Abstract
This chapter addresses factors that arise from basic characteristics of the human body. While bodies vary in their size, shape, capabilities, and limitations, there are some common factors that are shared and some general guidance that we can apply to design better interfaces and systems. This is a broad topic: the influence of bodies on usability applies to all systems, and is illustrated with examples from desktop, laptop, mobile, and handheld systems. After briefly providing an overview of the issues involved, this chapter covers the importance of the physical setup for computers. We also introduce and discuss the importance of touch and tactile feedback, better known as haptic perception. Haptic perception has become increasingly important with the widespread uptake of touch screen devices and gaming interfaces. We illustrate the importance of haptic perception by considering how people interact with a wide range of devices and systems. The chapter concludes with some implications of the need to consider anthropometric factors when designing interactive systems.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bau, O., & Poupyrev, I. (2012). REVEL: Tactile feedback technology for augmented reality. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 31(4), Article 89, 1–11.
Card, S. K., Moran, T. P., & Newell, A. (1980). The keystroke-level model for user performance time with interactive systems. Communications of the ACM, 23(7), 396–410.
Card, S. K., Moran, T., & Newell, A. (1983). The psychology of human-computer interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Dillon, P., Moody, W., Bartlett, R., Scully, P., Morgan, R., & James, C. L. (2001). Sensing the fabric: To simulate sensation through sensory evaluation and in response to standard acceptable properties of specific materials when viewed as a digital image. In Haptic human-computer interaction, First international workshop (pp. 205–218). Berlin: Springer.
English, J., & Andre, A. D. (1999). Posture and web browsing: An observational study. In Proceedings of the 43rd annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 945–949). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
Fitts, P. M. (1954). The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(6), 381–391.
Fogtmann, M. H., Fristch, J., & Kortbek, K. J. (2008). Kinesthetic interaction—Revealing the bodily potential in interaction design. In OZCHI’08: Proceedings of the 20th Australasian conference on computer–human interaction: Designing for habitus and habitat (pp. 89–96). New York, NY: ACM Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Göbel, M., Luczak, H., Springer, J., Hedicke, V., & Rötting, M. (1995). Tactile feedback applied to computer mice. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 7(1), 1–24.
James, C. L., & Reischel, K. M. (2001). Text input for mobile devices: Comparing model prediction to actual performance. In CHI ‘01 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 365–371). New York, NY: ACM.
Jiang, Y., Tian, F., Zhang, X., Liu, W., Dai, G., & Wang, H. (2012). Unistroke gestures on multi-touch interaction: Supporting flexible touches with key stroke extraction. In ACM conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) (pp. 61–70). New York, NY: ACM.
John, B. E. (1996). TYPIST: A theory of performance in skilled typing. Human-Computer Interaction, 11(4), 321–355.
Kaczmarek, K. A., & Bach-y-Rita, P. (1995). Tactile displays. In W. Barfield & T. A. Furness III (Eds.), Virtual environments and advanced interface design (pp. 349–414). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kinkead, R. (1975). Typing speed, keying rates, and optimal keyboard layouts. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 19th annual meeting (pp. 159–161). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.
Landauer, T. K. (1987a). Relations between cognitive psychology and computer systems design. In J. M. Carroll (Ed.), lnterfacing thought: Cognitive aspects of human- computer interaction (pp. 1–25). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Landauer, T. K. (1987b). Relations between cognitive psychology and computer systems design. In J. Preece & L. Keller (Eds.), Human-computer interaction (pp. 141–159). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Loomis, J. M., & Lederman, S. J. (1986). Tactual perception. In K. Boff, L. Kaufman, & J. Thomas (Eds.), Handbook of perception and human performance (Vol. II, pp. 31-31–31-41). New York, NY: Wiley.
MacKenzie, I. S., & Buxton, W. A. S. (1992). Extending Fitts’ law to two-dimensional tasks. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 1992 conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 219–226).
MacKenzie, I. S., & Soukoreff, R. W. (2002). Text entry for mobile computing: Models and methods, theory and practice. Human-Computer Interaction, 17, 147–198.
Norman, D. A. (1988). The psychology of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
Park, Y. W., Baek, K. M., & Nam, T. J. (2013). The roles of touch during phone conversations: Long-distance couples’ use of POKE in their homes. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM annual conference on human factors in computing systems, (pp. 1679–1688). New York, NY: ACM.
Salthouse, T. A. (1986). Perceptual, cognitive, and motoric aspects of transcription typing. Psychological Bulletin, 3(3), 303–319.
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423; 623–656.
Tian, F., Xu, L., Wang, H., Zhang, X., Liu, Y., Setlur, V., et al. (2008). Tilt Menu: Using the 3D orientation information of pen devices to extend the selection capability of pen-based user. In ACM SIGCHI annual conference (CHI) 2008, (pp. 1371–1380). New York, NY: ACM.
Wickens, C. D., Gordon, S. E., & Liu, Y. (1998). An introduction to human factors engineering. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley.
Zonta, N., Grimstead, I. J., Avis, N. J., & Brancale, A. (2009). Accessible haptic technology for drug design applications. Journal of Molecular Modeling, 15(2), 193–196.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ritter, F.E., Baxter, G.D., Churchill, E.F. (2014). Anthropometrics: Important Aspects of Users’ Bodies. In: Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5134-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5134-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-5133-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-5134-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)