Post-it notes - a cognitive artifact
Fridge full of post-it notes (what a variety there!) and a shopping list represents something about our mind. In this case we reduce a workload from a memory by externalizing our memory to the outside environment. With these artifacts humans represent information taken from their mind trying to improve their cognitive abilities. External cognition topic is important topic in Human Computer Interaction field as a complement to mental model theory in order to explain human cognition.
As it is suggested in Interaction design book, we use such external representations in order to:
- reduce memory load
- do a computational offloading
- annotate and trace cognition
Cognitive artifacts are different from cognitive tools in a way that artifacts are in static representational form while tools require more interaction, just like a modelling software which outputs different results relating to the input data.
Examples
I am amazed how different these artifacts are in various cultures. For instance the quipu recording devices used by Inca civilization – strings containing knots helping to remember something.
As another example a solar clock (sundial) could be mentioned where time is being measured by the position of the sun. First used probably by Egyptians on about 1500 B.C.
Future
As our manufacturing tools improve, cognition representing is becoming more complex. Take visualization of complex networks library or another data-driven vizualization library as an inspiration. What a variety of information design! As the amount of (recognized and processed) data is increasing there is a demand of relevant ways how to visualize them.
