Edwin Hutchins

Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research

We are quickly passing through the historical moment when people work in front of a single computer, dominated by a small CRT and focused on tasks involving only local information. Networked computers are becoming ubiquitous and are playing increasingly significant roles in our lives and in the basic infrastructures of science, business, and social interaction. For human-computer interaction to advance in the new millennium we need to better understand the emerging dynamic of interaction in which the focus task is no longer confined to the desktop but reaches into a complex networked world of information and computer-mediated interactions. We think the theory of distributed cognition has a special role to play in understanding interactions between people and technologies, for its focus has always been on whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them. Distributed cognition provides a radical reorientation of how to think about designing and supporting human-computer interaction. As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies. In this article we propose distributed cognition as a new foundation for human-computer interaction, sketch an integrated research framework, and use selections from our earlier work to suggest how this framework can provide new opportunities in the design of digital work materials.

How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds

Cognitive science normally takes the individual agent as its unit of analysis. In many human endeavors, however, the outcomes of interest are not determined entirely by the information processing properties of individuals. Nor can they be inferred from the properties of the individual agents, alone, no matter how detailed the knowledge of the properties of those individuals may be. In commercial aviation, for example, the successful completion of a flight is produced by a system that typically includes two or more pilots interacting with each other and with a suite of technological devices. This article presents a theoretical framework that tokes a distributed, socio-technical system rather than an individual mind as its primary unit of analysis. This framework is explicitly cognitive in that it is concerned with how information is represented and how representations are transformed and propagated in the performance of tasks. An analysis of a memory task in the cockpit of a commercial airliner shows how the cognitive properties of such distributed systems can differ radically from the cognitive properties of the individuals who inhabit them.

Direct manipulation interfaces

Direct manipulation has been lauded as a good form of interface design, and some interfaces that have this property have been well received by users. In this article we seek a cognitive account of both the advantages and disadvantages of direct manipulation interfaces. We identify two underlying phenomena that give rise to the feeling of directness. One deals with the information processing distance between the users intentions and the facilities provided by the machine. Reduction of this distance makes the interface feel direct by reducing the effort required of the user to accomplish goals. The second phenomenon concerns the relation between the input and output vocabularies of the interface language. In particular, direct manipulation requires that the system provide representations of objects that behave as if they are the objects themselves. This provides the feeling of directness of manipulation.

Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit

In earlier research on the organization of work, Hutchins developed a theory of distributed cognition that takes as its unit of analysis a culturally constituted functional group rather than an individual mind. This theory is concerned with how information is propagated through a system in the form of representational states of mediating structures. These structures include internal as well as external knowledge representations, (knowledge, skills, tools, etc.). This approach permits us to describe cognitive processes by tracing the movement of information through a system and characterize the mechanisms of the system which carry out the performance, both on the individual and the group level. In this paper we apply this approach to the structure of activity in a commercial airline cockpit. A cockpit provides an opportunity to study the interactions of internal and external representational structure and the distribution of cognitive activity among the members of the crew. Through an analysis of audio and video recordings of the behaviors of real airline flight crews performing in a high fidelity flight simulator we demonstrate that the expertise in this system resides not only in the knowledge and skills of the human actors, but in the organization of the tools in the work environment as well. The analysis reveals a pattern of cooperation and coordination of actions among the crew which on one level can be seen as a structure for propagating and processing information and on another level appears as a system of activity in which shared cognition emerges as a system level property. Copyright

Constructing Meaning from Space, Gesture, and Speech

Face-to-face communication in the workplace is often conceived of as consisting mainly of spoken language. Although spoken language is clearly a very important medium for the creation of representations, in complex work settings, it is one of several such media. Gestures and the space inhabited by speakers and listeners are normally thought of as providing context for the interpretation of speech. In this chapter we show how space, gesture, and speech are all combined in the construction of complex multilayered representations in which no single layer is complete or coherent by itself. We examine a brief explanation given by one worker to two others. We show how the meaning of the explanation is carried in the coordination among the spatial organization of specilized artifacts, the positioning of gestures with respect to those artifacts, and the words that are spoken.

I See What You Are Saying: Action as Cognition in fMRI Brain Mapping Practice

In cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is used to produce images of brain functions. These images play a central role in the practice of neuroscience. In this paper we are interested in how these brain images become understandable and meaningful for scientists. In order to explore this problem we observe how scientists use such semiotic resources as gesture, language, and material structure present in the socially and culturally constituted environment. A micro-analysis of video records of scientists interacting with each other and with fMRI images reveals action as cognition , that is, actions that constitute thinking for the scientists.

ChronoViz: a system for supporting navigation of time-coded data

We present ChronoViz, a system to aid annotation, visualization, navigation, and analysis of multimodal time-coded data. Exploiting interactive paper technology, ChronoViz also integrates researchers paper notes into the composite data set. Researchers can navigate data in multiple ways, taking advantage of synchronized visualizations and annotations. The goal is to decrease the time and effort required to analyze multimodal data by providing direct indexing and flexible mechanisms to control data exploration.

The cultural ecosystem of human cognition

Everybody knows that humans are cultural animals. Although this fact is universally acknowledged, many opportunities to exploit it are overlooked. In this article, I propose shifting our attention from local examples of extended mind to the cultural-cognitive ecosystems within which human cognition is embedded. I conclude by offering a set of conjectures about the features of cultural-cognitive ecosystems.

The challenges of partially automated driving

Car automation promises to free our hands from the steering wheel but might demand more from our minds.

Anthropology in Cognitive Science

This paper reviews the uneven history of the relationship between Anthropology and Cognitive Science over the past 30 years, from its promising beginnings, followed by a period of disaffection, on up to the current context, which may lay the groundwork for reconsidering what Anthropology and (the rest of) Cognitive Science have to offer each other. We think that this history has important lessons to teach and has implications for contemporary efforts to restore Anthropology to its proper place within Cognitive Science. The recent upsurge of interest in the ways that thought may shape and be shaped by action, gesture, cultural experience, and language sets the stage for, but so far has not fully accomplished, the inclusion of Anthropology as an equal partner.