Cognitive Factors in Design: Basic Phenomena in Human Memory and Problem Solving

This tutorial provides a "hands-on" (actually, "minds-on") exploration of several basic processes and phenomena of human memory, and problem solving. The emphasis is on developing both intuitive and formal knowledge which can serve as background knowledge which will be useful in interpreting design guidelines and in making educated design judgments when design guidelines fail, conflict, or are nonexistent. The demonstrations used emphasize basic general phenomena with which any theory of memory or problem solving must deal. In addition, the tutorial suggests some of the implications of these phenomena for designing interactive computing systems.