HCI HUMAN FACTORS PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION

Perception Perception is the process or the capability to attain awareness and understand the environment surrounding us by interpreting, selecting and organizing different type of information. All perceptions involve stimuli in the central nervous system. These stimuli result from the stimulation of our sense organs such as auditory stimuli when one hears a sound or a taste when someone eats something. Perception is not only passive and can be shaped by our learning, experiences, and education, by training your brain and your cognitive abilities, one can improve the different skills that they use to perceive the world around you, be more aware and improve your learning capacity. An understanding of the way humans perceive visual information is important in the design of visual displays in computer systems. Several competing theories have been proposed to explain the way we see. These can be split into two classes: constructivist and ecological. • Constructivist theorists believe that seeing is an active process in which our view is constructed from both information in the environment and from previously stored knowledge. Perception involves the intervention of representations and memories. What we see is not a replica or copy; rather a model that is constructed by the visual system through transforming, enhancing, distorting and discarding information. Example, “the Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization” • Ecological theorists believe that perception is a process of “picking up” information from the environment, with no construction or elaboration needed. Users intentionally engage in activities that cause the necessary information to become apparent. According to the theory we explore objects in the environment. Example Affordance.