Using Diagrams to Design Information Systems 1 (2009)
James E. Corter, Jeffrey V. Nickerson, Barbara Tversky, Doris Zahner
Designers use sketches to offload memory and information processing and to promote discovery and inferences. Designers of information systems depend on topological connectivity rather than Euclidean...
Maneesh Agrawala, Doantam Phan, Julie Heiser, John Haymaker, Pat Hanrahan, Barbara Tversky, ...
We present design principles for creating effective assembly instructions and a system that is based on these principles. The principles are drawn from cognitive psychology research which...
2004 Narratives of space, time and life (2009)
Abstract: The mind constructs narratives from what would otherwise be chaos. Narratives viewed minimally—at least two temporally ordered events—are revealed in the way people talk about space and...
Of Visualizations, Barbara Tversky, Maneesh Agrawala, Julie Heiser, Paul Lee, Pat Hanrahan, ...
Before there were written languages, there were visualizations, painted in caves, inscribed in stone, or carved on wood. Visualizations of things that are
Barbara Tversky, Holly Taylor, Karen Emmorey, Ra Lozano, Julie Heiser, Angela Kessell
Gestures serve many roles, some expressive, some communicative, some for gesturer, some for listener. One role they serve is to express and communicate models. A gesture model is a sequence of...
Mental Models 1 Mental Models of Complex Systems: Structure and Function (2008)
Mental Models Interacting with complex systems such as organizations and mechanical devices is an integral part of our lives. Learning them can be a challenge, although they can be described in...
Gestures Augment Learning in Communicators and Recipients (2008)
Communicators explained how to assemble an object or how to get from A to B to recipients, using speech and gesture freely, or restricted to gesture alone. Explanations were examined for uses of...
Microsoft Research Abstract Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions (2008)
Maneesh Agrawala, Doantam Phan, Julie Heiser, John Haymaker, Pat Hanrahan, Barbara Tversky
We present design principles for creating effective assembly instructions and a system that is based on these principles. The principles are drawn from cognitive psychology research which...
Some Ways Images Express and Promote Thought (2008)
How does thought happen? Perhaps because thought is often expressed in language, it is often thought that thought happens in language. Yet it is elementary that thought occurs in the brain,...
Communicating with Diagrams and Gestures (2008)
There are many ways to communicate. Some forms of communication, like words, are symbolic; the relationship between the content and the form of a message is arbitrary. Other forms, like...
Research Article Cognitive models of geographical space (2008)
David M. Mark, Christian Freksa, Stephen C. Hirtle, Robert Lloyd, Barbara Tversky
Abstract. This paper reviews research in geographical cognition that provides
CHAPTER 10 Visuospatial Reasoning (2008)
Visuospatial reasoning is not simply a matter of running to retrieve a fly ball or wending a way through a crowd or plotting a path to a destination or stacking suitcases in a car trunk. It is a...
How Space Structures Language 1 (2008)
Abstract. As Talmy has observed, language schematizes space; language provides a systematic framework to describe space, by selecting certain aspects of a referent scene while neglecting the others....
who analyzed some of the data with care and efficiency. The research was supported by the
Research Article Cognitive models of geographical space (2008)
David M. Mark, Christian Freksa, Stephen C. Hirtle, Robert Lloyd, Barbara Tversky
Abstract. This paper reviews research in geographical cognition that provides
Diagrams as a tool in the design of information systems (2008)
Jeffrey V. Nickerson, James E. Corter, Barbara Tversky, Doris Zahner, Yun Jin Rho
Design typically relies on diagrams to offload memory and information processing and to promote discovery and inferences. Design of information systems, in contrast to design of buildings and...
Diagrams: A Cognitive Tool (2007)
Barbara Tversky, Julie Heiser, Paul Lee, Jeffrey M. Zacks
Diagrams, such as maps, charts, graphs, and widely used as cognitive tools to promote memory and information processing, serving a variety of situated roles. They offload limited capacity working...
Shaaron Ainsworth, Marian Anderton, Mireille Bretancout, Ivar Braten, Stephan Dutke, Mary Sheard, ...
2 focuses on how learning is influenced by the form of representation that learners study. Historically, we focused on text and picture comprehension but given the explosion of representations made...
Characterizing diagrams produced by individuals and dyads (2004)
Abstract. Diagrams are an effective means of conveying concrete, abstract or symbolic information about systems. Here, individuals or pairs of participants produced assembly instructions after...
