User Behavior & Psychology / Article 4. First Published in Aug. 2006, HCI Vistas Vol-II Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre

Figure 1.

Here is a very interesting and intriguing experience I wish to share with you.

My son, Paritosh, drew this sketch (Figure 1) when he was 4-5 years old. You can clearly see the drawing of cricket stumps. I instantly photographed it using my camera-phone. However, I am reporting these observations after a gap of 3 years. There are about 4/5 stumps in this drawing, as Pari (that is his nick name) had not learnt to count. What struck me most is that the stumps are shown up side down. The pointed conical tip of the stump should have been buried inside the ground or at least it should have been on the down side. Probably, I was thinking like a typical adult! I called him and explained the correct thing. He looked at me with great disbelief and fled away to play with his friends.

Two/three weeks passed. The boy made yet another drawing (Figure 2). This time he had improved. There were three stumps and the middle one appeared a bit shorter. But they were still up side down! The pointed conical tips of the stumps were still facing the sky! I again called him to explain the right thing. But Pari seemed quite unconvinced! It left me wondering and uneasy.

Figure 2.

Some more days passed. I had just returned from office and was parking my car. Pari was playing cricket with his friends on the pavement in the parking space! What I saw was very surprising! As there being no soil but hard surface all around the building, the kids had to erect the cricket stumps up side down with some support! Look at the photograph below.

Figure 3.

Pari was consistently true to his reality!

This incidence teaches us that the reality can be so different to different people. We can apply the conclusion of this case-study in HCI as that being our central theme. When we design interfaces, we are quite authoritative and sure about how our design will be perceived by the users. Many times we think that we are correct and logical.

But the user’s reality can be genuinely different
and contrary to what we believe!

It reaffirms the relevance and importance of context study, user participation in design process, study of mental models and usability testing. There is no way out if you wish to capture and represent user’s reality in design!

There are many interesting cases like this one, which I will share with you. It may be of interest to those involved in study of learning models and cognitive psychology of children. So look forward to it!

Dr. Dinesh Katre presently heads the National Multimedia Resource Centre of C-DAC, Pune, India. He is the principle designer of many software products that deal with digital library, cultural informatics, e-learning, multimedia authoring and computer game design. He has special interest in the cognitive study of technology users and behavioral design of products. Journal of HCI Vistas is his community building initiative. It is meant to promote research oriented, multi-disciplinary thinking in the field of Human-Computer Interaction in India. This e-publication is open for usability practitioners and UX designers to publish short articles.

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