Applying Cognitive Science to User Assistance

RAY GALLON C U L T U R E C O M

Presentation © 2013 Ray Gallon all rights reserved

Applying Cognitive Science to User Assistance

Member, Board of Directors


About Me - Ray Gallon The Humanist Nerd!

Owner/Consultant, Culturecom – specialist in usability, content strategy, and user assistance for software !

Research collaborator and principal, The Transformation Society, a new research and training institute in Barcelona, Spain!

■  20 years in technical communication with major companies such as G.E. Healthcare, Alcatel, IBM, etc.

■  Member, board of directors, Society for Technical Communication (STC)

■  Past president, STC France ■  Award-‐winning radio producer and journalist – CBC, NPR, France Culture,

etc. and former programme manager, WNYC-‐FM, New York Public Radio!



The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different " " "! Peter Drucker!

Our job is to help people use our products well and wisely, which means they learn to adapt, and cope with changes in technology and society.


OECD: The Future Requires Complex Thinking

Expert Thinking

Complex Communication

Non-routine Manual Tasks

Routine Cognitive Tasks

Routine manual tasks

• Communication • Knowledge


Before Proceeding, Decide

Modern software’s complexity, features, & power can leave users perplexed – often just when they

have some immediate, contingent need:

“I need to get this done, and NOW!.”


Before Proceeding, Decide

•  User assistance that is limited to procedures cannot help people with contingent needs.

•  They need to decide which, if any, procedures they need to use.

•  Long conceptual topics might provide insight.

•  But people with contingent needs are not going to wade through long texts.

•  We can help users get real work done more quickly with a bit of decision support.


Designing User Assistance - Experience is More Important than Taxonomy

"   Problem #1: with traditional “static” documentation, the product gives meaning to the docs.

"   Users’ experience with the product takes them from the abstract realm of reading about the product...


Designing User Assistance - Experience is More Important than Taxonomy

"   Problem #1: with traditional “static” documentation, the product gives meaning to the docs.

"   Users’ experience with the product takes them from the abstract realm of reading about the product...

"   to the reality of performance.

"   For software, we can go straight to performance-‐based meaning if we embed the user assistance in the product itself.

"   Minimalism + Structured Authoring make this doable.


Let’s Look at Minimalism

"   Two common ideas about minimalism:

"   Don’t waste user’s time with unnecessary

detail, especially concepts

"   Save money in production and

localization with reduced content

"  STEP 1!"  STEP 2!"  STEP 3!

DON’T DO THAT!

NOTE:!

WARNING!!

"   Is memorizing a procedure by rote

necessary for competency? "   If co

ncepts are im

portant,

how do we include the

m

without “wasting

users’

time?”

"   How do I know if I need to do this?


Not Just Minimal – Minimal and Meaningful

§ Minimal and meaningful: one task helps

us understand many related tasks. § Minimal and meaningful: one quick look

tells us we don’t need to bother with this

(or that we do).

"   People best learn about produ

ct

use by doing something and making

connections in the process.

"   Learn by do

ing – put the

concepts where th

ey will be

useful and re

membered.


Everything We Know…

"  Get straight to procedures "  Don’t waste user’s time with unnecessary detail, especially concepts

"  Procedural information must be separated from conceptual information.


Double Embeddedness

Embed simple concepts directly into the User Assistance

Cognitive Science (and John Carroll)backs this up


Cognitive Bases: Gestalt Psychology

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

•  Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain stable percepts in a noisy world.

•  The brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-‐organizing tendencies.

•  The human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts, suggesting the whole is “other” than the sum of its parts.

We fill in blank spaces to complete images. John Carroll favours this kind of inferential learning in minimalism.


Cognitive Bases: Constructivism

•  Allows the learner to experience an environment first-‐hand, thereby giving the student reliable, trust-‐worthy knowledge.

•  The learner is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.

•  Learners are self-‐directed, creative, and innovative.

•  Instructors are facilitators, not teachers.

•  The context in which the learning occurs is central to the learning itself

•  Learning is an active, social process.

•  Learners should collaborate to arrive at shared understanding.

•  This social approach has developed into…

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)


•  Knowledge is activated in the world as much as in the head of an individual. •  It exists within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities.

Cognitive Bases: Connectivism

•  Learning is the process of creating connections and elaborating a network. In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organisation, information, data, feelings and images.

•  Learning may reside in non-‐human appliances.

•  Learning is more critical than knowing.

•  Maintaining and nurturing connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

•  Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.

•  Currency (accurate, up-‐to-‐date knowledge) is the intent of learning activities.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism


•  Knowledge is activated in the world as much as in the head of an individual. •  It exists within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities.

Cognitive Bases: Connectivism

•  Learning is the process of creating connections and elaborating a network. In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organisation, information, data, feelings and images.

•  Learning may reside in non-‐human appliances.

•  Learning is more critical than knowing.

•  Maintaining and nurturing connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

•  Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.

•  Currency (accurate, up-‐to-‐date knowledge) is the intent of learning activities.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism

The Underpinning for

KANBAN INFORMATION:

•  +Know where •  Know how •  Know what •  +Know when

Implied:!•  +Know how to be •  +Know how to be with others


Kanban Information: ��Help Users Learn Your Software Fast

"   We want to give the user all the information s/he needs and only the information s/he needs.

