Abstract not found

One of the most sweeping changes ever in the ecology of human cognition may be taking place today. People are beginning to learn and use very powerful and sophisticated information processing technology as a matter of daily life. From the perspective of human history, this could be a transitional point dividing a period when machines merely helped us do things from a period when machines will seriously help us think about things. But if this is so, we are indeed still very much within the transition. For most people, computers have more possibility than they have real practical utility.

this paper, I review the history of HCI as steps toward a science of design. My touchstone is Simon's (1969) provocative book he Sciences of the Artificial. The book pre-dates HCI, and many of its specific characterizations and claims about design are no longer authoritative (see Ehn, 1988). Nevertheless, two of Simon's themes echo through the history of HCI, and still provide guidance for charting its continuing development

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

'spaces'represented in graphic spaces. Dimensional variables distributed by value in a spatial distribution (e.g., a three-dimensional visualization of corporate organizational structure such as those shown using the "Information Visualizer" of Card, Robertson, and Mackinlay, 1991). All of these can be multi-modal, including sight, sound, motion, and tactile perception. They are also influenced by different perceptual and cognitive abilities and skills of the user. Some relevant cognitive abilities or skills include: . detection, recognition and categorization of objects . orientation of self or another entity in 2- or 3-dimensional space . relative direction . depth perception . path finding by a sequence of landmarks . movement of an object relative to a frame . translation to 2-dimensional space . mathematical manipulation of spatial relations Clearly, there are individual differences with respect to these abilities and skills; it is less clear whether there also are differe...

A source of intellectual overhead periodically encountered by scientists is the call to be "hard," to insure good science by imposing severe methodological strictures. Newell and Card (1985) have undertaken to impose such strictures on the psychology of humancomputer interaction. Although their discussion contributes to theoretical debate in humancomputer interaction by setting a reference point, their specific argument fails. Their program is unmotivated, is severely limited, and suffers from these limitations in principle. A top priority for the psychology of human-computer interaction should be the articulation of an alternative explanatory program, one that takes as its starting point the need to understand the real problems involved in providing better computer tools for people to use. 1. Newell and Card on Being Hard Newell and Card (1985) have presented a program for psychological research in humancomputer interaction couched as an analysis of how psychology can avoid being ...

This memory system is mainly concerned with the long-term retention of information. Psychologically, the model is underspecified: it is not Figure 2: details of the attentional system resource control mechanisms inference mechanisms working store intended to capture long-term learning, that is the accretion of information into the memory system or the migration of information between its components. However, we recognise that temporarily activated information within the memory system is a form of transitory storage (an effective extension of the working store), and that such information may have been recently added to the memory system. The action system is responsible for detailed control of output via the musculature. It has no conceptual planning abilities, rather its activity is determined in two ways. It can receive abstract commands from the attentional system, such as "log on", requiring a complex sequence of actions; it can also be triggered directly by external input received via the recognition component of the memory system (both input and resulting action plan can be complex --- a skilled user might detect and correct a spelling mistake while engrossed in a conversation). The translation from command to action sequence relies heavily upon procedural schemas (action plans) held in the memory system, and includes provision for the automatic processing of external information and feedback. Thus the task of logging on requires the cognitive system to recognise both internal and external feedback from key presses, and perhaps also visual prompts from the display, information which the action system will use as triggers for further action. These two alternative means of accessing the action system are a fundamental feature of the model, and, following Schneider,...

One of the central concepts in human-computer interaction (HCI) is usability. Interestingly, in spite of its brief history as a scientific and applied discipline, HCI has already produced several different views on usability. These views are, in turn, interrelated with how research and systems development are seen. This paper identifies five different perspectives on usability: general theory, usability engineering, subjectivity, flexibility and sociality. Their interrelations and implications for usability-oriented systems development are discussed.

this report is distributed will allow you to answer questions about your methodologies and findings, as well as limit any possible misreadings of the conclusions. Task analyses are often an integral part of a thorough needs assessment. They identify the complex range of actions that users must perform, and they further Selber, Johnson-Eilola, and Mehlenbacher 15

this article, we describe a framework for managing training evaluation in such contexts. We illustrate by example the feasibility of taking a broad approach toward training evaluation