Cognitive artifact
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Definition
- “Cognitive artifacts may be defined as "those artificial devices that maintain, display, or operate upon information in order to serve a representational function and that affect human cognitive performance." (Norman 1991, p.17) Cognitive artifacts are in other words man-made things that seem to aid or enhance our cognitive abilities, and some examples are calendars, to-do lists, computers, or simply tying a string around your finger as a reminder.” (Soegaard)
- Cognitive artifacts are an important part of a task environment, i.e. the environment of action.
References
- Kirsh, D. (1999): Distributed Cognition, Coordination and Environment Design, In Proceedings of the European Cognitive Science Society. HTML
- Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.
- Norman, Donald A. (1991): Cognitive artifacts. In: Carroll, John M. (Eds.) "Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface". Cambridge University Press
- Simon, Herbert A. (1996): The Sciences of the Artificial, (third ed.). Cambridge, MA, MIT Press
- Soegard, Mats (20003), Cognitive Artifacts, Interaction-design.org encyclopedia, HTML