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Software development remains mentally challenging despite the continual advancement of training, techniques, and tools. Because completely automating software development is currently impossible, it makes sense to seriously consider how tools can improve the mental activities of developers apart from automating them away. Such mental assistance can be called “cognitive support”. Understanding and developing cognitive support in software engineering tools is an important research issue but, unfortunately, at the moment our theoretical foundations for it are inadequately developed. Furthermore, much of the relevant research has occurred outside of the software engineering community, and is therefore not easily available to the researchers who typically develop software engineering tools. Tool evaluation, comparison, and development are consequently impaired. The present work introduces a theoretical framework intended to seed further systematic study of cognitive support in the field of software engineering tools. This theoretical framework, called RODS, imports ideas and methods from a field of cognitive science called “distributed cognition”. The crucial concept in RODS is that cognitive support can be understood and explained in terms of the computational advantages that are conferred when cognition is redistributed between software developer and their tools and environment. The name RODS, in fact, comes from the

StatPlay is multimedia for conceptual understanding in the introductory statistics course in any discipline. Its aim is to help overcome misconceptions about fundamental statistical concepts, and thus improve education and promote highly desirable reform of statistical practice by researchers in the social and behavioural sciences. StatPlay comprises simulations and tools in a number of microworlds in the broad areas of distributions, data, sampling, estimation and statistical significance testing. StatPlay design strategies include provision of vivid take-home images of concepts, multiple images of concepts dynamically linked, a high degree of interactivity, and a facility for the recording and playback of multimedia demonstrations. Classroom experience with StatPlay has been very positive, and commercialisation is now being sought. We give a brief description of the goals, design and use of StatPlay, our multimedia for introductory statistics. The context is that we see two fundamental challenges for statistics educators: overcoming widespread misconceptions about key statistical concepts, and helping to reform statistical practice in psychology and other disciplines.

Combining interactive technology with traditional toys promises to significantly enhance the educational value of children’s play. Designing such augmented toy environments, however, requires designers to take both the traditional, technology-less nature of the toy, and the novel interactive aspects of the newly accessible virtual environment into account. This article attempts to present a unified set of guidelines for the design and implementation of augmented toy environments, drawing upon existing literature in traditional and educational toy and game design, as well as our own experiences in building mixed reality game environments. We also offer practical advice on the use of these guidelines by reporting on our own augmented toy environment for young children, called the Augmented Knight’s Castle, which encourages learning about the Middle Ages in a playful way.

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A non-immersive virtual reality interface is conceptualized and developed to augment a conventional children’s web portal. Two focus group studies were undertaken to evaluate the interface, the result of which show that children endorse and embrace enthusiastically the concept of browsing for information in a virtual environment. Résumé: Une interface virtuelle non immersive est conceptualisée et développée pour améliorer un portail Web traditionnel pour enfants. Deux groupes de discussion ont entrepris l’évaluation de l’interface. Le résultat démontre que les enfants approuvent et adoptent avec enthousiasme le concept de furetage de l’information dans un environnement virtuel. 1.

In this article, we describe and analyze the emergence of a scientific discipline, usability science,whichbridgesbasicresearchincognitionandperceptionandthedesignofusable technology.Ananalogybetweenusabilityscienceandmedicalscience(whichbridgesbasicbiologicalscienceandmedicalpractice)isdiscussed,withlessonsdrawnfromtheway in which medical practice translates practical problems into basic research and fosters technology transfer from research to technology. The similarities and differences of usability science to selected applied and basic research disciplines—human factors and human–computer interaction (HCI) is also described. The underlying philosophical differences between basic cognitive research and usability science are described as Wundtian structuralism versus Jamesian pragmatism. Finally, issues that usability science is likely to continue to address—presentation of information, user navigation, interaction, learning, and methods—are described with selective reviews of work in graph reading, controlled movement, and method development and validation. 1.

through constraints identification, solution space optimisation and reuse.

The objective of this paper is to examine in detail the activity of programming as such. In particular, it is concerned with those aspects of requirements analysis and design which are (and can probably only be) embedded into programming itself, regardless of the method or project model that is used. Software development is usually based on a rational organization of work into stages such as requirements engineering, analysis, design, programming, testing, etc. Each is seen as resulting in artefacts which are then further refined and concretized throughout later stages. Different methods are often contrasted to each other with regards to the amount of design that is required before implementation, the looping of stages and the extent of formal documentation which is handed from one stage to the next. However, little evidence can be found that one method is actually better than the others. This paper indicates that one reason might be that programming is poorly understood and that too many methods and process models still wrongly assume that programming simply translates an existing design into code.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 951-22-7512-0 (print) ISBN 951-22-7513-9 (electronic)