Cognitive Dimensions of Notations

Date	September 24, 2005, two half days: morning tutorial & afternoon workshop
Venue	VL/HCC Symposium 2005
Address	Southfork Hotel, 1600 North Central Expressway, Plano, TX 75074, USA
Price (either workshop or tutorial)		Early (before August 20)	Late (after August 20)
	IEEE members:	US$ 95	US$ 130
	Non-Member:	US$ 145	US$ 180
	Students:	US$ 80	US$ 110
Price (both workshop and tutorial)		Early (before August 20)	Late (after August 20)
	IEEE members:	US$ 145	US$ 195
	Non-Member:	US$ 180	US$ 230
	Students:	US$ 95	US$ 130
Audience	Tutorial attendance suitable for any VL/HCC delegate. Delegates with no prior experience of Cognitive Dimensions are very welcome to attend the afternoon workshop, but would be advised to attend the morning tutorial also.

This VL/HCC satellite event is a tutorial and workshop on related themes. It is possible to register for either the tutorial or the workshop part of the day separately.

Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Tutorial

The Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (CDs) framework is the world's leading approach to understanding the usability of programming tools. It provides an analytic framework and design vocabulary that can be used to evaluate and improve, not only programming languages, but a wide variety of environments and notations for design, problem-solving, and creative work. It was originally proposed by Thomas Green in 1989, laid out in detail by Green and Marian Petre in 1996, and has been the subject of more than 100 research publications since then.

This half day tutorial will provide an introduction to CDs, including motivation, theoretical details, and application methods. It will be extensively illustrated with examples of notational systems and applications. The final part of the tutorial will provide a brief opportunity for participants to discuss their own design or research projects in the context of the framework. We welcome and encourage participants who are working on relevant projects to attend both the tutorial and the afternoon research workshop, which will provide an opportunity for more extensive discussion of their new applications.

Tutorial Speaker

Dr. Alan Blackwell is Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at Cambridge University. He has published extensively on CDs, including (with Thomas Green in 2003) a chapter dedicated to CDs in John Carroll's popular postgraduate HCI textbook. Blackwell consults regularly on applications of CDs, has been teaching a CDs course to Cambridge undergraduates for seven years, and has presented conference tutorials on CDs on several occasions, including previously at VL/HCC.

Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Workshop

(For a description of the Cognitive Dimensions (CDs) framework, see the associated tutorial).

This research workshop marks the 10th anniversary of Green and Petre completing their canonical paper on CDs, and 2006 will be the 10th anniversary of its publication. The workshop will address the current state of the art in CDs research, techniques and applications, and consider future developments in the field. We hope that a major output of the workshop will be the publication, in 2006, of a special journal issue marking the 10th anniversary.

We invite submission of position statements from researchers who wish to participate in the workshop. The following types of contribution will be particularly welcome:

Workshop Submission format

Position statements should be 2 pages in PDF format, including author name, affiliation and contact information. Statements accepted for presentation at the workshop will be distributed in hardcopy at the workshop itself, and also via the CDs resource site.

Position statements should be sent by email to the chair, Alan.Blackwell@cl.cam.ac.uk

Cognitive Dimensions of Notations

Alan Blackwell