Post-cognitivist HCI: second-wave theories

ABSTRACT

Historically, the dominant paradigm in HCI, when it appeared as a field in early 80s, was information processing ("cognitivist") psychology. In recent decades, as the focus of research moved beyond information processing to include how the use of technology emerges in social, cultural and organizational contexts, a variety of conceptual frameworks have been proposed as candidate theoretical foundations for "second-wave" HCI and CSCW. The purpose of this panel is to articulate similarities and differences between some of the leading "post-cognitivist" theoretical perspectives: language/ action, activity theory, and distributed cognition.

REFERENCES

• 1: Susanne Bdker, Through the Interface: A Human Activity Approach to User Interface Design, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1991
• 2: John Millar Carroll, Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1991
• 3: Hutchins, E. Cognition in the Wild. The MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass., 1995
• 4: Terry Winograd , Fernando Flores, Understanding computers and cognition, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1986

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
HCI theories, activity theory, cognitive approach, distributed cognition, language/action