Cognitive Dimensions of Notations: Design Tools for Cognitive Technology

Abstract

???The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com???. Copyright Springer. [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]The Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework has been created to assist the designers of notational systems and information artifacts to evaluate their designs with respect to the impact that they will have on the users of those designs. The framework emphasizes the design choices available to such designers, including characterization of the user???s activity, and the inevitable tradeoffs that will occur between potential design options. The resulting framework has been under development for over 10 years, and now has an active community of researchers devoted to it. This paper first introduces Cognitive Dimensions. It then summarizes the current activity, especially the results of a one-day workshop devoted to Cognitive Dimensions in December 2000, and reviews the ways in which it applies to the field of Cognitive Technology

Visualising Formula Structures to Support Exploratory Modelling

“…Research into complex interactive systems and user empowerment (Blackwell, et al 2001) has provided a range of dimensions that capture some of those core characteristics. The notion of 'premature commitment' describes systems that, in effect, enforce unwanted constraints upon users before they know if they want such constraints.…”

Interaction in the Visualization of Multivariate Networks

“…We group these guidelines into three broad categories-Learnability, Flexibility and Robustness-as suggested by Dix et al [12]. We also draw from other sources, including Cognitive Dimensions of Notations [8,25], which offers some useful vocabulary for discussing design and choice of interactions as well as evaluating the impact a design will have on users.…”

An Experimental Study on the Design and Modeling of Security Concepts in Business Processes

“…The quality of conceptual models is essential to, e.g., prevent errors and to improve the quality of the corresponding systems [18]. Several frameworks exist that provide guidelines on how to design and evaluate visual notations (e.g., [17,19]). For example, the Physics of Notations in [17] consists of nine principles to design visual notations effectively.…”

“…For example, the Physics of Notations in [17] consists of nine principles to design visual notations effectively. Further language evaluation frameworks include the cognitive dimensions of notations [19,20] that provide a set of dimensions to assist designers of visual notations to evaluate these designs. A framework for evaluating the quality of conceptual models is presented in [21].…”