Re: ::scr Re: Cognitive Friction

[celia romaniuk <space@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2001, Piers Cawley wrote:

> As the old joke has it, the only truly intuitive interface is the
> nipple. After that everything is learned.

Yeah, I hear trackpad-haters use this argument all the time ;)
 
> Anyway, how do you build learnability into anything? I have a
> (purely gut) feeling that learnability is something 'deep' that
> applies to far more than just interfaces. 

Way back in the day (*waves hands vaguely*) I worked as an Instructional
Designer on CD-ROMS and web sites for university courses. My job was to
ensure that the products had educational value i.e. that people actually
learnt stuff from using the media.

The field of Educational Theory and Instructional Design is like a lot of
other areas of academic theory - it's vast and there be dragons. Googling
around leads to pages like this: 

http://tip.psychology.org/

...which gives you some idea of the depth of the field. 

This page on learning concepts goes some way to answering your question,
though: http://tip.psychology.org/concepts.html

I also had a quick look through this page, and thought it was quite good:

http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/peterdl/ID%20Theory.htm

"Jonassen et al. (1997: 28) maintain that the elusive and complex nature
of human consciousness make it impossible to describe, let alone predict,
what will happen in learning situations. Knowledge is not a static object,
but is rather distributed in society, constantly subject to revision and
negotiation."

- 
celia
...(small town, slow news day)