Research Publications
Research publications document the ongoing research that expands the capabilities of cognitive modeling in general or CogTool in particular.
If you are looking for reports of people using CogTool for practical purposes in their work, see Experience Reports.
As a registered user, you may contribute your own publications to this page.
2013
John, B. E., Swart, C., Bellamy, R. K., Blackmon, M. H., Brown, R. (2013) An Open Source Approach to Information Scent. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2013 (Paris, France, April 27-May 3, 2013). ACM, New York.
Opens the door to more research in predicting novice behavior with CogTool-Explorer by removing the tie to proprietary algorithms and corpora for calculating information scent.
Swearngin, A., Cohen, M. B., John, B. E., and Bellamy, R. K. E. (2013). Human performance regression testing. Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2013.
Demonstrates a proof-of-concept system for automatically generating CogTool models so usability can be regression tested in the software development process.
2012
John, B. E., Starr, S. M., and Utesch, B. S. (2012). Experiences with collaborative, distributed predictive human performance modeling. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2012 (Austin, TX, May 5-10, 2012). ACM, New York.
Case study of using CogTool for real-world product development at IBM.
John, B.E., Patton, E.W., Gray, W.D., Morrison, D.F. (2012) Tools for predicting the duration and variability of skilled performance without skilled performers.
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, pp. 985--989, 2012
Demonstrates creating models in CogTool and connecting them to SANLab, a tool that predicts human variability when executing tasks.
Swearngin, A., Cohen, M. B., John, B. E., and Bellamy, R. K. E. (2012). Easing the generation of predictive human performance models from legacy systems. Proceedings of CHI 2012 (Austin, TX, May 5-10, 2012). ACM, New York.
Demonstrates how to use GUI testing tools to automatically create CogTool models of existing systems.
Teo, L., John, B. E. John, and Blackmon, M. H. (2012). CogTool-Explorer: A model of goal-directed user exploration that considers information layout. Proceedings of CHI 2012 (Austin, TX, May 5-10, 2012). ACM, New York.
Extends CogTool to predict novice exploration behavior and shows how these predictions can be used to focus design effort.
2011
Abdulin E. (2011) Using the Keystroke-Level Model for designing user interface on middle-sized touchscreens. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2011 (Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 7 – 12, 2011)
Case Study of using CogTool for making touch screen GUIs for integrated control systems
Bellamy, R. John, B. E., and Kogan, S. (2011) Deploying CogTool: integrating quantitative usability assessment into real-world software development. In Proceeding of the 33rd international conference on Software engineering (ICSE '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 691-700.
Shows how CogTool was used in 5 development projects at IBM and discusses its contribution to software engineering processes in those projects.
John, B. E. (2011) Using Predictive Human Performance Models to Inspire and Support UI Design Recommendations. Proceedings of CHI 2011. (Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 2011) ACM New York.
Shows that CogTool is not just about the numeric predictions -- people can use it to inspire and support design recommendations as well.
Teo, L., & John, B. E. (2011) The evolution of a goal-directed exploration model: Effects of information scent and GoBack utility on successful exploration. Topics in Cognitive Science 3(1), 154-165.
Explains the mechanism CogTool-Explorer uses to decide whether to keep reading links on a webpage, click on the best link seen so far, or go back to the preivous page.
2010
French, B., Siewiorek, D. P. Smailagic, A., and Kamarck, T. (2010) Lessons learned designing multi-modal ecological momentary assessment tools. Technology and Disability (22)1-2, p. 41-51.
Uses CogTool to assess different designs on PDAs and validates against field data.
Harris, B. N., John, B. E., and Brezin, J. 2010. Human performance modeling for all: importing UI prototypes into cogtool. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 3481-3486
Proposal for allowing CogTool to import from a variety of other prototyping tools.
John, B. E., (2010) Reducing the Variability between Novice Modelers: Results of a Tool for Human Performance Modeling Produced through Human-Centered Design. Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS) (Charleston, SC, March 22-25, 2010).
CogTool helps people new to predictive human performance modeling be much more consistent than building Keystroke-Level Models by hand.
John, B. E., and Jastrzembski, T. S. (2010) Exploration of costs and benefits of predictive human performance modeling for design. Proceedings of International Conference on Cognitive Modeling 2010 (Philadelphia, PA, August 6-8, 2010).
Explores different ways to use CogTool and other modeling approaches to model age-related performance on UI designs
Teo, L. & John, B. E. (2010) The Evolution of a goal-directed exploration model: Effects of information scent and go-back utility on successful exploration. Proceedings of International Conference on Cognitive Modeling 2010 (Philadelphia, PA, August 6-8, 2010).
Improves CogTool-Explorer, the research version of CogTool that predicts novice exploration behavior
2009
Agarwal, A. and Prabaker, M. 2009. Building on the Usability Study: Two Explorations on How to Better Understand an Interface. In Proceedings of the 13th international Conference on Human-Computer interaction. Part I: New Trends (San Diego, CA, July 19 - 24, 2009). J. A. Jacko, Ed. Lecture Notes In Computer Science, vol. 5610. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 385-394.
The paper reports using CogTool to make predictions of expert performance, which is used in their new measure of intuitiveness.
John, B. E. & Suzuki, S. (2009) Toward Cognitive Modeling for Predicting Usability. Proceedings of HCI International 2009 (19-24 July 09, San Diego, CA).
