Effective Decision Making with Effective Human Information Interaction: a Cognitive Perspective

Information-rich user interfaces support a user’s information-driven behavior and become increasingly important as computer technologies are used more to "informate" than to automate. The critical aspect of designing such interfaces is to support effective interaction between human and information. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model that considers two components: (1) the cognitive distance for a user to get the information s/he needs from the information represented, and (2) user’s qualitative feeling of thinking directly in the way information is represented. A space of information-rich interfaces classifies four types of human information interactions and their effectiveness. We then draw the implications for designing and using information-rich user interfaces.