Hang on in there, Bob. Although we're not there yet, what you're doing is interesting (to me) and (I anticipate) ultimately fruitful.
But, in ergo-speak, the "cognitive complexity" of the "paradigm" is enormous. This means you no sooner bridge one mental gap when you expose the next. Work on cognitive complexity (as applied to computing -- it was going on in other areas long before) began in the early 80s, with names like Hammond, Morton, Long, Chapanis and Eason. Funded by IBM, the aim was to replace much tedious expensive experimentation on live subjects (the old HF way) by some sort of theoretical analysis which developers themselves could employ. And what's the point of live testing anyway unless you the developer can generate promising paradigms to test? I think I can still draw a cognitive map: a tool for reducing cognitive complexity. Unfortunately a map to fit an American can be a bad mismatch for a Japanese, or even a Brit. Which is maybe why the research petered out -- or is it just that I've not been following it? Anyway there's no evidence of big developers like M$ applying it in their main products. Apple have a long tradition of applying good ergonomics, but even they're slackening of late. I'll take a stab at it over the next few days if I get time. I still haven't delivered on the task analysis, I know. It's a question of who's kicking me hardest at any one moment. But without a cognitive map to guide design decisions, we're fumbling in the dark. Ian On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> wrote: > Sorry if you feel that you are having to "jump through hoops" trying out > all of these schemes. Each time you provide a new example, what's good > and bad just pops out, Too bad we can't visualize all this beforehand, > but it seems that we have to actually see it work, to spot the issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