Uses CogTool to model human performance on cellphones.
John, B. E., Blackmon, M. H., Polson, P. G., Fennell, K., & Teo, L. (2009) Rapid Theory Prototyping: An Example of an Aviation Task. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 53rd Annual Meeting (San Antonio, Texas, October 19-23, 2009).
Uses CogTool-Explorer to rapidly explore vaiations on theory and device knowledge.
2008
John, B. E. (2008) How Simple Can Motor Modeling Be And Still Be Useful? In Wayne D. Gray (organizer) Models of Motor Control and Performance, a Symposium. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 52nd Annual Meeting (New York City, New York, Sept 22-26, 2008).
Discusses how simple model of motor operations, like those in CogTool, can be useful in design.
Teo, L. & John, B. E. (2008) CogTool-Explorer: Towards a Tool for Predicting User Interaction. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2008 (Florence, Italy, April 5 – 10, 2008) ACM, New York.
CogTool-Explorer predicts novice exploration behavior, including errors they may make (short version).
Teo, L. & John, B. E. (2008) Towards Predicting User Interaction with CogTool-Explorer. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 52nd Annual Meeting (New York City, New York, Sept 22-26, 2008).
CogTool-Explorer predicts novice exploration behavior, including errors they may make.
2007
Luo, L. and Siewiorek, D. P. (2007) KLEM: A method for predicting user interaction time and system energy consumption during application design. 11th International Symposium on Wearable Computers, Boston, MA, October 2007.
Predict both skilled execution time on PDA tasks and energy expediture.
Teo, L., John, B. E., & Pirolli, P. (2007) Towards a tool for predicting user exploration. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2007 (San Jose, USA, April 28 – May 3, 2007) ACM, New York.
First paper about CogTool-Explorer, the research version of CogTool that can predict the exploration behavior of novice users.
2006
Ritter, F. E, Haynes, S. R., Cohen, M., Howes, A., John, B., Best, B., Lebiere, C., Lewis, R. L., St. Amant, R., McBraide, S. P. Urbas, L., Leuchter, S., Vera, A. (2006) High-level behavior representation languages revisited. In Proceedings of ICCM 2006, Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (Trieste, Italy, April 5-8, 2006) Edizioni, Goliardiche.
CogTool, with its "modeling by demonstration" is one of the approaches reviewed in this paper about making human performance modeling easier.
Teo, L., & John, B. E. (2006) Comparisons of Keystroke-Level Model predictions to observed data. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2006 (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 22-27, 2006) ACM, New York.
Describes a method for statistically evaluating the match between predicted behavior and observed human behavior.
2005
John, B. E. & Salvucci, D. D. (2005) Multi-Purpose Prototypes for Assessing User Interfaces in Pervasive Computing Systems. IEEE Pervasive Computing 4 (4), 27-34.
CogTool is used to prototype hand-held devices for user testing and human performance modeling.
Luo, L. & John, B. E. (2005) Predicting task execution time on handheld devices using the keystroke-level model. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2005 (Portland, OR, April 2-7, 2005) ACM, New York.
CogTool is used to model different methods on a PDA and predictions are matched to data.
2004
John, B. E., Salvucci, D. D., Centgraf, P., Prevas, K., (2004) Integrating models and tools in the context of driving and in-vehicle devices. Proceedings of International Conference on Cognitive Modeling 2004 (Pittsburgh. PA, July 30 – August 1, 2004).
Integrates CogTool models of dialing a cellphone with driving.
John, B., Prevas, K., Salvucci, D., & Koedinger, K. (2004) Predictive Human Performance Modeling Made Easy. Proceedings of CHI, 2004 (Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2004) ACM, New York.
First paper about CogTool.
2003
John, B. & Prevas, K. (2003) Modeling Driver Performance with In-Vehicle Information Systems, Poster.
Poster of early CogTool models integrated with a model of driving.
John, B. E. (2003) Information processing and skilled behavior. In J. M. Carroll, (Ed.), Toward a multidisciplinary science of human computer interaction. Morgan Kaufman.
General introduction to human information processing and the GOMS family of models. Mentions tools that pre-date CogTool.
2000
Baumeister, L., John, B. E. & Byrne, M. (2000) A Comparison of Tools for Building GOMS Models. Proceedings of CHI, 2000 (The Hague, The Netherlands, April 1-6, 2000) ACM, New York. pp. 502-509.
Comparison of modeling tools that pre-date CogTool. This analysis helped identify important characteristics of CogTool.
1999
Hudson, S. E., John, B. E., Knudsen, K., & Byrne, M. D. (1999). A tool for creating predictive performance models from user interface demonstrations. UIST'99: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
Describes a predecessor to CogTool, CRITIQUE, which also created models by demonstration.
1995
John, B. E. (1995) Why GOMS? interactions, vol. 2, no. 4. pp. 80-89.
A general introduction to GOMS and KLM human performance modeling and why it can be valuable to product design.
1994
John, B. E. (1994) Toward a deeper comparison of methods: A reaction to Nielsen & Phillips and new data. In Proceedings Companion of CHI, 1994 (Boston, MA, April 24-28, 1994) ACM, New York, 1994. pp. 285-286.
This analysis of what people do when they create Keystroke-Level Models led to some of the design decisions in CogTool