A bibliography of Cognitive Dimensions papers

We have tried to make this list as inclusive as possible. There will also be a list of selected readings in due course.

Last update: September 2008

Additions and corrections should be sent to Alan.Blackwell@cl.cam.ac.uk. Please mention the CD Bibliography in your message.

Blackwell, A.F. (2000). Dealing with new Cognitive Dimensions. Paper presented at Workshop on Cognitive Dimensions: Strengthening the Cognitive Dimensions Research Community. University of Hertfordshire, 8 December 2000. Lists the current set of candidates for new cognitive dimensions, and discusses the criteria that we use for defining new dimensions.

Blackwell, A.F. (2003). Cognitive dimensions of tangible programming techniques. In Proc. First Joint Conference of EASE & PPIG, pp. 391-405.

Blackwell, A.F. (2006). Ten years of cognitive dimensions in visual languages and computing. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 17(4), 285-287.

Blackwell, A.F. (2008). Cognitive Dimensions of Notations: Understanding the Ergonomics of Diagram Use. Invited tutorial at Diagrams 2008.

Blackwell, A.F. & Green, T.R.G. (2000). A Cognitive Dimensions questionnaire optimised for users. In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twelth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, 137-152.

Blackwell, A.F., Green, T.R.G. & Nunn, D.J.E. (2000). Cognitive Dimensions and musical notation systems. Paper presented at ICMC 2000, Berlin: Workshop on Notation and Music Information Retrieval in the Computer Age.

Blackwell, A.F., Britton, C., Cox, A. Green, T.R.G., Gurr, C.A., Kadoda, G.F., Kutar, M., Loomes, M., Nehaniv, C.L., Petre, M., Roast, C., Roes, C., Wong, A. and Young, R.M. (2001). Cognitive Dimensions of Notations: Design tools for cognitive technology. In M. Beynon, C.L. Nehaniv, and K. Dautenhahn (Eds.) Cognitive Technology 2001 (LNAI 2117). Springer-Verlag, pp. 325-341.

Blackwell, A.F. & Green, T.R.G. (1999). Investment of attention as an analytic approach to Cognitive Dimensions. In T. Green, R. Abdullah & P. Brna (Eds.) Collected Papers of the 11th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG-11), pp. 24-35.

Blackwell, A.F., Burnett, M.M. and Peyton Jones, S. (2004). Champagne Prototyping: A research technique for early evaluation of complex end-user programming systems. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC04), pp. 47-54.

Blackwell, A. and Collins, N. (2005). The programming language as a musical instrument. In Proceedings of PPIG 2005, pp. 120-130.

Blackwell, A.F. and Green, T.R.G. (2003). Notational systems - the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a multidisciplinary science. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 103-134.

Blackwell, A.F., Whitley, K.N., Good, J. and Petre, M. (2001). Cognitive factors in programming with diagrams. Artificial Intelligence Review 15(1), 95-113.

Bobkowska , A. (2003). Cognitive Dimensions questionnaire applied to visual languages evaluation -- a case study. In Proceedings of the First Joint Conference of EASE & PPIG (PPIG 15).

Bresciani, S., Blackwell, A.F. and Eppler, M. (2008). A Collaborative Dimensions Framework: Understanding the mediating role of conceptual visualizations in collaborative knowledge work. Proc. 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICCS 08), pp. 180-189.

Bresciani, S., Blackwell, A.F. and Eppler, M. (2008). Choosing visualisations for collaborative work and meetings: A guide to usability dimensions. Darwin College Research Reports DCRR-007, available online at www.dar.cam.ac.uk/dcrr/

Britton, C., and Kutar, M. (2001). Cognitive Dimensions Profiles: A Cautionary Tale. In G. Kadoda (Ed.) Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group.

Britton, C. and Jones, S. (1999) The untrained eye: how languages for software specification support understanding in untrained users HCI Volume 14 (1) (1999) 191-244

Britton, C., Jones, S., Kutar, M., Loomes, M. and Robinson, B. (2000) Evaluating the intelligibility of diagrammatic languages used in the specification of software. Proc. Diagrams 2000, Springer-Verlag, pp. 376-391.

Britton, C., Jones, S. and Lam, W. (1998) Separating the system interface from its internal state: an alternative structure for Z specifications, Proc. of Formal Aspects of Human Computer Interaction, BCS-FACS Workshop. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University, pp. 87-102. ISBN 0-86339-7948.

Buckingham-Shum, S. and Hammond, N. (1994) Argumentation-based design rationale: what use at what cost? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 40 (4), 603-652. Includes a cognitive dimensions analysis of visual tools for design rationale

Burnett, M., Cao, N., and Atwood, J. (2000) Time in grid-oriented VPLs: just another dimension? In (no editors listed) 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages (VL2000), Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, pp 137-144

Clarke, S. (2001). Evaluating a new programming language. In G. Kadoda (Ed.) Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, 275-289.

Clarke, S. & C.Becker (2003). Using the cognitive dimensions framework to measure the usability of a class library. In Proceedings of the First Joint Conference of EASE & PPIG (PPIG 15).

Collins, T. & Fung, P. (1999). Evaluating Hank, a cognitive modelling language for psychologists. Collected papers of PPIG-11 Annual Workshop.

Cox, K. (2000) Cognitive Dimensions of use cases: feedback from a student questionnaire In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twelth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group

Dagit, J., Lawrance, J., Neumann, C. Burnett, M., Metoyer, R. and Adams, S. (2006). Using cognitive dimensions: Advice from the trenches. Journal of Visual Languages & Computing 17(4), 302-327

Dearden, A. (2006). Designing as a conversation with digital materials. Design Studies 27(3), 399-421. (Special issue on Digital Design).

