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A factor relevant to the individual perception of credibility regarding a web
site is the perceived efficiency at which the user is able to complete certain tasks on the site. Effective
operation of an interactive tool is dependent on the ease at which the user is able to learn the interface and
anticipate the navigational schema. To figure out what methods would lend themselves more easily to an interactively
ergonomic interface, you need to understand how the mind works, and what processes it goes through to arrive at
certain conclusions.
The breadth of research on cognitive theory is much to great to summarize in any kind of specific detail for this
site, but highlighting a couple of aspects of the cognitive model of learning might prove useful to any interactive
designer.
The process of learning, under the cognitive model, is predominantly an internal process of the individual doing the
learning. Most knowledge acquisition is understood as being transmitted in a one-way process from the "teacher" to the
"learner." The information is somehow copied exactly from one brain to another. This, however, is not altogether that
accurate, given the way the human mind works. The learner is an active processor of information who internally
constructs individualized knowledge. Increasing the efficiency of a teaching tool (any web site with information to
convey) would require the designer of the tool to re-conceptualize the "teaching" process from a "transmission" model
to an "integration" model.
In Instructional Design: Implications from Cognitive Science, the author indicates that new information that is
to be "integrated" with a learner must be modified to fit within existing individual knowledge structures called
"schemas." For integration to occur successfully, an existing schema must be modified in one of three ways:
- Accretion (minor additions to existing schema),
- Tuning (minor modifications to an existing schema), or
- Restructuring (major modification of an existing schema)
In the case of interactive media, the schema in question is "interaction methods to item(s) I learn from/with." Early
web designers were at least instinctively aware of this "Schema Modification Theory," as their designs could be
easily identified as alterations of well established metaphors. It was not uncommon in the early days of the world
wide web to see sites that functioned almost exactly like a book, table of contents and all. On other sites one
might find pages mimicking either an audio tape player or a VCR with images a visitor might click on to stop, go
forward, or reverse. These examples of "piggy-backing" on existing visual and organizational metaphors serve as
excellent examples of accretion, but are usually understood as only mildly successful in terms of usability.
In hindsight, one can see that these first attempts to allow an individual to successfully navigate and retrieve
information from an "interactive" resource were steps toward a more complete schema restructuring. It may be
premature to say that an entirely new schema has been constructed, on a socio-cultural level that reflects the
"Internet" metaphor, but it is certainly on it's way. Television commercials and advertising have begun to tune
their own schemas by including "visual idioms" unique to the world wide web.
It is important to realize that the Internet has begun to integrate itself into the social consciousness in such a
fashion that any effort by a web designer to do anything but restructuring would be a step backward. Because
the web is a unique medium, it cannot be forced into a television, radio, or library metaphor. Or rather, it can, but
it will limit the capabilities of the tool, and thus, the efficiency at which information can be gathered, and
knowledge learned.
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