Information Design I:

"Things that Make Us Smart," by Donald Norman

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World

The chapter distinguishes between experiential and reflective cognition and identifies their role in the optimal design of educational multimedia

Experiential cognition is likened to automaticity or reactive thought driven by patterns of information understood largely through tuning or practice. In contrast, reflective reasoning is described as "slow and laborious", often requiring a complex thought process in an environment that affords minimum distraction. Because of its complex nature, reflective reasoning often requires external support through various aids as well as the assistance of other people. Reflective reasoning is achieved through the cognitive process of restructuring where new conceptual skills and structures must be acquired and new schema developed enabling learners to "loose themselves" in the task at hand.

Norman states that the problem with most technologies is that they force learners into experiential or reflective through almost exclusively where a more optimal flow would prove beneficial. Norman asserts that learners should be motivated while at the same time given opportunity to reflect and explore.

To me, Norman is underscoring the need to incorporate interactivity in a product's design to create a pleasurable user experience. Experiences where users "lose themselves" in the task at hand are typically creative, adaptive and pleasurable. These are the properties typical of truly interactive experiences.

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation

Norman states that "the powers of cognition come from abstraction and representation: the ability to represent perceptions, experiences, and thoughts in some medium other than that in which they have occurred, abstracted away from irrelevant details." If the representation are "just right" then new insights and knowledge can be constructed.

According to Norman, good representations capture the essential components of the event and leave out extraneous information that doesn't aid in understanding. Learners should not be distracted by irrelevant information. Representations should be appropriate for the learner and appropriate for the task. Finally, to facilitate experiential cognition, the properties of the representation should match the properties of what is being represented. (i.e. Naturalness Principle).

Norman's guidelines should be adhered to in order to eliminate germane cognitive load. His recommendation on taking advantabe of objects' affordances to reduce cognitive load and alieviate user frustration should be applied when designing multimedia simulations. The more that is done to eliminate germane cognitive load in a learning context, the more learners are able to concentrate on the learning task at hand and extract meaning from it.

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person

Norman describes two views of cognitive artifacts: the personal point of view or impact the artifact has on the individual, and the system point of view, described as how the combination of the artifact an person is more powerful than either in isolation. Norman categorizes cognitive artifacts as surface artifacts or internal artifacts. Surface artifacts only provide surface representations and what you see is what you get. With internal artifacts, hidden representations exist and there is more than meets the eye.