David Kirsh

University of California, San Diego, Cognitive Science, Faculty Member

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My interests tend to be foundational: how we think with things, what being situated, embedded and embodied means, how we project structure onto the world to facilitate interaction, and how we make sense of instructions. I am also deeply interested in design and especially how to design interactive artifacts and experientially rich environments.
Address: Interactive Cognition Lab
Dept of Cognitive Science
UCSD
La Jolla, CA 92093-0515

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Papers by David Kirsh

A Few Thoughts on Cognitive Overload

Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, 2000

What causes cognitive overload in the workplace? What analytical framework should be used to unde... more What causes cognitive overload in the workplace? What analytical framework should be used to understand how agents interact with their work environments? How can environments be restructured to improve the cognitive workflow of agents? Four primary causes of overload are identified: too much information supply, too much information demand, constant multi-tasking and interruption, and inadequate workplace infrastructure to help reduce the need for planning, monitoring, reminding, reclassifying information, etc… The first step in reducing the cognitive impact of these causes is to enrich classical frameworks for understanding work environments, such as Newell and Simon's notion of a task environment, by recognizing that our actual workplace is a superposition of many specific environments -activity spaces -which we slip between. Each has its own cost structure arising from the tools and resources available, including the cognitive strategies and interpretational frameworks of individual agents. These cognitive factors are significant, affecting how easy or difficult it is to perform an action, such as finding a specific paper in a "messy" desk. A few simple examples show how work environments can be redesigned and how restructuring can alter the cost structure of activity spaces.

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1 Interaction , External Representation and Sense Making

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illus... more Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation – external representations save internal memory and computation – is only part of the story. I discuss eight ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they facilitate re-representation; they are often a more natural representation of structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought – they help coordinate thought.

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Myślenie za pomocą reprezentacji zewnętrznych

AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard

Dlaczego ludzie tworzą reprezentacje zewnętrzne, by pomóc sobie w zrozumieniu sytuacji, diagramów... more Dlaczego ludzie tworzą reprezentacje zewnętrzne, by pomóc sobie w zrozumieniu sytuacji, diagramów, ilustracji, poleceń czy problemów? Oczywisty powód jest taki, że reprezentacje zewnętrzne odciążają naszą wewnętrzną pamięć i obliczenia-to jednak tylko część wyjaśnienia. Omawiam tu siedem sposobów, za pomocą których reprezentacje zewnętrzne zwiększają nasze możliwości poznawcze: (1) zmieniają strukturę kosztów w procesie wnioskowania; (2) wyposażają nas w struktury, które mogą funkcjonować jako współdzielone z innymi przedmioty myśli, (3) tworzą trwałe desygnaty, (4) ułatwiają proces reprezentowania, (5) oddają struktury w sposób bardziej naturalny niż reprezentacje umysłowe, (6) umożliwiają bardziej przejrzyste sposoby kodowania informacji; (7) pozwalają na tworzenie struktur o dowolnej złożoności; (8) obniżają koszty kontroli procesów myślowych: ułatwiają koordynowanie myśli. Łącznie funkcje te sprawiają, że ludzie są w stanie lepiej myśleć za pomocą reprezentacji zewnętrznych niż bez nich. Pozwalają nam myśleć o rzeczach pierwotnie nie do pomyślenia. Słowa kluczowe: reprezentacje zewnętrzne; myślenie; interakcyjność; rozumienie; struktura kosztów. 30 Przekład publikowany za zgodą właścicieli praw do tekstu.

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A Randomized Controlled Trial on the Effect of a Double Check on the Detection of Medication Errors

Annals of emergency medicine, Jan 29, 2017

The use of a double check by 2 nurses has been advocated as a key error-prevention strategy. This... more The use of a double check by 2 nurses has been advocated as a key error-prevention strategy. This study aims to determine how often a double check is used for high-alert medications and whether it increases error detection. Emergency department and ICU nurses worked in pairs to care for a simulated patient. Nurses were randomized into single- and double-check groups. Errors intentionally introduced into the simulation included weight-based dosage errors and wrong medication vial errors. The evaluator recorded whether a double check was used, whether errors were detected, and observational data about nurse behavior during the simulation. Forty-three pairs of nurses consented to enroll in the study. All nurses randomized to the double-check group used a double check. In the single-check group, 9% of nurses detected the weight-based dosage error compared with 33% of nurses in the double-check group (odds ratio 5.0; 95% confidence interval 0.90 to 27.74). Fifty-four percent of nurses in...

Designerly Pick and Place: Coding Physical Model Making to Inform Material-Based Robotic Interaction

Design Computing and Cognition '16, 2017

To study how designers explore ideas when making physical models we ran an experiment in which ar... more To study how designers explore ideas when making physical models we ran an experiment in which architects and undergraduate students constructed a dream house made of blocks. We coded their interactions in terms of robotic pick and place actions: adding, subtracting, modifying and relocating blocks. Architects differed from students along three dimensions. First, architects were more controlled with the blocks; they used fewer blocks overall and fewer variations. Second, architects appear to think less about house features and more about spatial relationships and material constraints. Lastly, architects experiment with multiple block positions within the model more frequently, repeatedly testing block placements. Together these findings suggest that architects physically explore the design space more effectively than students by exploiting material interactions. This embodied know-how is something next generation robots will need to support. Implications for material-based robotic interaction are discussed.