"   We want to deliver that information when s/he needs it – which implies, at the moment s/he has real work to do.

"   The logical conclusion is that user assistance needs to be embedded in the software itself, in such a way that:

"   The user can find it immediately, without excessive searching, if s/he needs it.

"   If s/he doesn’t need it, it stays out of the way.


...AND WHEN????!

Integrated Competency Learning

Adapted by Dr. Neus Lorenzo from Phil Ball & Keith Kelly (2009) Ref: http://ow.ly/dLK8g & http://goo.gl/Ul3A2

+ Individually significant contextualisation (contingency)

+Socio-‐cultural construction (information sharing, mentoring)

+Procedural Memorisation

+ Cognitive construction and process reasoning

+Code: Mastery of the language, interface, iconography...

+Thematic knowledge (SME)

User !Learning Space!

! WHERE IN THIS SPACE DO YOU WANT YOUR

USERS?!


As richness of content i n c r e a s e s , o u r knowledge becomes more and more complex, cognitively speaking. We return regularly to the same place, but on a higher cognitive level

COGNITIVE-‐SYMBOLIC COMPLEXITY

RICH

NES

S OF TH

E CO

NTE

NT

+!

+!-!

The Cognitive Spiral

Bloom’s Pyramid

Adapted from a scheme by Dr. Neus Lorenzo


Integrated Learning: ��Dimensions of Competency

Integrated Learning

Literal Content

Communication

Cognition

Community

Complexity

Criteria Selection

A1 Beginner

A2 Basic

B1 Threshold

C1 Functional

B2 Advanced

C2 Mastery Quantity

Qua

lity

In moving from contingent need to confusion, we still learn more.

Interfaces, hardware, software, user assistance, hands-‐on and conceptual combined

COMPLEXITY ≠ CHAOS!

Quantity of information > contingent need learner gets confused, sense of chaos Can’t keep track of it all


Blending Concepts and Tasks: ��Kanban Information meets DITA

•  We often use concepts to introduce & lead into multiple tasks:

Concept: This concept explains what this element of the interface is all about. It is used in the following tasks:

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4 •  We don't know how else to do it, but this is an

inappropriate use of conceptual information: •  Not good cognitive development •  Not good Kanban


Blending Concepts and Tasks: ��Kanban Information meets DITA

Why not use the DITA Task topic structure to deliver conceptual information where it will do the most good and be best remembered?

<task> Topic General conceptual information using the <context> element

Include decision support (Reusable for related tasks)

Step 1 <cmd> <stepresult> – What happens after execution – can include why

Step 2 <cmd> <info> -‐ Use when there is no result to embed concepts pertinent to the step. Make sure it relates to the task, but is also generalisable to other similar tasks, if appropriate


!

Example <shortdesc> (from tool tip)

<context> The first <p> comes

from tool tip

oXygen Author


Use <choice> lists to include conceptual information

<cmd>

<choices>

<info>

FrameMaker 11


<choicetable> offers another option

<cmd>

<choicetable>

All these elements are available after a <cmd>. Use the one that works best, semantically.


DITA Composite Topic – ��One Size Fits All

The composite topic begins, simply, with a <dita> tag. You can then insert any type of DITA topic, nested within it. Use with great caution!


The Top of the Cognitive Spiral

This is where Integrated Learing

takes place

Equivalent to C levels of linguistic

competency

In Community!


Software Integrated ��Learning Communities

•  Not user groups or user forums, but integrated communities: •  Information developers, and preferably coders and interface

designers, too

•  Marketing, pre-‐sales, administration, anyone in the company you can get interested

•  Expert users

•  Beginners

•  The curious

•  Primary objective: creating an integrated, collaborative community that creates value that is re-‐injected into the system


Vectorising = Actions

http://www.acreditacionfada.org/uploads/images/investigacion.jpg!

Product!

SME!

Wiki!

Online!Embedded!

User Assistance!CRM!

Marketing!

Tech Comm!

Users! Users!

Impacts

Influences

Interacts with

Integrates Helps Feed into

Facilitates

Feeds into

Fertilizes

Adds value to


Self-Organised Groups We made great UA and nobody uses it or they can’t find it!

"   Google is the first instinct! WHY? "   Look for community guidance

"   Use social networks to get answers

"   Consult and contribute to crowd sourced materials

Culture of

information

sharing and

knowledge

building, in

side and ou

tside

the organi

sation.

The user decodes information so as to reconstruct it. S/he then recodes it into new knowledge.

And needs to come up first…

A Group is not a Community

“Finding is the new Doing” –Ian Barker


Integrated Learning Communities

Let people know what you are tracking.!

Attribute material you

reuse in your UA – from

both!

Turn users’ tips and

tricks into training

materials!



Email: [email protected]

Thank You!

Google Plus: +Ray Gallon Twitter: @RayGallon LinkedIn: Ray Gallon

Check out my blog, Rant of a Humanist Nerd: http://humanistnerd.culturecom.net

Portions of this presentation based on research

by the Transformation Society Research group.

Link to the Adobe webinars here: http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2013/02/cognitive_design_user_assistance.html

Two new white papers published on Adobe site: • Changing Paradigms in Technology and Communication • Crossing Boundaries: Implications for the Content Industries Link: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?event=custom&sku=FS0003673&e=tcs_whitepaper !

Applying Cognitive Science to User Assistance

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