user assistance: cognitive architecture

RAY GALLONC U L T U R E C O M

Presentation © 2013 Ray Gallon all rights reserved

User Assistance: Cognitive Architecture

The Transfo

rmation Socie

ty

Saturday, 28 September 2013


Who Is This Guy?Ray Gallon - The Humanist Nerd

Research collaborator and principal, The Transformation Society, a new research and training institute in Barcelona, Spain

■ 20 years in technical communication with major companies such as G.E. Healthcare, Alcatel, IBM, etc.

■ Member, board of directors, Society for Technical Communication (STC)

■ Past president, STC France

■ Award-‐winning radio producer and journalist – CBC, NPR, France Culture, etc. and former programme manager, WNYC-‐FM, New York Public Radio

Owner/Consultant, Culturecom – specialist in usability, content strategy, and user assistance for software



Who Is This Guy?Ray Gallon - The Humanist Nerd

NOT AN INFORMATION ARCHITECT!

■ What makes you think you can speak to this crowd?

■The Hairball of Content!

■We’re All Just Content Workers!



When User Assistance was “Documentation”

Technical writers were at the end of the food chain:

Following engineers around

Writing what they said they did

https://computing.seas.harvard.edu/download/attachments/51708221/documents.jpg?

http://www.ebsqart.com/Art/FISH/Mixed/732427/650/650/BIG-‐FISH-‐LITTLE-‐FISH-‐Food-‐Chain.jpg

User Assistance was an Add-‐onToday, UA must be a designed subsystem

integrated into the product



Provide Decision Support

Modern software’s complexity, features, & power can leave users perplexed – often just when they

have some immediate, contingent need:

“I need to get this done, and NOW!.”

User assistance that is limited to procedures cannot help people with contingent needs.

People with contingent needs are not going to wade through long conceptual texts.



Experience is More Important than Taxonomy

In traditional “static” documentation, the product gives meaning to the docs.

Users’ experience with the product takes them from the abstract realm of reading about the product...



Experience is More Important than Taxonomy

In traditional “static” documentation, the product gives meaning to the docs.

Users’ experience with the product takes them from the abstract realm of reading about the product...

to the reality of performance.

For software, we can go straight to performance-‐based meaning if we embed the user assistance in the product itself.



People Learn Best by Doing

People learn about product use by

doing something and making

connections in the process.

BUT: is memorizing a procedure by

rote necessary for competency?

How do I even know if I need to do this?



Performance-Based Meaning?

STEP 1STEP 2STEP 3

DO THIS

DON’T DO THAT

NOTE:WARNING!If conc

epts are

important, and

we

learn best by

doing...

...how do we learn concepts by doing?

Put them where they will be useful and remembered:



Double Embeddedness

Embed pr

ocedural

UA direc

tly into

the Inte

rface Embed simple concepts directly

into the UACognitive Science backs this up



Cognitive Bases: Gestalt Psychology

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

Tries to understand how we acquire and maintain stable percepts in a noisy world.

The brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-‐organizing tendencies.

The human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts

The whole is “other” than the sum of its parts.

We fill in blank spaces to complete images.John Carroll favours this kind of inferential learning in minimalism.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology









Cognitive Bases: Constructivism

Learner experiences an environment first-‐hand, gets trust-‐worthy knowledge.

Self-‐directed learners must act on the environment to acquire and test new knowledge.

Instructors are facilitators, not teachers.

The learning context is central to the learning itself

Learning is an active, social process.

Learners should collaborate to arrive at shared understanding.

This social approach has developed into…

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)


Knowledge is activated in the world as much as in the head of an individual.

It exists within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities.

Cognitive Bases: Connectivism

Learning = creating connections and elaborating a network. In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organisation, information, data, feelings and images.

Learning may reside in non-‐human appliances.

Learning is more critical than knowing.

Maintaining and nurturing connections facilitates continual

learning. Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.

Currency (accurate, up-‐to-‐date knowledge) is the intent of learning activities.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism


Integrated Learning: Dimensions of Competency

Integrated Learning

Literal Content

Communication

Cognition

A1 Beginner

A2 Basic

B1 Threshold

Community

Complexity

Criteria Selection

C1 Functional

B2 Advanced

C2 Mastery Quantity

Qua

lity

In moving from contingent need to confusion, we still learn more.

