John DeRiggi

Hw9

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What the class found interesting about the article

Several participants mentioned the artcile's discussion about ethnography of cognitive systems and keeping a history of representations to assist users in working with the most relevant information. Others wrote about the article's broader topics like the study of how groups of people think and understand together. I am surprised more people did not mention the human computer interaction section concerned wih how to move beyond the direct manipulation interfaces . Studying how people use representations and what strategies they employ is and interesting topic. It made me think of the differen representations of tic-tac-toe presented to us in class.


The main message of the article.

Most of the class understood the main message of the article as one of two topics: collaboration, and the interaction of humans with their environment. As the article argues, these topics are considered closely related to eachother. This linkage is made when the article discusses that in order to understand human cognition, you cannont neglect the importance of the environment, or culture defined by how the collaboration takes place.


What the class wants to know more about

Some participants expressed an interest for more information on representation. Dipti Mandalia made an interesting query with respect to the articles attention to how humans use representations and interfaces that we as a class were exposed to such as janus and he edc. Others wanted to know more about some of the larger themes in the article, such as distributed cognition, and distributed system collaboration


The class' s understanding of

• Distributed Cognition
  The class almost entirely understood distributed cognition as the interaction of individuals with other individuals. Some expanded to include humans interaction with their environment and with artifiacts in their environment.


• Ethnography
  Most participants described ethnography as the relationship humans have with their environment.


• Active Representation
  The class seemed less clear and cohesive on a definition of this term. Some were specific and described it as digital objects that react to historical use. Others wrote more generally in its relation to cognition.

Old and new HCI
Much of the class discussed old HCI as interfaces which do not take into account the environment or the culture in which the interface is being used. New ones use information from the environment to assist users in their task.


Extended research

Some people talked about using concepts from this article in the EDC. It seems to me that the EDC already has a lot of capability for ethnography.