Julie Heiser, Doantam Phan, Maneesh Agrawala, Barbara Tversky, Pat Hanrahan
Designing effective instructions for everyday products is challenging. One reason is that designers lack a set of design principles for producing visually comprehensible and accessible instructions....
Sketches for Design and Design of Sketches (2003)
Barbara Tversky, Masaki Suwa, Maneesh Agrawala, Julie Heiser, Chris Stolte, Pat Hanrahan, ...
Sketches for and by Design It is said, though not without controversy, that what distinguishes design from art is function. Design is for a purpose, usually a human one. As such, design entails both...
Navigating by mind and by body (2003)
Within psychology, at least two research communities study spatial cognition. One community studies systematic errors in spatial memory and judgement, accounting for them as a consequence of and clue...
Designing effective step-by-step assembly instructions (2003)
Maneesh Agrawala, Doantam Phan, Julie Heiser, John Haymaker, Pat Hanrahan, Barbara Tversky
Navigating by mind and by body (2003)
Abstract. Within psychology, at least two research communities study spatial cognition. One community studies systematic errors in spatial memory and judgement, accounting for them as a consequence...
Morrison, Julie Bauer, Tversky, Barbara
How do we think about the space of bodies? This was addressed in body-part verification tasks exploring several accounts of mental representations of bodies. An imagery account predicts faster times...
Diagrams and descriptions in acquiring complex systems (2002)
Complex systems such as a car brake, circulatory system, or legislative system can be conveyed by language or diagrams. Such systems can be presented from structural or functional perspectives. In...
Animation: Can it facilitate (2002)
Barbara Tversky, Barbara Tversky, Julie Bauer Morrison, Mireille Betrancourt
Graphics have been used since ancient times to portray things that are inherently spatiovisual, like maps and building plans. More recently, graphics have been used to portray things that are...
Some ways that graphics communicate (2002)
A century and a half ago, a young Ojibwa woman sent the letter in Figure 1 to someone she was interested in (Mallery, 1972). The letter portrays a schematic map with a message superimposed. The map...
Animation: Can it facilitate (2002)
Barbara Tversky, Mireille Betrancourt
Graphics have been used since ancient times to portray things that are inherently spatiovisual, like maps and building plans. More recently, graphics have been used to portray things that are...
External representations contribute to the dynamic construction of ideas (2002)
External representations such as diagrams, sketches, charts, graphs and scribbles on napkins play facilitatory roles in inference, problem-solving and understanding (e.g....
Perceiving, remembering, and communicating structure in events (2001)
Jeff Zacks, Barbara Tversky, Gowri Iyer
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. The archival text may be retrieved from:
Structures of Mental Spaces (2001)
Human activity takes place in space. Sometimes, interactions in space are explicit, as we grasp the things around us or find our ways inside and out. Other interactions are implicit, an awareness of...
Spatial schemas in depictions (2001)
To Rochel Gelman, Jeff Zacks, Barbara Tversky, Barbara Tversky
five anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft,
Some ways that maps and diagrams communicate (2000)
Abstract. Since ancient times, people have devised cognitive artifacts to extend memory and ease information processing. Among them are graphics, which use elements and the spatial relations among...
Ontology and Geographic Objects: An Empirical Study of Cognitive Categorization (1999)
David M. Mark, Barry Smith, Barbara Tversky
. Cognitive categories in the geographic realm manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We argue that these features reflect specific...
Pictorial and verbal tools for conveying routes (1999)
Abstract. Traditionally, depictions and descriptions have been seen as complementary; depictions have been preferred to convey iconic or metaphorically iconic information whereas descriptions have...
Why do speakers mix perspectives (1999)
Barbara Tversky, Paul Lee, Scott Mainwaring
Abstract. Although considerations of discourse coherence and cognitive processing suggest that communicators should adopt consistent perspectives when describing spatial scenes, in many cases they...
What does drawing reveal about thinking (1999)
Barbara Tversky, Barbara Tversky, Barbara Tvesky
ABSTRACT. Drawings are an integral part of the dialogue a designer conducts with him or herself during design. They are a kind of external representation, a cognitive tool developed to facilitate...
Induced Pictorial Representations. (1998)
Researchers agree that mental representations of discourse are established at many levels, including a model of the situation described by the discourse. I describe two sets of studies investigating...
Induced Pictorial Representations. (1998)
When understanding discourse, people form mental representations at many levels, including a model of the situation. This report describes two projects investigating spatial mental models induced by...
What architects and students see in architectural design sketches: A protocol analysis (1996)
Abstract The present research aims at examining what information architects think of and read off from their own freehand sketches, and at revealing how they perceptually interact with and benefit...