Assignment Three - Cognitively Deciding When To Go To The Market (Katie Dreier)

When my two close friends and I lived together in an apartment last year, we became a part of a cognitive system. The three of us would do the grocery shopping together and split the cost. As our schedules became increasingly varied from each other’s, the task of coordinating when every one would be available at the same time became increasingly difficult. We needed a system to help “coordinate transformations on representations in [our] goal seeking behavior.” Our goal was to find one hour each week when we could all go together to the market.

Internal representations were not helpful in this situation – our own memories were not going to help coordinate our three different schedules. Instead, we needed external representative tools; we needed to reduce the load on each of us yet still effectively accomplish our goal. In the beginning, we would send text messages to each other when we needed to go to the store and would say when we were available. The problem with this representation was copying more than one person on multiple text messages; it became too confusing as to who was replying to whose text.

To simplify the problem, we created a white board system in our kitchen. Some of us would be up early for classes and others didn’t have work until later in the day. This system allowed us to respond at our own convenience. We could write on the write board when we noticed it was time to go to the market again. Each person would write when they were available in the next two days and it the representation would be transformed; it would become visually clear what time was going work best for each of us.

This system worked because we didn’t need answers immediately. The Olson and Teasley paper defines coupling as “involving two factors: how immediate a response is needed, and how much interaction is required for either clarification or persuasion.” Usually, within two days the board would show when our schedules were each going to match up. We didn’t need to confirm so many times with each other and we didn’t need instant feedback. Our system was great for a loosely coupled task. We “needed to be aware of others’ activity and decisions, but [didn’t need] immediate clarification or negotiation.” Obviously if the decisions were more immediate, or more tightly coupled, we would have needed a new system.