The Context of Work

An ontology of geo-reasoning to support medical response to attacks with weapons of mass destruction

AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings / AMIA Symposium. AMIA Symposium, 2005

We study how Metropolitan Medical Response System units conceptualize the physical space of a dis... more We study how Metropolitan Medical Response System units conceptualize the physical space of a disaster and their organized response. Using a variety of ethnographic methods before, during, and after a disaster drill, we have developed an initial ontology for geospatial and context-aware technology. The conceptual map of first responders is far more complex than a geographical map. Zones and Areas are used to describe documented concepts critical to MMRS operations. Ad hoc locations also play a critical role, helping first responders communicate tactics in spatial terms. Such distinctions play an important role in the way our experts think about their activity. Successful geoaware alerting systems must incorporate these notions if they are to seamlessly fit into the work flow of first responders.

format_quoteThe WIISARD project aims to enhance disaster response through advanced location-aware networks, focusing on WMD incident mitigation.format_quote

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Symposium: Creative Cognition

Why We Use Our Hands When We Think

Distrubuted Cognition, Coordination and Environmental Design

The type of principles which cognitive engineers need to design better work environments are prin... more The type of principles which cognitive engineers need to design better work environments are principles which explain interactivity and distributed cognition: how human agents interact with themselves and others, their work spaces, and the resources and constraints that populate those spaces. A first step in developing these principles is to clarify the fundamental concepts of environment, coordination, and behavioural function. Using simple examples, I review changes the distributed perspective forces on these basic notions.

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Quantifying the Relative Roles of Shadows, Steropsis, and Aocal Accomodation in 3D Visualization

The goal of three-dimensional visualization is to present information in such a way that the view... more The goal of three-dimensional visualization is to present information in such a way that the viewer suspends disbelief and uses the screen imagery the same way as he or she would use an identical, real 3D scene. To do this effectively, programmers employ a variety of 3D depth cues. Our own anecdotal experience says that shadows and stereopsis are two of the best for visualization. The nice thing is that both of these are possible to do in interactive programs. They sacrifice a certain amount of interactive speed, but they are possible. But, there is very little information detailing exactly what these cues add to the perception process. The purpose of this project was to quantify how worthwhile using these two depth cues are, that is, is it worth losing interactivity to get them? Using a large number of student subjects, we performed a series of depth-test trials and analyzed the results. Finally, as an upper-bound control on these experiments, we also ran subject trials on physically fabricated 3D objects, viewing them through a pinhole in a controlled-lighting situation to factor out both shadows and stereopsis, leaving only focal accommodation. This paper shows the design of the experiments and the results expressed in reaction times and error rates. The results have a significant bearing on the design of 3D interactive visualization systems, particularly those that use virtual or augmented reality.

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Using Sketching: To Think, to Recognise, to Learn

Situating Instructions

A web-based video annotation system for crowdsourcing surveillance videos

Imaging and Multimedia Analytics in a Web and Mobile World 2014, 2014

ABSTRACT Video surveillance systems are of a great value to prevent threats and identify/investig... more ABSTRACT Video surveillance systems are of a great value to prevent threats and identify/investigate criminal activities. Manual analysis of a huge amount of video data from several cameras over a long period of time often becomes impracticable. The use of automatic detection methods can be challenging when the video contains many objects with complex motion and occlusions. Crowdsourcing has been proposed as an effective method for utilizing human intelligence to perform several tasks. Our system provides a platform for the annotation of surveillance video in an organized and controlled way. One can monitor a surveillance system using a set of tools such as training modules, roles and labels, task management. This system can be used in a real-time streaming mode to detect any potential threats or as an investigative tool to analyze past events. Annotators can annotate video contents assigned to them for suspicious activity or criminal acts. First responders are then able to view the collective annotations and receive email alerts about a newly reported incident. They can also keep track of the annotators&#39; training performance, manage their activities and reward their success. By providing this system, the process of video analysis is made more efficient.

Préparation et improvisation

Réseaux, 1990

- Le monde comporte beaucoup trop de détails pertinents pour qu'il soit possible d'en d... more

Competence models are causal

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1988

... Article author query; kirsh d [PubMed] [Google Scholar]. David Kirsh a1. ... Competence model... more

In Proceedings of the fourteenth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: LEA. 1992

Perceptive Actions in Tetris, in Control of Selective Perception

1. control of attention: within an image produced by a given sensor certain elements can be selec... more 1. control of attention: within an image produced by a given sensor certain elements can be selected for additional processing; 2. control of gaze: the orientation and resolution (center of foveation of the sensor can be regulated to crate a new image; 3. control of activity: certain non‒percecptual actions can be performed to increase the probability of unearthing salient information that currently is unavailable, hard to detect, or hard to compute. ... In this note we shall discuss some experiments we have been performing on the last variety of active sensing. ... Copyright © 2000-2006 ...

Virtual Collaboration and Adaptive Rooms

SIMULATION SERIES, 1998

Special Issue on Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, Part II-Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research

ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction-TOCHI, 2000

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