Reaction: Distributed Cognition as a Theoretical Framework for Information Visualization

The author presents a view of how the fundamentals of distributed cognition framework can affect the ways of designing and methodologies of developing InfoVis applications. The author further mentions how cognition can be a part of the fundamentals of the way we perceive information. He also explains how interaction are related to cognition and cognition is more of interactions or actions between the environment and the individual.

The author further provides a scenario to explain internal and external representations and their relations with each other through a scenario/example. The author puts more emphasis on proving that cognition needs to be one of the principle factors shaping the way visualizations are made. He states that this is inclusive of actions that the InfoVis makes with the user and the environment. Author states that it is more important to pay attention to such interactions with the user than how the techniques in the InfoVis work.

The paper mentions that there has not been considerable research done on ways to completely relate all aspects of cognition to InfoVis such that it can be efficiently used as a framework. The paper also explains the improvements that can be done to the Cognition idea such that its scope can be expanded beyond InfoVis Systems.