1. Cognitive Models Agenda Who Am I? Cognitive Models
Situated Action
Activity Theory
Distributed Cognition
How to use these models
Compare to Engineering Models
CS 6750 Fall 2001

2. Who Am I? Elizabeth Mynatt Associate Professor, CoC, HCI
Everyday Computing Lab
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3. Models of Human Cognition
Human as “information processing system”
Predict performance, not describe truth
Other models?
Distributed cognition
Activity theory
Situated action
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4. Situated Action Emergent property of moment-by-moment interactions
Relation between persons and arenas
Improvisation
Detailed temporal accounts
De-emphasizes rigid plans and rational problem solving
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5. Activity Theory Subject, object, actions and operations
Flexible in face of changing conditions
Mediation by artifacts
Transformative relationship
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6. Distributed Cognition
Distributed collection of interacting people and artifacts
Less emphasis on individual cognition; system goal
Representations and transformations
Collaboration
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7. Comparing Models Goals versus “retrospective reconstructions”
Persistent structures
People and things
Level of detail
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8. Square 1 What do you know? Where not to start: Marketing data
Detailed surveys
Jumping into design
Asking the customer …
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9. Knowing your user Understand underlying structure / goals / values …
Make tacit knowledge explicit
Train your intuition
Enable tech transfer
Apprentice model
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10. Observation You just landed on planet X
Teach someone to drive in a conf room
People use knowledge in the world
Lots of non-verbal details
Listen to the language
Videotaping
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11. Interviews Observation grounds interviews Keeping the interview open
Cheat sheets
Avoid summaries, abstractions
Create interpretations together
“What should I have asked?”
Tape recording
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12. Other techniques Exercises Focus groups Surveys Sorting, ordering
Reaction to prototypes
Surveys
Detailed data, evaluation
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13. Triangulation Multiple viewpoints Different types of data
Discover bias
Better data
Shared understanding
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14. Model Human Processor Perceptual, cognitive and motor processors
Recognize-act cycle
Engineering models
GOMS
KLM GOMS
CCT
CS 6750 Fall 2001