Cognitive Artifacts & Windows 95 :: essays research papers

cognitive Artifacts & Windows 95     The clause on Cognitive Artifacts by David A. Norman deals with thetheories and principles of artifacts as they relate to the user during executionand uttermost of tasks. These principles and theories that Norman speaks aboutmay be applied to any in writing(p) user interface, however I have chosen to relatethe hold to the interface known as Windows 95. Within Windows 95, Microsofthas included a dinky tool called the wizard that guides us through the stepsinvolved in setting up certain applications. This wizard is a very helpful toolto the non experienced computer user, in the musical mode that it acts wish well a to-do harken.The wizard takes a complex task and breaks it into discrete pieces by askingquestions and responding to those questions based on the dissolvents. UsingNormans theories on system facet and the personal view of artifacts, we see thatthe system views the wizard as an enhancement. For example, we treasured to set upthe Internet explorer, you click on the icon answer the wizards questions andthe computer performs the work. Making sure everything is setup properlywithout the errors that could occur in configuring the task yourself. Thewizard performs all the functions on its little to-do list without having theuser worrying about whether he/she remembered to include all the commands. Onthe side of personal views the user may see the wizard as a new task to learnbut in world(a) it is simpler than having to configure the application yourselfand making an error, that could cause disaster to your system. The wizard besidesprevents the user from having to deal with all the internal jibeation ofthe application like typing in command lines in the system editor.     Within Windows 95 most of the representation is internal therefore weneed a way to transform it to come out representation so it is accessible to theuser. According to Normans article there are &qu otthree essential ingredients inrepresentational systems. These be the world which is to be represented, theset of figures representing the world, and an interpreter." This is done inWindows by icons on the desktop and on the start menu. The world we are tryingto represent to the user is the application, which can be represented by asymbol which is the icon. These icons on the desktop and on the start menu arethe surface representations the user sees when he goes to access the applicationnot all the files utilize to create it or used in conjunction with the applications