Josh,
thanks for that "crash course." It definitely gave me a better lens into
when and how the tool could be applied.

Cheers,
Todd

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:20 PM, Josh Weihnacht <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Having taken a class with Bonnie where we used CogTool, I'll give it a
> shot.
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Todd Moy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Bonnie -
>>
>> could you give us a basic idea about what CogTool does--and how it might
>> be
>> applied?
>>
>
>
> CogTool is basically about automating predictions of how long it would take
> an expert user to perform a task or tasks on a system.  You build screens
> with various widgets on them and then use these screens to create one or
> more scripts of how a user would perform some task in the system.  The
> program then estimates how long it would take an expert user to perform that
> task in that manner.
>
> >From the site, I seem to believe this is used to model efficiency along a
>> single path. Assuming individual flows within a storyboard could be widely
>> variable in terms of completion time, would you use this tool to identify
>> those as areas to think more critically about?
>
>
> It can certainly be used to model two different ways of performing a task
> on the system (say with a mouse vs a keyboard.  or even two completely
> different flows).  Then it will give you estimates of how long each task
> would take an expert user to perform, along with a graph of all the various
> events (moving the cursor to a target, clicking the mouse, recognizing that
> the screen has changed, etc).  This can help you to identify where time
> savings could be found in order to make the task more efficient.  It is
> certainly intended to help you think critically about ways to improve
> completion time as well as to compare completion times of different tasks.
>
>
>
>> Also, do you believe this
>> could be applied to an environment that supports multiple ways of
>> achieving
>> a goal? The tutorial leads me to think "no", but it's entirely possible
>> I've
>> missed the point. :)
>>
>
> Yes, definitely.  Sounds like there is more work for the CogTool team to do
> on the tutorial.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> best
> Josh Weihnacht
>
> http://www.inputpattern.com
>



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