Designing and implementing tools with a good cognitive fit for user and task is an exercise in removing gratuitous difficulties and finding familiar, expressive interface metaphors. Because there is an existing way the task is being performed by existing users (...), it is possible to invent a new tool idea and quickly test the idea with users to see if it in fact makes a task easier. Often users are able to state with confidence whether or not they believe a new way of doing a task will be easier and more efficient based solely on hearing the idea, without having the new tool implemented. However, designing and implementing a dissemination strategy with a good social fit for the user community is far more difficult. A good social fit means users eagerly give up an old tool and adopt a new tool. The time constant in social fit (new product adoption cycle) is typically much longer than the time constant for cognitive fit (duration of an authoring task). New tools that are free to try, easy to learn, similar to existing tools, demonstrate rapid payback, small and fast are likely to spread rapidly in a community of users.
— ATG Education Research - The Authoring Tools Thread - Jim Spohrer
285 words last tended to on 2021-06-03 — let me know what you think