DESIGNS THAT FIT - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 189

Table 10.1

Potential Types of Fit in HCI

Type of Guideline on Fit Example of Guideline

1 Fit audio-visual output to the physical Fit screen brightness to light intensity.

environment.

2 Fit medium to affective considerations. Choose a medium for conveying personal

data that secures privacy.

3 Fit format to user characteristics. Personalize fonts to user's age and taste.

4 Fit format to task characteristics. Display quantitative information graphically

for spatial tasks.

5 Fit information detail to complexity Adjust level of explanations when user

experienced by user. encounters difficulty.

6 Fit affective expressions to the user's Match colors, tone, and facial expressions

emotional state. to user's mood.

be (1) fitting the screen brightness to the light intensity in the room; (2) displaying sensitive mes-
sages only on a user's terminal rather than in less private media; (3) displaying bright colors and
animation to young users; (4) displaying graphical data for spatial tasks; (5) providing more
detailed feedback to students exhibiting difficulty in the task; and (6) computer-generated sympa-
thetic messages to users encountering stressful information. Taking a relatively broad view of fit,
I treat all these examples as incidents of fit. Table 10.1 generalizes the six examples as achieving
different types of fit in HCI. This is not a comprehensive list of possibilities, but rather a demon-
stration of the scope of types of fit as they are discussed in this chapter.
Research on HCI in information systems (IS), as opposed to computer engineering, has tradition-
ally concentrated on the design of software-based human-computer interfaces rather than hardware,
treating the hardware as given. Ergonomic design of input and output devices has largely been left to
other academic fields, e.g., human factors. The subset of HCI research in IS focusing on fit has sim-
ilarly dealt primarily with the design of (software-based) information displays, relying on cognitive
aspects of fit to direct design. In comparison with the broad range of types of fit demonstrated in
Table 10.1, the review of research in this chapter has consequently more to say about cognitive
aspects of fit than it does about physical aspects of fit. Furthermore, fitting designs to human charac-
teristics has at least two levels: One is fit with the general (average) characteristics of users, and the
second, more sophisticated, level is fit with particular characteristics of special tasks, special users,
and other idiosyncrasies. In organizational settings, fitting designs to physical characteristics has
usually been constrained to the “average” user engaged in a variety of tasks, making it possible to
rely on ready-made ergonomic designs to fit all (with limited adjustments such as fitting the screen's
position to the user's height). By contrast, fitting information displays to task idiosyncrasies has
attracted considerable interest in IS research. Again, the organizational emphasis on task will be
reflected in the discussions below that introduce the organizational task as a major influence in
achieving cognitive, but not physical, fit.
In sum, the notion of fit in HCI design means different things to researchers taking different
perspectives. Table 10.1 demonstrates a wide scope of possible guidelines for designing HCI to fit
the user and the task in a given context. Indeed, this chapter attempts to take a broad view in order
to review published research on various types of fit within an integrated framework; in so doing,
it also attempts to identify unexplored areas. To this end, the chapter is organized around the
framework depicted in Figure 10.1, which is developed gradually throughout the paper. For now,