Research
Research in our lab focuses on applying theories in cognitive science to studies of human-systems interactions. Traditional Human Factors or Human-Computer Interaction research often implicitly assumes a fixed set of cognitive representations and processes when people interact with a socio-technological system. We believe that this assumption often leads to premature conclusions about human performance and designs. In fact, one major research theme of our lab is to show that the human cognitive system and socio-technological systems are dynamically coupled, in the sense that processes (user strategies) and representations (internal knowledge structures) are highly flexible and adaptive to the emergent characteristics of the interactive task environments. Currently, our research lies at the intersection of Information-Seeking Behavior, Exploratory Search and Learning, Interactive Skill Acquisition, and Interactive Decision Making.
