ICS 463, Intro to Human Computer Interaction Design: 5. Knowledge and Mental Models Dan Suthers

What is the mental language? A big historical debate –Analogical? –Propositional? –Both? Then what’s the interlingua? –Emergent from distributed? Note: not about conscious experience Match the external representations to the postulated internal processing

Theories of Knowledge Organization Episodic and Semantic Semantic networks –graphs of relations between concepts –associative activation Schemata –like Java Classes, group related data and operations for objects Scripts –typical patterns of behavior indexed by situations

Theories of Knowledge Organization Mental Models –analogical and propositional –analogical is view independent –“runnable” Functional Models –what does it do, how do you use it –task oriented (task-action mapping) Structural Models –what are the parts, how connected –Inferring function from structure: more work but more flexible

Implications Of Scripts –Seek consistency between systems in interaction required for a given task –Style guidelines and convergence of WIMP Of Mental Models –design the mental model along with the actual system –simplified but accurate –This is what you have been doing? –Do users develop mental models? Watch for it.