HCI definitions

visual acuity - Sharpness of vision, measured by the ability to discern letters or numbers at a given distance according to a fixed standard.


flicker -Noun: An unsteady movement of a flame or light that causes rapid variations in brightness.
Verb: (of light or a source of light) Shine unsteadily; vary rapidly in brightness: "the interior lights flickered and came on"


hue - The attribute of a color by virtue of which it is discernible as red, green, etc., and which is dependent on its dominant wavelength, and independent of intensity or lightness.


colour sat·u·ra·tion
Is how vivid colours are and how much the pure colour is diluted with white or grey.


Iconic memory - Iconic memory is a type of short term visual memory (a sensory memory), named by George Sperling in 1960. 


Brief on the composition of Human Memory
http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/rng/teaching/notes/Memory.html


Haptic - The science that deals with the sense of touch.


Echoic memory - A type of sensory memory that briefly holds audio information for about 4 seconds


Genetic memory - In psychology, genetic memory is a memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience, and is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time. 


Semantic memory - A subcategory of declarative memory, semantic memory stores general information such as names and facts; A system of the brain where logical concepts relating to the outside world are stored; the memory system which stores information relating to brands, thus where brand positioning is established


Concept - 1. An abstract idea; a general notion.
2. A plan or intention; a conception.


Memory scripts - Represent stereotypical knowledge about situations - for example, sequence.


Memory frames - Extend semantic nets to include structured, hierarchical information. 
Make explicit the relative importance of each piece of information


Production Rules - “If condition then action” rules. 
Encode procedural knowledge.
E.g.,


If glass is empty then fill glass.
If glass contains beer then drink it.


Visual Memory - Visual memory is a part of memory preserving some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory information that resembles objects, places, animals or people in sort of a mental image.


Abductive reasoning - Determining plausibility based on a set of evidence.
For example, the lawn is wet. But if it rained last night, then it would be unsurprising that the lawn is wet. Therefore, by abductive reasoning, it rained last night. 


Inductive reasoning - The process of making inferences based upon observed patterns, or simple repetition. Often used in reference to predictions about what will happen or does happen, based upon what has happened.
Example: All the tigers observed in a particular region have yellow black stripes, therefore all the tigers native to this region have yellow stripes.




Deductive reasoning - The process of reasoning that starts from statements accepted as true and applied to a new situation to reach a conclusion (eg, if 5+4 = 9, and 6+3 = 9, then 5+4 = 6+3).
Another example: 
Everyone who eats steak is a quarterback.
John eats steak.
Therefore, John is a quarterback.


In brief:
Deductive reasoning involves deciding what must be true given the rules of logic and some starting set of facts(premises). Inductive reasoning involves deciding what is likely to be true given some starting set of beliefs or observations.




Conducive - Making a certain situation or outcome likely or possible.




Gestalt - Gestalt theory claims that problem solving is productive and reproductive. Reproductive problem solving draws on previous experiences whereas productive problem solving involves insight and restructuring of the problem. Reproductive problem solving could be a hindrance to finding a solution, since a person may fixate on the known aspects of a problem and so be unable to see novel interpretations that might lead to a solution.


A well known example of this is Maier's `pendulum problem'.




The cocktail party effect describes the ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises, ignoring other conversations.




Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.




The problem space theory was proposed by Newell and Simon. The theory says that problem solving centers around the problem space. This space comprises of problem states which can be generated using legal transition operators.
For example, imagine you are reorganizing your office and you want to move the desk from one end to another. The two different states are represented by the locations of the desk. A number of operators can be applied to move these things: they can be carried, pushed, dragged etc. In order to ease the transition between the states, you have a new sub-goal: to make the desk light. These may involve operators such as removing drawers and so on.


more on: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/human-cap/process.html


static - Lacking in movement, action, or change, esp. in a way viewed as undesirable or uninteresting


A command-line interface (CLI) is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks.


Menus - a list of options available to a computer user


In computer science, a cache ( ) is a component that improves performance by transparently storing data such that future requests for that data can be served faster.


Spreadsheet - a screen-oriented interactive program enabling a user to lay out financial data on the screen


In human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for "window, icon, menu, pointing device", denoting a style of interaction using these elements. It was coined by Merzouga Wilberts in 1980. Although its usage has fallen out of favor, it is often used as an approximate synonym of "GUI".


Toolkit - An assembly of tools; set of basic building units for graphical user interfaces


Context Menu - A context menu (also called contextual, shortcut, and popup or pop-up menu) is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right mouse click or middle click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choices that are available in the current state, or context, of the operating system or application. Usually the available choices are actions related to the selected object.


Driver - a program that determines how a computer will communicate with a peripheral device

.......more to come.....