ENHANCING THE EPISTEMIC UTILITY OF PHYSICAL SPACES THROUGH DIGITAL INFORMATION INTERFACES

摘要

People perform many activities in physical spaces such asrnscientific museums, medical laboratories, and educationalrnexhibits. Some activities performed in such spaces are forrnthe purpose of making sense of the features of the space,rnlearning about how elements within the space work,rnsolving problems regarding relationships among itemsrnwithin the space, and so on. As all of these activities arernfundamentally cognitive in nature, they may be labeled asrncognitive activities (CAs). These activities involve and arernrelated to knowledge of and/or knowing about physicalrnspaces. Therefore, the degree to which physical spacesrnsupport such activities may be referred to as their epistemicrnutility. The epistemic utility of physical spaces hasrnhistorically been limited due to the limited affordances thatrnsuch spaces offer. Recent technological advances, however,rnprovide opportunities for enhancing the epistemic utility ofrnphysical information spaces. Cognitive activity supportrntools (CASTs) are one such type of technology that canrnpotentially enhance the epistemic utility of physicalrninformation spaces. The enhancement is in potential formrnas it depends upon the effective and proper design ofrnCASTs. This paper draws upon research from therncognitive, information, and computer sciences to informrnand motivate the conceptualization of CAST-augmentedrnphysical information spaces that have enhanced epistemicrnutility for performing CAs.