{"id":1007,"date":"2012-04-10T14:42:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T13:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dpscomputing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2012-04-10T15:03:25","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T14:03:25","slug":"cognitive-models-in-computing-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/10\/cognitive-models-in-computing-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive Models In Computing Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dpscomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1008\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/10\/cognitive-models-in-computing-applications\/userinterface\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface.png\" data-orig-size=\"600,428\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"User Interface\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface-300x214.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface.png\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1008\" title=\"User Interface\" src=\"http:\/\/dpscomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface-300x214.png\" alt=\"User Interface\" width=\"300\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface-300x214.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface-150x107.png 150w, https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/userinterface.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>There are two important cognitive (mental) model principles to deal with when designing computing applications.<\/p>\n<p>These are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Principle of pictorial realism<\/li>\n<li>Principle of the moving part<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The principle of pictorial realism means that the objects that form the different parts of your computer program should look like how a human would visually interpret them. \u00a0For example, if we were writing a car simulation application, and we were representing the speed of the virtual car in our application, we would use a speedometer &#8211; as this is what a human would associate with telling the speed of a car in the real world. \u00a0Also, we would have the pointer on the speedometer move round and point further to the right the higher the speed of our virtual car. \u00a0This makes it easy for a user to understand and makes it realistic. \u00a0Although we could have the speedometer go from right to left rather than the standard left to right this would cause confusion and a greater learning period required for the user, and, although they would eventually become used to it, it creates an additional workload on the users mind and cognition that is not required.<\/p>\n<p>There we have looked at a simple, one element situation. \u00a0If there are multiple elements, as there will be in most apps, it is important that when all the elements are put together on the screen that they represent the environment as it would appear in the real world. \u00a0For example, using our virtual car app, you wouldn&#8217;t put the accelerator on the passenger side, as this is not how it would be represented in real life and again causes unnecessary confusion for the user.<\/p>\n<p>The basic idea of this principle is that when representing system objects and values visually, make them look like how they would appear in the real world and \/ or how the user would expect that they would appear. \u00a0If there are certain well accepted standards for the type of application that you are developing, be sure to include these. \u00a0Users like familiarity!<\/p>\n<p>The principle of the moving elements ties in with the principle mentioned above. \u00a0Users will have a cognitive model on how they expect something to move. \u00a0In our example above, the user will expect the speedometer pointer to move further right the higher the speed that the virtual car is travelling.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to work out and analyse, prior to developing your application, what you target user set expects and how they would visualise it in their minds. \u00a0Then you should match the expected cognitive (mental) models of these users to how your application works and performs tasks. \u00a0To not comply with this will only frustrate the users of your application &#8211; and if you are trying to get users to change over to a new application, then you want to do everything you can to make the transition as smooth as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are two important cognitive (mental) model principles to deal with when designing computing applications. These are: Principle of pictorial realism Principle of the moving part The principle of pictorial realism means that the&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[331,332,329,330,334,335,333,336],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cognition","tag-cognitive","tag-cognitive-models","tag-congitive-psychology","tag-hci","tag-hci-in-computing","tag-human-computer-interaction","tag-user-interaction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsfA-gf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dpscomputing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}