[IxD Theory] Cognition

Discuss a product via the lens of human cognition. How do we process the product? Consider perception, attention, memory, learning, etc. What did the designers do to help simplify the cognitive processes required to use the product? What’s the mental model and how rigorously is it preserved?

I'm going to look at iTunes because it is a product we process through multiple kinds of cognition -- learning, listening, attention, and memory.

The function which lets you sort by album cover is great because it takes advantage of our ability to quickly scan images. I have over 1000 albums in my library, and while I often cannot remember the name of the album, I can often picture the album cover in my head. Scanning through the music by cover view helps me to find the correct album much faster than reading through the list, and trying to remember what I'm looking for.

Another example of how the designers have simplified the cognitive process deals with focusing our attention. I have my player set up to show eight different pieces of information for each song. Despite the relatively high amount of information showing, the process of searching for a particular piece of information is simple because the information is clearly structured and I can modify the structure to suit my goal.

I think the mental model is a spreadsheet. Yes, it plays music, and creates playlists, and manages your media, but I think the feature that differentiates iTunes has always been it's ability to search and clearly display the information the user is looking for. Up until version 11, I think they followed the model of a spreadsheet closely. The default settings on version 11 change things completely; because they moved away the mental model, it is difficult to process where your files are how to find an particular item. Luckily, by changing a number of settings you can get iTunes functioning the way it did in versions before.