Glossary - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 411

Grice's maxims The four basic maxims underlying the co-operative principle.
These maxims make strong suggestions about how people should communicate
with other people. When these suggestions are followed, communication is
more successful and more satisfying.
GUI (Graphical user interface) A user interface that is made up of graphical
objects, such as icons.
Gulf of evaluation The gap between the concepts used in the physical system and
the user's psychological representation of those concepts.
Gulf of execution The gap between the user's (psychological) goals and inten-
tions and the physical actions they need to take to achieve those goals.
Habituation Becoming so used to a stimulus that it becomes unnoticeable. (This
is very similar to desensitization.)
Haptic devices Devices which utilize touch and tactile feedback. Most haptic
devices only support interaction using the hands or fingers, even though users
could use any part of their body. There is a growing number of devices that
support input using the feet.
Hard mental operations One of the cognitive dimensions. It relates to the fact
that users find some kinds of operations harder to perform than others, so they
prefer easier mental operations.
HCI (Human-computer interaction) The study of how people interact with
technology. The abbreviation is also sometimes used to refer to Human-
Computer Interface.
Heuristic evaluation A relatively informal way of analyzing the usability of an
interface design in which a small select number of people are asked to judge the
design based on a set of guidelines or principles together with their own
knowledge.
Hicks law An equation that is used to describe the time to make a decision based
on the number of available choices. Also called the Hick-Hyman Law.
Hidden dependencies One of the cognitive dimensions. They show how visible
the relationships between design components are, describing the number and
direction of those relationships.
Hierarchical task analysis (HTA) A method for analyzing in detail how tasks
are performed by decomposing goals into subgoals. It is often described in
terms of decomposing tasks into sub-tasks.
Human factors The field that is concerned with providing a good fit between
people and their work or leisure environments. Often used interchangeably with
Ergonomics.