{"id":78,"date":"2009-04-23T21:10:07","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T21:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/wordpress\/?p=78"},"modified":"2021-12-22T20:22:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T20:22:27","slug":"designing-for-the-gullible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Designing for the gullible"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice article<\/a> in todays Guardian by Charles Arthur regarding user gullibility in the face of technological systems.\u00a0 In this case, he’s talking about the voice risk analysis (VRA) software used by local councils and insurance companies to detect fraud (see related article<\/a> by same author), which performs fairly poorly when evaluated, but is reckoned by those bureaucrats who purchased the system to be a huge money-saver.\u00a0 The way it works is this – operator receives a probability that the claimant is lying (based on “brain traces in the voice” – in reality probably changes in the fundamental frequency and pitch of the voice), and on this basis,\u00a0 may elect to ask more detailed questions.<\/p>\n

Charles Arthur makes the point that we’re naive and gullible when faced with a technological diagnosis.\u00a0 And this is fair point, whether it’s the voice analysis system or a physiological computing system providing feedback that you’re happy or tired or anxious.\u00a0 Why do we tend to yield to computerised diagnosis?\u00a0 In my view, you can blame science for that – in our positivist culture, cold objective numbers will always trump warm subjective introspection.\u00a0 The first experimental psychologist, Wilhem Wundt (1832-1920) pointed to this dichotomy when he distinguished between mediated and unmediated consciousness.\u00a0 The latter is linked to introspection whereas the former demands the intervention of an instrument or technology.\u00a0 If you go outside on an icy day and say to yourself “it’s cold today” – your consciousness is unmediated.\u00a0 If you supplement this insight by reading a thermometer “wow, two degrees below zero”\u00a0 – that’s mediated consciousness.\u00a0 One is broadly true from that person’s perspective whereas the other is precise from point of view of almost anyone.<\/p>\n

The main point of today’s article is that we tend to trust technological diagnosis even when the scientific evidence supporting system performance is flawed (as is claimed in the case of the VRA system).\u00a0 Again, true enough – but in fairness, most users of the VRA didn’t get the chance to review the system evaluation data.\u00a0 The staff are trained to believe the system by the company rep who sold the system and trained them how to use it.\u00a0 From the perspective of the customers, insurance staff may have suddenly started to ask them a lot of detailed questions, which indicated their stories were not believed, which probably made the customers agitated and anxious, therefore raising the pitch of the voice and turning themselves from possibles to definites.\u00a0 The VRA system works very well in this context because nobody really knew how it worked or even whether it worked.<\/p>\n

What does all this mean for physiological computing?\u00a0 First of all, system designers and users must accept that psychophysiological measurement will never give a perfect, isomorphic, one-to-one model of human experience.\u00a0 The system builds a model of the user state, not a perfect representation.\u00a0 Given this restriction, system designers must be clever in terms of providing feedback to the user.\u00a0 Explicit and continuous feedback from the system is likely to undermine the credibility of the system in the eyes of the user.\u00a0 Users of physiological computing systems must be sufficiently informed to understand that feedback from the system is an educated assessment.<\/p>\n

The construction of physiological computing systems is a bridge-building exercise in some ways – a link between the nervous system and the computer chip.\u00a0 Unlike similar constructions, this bridge is unlikely to ever meet in the middle.\u00a0 For that to happen, the user must rely his or her gullibility to make the necessary leap of faith to close the circuit.\u00a0 Unrealistic expectation will lead to eventual disappointment and disillusionment, conservative cynicism and suspicious will leave the whole physiological computing concept stranded at the starting gate – it’s up to designers to build interfaces that lead the user down the middle path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice article in todays Guardian by Charles Arthur regarding user gullibility in the face of technological systems.\u00a0 In this case, he’s talking about the voice risk analysis (VRA) software used by local councils and insurance companies to detect fraud (see related article by same author), which performs fairly poorly when evaluated, but is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9,28,61,79],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pY315-1g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4759,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/4759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}