Distributed Cognition: A Conceptual Framework for Design-for-All

In most traditional approaches, human cognition has been seen as existing solely ‘inside’ a person’s head, and studies on cognition have often disregarded the physical and social surroundings in which cognition takes place. The fundamental assumptions underlying our research are: (1) distributed cognition provides an effective theoretical framework for understanding what humans can achieve and how artifacts, tools, and socio-technical environments can be designed and evaluated to empower humans beings and to change tasks; and (2) applying this framework to people with cognitive disabilities in design-for-all approaches creates new unique challenges, and in return will create a deeper understanding of distributed cognition.