Distributed cognition in software engineering research: Can it be made to work?

Distributed cognition is a theoretical and methodological framework that considers social groups, their artifacts, and their contexts as a single cognitive entity working towards the solution of a shared problem. In this paper we briefly describe the framework and consider its strengths and weaknesses as a theoretical foundation for software engineering research. We propose a series of techniques to address the methodological problems that the application of the framework entails in our research field. Finally, we present an ongoing exploratory case study that aims to evaluate the adaptability of the framework and of the techniques we propose here.