Cognitive Dimensions Flashcards
what are the cognitive dimensions?
a set of discussion tools to evaluate properties of a design
- make principles explicit
- improve the quality of discussion
- provide descriptive terms for key issues
- reminder of what common issues need to be considered
- like heuristics
what is viscosity?
resistance to change
A system that is highly viscous will require the user to
take many steps to accomplish their goal e.g. controlF allows this
what is visibility?
ability to view components easily
how easy it to see to see the results of edits?
what is premature commitment?
constraints on the order of doing things
how easy is it to change something, like program structure
what are hidden dependencies?
important links between entities are not visible
how easy is it to see dependencies between cells in a spreadsheet?
what is role-expressiveness?
the purpose of an entity is readily inferred. it is easy to discover why information has been structure in a certain way, if different entities look similar, discovering their relationship can be difficult
how easy is it to see the type of a variable or text in the editor?
what is error-proneness?
the notation invites mistakes and the system gives little protection
linting features in an IDE, proactively finding errors
what is abstraction?
types and availablity of abstraction mechanisms. abstractions(redefinitions) can change the underlying notation such as macros and find and replace commands
what are the minimum and maximum levels of abstraction available?
what is secondary notation?
extra information in means other than formal syntax
comment notation in programming languages, or color or format changes that indicate information such as in an IDE displaying words different coloiurs
what is closeness of mapping?
closeness of representation to domain
how closely is the notation to the result it is describing
If the button “Add to Cart” sends an item to the wish list instead of to the cart, that element is very far from the result it is describing
what is consistency?
similar semantics are expressed in similar systematic forms
Using consistent patterns allows users to recognize
familiar symbols as they move through a system. There
are many examples of consistent UI layout within a single set of
related products (e.g. Microsoft Office). However, across operating
systems, the onscreen search feature is often placed in the top right of
the screen in a consistent location
what is diffuseness?
verbosity of language
some notations are long-winded
How many symbols or how much space does the notation require to produce a certain result?
what are hard mental operations?
high demand on cognitive resources
a notation can make things difficult to work out
how much does the user need to understand to use the ide? suggesting function names may be helpful
what is provisionality?
degree of commitment to actions or marks
does the system alow users to make tentative sketches?
how much code needs to be written to try something out?
what is progressive evaluation?
work-to-date can be checked at any time
How easy is it to evaluate and obtain feedback on an incomplete solution?