Dearden, A., J. Siddiqi & A. Naghsh (2003). Using cognitive dimensions to compare prototyping techniques. In Proceedings of the First Joint Conference of EASE & PPIG (PPIG 15).

Delahunta, S., McGregor, W. and Blackwell, A.F. (2004). Transactables. Performance Research 9(2), 67-72.

Edge, D. and Blackwell, A.F. (2006). Correlates of the cognitive dimensions for tangible user interface. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 17(4), 366-394.

Fincher, S. (2002). Patterns for HCI and Cognitive Dimensions: Two Halves of the Same Story? In J. Kuljis, L. Baldwin and R. Scoble (Eds), Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, pp. 156-172.

Gilmore, D. J. (1991) Visibility: a dimensional analysis. In D. Diaper and N. V. Hammond (Eds.) People and Computers VI. Cambridge University Press.

Green, T. R. G. (1989). Cognitive dimensions of notations. In People and Computers V, A Sutcliffe and L Macaulay (Ed.) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge., pp. 443-460. The original paper

Green, T. R. G. (1990) The cognitive dimension of viscosity: a sticky problem for HCI. In D. Diaper, D. Gilmore, G. Cockton and B. Shackel (Eds.) Human-Computer Interaction — INTERACT ’90. Elsevier.

Green, T. R. G. (1991) Describing information artefacts with cognitive dimensions and structure maps. In D. Diaper and N. V. Hammond (Eds.) Proceedings of "HCI’91: Usability Now", Annual Conference of BCS Human-Computer Interaction Group. Cambridge University Press.

Green. T. R. G., Winder, R., Gilmore, D. J., Davies, S. P. and Hendry, D. (1992) Designing a cognitive browser for object-oriented programming. Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour Quarterly, Issue 81, 17-20.

Green, T. R. G. (1996) The visual vision and human cognition. Invited talk at Visual Languages '96, Boulder, Colorado. Abstract only appears in: Proceedings of 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages. Eds: W. Citrin and M. Burnett. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Society Press, 1996. Adapts much of the content of Green and Petre (1996) for web presentation

Green, T. R. G. & Petre, M. (1996) Usability analysis of visual programming environments: a 'cognitive dimensions' framework. J. Visual Languages and Computing, 7, 131-174. A lengthy analysis of selected visual programming languages: the most extensive presentation so far in print

Green, T. R. G. & Benyon, D. (1996) The skull beneath the skin: entity-relationship models of information artifacts. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 44(6) 801-828 Goes a little way to formalising the dimensions in terms of extended entity-relationship models

Green, T.R.G. and Blackwell, A.F. (1996). Ironies of abstraction. In Proceedings 3rd International Conference on Thinking. British Psychological Society.

Green, T.R.G. and Blackwell, A.F. (1998). Design for usability using Cognitive Dimensions. Tutorial session at British Computer Society conference on Human Computer Interaction HCI'98.

Green, T. R. G. (1999) Building and manipulating complex information structures: Issues in Prolog programming. In P. Brna, B. du Boulay and H. Pain (Eds.), Learning to Build and Comprehend Complex Information Structures: Prolog as a Case Study. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 1999.

Green, T.R.G. (2000)Instructions and descriptions: some cognitive aspects of programming and similar activities. Invited paper, in Di Gesù, V., Levialdi, S. and Tarantino, L., (Eds.) Proceedings of Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2000). New York: ACM Press, pp 21-28.

Green, T.R.G. (2006). Aims, achievements, agenda - where CDs stand now. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 17(4), 285-394.

Hendry, D. G. and Green, T. R. G. (1994) Creating, comprehending, and explaining spreadsheets: a cognitive interpretation of what discretionary users think of the spreadsheet model. Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 40(6), 1033-1065. Includes a cognitive dimensions analysis of spreadsheet pros and cons

Hendry, D. G. and Green, T. R. G. (1993) CogMap: a visual description language for spreadsheets. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 4(1), 35-54 (special issue on cognitive aspects of visual languages) How to improve spreadsheets, according to cognitive dimensions analysis (particularly with regard to ‘role-expressiveness’, not explored here)

Hendry, D. G. and Harper, D. J. (1997) An informal information-seeking environment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(11):1036-1048. Considers information seeking as opportunistic design of queries, to which cognitive dimensions can be applied, and relates usability of systems to the ease of forming and modifying the queries.

Jones, S. and Scaife, M. (2000) Animated diagrams: An investigation into the cognitive effects of using animation to illustrate dynamic processes. Proc. Diagrams 2000, Springer-Verlag, pp. 231-244.

Kadoda, G. (2000) A Cognitive Dimensions view of the differences between designers and users of theorem proving assistants. . In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twelth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group

Kutar, M., Britton, C. and Wilson, J. (2000) Cognitive Dimensions: An experience report. In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twelth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group

Kutar, M., Britton, C. and Barker, T. (2002). A Comparison of Empirical Study and Cognitive Dimensions Analysis in the Evaluation of UML Diagrams. In J. Kuljis, L. Baldwin and R. Scoble (Eds), Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, pp. 1-14

Lavery, D., Cockton, G., and Atkinson, M. (1996). Cognitive Dimensions: Usability Evaluation Materials, Technical Report TR-1996-17, University of Glasgow. Part of a study comparing effectiveness of diff