QUESTIONS The usability researcher always tries to get involved with the users thinking. One of the most important parts of research is to access the user’s cognitive schemas. - What are these cognitive schemas? - Why should we know them, and how could we access, measure and research them? - How and why determine our cognitive processes with online surfaces in the rst place? Above all: how can we use these data in information architecture planning / web design / usability / UX? How can this help us solve design problems?

1. Csilla Herendy Europe's Seventh Information Architecture Summit
Corvinus University of Budapest Prague, Czech Republic, September 23-24, 2011
QUESTIONS
Cognitive schemas @
The usability researcher always tries to get involved with the user’s
thinking. One of the most important parts of research is to access the
user’s cognitive schemas.
– What are these cognitive schemas?
website usability
– Why should we know them, and how could we access, measure and
research them?
– How and why determine our cognitive processes with online surfaces in
the rst place?
Above all:
how can we use these data in information architecture planning / web
design / usability / UX? How can this help us solve design problems?
Successful products will be ones that take the user into consideration
v v
o ine (ergonomy) online (cognitive ergonomy
/ software ergonomy)
Relationship between man and We move about di erently in the Ergonomic interface: we like it more
Pic: toothpastefordinner.com
technology online surface than we do o ine
» not sensomotor but » Redundant cognitive Moreover:
» cognitive level! operations... » we get better performance in a
The aim is to create compatibility » Invisible interface? more e cient system
between human thinking and the between human thinking and
{
computer program. the computer program.
In order to create this, we need to know the user.
? Accessing cognitive schemas
v
We can access cognition by:
Orientation is usually guided by unconscious “The term schema is used to refer to well integrated chunks of knowledge about the world, events,
strategies (psychology of perception): people, and actions.” Eysenck – Keane
v
» we do not use emphases consciously,
» instead, orientation is governed by so-called According to Piaget, schemas are the frameworks through which we perceive the world, ranging
cognitive schemas from an early re ex to a complex philosophical concept. Cognitive schemas used in more complex
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» thus, e.g., what we look for and where we try forms of action are the patterns of thought and planning that behavior is presumably based on.
to nd it on a given digital surface – as a
stereotypical situation.
Aim: to create simple, explicit surfaces.
However: to whom is it explicit? To the designer? Or the user?
Objective:
» to learn about the general ways of online thinking
{ General online way of thinking in practice, examples:
Visual aspects, layout (these rules have become almost compulsory by now).
» to avoid unnecessary cognitive steps » place of the site logo; place of search function
» home: the rst item of the navigation bar
v
» expected system of primary and secondary navigation
» links (colour, underlined)
Other issues, e.g. the process of online shopping
But: Research is the way to explore what is evident to the user in a given environment,
on a given surface (eg. eye tracking, online focus group researches and methods).
Based on: getting to know users and their ways of thinking, and testing the surfaces
while under construction.