1. Understanding Users Cognition & Cognitive Frameworks
Dr. Dania Bilal
IS 588
Spring 2008

2. Cognition What goes on in our minds when carrying out activities
Involves cognitive processes
Attention
Perception and recognition
Memory
Learning
Reading, speaking, listening
Decision-making, problem-solving, reasoning, planning, making analogies

3. Attention Involves Ease and difficulty of attention depends on
auditory and/or
visual senses
Ease and difficulty of attention depends on
Whether we have goals
Based information to look for, time involved
Will drive browsing, scanning or
Searching, asking friends

4. Attention See Text, fig. 3.2, p. 96.
Whether information presented/displayed is easy to understand and manipulate
Dense vs. simple screens
Visual cues used and appropriateness
Spacing, bordering, fonts
Instructions to carry out tasks
See Text, fig. 3.2, p. 96.

5. Attention: Design Implications
Make information salient
Use graphics, color, animation, ordering of items, spacing, sequencing of information.
Avoid cluttering interface
Use commonly used metaphors
Use fill-ins as appropriate
Use meaningful icons
See p.101 for additional design for attention

6. Memory Allows recalling knowledge
Humans can’t recall everything they store in their memories
Filtering process is used to decide on information to process and memorize
Information is encoded into the brain and retrieved based on context in which it is encoded

7. Cognition Recognition is easier than recall GUIs supports recognition
Web browsers support recognition
Command-driven and DOS-based systems don’t support recognition
Why?
George Miller’s theory: 7+or -2

8. Memory Supporting recall See also text, p. 110 for design implications
Design based on familiarity
Design based on mnemonics
Design based on context or relevance of information to user
Example: what’s the name of your first significant other? Used to authenticate a user’s forgotten password.
See also text, p. 110 for design implications

9. Reading, Speaking, Listening
Depends on ease with which people can read, speak, and listen
Reading can be quicker than speaking or listening
Listening requires less cognitive effort than reading or speaking
Preference of listening vs. reading depends on person’s cognitive ability
Design Implications: Text, p. 114.

10. Cognitive Frameworks Represent and predict user behavior
Have impact on interaction design
Mental models
Theory of action
Information processing
External cognition
Distributed cognition

11. Mental Models
Knowledge people have of how to interact with a system and how the system works
The more people learn about a system and how it functions, the more their mental models develop.
Question: Why do people use erroneous or incomplete or inaccurate mental models when interacting with a system?

12. Mental Models
Most people have poor mental models of how the Internet, search engines, and other computer-based technologies work.
Norman (83): users mental models are often incomplete, easily confusable, based on inappropriate analogies, and superstition.
They find it difficult to identify, describe, or solve a problem, and lack the words or concepts to explain what’s happening.

13. Mental Models What is needed of users to do about their mental models?
How should interaction designers address these problems in designing systems?
Students: Discuss these questions in relation to:
User’s role
System designer’s role

14. Theory of Action
Norman (1986) specifies 7 stages of an activities based on theory of action.
Establish a goal
Form an intention
Specify action or sequence
Execute action
Perceive the system state
Interpret the state
Evaluate the system state vis-à-vis goal and intention

15. Theory of Action
Students: Use the stages of this theory and apply it to an activity for interacting with a Web engine.
How do the stages apply to your activity?
Are they linear or non-linear based on your activity?
What’s wrong with this theory?

16. Theory of Action Core concepts
Gulf of execution
Gulf of evaluation
Best represented in the figure showing how these two gulfs can be bridged (text, p. 121).
Roles of designers and users in bridging the gulfs to reduce cognitive effort required to complete a task.

17. Information Processing
Human mind as an information processor
Information enters and exit the mind through a series of ordered processing stages.
See Text, fig. 3.11, p. 123.
Approach is based on modeling mental activities that happen exclusively in the head.
Students: Provide comments about the model.

18. Alternative approach to Information processing model
Study of cognitive activities in the context in which they occur, analyzing cognition as it happens.
Focus on environment and how certain structures can aid cognition and reduce cognitive load

19. Reducing cognitive load
Externalizing cognition
Externalizing to reduce memory load
Use external representations (e.g., notes, diaries, lists, and other external reminders)
Computational offloading
Use of a tool in conjunction with external reminders (e.g., use a calculator to solve a mathematical problem)
Annotating and cognitive tracing
Modify representations to reflect changes that occurred (e.g., crossing off or underlining completed tasks on a list)