Interfaces, hardware, software, user assistance, hands-‐on and conceptual combined

COMPLEXITY ≠ CHAOS!

Quantity of information > contingent need

learner gets confused, sense of chaos

Can’t keep track of it all



As richness of content increases, our knowledge becomes more and more complex, cognit ive ly speaking. We return regularly to the same place, but on a higher cognitive level

COGNITIVE-‐SYMBOLIC COMPLEXITY

RICH

NES

S OF TH

E CO

NTE

NT

+

+-

The Cognitive Spiral: Generating Cognitive Demand

Bloom’s Pyramid

Adapted from a scheme by Dr. Neus Lorenzo

OPPORTUNIT

Y, PRACTIC

E



“EDIBLE!

”

-Guide Michelin

What if a Restaurant Advertised itself like this?

Diners don’t want edible They want delicious!

WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE

FOR THE ENTIRE CUSTOM

ER

EXPERIENCE - WHEREVER

WE MAY BE IN THE ORG C

HART

Customers don’t want usable

They want a great experience!



What Happens When We Learn by Doing?

Seen this before?

Is it help

ful?

What impression does a user get of your company when s/he sees this on the screen?




Roger C. Schank’s Schema -‐ We remember independent, self-‐contained scripts, or Memory Organization Packets (MOP’s)

Restaurant Airplane Clothing Shop

PayBeing seated Eat

Choose

Romantic Conversation

PayBeing seated Eat

Choose

Pay

Choose

Fasten Seatbelt

Try on

MOP’s are composed of scenes, which can be generalized from one MOP to another

Serve wine

REF: http://cogprints.org/637/1/LearnbyDoing_Schank.html




If we learn about “paying” in a restaurant...

Are we learning something specific to the MOP “Restaurant?”

Are we learning something generalizable to multiple MOP’s -‐ i.e. a scene called “paying?”

Are we learning something about some more abstract MOP that has nothing to do with the current MOP or scene (e.g. “economy”)?

You are the architect of this experience!

REF: http://cogprints.org/637/1/LearnbyDoing_Schank.html



...AND WHEN????

Integrated Competency Learning

Adapted by Dr. Neus Lorenzo from Phil Ball & Keith Kelly (2009) Ref: http://ow.ly/dLK8g & http://goo.gl/Ul3A2

+ Individually significantcontextualisation (contingency)

+Socio-‐cultural construction(information sharing, mentoring)

+Procedural Memorisation

+ Cognitive construction and process reasoning

+Code: Mastery of the language, interface, iconography...

+Thematic knowledge(SME)

User Learning Space

WHERE IN THIS SPACE DO YOU WANT YOUR

USERS?

The architecture of the scenes we design for our user/learners are determinant

factors


http://ow.ly/dLK8g

http://ow.ly/dLK8g

http://goo.gl/Ul3A2

http://goo.gl/Ul3A2

User A

ssista

nce ha

s

to be

Google

able!

And needs to come up first…

A Group is not a Community

“Finding is the new Doing” –Ian Barker

Create your own stakeholder communities-including user/learners as full collaborators



Integrated Learning Communities

Make you

r cookie

s PublicLet people know what you

are tracking.

Attribute ma

terial you r

euse in

your UA – fr

om both

Treat

inside

stake

holder

s and

custom

ers th

e same

way

Turn users’

tips and tri

cks

into trainin

g materials



RAY GALLONCULTURECOM

Email: [email protected]

Thank You!

Google Plus: +Ray GallonTwitter: @RayGallonLinkedIn: Ray Gallon

Check out my blog, Rant of a Humanist Nerd:http://humanistnerd.culturecom.net

Portions of this presentation based on research by

the Transformation Society Research group.

Link to Adobe webinars on UA and cognitive science here: http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2013/02/cognitive_design_user_assistance.html

Related white papers published on Adobe site:•Changing Paradigms in Technology and Communication•Crossing Boundaries: Implications for the Content IndustriesLink: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?event=custom&sku=FS0003673&e=tcs_whitepaper


http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2013/02/cognitive_design_user_assistance.html














http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?event=custom&sku=FS0003673&e=tcs_whitepaper






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