possibilities for action that inform, and are informed by, the different ways that we can interact with objects and our environment.

Cognitive load

The amount of mental effort used the intellect at any moment, according to cognitive psychologist, John Sweller, who applied the concept to using good design to the presentation of information.

Cue

Perceived qualities of objects or environments that signal other qualities such as the state of that object. We use them, and often depend on them, to help us understand what is happening around us, what we should do, and to recognize the state of objects, environments, and situations.

Dimension

Types of stimuli that a sense detects. The many dimensions of touch include warmth, texture, and pressure, whereas light is the single dimension of vision.

Haptic

The combination of the tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular systems together. (Often thought of as primarily touch-based.)

Human factors

A discipline within design focused on optimizing products or systems for use by and interaction with humans.

Feedback

A response, such as a signal or cue that happens as a result of an action.

Feedforward

Similar to feedback, a special kind of a signal sent in in anticipation of an action, usually as a way of guiding users.

Kinesics

The study of how bodily movements such as facial and other gestures can communicate, whether intentionally or not.

Mental model

A representation of the way a person thinks about an object, event, or situation. That might include what that thing does, how it works, how it might interact, what the person can do with it, and relationships it might have with other things. The phrase may refer to a person’s actual thought process, as well as representations or illustrations describing that process, such as those made by designers.

Modality

Patterns that shape the way people use sensory channels to inform their behaviors.

Mode

Device capabilities that drive the ways they interact with people, the world, and with each other. Because devices use senses to communicate with people, these often align with human modalities.

Multimodal

The use of several modes or modalities simultaneously or in sequence in order to affect an action or activity.

Neural adaptation

The way that the nervous system responds to long-term, non-painful sensations by lessening or losing perception of them, as with the lack of perception of comfortable shoes after a few moments wear.

Paralanguage

Non-language–based components of communication that can convey emotion, intensity, or other types of meaning, often in conjunction with spoken language, as with pitch, prosody, intonation. Paralanguage may be aware or non-aware.

Parity

The overlap between abilities and the way they support and inform each other, whether the abilities are within the same person, between a person and a device, or between devices.

Perception

How we sense physical information, become aware of it, organize it and interpret it.

Physical information

The practically unlimited state of the physical world and how it is understood, whether that means the sun is shining, there is a flat tire, the earth is the third planet from the sun, or that you are traveling 63 mph downhill on a roller coaster in Santa Cruz, California.

Prompt

A cue that signals a shift in agency, particularly in interactions that require turn-taking in communication, control, or activity.

Proprioception

The sense of bodily position, motion, and effort that is informed by nerves within the body as well as our vestibular sense.

Proxemics

The study of how space is used by people for communication and organization, as well as the effect that distance and crowding has on their perceptions, emotions, and interactions. Coined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall.

Umwelt

The particular sensory world that an individual or species lives within and that reflects what it understands can help it live, function, and flourish. Similar to the idea of affordances, but reflecting the idea that abilities to perceive helpful and nourishing things shape a being’s worldview. This concept can be adapted to model a device’s sensory world by grouping its sets of input and processing.

Range

The variation in a stimuli that can be sensed. Though our resolution in precisely detecting temperature is low, we can experience a range from between freezing up to about 140° or 150° Fahrenheit.

Resolution

The level of detail and amount of information within a stimuli. While vision has low dimension (only light), we can process a lot of detailed information using it.

Schema

In psychology, patterns in thought or behavior that organize experiences in order to understand them and how they relate to each other. Different categories of schema, such as perceptual, semantic, and conceptual, deal with different types of activity, thought, and perception. They are also created in order to handle new information and experiences effectively.

Substitution

The use of alternative senses when there is interference within a modality.

Synchrony

In multisensory integration, the way that sense abilities reinforce each other, and increase the ability to predict and correct each other.

System 1 and System 2

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes the brain working in two ways, System 1, which is intuitive, fast and sometimes even automatic; and System 2, which is slower and more deliberative.

Translation

A particular type of substitution that can map information to a relevant modality, when an experience lies outside of human perception or outside of practical means to obtain physical information.

Unimodal

Using one modality or mode.