1. what did you find

1.1. interesting about the article?


What we found interesting about the article is that the article went to explain very important concepts like ethnography and gav edetailed examples on it. We also liked how the article debated that cultural corollairies and habits could be an obstacle towards knowing more and exploring more. We liked that section and we thaught that the paper did a good job in explaining it through examples.


1.2. not interesting about the article?


We found the paper somewhat hard to read, but the exmaples were clear and helped in the understanding of the concepts.


2. what do you consider the main message of the article?


Distibuted cognition has a very important role to play in the design and making of HCI. It should be adopted more to guarantee a system that satisfies users needs. It is therefore important to know the culture of the end users and how they think to be able to make a product that satisfies their criteria.


3. the article talks about “new foundations” for HCI

3.1. please discuss a couple of “old foundations” for HCI


Those foundations consists of the human interaction with interfaces of the desktop (interaction with mouse, keyboard...
Also, the ability of taking information and turning into computer representations in order to see it better.


3.2. how “new” according to your knowledge are these “new foundations”?


They might not be new for us after we have taken this class and been exposed to the concepts discussed in it, because it reiterates the need of metadesign and social groups collaboration in the making of every system, and it en courages using computers as tools and not as idea makers. The ideas and the design should be in form of collaboration in order to satisfy evryone's needs


4. in the class on Jan 14, 2004, we showed a multi-media show about the CLever project ‡ question: which elements of distributed cognition are described in this video?

remark/hint: in case you have to rely on “distributed cognition” to remember what was shown — you can refresh your memory by watching the multi-media show again (it only takes 6 minutes) at: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/clever/index.html by activating the link “Load Flash Movie”


The Clever project used elements of distributed cognition throughout the video. Part of the Clever features is that it incorporates the users and communities input in the making of the scripts to guarantee a better functionality. Also Clever has the ability of making a prediction of the users action's and alert the care givers anytime the user's action do not match the expected action.


5. here is a quote from Neil Postman: “anatomy is not destiny: The invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature nor the ravages of time. Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our minds as well as our bodies are improvable!”

5.1. argue what the this quote has to do with the article?


This quote argues that human capabilities through some mechanical improvements. In this case, the eye-glasses were an example of a mechanical improvement that made our brains think more. If we apply this quote to the article studied, we will find that if we use some physical improvements to the domain of cognition, our brains and our ability to improve our thoughts and deductions will increase and get better.


5.2. do you agree with the quote?


Yes, we do. We as human beings are always striving to be better thinkers and achievers, and the advanve in technology and material means had just made it easier for us to achieve more, therefore the quote applies to our time and to upcoming times.