The Cognitive Dimensions framework outlined here is generalised broad-brush approach to usability evaluation for all types of information artifact, from programming languages through interactive systems to domestic devices. It also has promise of interfacing successfully with organisational and sociological analyses. Keywords Usability evaluation, cognitive dimensions, notations, telephone, Prolog, spreadsheet, cognitive psychology. 1. INTRODUCTION We are living through a technological revolution, in which much research is necessarily dominated by immediate aims and short-term goals, and most research papers report some new accomplishment. The accomplishment may be useful but generalisations from one creation to another are very weak, unless the second is a direct descendant from the first. This paper is a contrast. Science-based engineering rests on idealisations (capacitance, gravity). Physical or chemical theory describing these idealisations is combined with experience and cra...

This paper describes work focused upon the formal analysis of the evaluative framework offered by cognitive dimensions. The paper introduces a tool for assisting with this analysis (CiDa). Findings from using the tool to analyse a series of example systems are described and discussed in relation to proposed cognitive dimension inter-dependencies. Exploiting Cognitive Dimensions Cognitive dimensions have received considerable attention within the human-computer interaction and the psychology of programming. The concepts on which the dimensions are based have received broad interest within a variety of domains where the uptake and complexity of notations and artefacts has been seen as a bottleneck in their effective exploitation, see Blackwell and Bilotta (2000),

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Abstract. The rise of interest in declarative languages for process modeling both justifies and demands empirical investigations into their presumed advantages over more traditional, imperative alternatives. Our concern in this paper is with the ease of maintaining business process models, for example due to changing performance or conformance demands. We aim to contribute to a rigorous, theoretical discussion of this topic by drawing a link to well-established research on maintainability of information artifacts.